Startup America

National Education Startup Challenge

Click here to see a one-page fact sheet for the National Education Startup Challenge. It's an invitation for students to develop an innovative solution to an education problem and design a blueprint for a new company or non-profit organization—a startup—to deliver it. The competition deadline is May 1, 2012. Full submission guidelines are available at http://nesc.challenge.gov.

Dept. of Education and Dept. of Labor Advance Entrepreneurship

On Thursday, December 8, 2011, the Department of Education and the Department of Labor announced a number of initiatives to advance entrepreneurship, including youth entrepreneurship. To see the fact sheet, click here.

DC-to-VC for Learning Technologies

Learning is transitioning from the traditional print-based classroom experience to incorporating a digital learning environment inside and outside the classroom, where new platforms, customized learning, and multimedia content promise to dramatically improve teaching and learning.

The US Department of Education is engaging in Startup America in order to drive the investment in and development of new learning technologies to improve the opportunity to learn in a growing global network.

Key administration programs are helping drive important state and local educational reforms and unleashing new market opportunities for learning technologies. For example:

• $4 billion Race to the Top
• $350 million Race to the Top Assessment
• $650 million Investing in Innovation

The Office of Educational Technology leads the department's technology efforts and will be hosting a series of "DC-to-VC for Learning Technologies" events in the coming months.

DC-to-VC summits are targeted engagements between senior Administration officials and entrepreneurs, investors, and students in communities across the country.The goals of DC-to-VC engagements are to communicate how the President's policies and priorities are unleashing new market opportunities for entrepreneurs, to inspire more entrepreneurs to pursue these opportunities, and to gain valuable policy feedback from the innovation community.

If you are interested, either as investor or entrepreneur, please email us at learningtechnology@ed.gov.