Our Work: Clearinghouse

Research | Public Policy | Clearinghouse | Programs

The Clearinghouse activities at Cowen Institute are aimed toward supporting successin public schools by identifying where needs can be matched with available material, financial, intellectual or informational resources. Functioning as an intermediary, the Cowen Institute, with its partners in business, non-profit, and civic entities at the local, state, and national levels, will support meeting the collective needs of public schools. By serving as the central agency for locating resources, the CI seeks to ensure that resources are targeted to meet the greatest need, and resource utilization, for the public school system as a whole, is optimized.

Brokering material and financial resources for public schools through a network of providers/partners.

As the public education system moves toward promoting greater autonomy for schools, the institute aims to empower individual schools in New Orleans with opportunities to identify sources of funding, personnel, research and information, in order to meet their specific goals. This will be achieved, in a large part, through the institute’s website serving as a virtual hub for schools to connect with potential resources. By serving as the moderator/convener of virtual forums, the institute is ideally set up to play a matchmaking role. The CI’s ambitious plans include a greater role for the informational email newsletters it currently employs, as well as for its website, which will evolve into hosting several online communities, for Department of Education officials across the state, New Orleans charter school operators, parent committees, and community organizations. These will, over time, be grown to achieve a national scope, where educational non-profit organizations and school support systems partner to address the issues of mutual interest.

Developing a sustainable mechanism for public schools to access human capital resources.

In addition to identifying sources of financial and material resources, a significant focus of the Cowen Institute’s matchmaking efforts is to locate inexpensive human capital for high-needs schools. This will be primarily executed through a volunteer program coordinated by the institute. The program seeks to channel student and staff volunteers at Tulane to schools with personnel constraints. Not only does this encourage the engagement of the University’s resources in the community, a stated strategy of the institute, it also offers schools, strapped for time and investment required to identify qualified personnel, a ready resource pool to draw on. In addition to Tulane’s resources, the volunteer program will, through its partnerships with community-based organizations, identify and enlist the resources available in the community, to maximize their utilization in the school system.

Enabling ongoing information and knowledge exchange to meet the informational needs of stakeholders in public schools.

The Cowen Institute’s efforts will also focus on providing opportunities that build social capital for the New Orleans public schools with agencies that are resource-rich. Such opportunities include an ongoing series of lectures, conferences and panel-discussions that bring thought-leaders from across the country into contact with local school administrators, educators, parents and communities. In addition, the Institute will organize topical sessions that address specific immediate concerns identified by schools – for example, an informational session coordinated by the institute, bringing together Louisiana Department of Education personnel and charter school principals, to fast-track the disbursement of the Renewal Fund, is in the works – as well as smaller, local citywide efforts that gather together various stakeholders, to facilitate cooperation and best practice exchange.

Another significant focus of the Clearinghouse activities at the Cowen Institute is proactively identifying and building a partners network that schools can plug into. By identifying and co-locating with a core set of implementation partners, including New Leaders for New Schools, New Schools for New Orleans, and The New Teacher Project, among others, the Institute has already provided a space for communication and collaboration in the reconstruction effort, as well as given schools a single-point access to currently available resources. The institute is also in the process of developing a comprehensive partners-database, to be made available to schools and the community, to help them take advantage of diverse avenues of support.