The formation of the Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative was the result of a process begun by the Jim Joseph Foundation in 2013. At that time, in an effort to spawn innovative, locally sustainable teen engagement programs, the Jim Joseph Foundation brought together an array of funders to explore various approaches. The first 24 months of this deliberate process in which ten local and five national funders undertook to educate themselves, build relationships and co-invest in community-based Jewish teen education and engagement initiatives was thoughtfully documented in a case study issued in January 2015 by Informing Change, entitled, Finding New Paths for Teen Engagement and Learning: A Funder Collaborative Leads the Way.
This case study documents the next stage of the Funder Collaborative’s development, roughly the 21-month period from January 2015 through October 2016 and reflects the Collaborative’s commitment to share its process with others who may choose to embark on their own co-funding endeavor. The case study explores the Collaborative’s experience as it deepens its work in the realm of Action and slowly considers how to move toward Impact.
PREPARING TO DEEPEN ACTION: A Funder Collaborative Finds its Way, June 2017
The formation of the Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative began in 2013, when more than a dozen local and national funders of Jewish teen programming were brought together by the Jim Joseph Foundation for an ongoing series of discussions about expanding teen involvement in Jewish life. Over the next two years, this group developed into a more formal Funder Collaborative, with the expressed aim of making grants to support comprehensive, innovative, and sustainable new community-based initiatives in ten communities across the United States: Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Denver, Los Angeles, New York, San Diego, and San Francisco.
In order to understand the process and outcomes of teen programs, both in individual communities and across multiple regions, two concurrent evaluation efforts were undertaken alongside the community initiatives. In each community, local evaluators were contracted to study regional initiatives; and, on a national level, a Cross-Community Evaluation (CCE) was initiated in 2015.
The CCE is designed to answer a set of primary evaluation questions centered on the learning and growth of Jewish teens in different communities, as well as to facilitate and encourage continual communication and sharing of lessons across communities. At its heart is an exploration into how, and to what extent, local initiatives are successfully engaging teens in Jewish learning and growth.
INITIAL OUTCOMES ACROSS COMMUNITIES: First Fruits from the Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative, June 2017
The Jim Joseph and William Davidson Foundations have been working diligently over many years on the demanding and pressing issues of Jewish engagement and learning. It is universally accepted that digital media engage youth and adults and can deliver educational outcomes. Yet the Jewish community can do much more to harness these powerful, ubiquitous, engaging Ed Tech tools efficiently in the service of Jewish engagement and learning. Lewis J. Bernstein and Associates present the following report advising the Foundations on making strategic Investments in Ed Tech and Digital Engagement in service of their missions.
Educational technology (Ed Tech) is broadly defined to include: digital technology, internet connectivity, and digital content in the service of a full range of educational and learning objectives. It is designed for use by teacher/instructors, educational institutions, and student/learners.
This report is a result of months of Ed Tech audits, over fifty interviews, and the Principles’ collective experience in the field. Smart Money is presented in two sections: 1) set of Recommendations for the foundations to consider and 2) a Landscape Report of the trends and tools used in Ed Tech.
Smart Money: Recommendations for an Educational Technology and Digital Engagement Investment Strategy, March 2017
Introductory Blog to Smart Money, by Kari Alterman, William Davidson Foundation, and Josh Miller, Jim Joseph Foundation
The Los Angeles Jewish Teen Initiative (LAJTI or Initiative) is a collective effort among organizations across the greater Los Angeles Jewish community to enhance the opportunities for teens to engage positively in Jewish life. The LAJTI launched in 2015 after several years of planning with a broad base of community stakeholders. Cofunded by the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles (the Federation) and the Jim Joseph Foundation (the funders), the LAJTI includes three main strategies, each with multiple components working toward shared goals: Expand and create teen engagement programs of excellence; Nurture the teen ecosystem and build community commitment to teen engagement; Support the professional development of educators of Jewish teens.
Informing Change has been engaged to evaluate the first three years of the LAJTI. The evaluation is both process and outcome oriented, with an intention to provide ongoing feedback on the LAJTI’s various components to inform strategic pivots, while also assessing the Initiative’s results.The data collected during the LAJTI’s first year largely serve as a baseline for assessing change over time. The baseline described in this report provides a promising outlook for the years ahead. The LAJTI launched many of its moving parts in Year 1, most notably the Accelerator and efforts to enhance the professional development for Jewish teen educators. These early starts are accomplishments in and of themselves; yet, as with any new endeavor, there have been bumps and requisite tweaks along the way. This report documents the LAJTI’s development and accomplishments in its first year of implementation, along with early lessons learned and recommendations for Year 2.
