Giving Compass' Take:

• At Getting Smart, Tom Vander Ark and Devin Vodicka ponder the benefits of COVID microgrants, small funds that could offer families more choice in their children's remote education.

• What would it take to provide families with these COVID microgrants? How might they help families with less access to resources? How can we support students in need of educational support during the pandemic?

Find funds to offer your support to economic benefits, like COVID microgrants, for families during the pandemic.


In many places, the pandemic has exposed the extent to which access to resources limits learner and community engagement. After one of the largest-scale forced experiments in public education history, few SEAs and LEAs are satisfied with their first pass at a digital-first education system. The vision for this priority is to create a system that facilitates parent educational choice while also expanding access to the basic technology infrastructure families need to effectively access current and future virtual learning options.

The end result would be a system that creates a state-level market for parents to select and spend their microgrant funds across a variety of options, suitable to their children and their own technology needs. It would empower rural communities to greatly improve connectivity, and provide students and families more agency and ability to access the education options that work best for them.

In our vision, it would also expand access to programming that is learner-centered. This means that it would elevate and expand access to learning that is personalized, authentic, competency-based, and open-walled.

To achieve this, a statewide microgrant system would have to function at three levels. First, it would need to include a platform accessible to parents and responsive to known and immediate needs. Within this platform it would need to provide options that fit community technology and learning demands. Finally, it would need to monitor usage, troubleshoot access challenges, and seek to inform the evolution of the network by linking this learning system into other state infrastructures like course credits, grading systems, and public matriculation.

Read the full article about COVID microgrants by Tom Vander Ark and Devin Vodicka at Getting Smart.