Funding the Next Bold Idea in edu.
Reinvention at Teach For America has distributed more than $12,000 in seed funding across regional and national teams to explore nine promising new innovations.
And, we're just getting started.
Innovation at
Teach For America
Horizons House is Reinvention at Teach For America's incubator and accelerator.
80+ innovations in portfolio: moving promising ideas from concept to pilot and toward sustainability or scale.
The 4R Framework
Great innovations need more than great ideas. Horizon House's 4R Framework helps innovators across Teach For America develop, evaluate, and strengthen new approaches through four essential lenses: Relevance, Resilience, Results, and Revenue.
The framework provides a practical way to test assumptions, learn from evidence, and make informed decisions about which innovations to nurture, accelerate, evolve, combine, or sunset to create meaningful impact for educators, students, and communities.
R: RELEVANCE
We prioritize innovations that respond to real demand, offer distinct value, and build trusted relationships with the educators and young people they serve.
We start with the people closest to the problem. We look for demonstrated user needs, meaningful differentiation from existing solutions, and the trust and relationships required for adoption. Strong innovations create value that educators, young people, and communities recognize and want.
R: RESILIENCE
We support innovations that strengthen operational efficiency, integrate into existing systems, and build the human capacity needed to succeed.
We assess organizational readiness, implementation fidelity, and the people, skills, and leadership required to sustain the work. We also consider regulatory and compliance requirements to ensure innovations can operate effectively and reliably over time.
R: REVENUE
We explore diversified, sustainable funding models that strengthen financial stability and attract continued investment.
We assess how innovations can secure funding from multiple sources, sustain their operations beyond initial investment, and demonstrate the value needed to attract future funders and partners. A strong idea needs a viable path forward.
R: RESULTS
We invest in innovations with a clear theory of change, ambitious goals, and evidence of meaningful impact.
We examine how each innovation connects its activities to intended outcomes, the depth and ambition of the change it seeks, and the results it achieves. Evidence guides decisions to scale, improve, pivot, or discontinue an approach.
R: Reinvention
The *silent* fifth "R" we are observing is reinvention. We champion innovations that radically depart from conventional schooling and expand what's possible for how young people learn.
Why are we interested in how reinvention plays a role in our portfolio? Guided by our Radical Departures whitepaper, we look for approaches that create new possibilities for learning, reclaim human and community-rooted practices, or bring promising alternatives to more young people. We prioritize innovations that move us toward a fundamentally different future of learning.
OUR Seed Fund
Our seed funding helps Teach For America teams and alumni explore new ideas for the future of learning. We’ve released $12,000 in funding, with awards ranging from $500 to $5,000.
We help move promising ideas from concept to pilot, support later-stage innovations with incubation and acceleration as they work toward sustainability and scale, and create disciplined pathways for learning, iteration, investment, and impact.
From early exploration to large-scale implementation, Horizon House helps turn bold ideas into meaningful change.
NINE BUILDERS ALREADY EXPLORING NEW WAYS TO RESCHOOL THE SYSTEM.
Together we are innovating towards the future of learning.
Paid Youth Consulting
Amara Sillah
How might we engage local youth in education careers before college so that marginalized students see a viable pathway and districts gain homegrown talent?
Problem: High school students who need paid work face barriers to participating in unpaid education internships. Educator recruitment often begins in college or later, missing opportunities to engage and develop talent within local communities earlier.
Solution: Develop a paid youth consulting program in which local high school students review curriculum and present recommendations to education leaders. Build the curriculum and program operations around municipal wage matching, with future pathways into college programs such as Ignite and Breakthrough Collaborative.
Community Literacy and Author Engagement
Madison Stuart
How might we close the early-literacy gap for Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students so they reach key educational milestones at the same rate as their peers?
Problem: Students in the Kealakehe Complex need stronger literacy support. TFA Hawaiʻi’s literacy events have concentrated on Oʻahu, leaving Hawaiʻi Island partner communities less served by these opportunities to engage students and families in reading and writing.