Expanding the Circle of Teen Education & Engagement: Evaluation of Year 1 of the Los Angeles Jewish Teen Initiative, December 2016
Learn more: A Taste of the Real World: Lessons Learned from a Community Internship Program for Teens
In 2014, Entwine received a grant from the Jim Joseph Foundation to support the continued expansion of select programs, to track and evaluate Jewish identity and service learning outcomes produced by the programs, and ultimately to develop Entwine’s internal capacity for ongoing self-assessment and learning.
In April 2015, Rosov Consulting was commissioned to carry this evaluation and capacity building efforts. The study included three separate, but closely related, components:
• An alumni study of Entwine trip and fellowship participants who were involved in the program between 2008 and January 2015.
• A real time study of trip and fellowship participants between June 2015 and February 2016.
• An assessment of Entwine Learning Networks across the country, encompassing leaders, participants, and trip-alumni nonparticipants in various communities.
Both the alumni and real time studies employed a combination of quantitative (surveys) and qualitative (focus groups and interviews) methods. The Learning Network assessment used qualitative methods (focus groups), with supplemental quantitative data that was obtained though the Alumni survey.
Vision in Action: Evaluating JDC Entwine’s Continuum of Service and Engagement, January 2017
The B’Yadenu (“In our Hands”) Demonstration Project was created because, historically, students with special learning needs (SLNs) have had difficulty succeeding in Jewish day schools (JDSs). Under-enrollment has been due to a variety of school conditions such as lack of skills, strategies, and resources to serve these students, resistance to change, insufficient professional development (PD), and limited experience addressing SLNs. The five-year model demonstration project (Phase 1), funded by the Jim Joseph Foundation and the Ruderman Family Foundation, was designed and implemented by a team from Combined Jewish Philanthropies (CJP), Gateways Access to Jewish Education, and Yeshiva University. Five Boston area JDSs participated in two cohorts: two schools in Cohort 1 (a third dropped out) and three schools in Cohort 2.
The two primary goals articulated in the B’Yadenu Logic Model were to: 1) Create and deliver an effective, sustainable, and adaptable model for JDS education to serve an increased number and range of students with SLNs in the Boston area and 2) Document and disseminate the model for adaptation in other communities. To address those goals, the primary “intervention” of B’Yadenu was professional development (PD) at each school, tailored to each school’s plans and overseen by the school leadership team.
From 2012 through 2016, Goodman Research Group, Inc. (GRG) conducted an external evaluation of the project, funded by the Jim Joseph Foundation.
Evaluation of the B’Yadenu Demonstration Project: Executive Summary of Final Report of Phase 1, November 2016
About a century after the first Jewish overnight summer camps were established in North America, Hebrew remains an important component of the camp experience. Some camps use very limited Hebrew, such as blessings and a few terms like Shabbat shalom and tikkun olam. Others incorporate Hebrew in activity names, announcements, and theatrical productions. To understand better how and why camps use Hebrew, Sarah Bunin Benor, Jonathan Krasner, and Sharon Avni — a sociolinguist, a historian of Jewish education, and an educational linguist —conducted this study.
This report is part of a larger study, “Hebrew at North American Jewish Overnight Summer Camps,” including observation and interviews, the results of which will be published as a book (Rutgers University Press, expected publication 2017). The study is a project of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University, with funding from the Consortium for Applied Studies in Jewish Education (CASJE) and additional support from the Wexner Foundation, Hebrew Union College, and City University of New York.
Beginning with pilot research in 2012 and culminating in 2015, the study involved several components:
- observation at 36 camps around north america;
- interviews and focus groups with about 200 staff members and campers;
- archival research; and
- document review.
To complement this qualitative research, the researchers conducted a survey of Hebrew use at camp, the results of which are reported in Connection, Not Proficiency. 103 camps participated in the survey, a response rate of 64%. They represent approximately 45,000 campers at a diversity of camps according to region, religiosity, and orientation toward Israel. For results of the full study, see the authors’ book, forthcoming in 2017.
Connection, Not Proficiency: Survey of Hebrew at North American Jewish Summer Camps, August 2016
The Jim Joseph Foundation created the Education Initiative to increase the number of educators and educational leaders who are prepared to design and implement high-quality Jewish education programs. The Foundation education granted $45 million to three premier Jewish higher education institutions–Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR), the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), and Yeshiva University (YU)–(each institution received $15 million) and challenged them to plan and implement programs that used new content and teaching approaches to increase the number of highly qualified Jewish educators serving the field.
The grant covered program operation costs as well as other costs associated with institutional capacity building. The majority of the funds (75 percent) targeted program planning and operation. The grantees designed and piloted six new master’s degree and doctoral degree programs or concentrations; eight new certificate, leadership, and professional development programs; two new induction programs; and four new seminars within the degree programs. The Education Initiative also supported financial assistance for students in eight other advanced degree programs. The grantees piloted innovative teaching models and expanded their use of educational technology in the degree and professional development programs.
American Institutes for Research (AIR) conducted an independent evaluation of the Education Initiative.
