BB Education spent eight decades learning what teachers actually buy. Its newest lesson was digital: schools do not shop like households, and the checkout had to catch up.
Natacha Beim Boserup could not persuade existing schools to adopt her early-learning ideas, so she opened one herself. Twenty-eight years later, CEFA packages curriculum, teacher training and a premium school experience into a franchise that costs roughly C$2.5 million to C$3 million to open.
A single Harlem school that opened with 165 kids in 2006 now tops New York State's math rankings and expands into Florida. Here is how Success Academy built it, and who is paying for it.
Solution Tree built a sizable education business around a deceptively ordinary ritual: teachers meeting together. Its edge is turning that meeting into a system schools can buy, practice, measure and repeat.
Uncommon Schools is a nonprofit charter management organization that starts and runs outstanding urban public charter schools designed to close the achievement gap and prepare students from low-income communities to graduate from college. Founded around North Star Academy in Newark in 1997 and relaunched as a multi-state network in 2005, Uncommon operates roughly 53 K-12 schools serving about 20,000 students across New York City, Newark, Camden, Rochester, Troy, and Boston. Beyond running schools, it is a national force in teacher development - home to Doug Lemov's 'Teach Like a Champion' methodology - and pairs rigorous, data-driven instruction with long-term alumni college coaching.
Julie Jackson is the Co-Chief Executive Officer of Uncommon Schools, a nonprofit network of high-performing public charter schools serving roughly 20,000 students across New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. The first Black Co-CEO in the organization's history, she has spent three decades in education, starting as a Teach For America corps member in Paterson, New Jersey in 1994 and rising from founding teacher and principal to President and now Co-CEO. She oversees all 53 K-12 Uncommon Schools and has trained more than 25,000 teachers and leaders across the United States and abroad. Known for her belief that schools should be places of both joy and rigor, she is a recognized voice on teacher development, college completion, and equity in urban public education.
BloomBoard is a Pittsburgh-based education technology company that helps K-12 school districts grow, advance, and retain their own educators. Its platform turns on-the-job classroom experience into pathways for teacher certification and college degrees, pairing districts with higher-education partners so paraprofessionals, substitutes, and support staff can earn credentials while continuing to work and get paid. Built originally around competency-based micro-credentials developed with the nonprofit Digital Promise, BloomBoard now runs turnkey, district-branded 'Your-District U' programs aimed at solving the national teacher shortage from within.
Room to Read is a global nonprofit working to create a world free from illiteracy and gender inequality. Founded in 2000 after a Microsoft executive's trek through Nepal, it partners with communities and governments to build foundational literacy in early grades and to support girls through secondary school with life-skills and mentorship. As of 2024 it reports reaching more than 50 million children across 28 countries.
Dr. Ilana Nankin is the Founder & CEO of Breathe For Change, a San Francisco-based organization that has trained over 15,000 educators in mindfulness, social-emotional learning, and yoga — reaching an estimated 1-5 million students across the United States. A former Pre-K teacher turned Ph.D. researcher turned movement builder, she launched Breathe For Change in 2015 after her own students demanded she formally train them. Her organization runs the world's only 200-hour Mindfulness, SEL & Yoga Teacher Training designed exclusively for educators, a Master's in Human-Centered Education in partnership with William Jewell College, and an expanding professional development platform for schools and districts.