Solution: Partner with Native Hawaiian author and TFA alum Kauakanilehua Māhoe Adams to offer a school-day author talk and writing workshop, followed by a community literacy event featuring a reading, student work, and books for participating families.
Education Leadership Dinners
Max Glenn
How might we coalesce a coalition among Indy school, system, and government leaders so that a competitive education market can still collaborate toward shared goals?
Problem: Competition across Indianapolis’s education community makes it difficult for school, system, and government leaders to build coalitions around shared goals for students.
Solution: Convene leaders for facilitated Jeffersonian dinners, using structured conversation and shared questions to build relationships, identify common priorities, and explore opportunities for collective action.
Corps Member Resilience
Tamara Rice
How might we build Corps Members' resilience so they can persevere through the challenges of their early years?
Problem: Corps members need sustained support to navigate the challenges of teaching. Resilience practices introduced during summer training need reinforcement throughout the school year so teachers can use them proactively.
Solution: Test two complementary approaches: a yearlong, small-group study of Elena Aguilar’s Onward and wellness and resilience activities integrated into three whole-corps gatherings.
BOOST
Hiram Martinez-Cabrera
How might we give college students a behind-the-scenes look at nonprofit leadership so they see get future ready skills that have meaningful impact for educational equity?
Problem: College students want firsthand experience of how TFA staff and alumni advance educational equity and navigate leadership challenges. Regional teams and alumni also need additional capacity to complete projects.
Solution: Connect undergraduates already in TFA’s network with short-term, hands-on projects supporting regional teams and alumni, helping students explore education and nonprofit careers while contributing to work those teams need to complete.
College Access Mentorship
Kat Hyslop
How might we ensure Lakota high school students and their families get the individualized support they need so they no longer navigate college applications and financial aid alone?
Problem: Lakota high school students in Pine Ridge and Rosebud lack consistent, individualized support throughout the college application and financial aid process. Trusted community members who already help students need additional tools to navigate these processes and barriers specific to Lakota applicants.
Solution: Train local educators and community leaders to provide sustained, one-to-one mentorship for Lakota juniors and seniors, supporting college selection, applications, FAFSA completion, and scholarship applications from beginning to end.
RSLA Alumni Leadership
Casey DeFord
How might we build infrastructure that lets RSLA alumni contribute to running and growing the program so their leadership stops going underutilized?
Problem: RSLA relies heavily on staff to deliver learning, mentorship, and community across a growing rural leadership network. Limited formal opportunities for alumni to contribute constrain both alumni leadership development and the program’s capacity to grow.
Solution: Strengthen and test RSLA’s Alumni Board and Peer Learning Facilitator roles, preparing and compensating alumni to mentor participants, facilitate learning, shape program strategy, and build community across cohorts.
High School Tutoring and Mentorship
De Andre Woods-Walker
How might we surface real-life problems so that Ignite high school students see their learning applied to authentic challenges?
Problem: High school students who have participated in Ignite want to understand how their academic learning and SAT preparation connect to real problems in schools and opportunities to help others.
Solution: Co-design a program with Segue Legacy High School and TFA partners that prepares high school Ignite participants to tutor and mentor local elementary students, with a longer-term pathway into Ignite tutoring in college and the corps.
Future Founders
Karina Alejandra Meza
Oliv Phreykz
How might we identify and engage undergraduate builders early so they see TFA as a place that recognizes and invests in their entrepreneurial leadership?
Problem: First- and second-year undergraduates building ventures and community initiatives may lack visibility, mentorship, funding, and professional networks. TFA lacks a consistent strategy to identify these students early and connect their entrepreneurial leadership to educational equity.
Solution: Pilot Future Founders at four universities, recognizing 10–15 undergraduate builders per campus and testing which additional supports, such as mentorship, community, skill development, or funding, create lasting value for students and sustain their connection to TFA.
Ready to Explore a problem?
$12,000 already released from Reinvention and infused into regional and national teams across Teach For America.
Do you have an idea? The winter application round is still ahead! Start by filling out the interest form!