Ideas worth spreading

1,278,754 views | Karim Abouelnaga • TED2017

Cursos de verano para los niños que lo deseen

Durante el verano los jóvenes de barrios de clase baja en Estados Unidos olvidan casi tres meses de lo que aprenden durante el año escolar. Karim Abouelnaga, emprendedor educativo y TED Fellow quiere invertir esta pérdida de formación, convirtiendo el bache del verano en una oportunidad para adelantarse en los estudios y encaminarse hacia un futuro mejor.

This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

Get your local schools to partner with Practice Makes Perfect. The only way we can combat summer learning loss is by reaching more students. Share the work our team is doing with your local schools and administrators and have them set up a meeting with our team. No amount of philanthropy could eliminate summer learning loss in perpetuity — that's why we need schools to make the decision to fund our services to support their students.

Promote educational equity. We're on a mission to make education and learning cool. We know that brands have the ability to change culture; that's why we launched our retail shop. Ten percent of profits from the shop will be earmarked to support our Educator Boot Camp scholarships and support our mentors.

Durante el verano los jóvenes de barrios de clase baja en Estados Unidos olvidan casi tres meses de lo que aprenden durante el año escolar. Karim Abouelnaga, emprendedor educativo y TED Fellow quiere invertir esta pérdida de formación, convirtiendo el bache del verano en una oportunidad para adelantarse en los estudios y encaminarse hacia un futuro mejor.

This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

Get your local schools to partner with Practice Makes Perfect. The only way we can combat summer learning loss is by reaching more students. Share the work our team is doing with your local schools and administrators and have them set up a meeting with our team. No amount of philanthropy could eliminate summer learning loss in perpetuity — that's why we need schools to make the decision to fund our services to support their students.

Promote educational equity. We're on a mission to make education and learning cool. We know that brands have the ability to change culture; that's why we launched our retail shop. Ten percent of profits from the shop will be earmarked to support our Educator Boot Camp scholarships and support our mentors.

About the speaker

Karim Abouelnaga

Education entrepreneur

See speaker profile

Karim Abouelnaga is working to provide kids with access to high-quality academic summer programming.

McKinsey & Company | Social Sector Office, 2009 | Explore

The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America's Schools

When I was a freshman in college, I stumbled upon this report that showed the economic consequences of not acting to improve our educational system. As a business student, I was initially intrigued by the cost savings of closing this gap. When I realized "the kids" referenced were me and my childhood friends, I grew frustrated with the system that was oppressing millions of children every single day. It inspired my quest into education and ultimately the premise by which I founded Practice Makes Perfect, which was to prove that all children — regardless of their race or socioeconomic status — had equal potential to compete intellectually in our society.

Patricia Burch | Routledge, 2009 | Book

Hidden Markets: The New Education Privatization

I found Patricia Burch's writing during my junior year of college. After reading the book, it debunked one of the biggest misconceptions that I originally had about low-income public schools: they have no money. Instead, I saw how inefficiently billions of dollars were wasted on our primary and secondary school systems every single year. It proved two things to me: 1) Throwing money at problems doesn’t solve them, and 2) There was money out there to improve our education system. This later gave the confidence I needed to turn down full-time job offers upon graduation and work to understand how to unlock the financial resources that existed in the system to improve it for kids attending urban schools.

Joel Klein | HarperCollins Publishers, 2014 | Book

Lessons of Hope: How to Fix Our Schools

Joel Klein was the NYC public school system's chancellor for the majority of Mayor Bloomberg's tenure. This book gives a real account of one individual's attempt to fix an entire school system with mayoral support and hundreds of millions of dollars in philanthropy. Klein gives an inside look at the programs and policies they tested during the administration and proved to me how, in many ways, long-term systemic change cannot come through politics. At the end, Klein makes a plea or call to action that urges us to address the disparities in education because the biggest threat to our national security will be the war that breaks out between the haves and have-nots if the inequality continues to persist.