Education

A landmark gift from Griffin Catalyst to Miami Dade College—the largest and most diverse college in America, serving over 120,000 students—establishes the Griffin Scholarship Fund. The $20 million grant, which represents the largest single gift in the history of Miami Dade College, supports four scholarship programs for more than 8,000 low-income students—most of them first-generation college-goers—across the school’s eight campuses.

With 53 schools located across New York City, Success Academy is one of the fastest-growing and most effective public charter school networks in the nation. Every one of its high school graduates, mostly from low-income households, has been accepted to attend a four-year college, and more than two-thirds of whom have been accepted by selective or highly selective colleges.

Support from Griffin Catalyst will allow the network to expand dramatically, increasing enrollment by 50% from 20,000 to 30,000 over the next five years—transforming the lives of countless students and their families and serving as a national model for the charter-school approach to public education.

Even as artificial intelligence (AI) and computer science (CS) education becomes ever more critical for career success and national competitiveness, the United States continues to underperform in STEM education compared with other countries.

To address this problem, Griffin Catalyst is supporting efforts to train more K-12 teachers in AI and computer science instruction, and to ensure more students have the opportunity to learn these critical skills, opening a path for them to become STEM majors in college and pursue a career in science and technology.

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic threaten to erase decades of academic progress, particularly for low-income students across the country. Personalized tutoring represents a powerful tool to combat this learning loss and help students catch back up to grade level. High-quality tutoring has been proven to accelerate academic achievement, helping students gain 24-36 months of learning in a single academic year.

By supporting Accelerate, Saga Education, and Schoolhouse.world, Griffin Catalyst is expanding access to tutoring and generating new evidence about the most impactful and cost-effective ways to personalize instruction.

A good education is the on-ramp to the American Dream. But for too many students, the opportunity to pursue world-class higher education is out of reach. That’s why Griffin Catalyst is focused on closing this opportunity gap—making strategic investments that allow more students to continue their education.

Historic gifts to Harvard University and the University of Chicago are helping to secure needs-based financial aid to ensure the best and brightest have access to the highest-quality education our country has to offer. By opening doors to world-class institutions and investing in student success, Griffin Catalyst is helping advance education—and American innovation—for generations to come.

To tackle the most challenging problems of our time, few skills are more valuable than critical thinking and an ability to understand and evaluate data.

Griffin Catalyst is actively committed to expanding such education in America’s classrooms. Through partnerships with Data Science 4 Everyone, the College Board and Nobel Prize Outreach, Griffin Catalyst is ensuring greater access to data science, computer science and scientific critical thinking curricula, inspiring in children a lifelong passion for problem-solving.