In different areas of New York, there have been positive (and some negative) developments vis-à-vis educational growth.  Here we give a brief overview of a few of the recent ones.

Having just raised $2.1 million in new funding, Wonderschool is now in a position to open 150 programs in New York City.  The organization – a network of in-home daycare and preschools -mainly acquired the capital  the following non-profit investment firms: Be Curious Partners, Edelweiss Partners, Learn Capital, Omidyar Network and Rethink Education.  This news is most welcome given the New York City Department of Education’s announcement  that it will close 14 public schools.

When it comes to forward-thinking tech education, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings is all about supplementing elementary and middle school education via student-customized games, lessons and more.  That was back in 2011.  Today, over 2 million kids use the  DreamBox Learning platform which assembles data on students’ performance, tracking how long it takes for them to get the right answer to a question, etc.  thereafter it responds by raising/lowering the difficulty level.  Per hour, over 50,000 data points are assembled for each student.