About the Pearson Foundation

The Pearson Foundation is an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that aims to make a difference by promoting literacy, learning, and great teaching.

We do this by collaborating with leading businesses, nonprofits, and education experts to share good practice; foster innovation; and find workable solutions to the educational disadvantages facing young people and adults across the globe.

Our Mission

We believe we can make an important difference by focusing our efforts, resources, and alliances on the key approaches inside and outside the classroom that can most shape a child’s success.

We focus on:

• Literacy – We’re sharing books we love, and helping teachers, parents, and great non-profit organizations ensure that young people are ready to read and learn.

• Great learning – We’re helping schools make use of mobile and digital technologies to improve student learning; identifying and supporting new approaches that encourage deeper learning inside and outside the classroom; and celebrating the remarkable ways that young people are using 21st century skills to make a difference in their local communities.

• Great teaching – We’re honoring great educators in local communities; supporting teaching and leadership that delivers better outcomes for students; and supporting innovative public-private partnerships to improve teaching practice in classrooms around the world. We also share with educators perspectives with potential to improve their own schools and better student outcomes.

How we work

Each year an initial grant from Pearson, the world’s leading learning company, provides us with operating funds we use to develop programs and partnerships around the world. We also work with Pearson, with other funders, and with a roster of exemplary nonprofit organizations, corporations, and partners to deliver scalable and replicable educational solutions to students, teachers, and educational institutions.

Whenever we can, we promote literacy, great learning, and great teaching by:

• Providing support and adding capacity to great nonprofit organizations already making a difference in local communities.

• Incubating innovative approaches to teaching and learning that can make an immediate difference in the lives of young people and educators.

• Documenting, sharing, and encouraging innovative practices inside and outside the classroom so that others can build upon proven efforts and can adapt them to help the individuals and organizations they serve.

To showcase some of the best solutions already making a difference in local communities, we’ve developed programs like the New Learning Institute, We Give Books, and the Strong Performers, Successful Reformers video series. These efforts—and others like them—share the common goal of supporting and spreading the word about exemplary practices among the world’s most successful education systems and learning organizations.

We’ve also worked with public and private partners to develop new learning approaches of our own—efforts like the BridgeIT mobile learning solution, for example; the My Voice student aspirations survey; and, most recently, our ongoing effort to help create a System of Courses for the Common Core Curriculum in Math and English Language Arts.

Getting in touch

To stay in touch with the Pearson Foundation, or to receive brief updates about the programs and partners we support, please consider subscribing to the Pearson Foundation blog; or visit us on Facebook or on Twitter.