Partnership Schools is honored to be recognized by Forbes as a semifinalist for the STOP Award.

A national initiative administered by the Center for Education Reform, the award recognizes educational organizations who are meeting COVID learning crises with innovative action on behalf of students and families—action that is “sustainable, transformational, outstanding and permissionless.” Partnership Schools and our fellow semifinalists represent “a microcosm of transformational, outstanding work from education providers who delivered for kids during the pandemic.”

As Center for Education Reform Founder and CEO Jeanne Allen explains in Forbes, “While thousands of the nation’s school systems were paralyzed by the pandemic, and some even bullied by teachers unions in the midst of it, in many communities, innovative schools, parent groups and other community organizations jumped in to serve students wherever they could. They did not wait to be told they could, or that it was allowed. They just did it.”

We are honored to be among twenty responsive, courageous educational organizations considered for the STOP Award’s $1 million prize to transform education. Together with them, we offer perhaps even more than models of innovation; we provide a vision of high-functioning communities that many Americans crave, where collective strength comes from community-based organizations with the mandate and gumption to respond nimbly to those they serve. As New Yorker Jamie Rubin reflected last week in The Chronicle of Philanthropy, “while most of the city came to a screeching halt, nonprofit human-services organizations sprang into action”—and those organizations, like the twenty recognized by the STOP Awards committee, merit a closer look for the work we are determined to continue doing on behalf of our communities.

For more on the STOP Award and our fellow semifinalists, you can read the full article here.