Education Initiative Year 5 Evaluation Report and Executive Summary
Education Initiative Year 4 Evaluation Report
Education Initiative Year 3 Evaluation Report
Education Initiative Year 2 Evaluation Report
Education Initiative Year 1 Evaluation Report
The doctoral and dual master’s programs in Education and Jewish Studies are a collaboration between the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development and the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University (NYU). The Jim Joseph Foundation awarded a grant of $4.96 million to NYU during the period 2009–2015 to improve the infrastructure of the two programs and to attract outstanding prospective students (Jim Joseph Foundation fellows).
American Institutes for Research (AIR) conducted an independent evaluation of this grant that assessed the extent to which the doctoral and dual master’s programs have provided what students need to become successful educators and educational leaders in Jewish education. This evaluation addressed three questions:
- According to fellows, to what extent did their programs promote applicable knowledge,
attitudes, and networking?
- To what extent have fellows engaged in leadership roles in the field of Jewish education
after graduation?
- To what extent do fellows attribute engaging in thought leadership to their doctoral and
dual master’s programs?
Moving Jewish Educators to the Next Stage in Their Career: An Evaluation of New York University’s Dual Master’s and Doctoral Programs in Education and Jewish Studies
In 2013, the Jim Joseph Foundation commissioned the report Effective Strategies for Educating and Engaging Jewish Teens. In that report, nine key implications for strategic development regarding Jewish teen education and engagement emerged. These implications provided a good baseline for The Jewish Education Project’s understanding of necessary factors to build programs that engage more Jewish teens in meaningful Jewish life. Following the release of Effective Strategies, the Jim Joseph Foundation began to partner with funders in ten communities to significantly invest further in Jewish teen engagement. The Jewish Education Project has run the National Incubator that has been working closely with these communities, known collectively as the Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative, as they design their respective teen initiatives.
Generation Now: Understanding and Engaging Jewish Teens Today — commissioned by the Jim Joseph Foundation, Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah, and The Marcus Foundation—builds on the past and is the result of new research in Jewish teen education and engagement. Funders in the Teen Collaborative identified a need to define shared outcomes in order to pursue their common goals and to effectively aggregate and compare evaluation findings. While this research was intended only to lead to the development of outcomes in this space, it yielded insights that can guide and inform Jewish teen education and engagement more broadly, and can be used by those in the Collaborative as well as others. Generation Now details insights about Jewish teens—from their interests, to their fears, to what brings them meaning in life—along with shared outcomes, indicators, and measurement tools that will gauge Jewish education and engagement among teens participating in Jewish experiences.
Generation Now: Understanding and Engaging Jewish Teens Today, April 2016
Effective Strategies for Education and Engaging Jewish Teens, February 2013
The Jewish Resource Specialist (JRS) Initiative, designed in 2008 by the Early Childhood Education Initiative (ECEI) of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties (the Federation), in partnership with the Jim Joseph Foundation, positions the early childhood years as a gateway into Jewish life for children and their families. It is a response to several catalyzing factors. First, preschool is a critical time for young families. Children are eager to learn and are developing socially, emotionally, cognitively and spiritually. For parents, at no other moment will they be so involved in their children’s schooling. They are also choosing how they spend their time and with whom they spend it. The JRS Initiative came about to leverage this unique time for families.
Second, the JRS Initiative also addresses the dearth of leaders working to build the field of Jewish early childhood education (ECE). Those who want to focus on Jewish ECE and build communities of engaged Jewish families with preschool-aged children are challenged to find the support, mentors and professional development opportunities they need to craft a career path. The JRS Initiative seeks to meet these field-wide demands by developing the skills and Jewish knowledge of the JRS educators who then bring ideas and guidance to their schools.
Enhancing Jewish Learning & Engagement in Preschool Life Executive Summary, January 2016
Enhancing Jewish Learning & Engagement in Preschool Life Full Model Documentation, January 2016
Launched in 2010, the Education Initiative is a $45 million grant program to Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR), the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), and Yeshiva University (YU). The three institutions have each been awarded $15 million to support the field of Jewish education through the development and enhancement of advanced degree, leadership, and certificate programs; improvement of recruitment activities; and induction support to new teachers and education leaders. In all, the Education Initiative engaged more than 1,400 Jewish education professionals from 34 states and internationally, and supported 26 new and existing programs in three higher education institutions. More than 200 graduates are expected to complete full-time graduate degree programs and will fill open positions in the Jewish education workforce through this Initiative.
American Institutes for Research (AIR) examined the work and outcomes of the programs funded by the Education Initiative. This independent evaluation focuses on the five goals for the Education Initiative, three of which relate to educator preparation and support, and two to capacity building.
Education Initiative Year 4 Evaluation Report and Executive Summary
Education Initiative Year 3 Evaluation Report
Education Initiative Year 2 Evaluation Report
Education Initiative Year 1 Evaluation Report