FAQs
What is CFY?
Where in the United States does CFY currently operate?
What is PowerMyLearning and how can I access it?
What is the Digital Learning Program?
How does CFY select the children and their families for its Digital Learning Program?
How does a school apply to be a part of CFY’s Digital Learning Program?
Why does CFY start with sixth graders?
What educational content is provided to the families CFY serves?
Where do CFY’s computers come from?
What is meant by the “home learning environment”?
How is CFY different from other organizations focused on using technology to improve educational outcomes?
How many families have benefited from CFY’s program?
What impact does CFY have on the families it serves?
What is CFY’s Affiliate Network?
How does CFY secure funding for its work?
CFY is a national education nonprofit that helps students in low-income communities, together with their teachers and families, harness the power of digital learning to improve educational outcomes. CFY pursues this mission through the combination of a groundbreaking K-12 learning platform, PowerMyLearning.com, and an on-the-ground direct service initiative, the CFY Digital Learning Program. PowerMyLearning makes best-in-class digital learning activities easily accessible and usable to meet the full range of K-12 learning needs . It is an integral part of CFY’s Digital Learning Program which is conducted in partnership with low-income public schools to increase home technology access, extend learning beyond the classroom, and deeply engage parents in the learning process. The program provides training for teachers, students and their parents along with a free broadband-ready home computer loaded with educational software and 24×7 bilingual help desk support.. To date, CFY has served more than 50,000 families from 100 schools nationwide and has demonstrated significant impact on student achievement, student engagement, parental confidence, and broadband adoption. To extend the impact of its work even further, CFY operates an Affiliate Network of over 30 organizations in more than 20 states and the District of Columbia.
Where in the United States does CFY currently operate?
CFY has operations in New York City, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area. CFY also leads an Affiliate Network of more than 30 organizations in over 20 states and the District of Columbia.
What is PowerMyLearning and how can I access it?
PowerMyLearning is a K-12 learning platform that can be accessed by anyone with internet access who visits PowerMyLearning.com and completes the free registration. PowerMyLearning provides students, teachers, and families with easy access to hundreds of free digital learning activities, organized by subject, grade band, and now the Common Core learning standards. See PowerMyLearning section of this site for more details.
What is the CFY Digital Learning Program?
The CFY Digital Learning Program is a partnership between CFY and public middle schools to bring digital learning training, tools, and resources to low-income students and their teachers and families. Read more about the program in the Digital Learning Program section of this site.
What is meant by the “home learning environment”?
The home learning environment refers to educational resources in the home (such as books, educational software, and educational TV-programming) as well as parent-child interaction around learning at home. Programs that improve the home learning environment of low-income children during the vulnerable middle school years are virtually nonexistent. Research shows that parenting practices account for up to 25% of the achievement differences between higher- and lower-performing students, but school systems spend less than two percent of their budgets in this area. CFY meets this need directly through its Digital Learning Program.
How does CFY select the children and their families for its program?
CFY does not select children and their families one-by-one, but rather selects a community of learners. CFY selects public schools with high poverty statistics (more than 75% of students must be eligible for the federal free or reduced lunch program) and offers all the sixth graders and their parents/guardians the ability to participate in the CFY Digital Learning Program. Our goal is to return to selected schools year after year, thereby saturating the entire community of sixth, seventh, and eighth graders and their families.
How does a school apply to be a part of CFY’s Digital Learning Program?
CFY has an application process for schools that are interested in participating in our program. The process includes a formal request, a site visit, and an interview. CFY selects schools based on poverty criteria (more than 75% of students must be eligible for the federal free or reduced-cost lunch program), a commitment to involving families in children’s education, and a vision for how to use technology as a tool to empower students as learners.
Why does CFY start with sixth graders?
CFY focuses on sixth graders in order to intervene just as children’s disengagement from family and school begins. Research shows sixth grade is right when parents begin to feel less capable of helping with increasingly complex homework assignments and when there is the steepest decline in academic achievement.
What educational content is provided to the families CFY serves?
All CFY computers come with engaging educational software titles in math, English, social studies, and science. These titles have been identified by CFY software experts and tested by CFY students and CFY’s panel of education executives from school districts across the country. CFY also provides families with access to educational web content at PowerMyLearning.com, plus free one-year subscriptions to engaging math and reading sites worth more than $600 per family.
Where do CFY’s computers come from?
CFY views the hardware we provide as “content delivery vehicles” and carefully selects the most appropriate and cost-effective hardware to promote learning in the home. In some of the cities in which CFY operates, we purchase refurbished computers fully loaded with our image. In other cities, CFY solicits donations of computers primarily from major corporations. We rely on donations of 30 or more computer systems at a time so we can equip an entire classroom of families with the same hardware to take home. Once computers are received, CFY’s technical staff turn them into robust educational tools by pre-loading them with CFY’s software image.
How is CFY different from other organizations focused on using technology to improve educational outcomes?
CFY is one of the only organizations in the country that works “in the cloud” as we do via our PowerMyLearning platform; works “on the ground” as we do via our Digital Learning Program; and works deeply and at significant scale with all three key constituents in the education process: students, teachers, and families.
How many families have benefited from CFY’s program?
Since beginning operations in 1999, CFY has served more than 50,000 families from over 100 schools across the country.
CFY is now in the midst of an even more rapid expansion. During the next two school years (2010-2012), CFY will directly serve more than 35,000 families, and its Affiliate Network members will serve thousands more.
A key driver of this unprecedented growth is CFY’s receipt of two U.S. Department of Commerce grants for the “Sustainable Broadband Adoption” portion of the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP). These grants, totaling $23M, give CFY a hard-won stamp of approval and will have wide-reaching effects across the country.
What impact does CFY have on the families it serves?
CFY has achieved positive outcomes in the following areas:
Academic achievement
CFY’s research study with ETS showed that CFY’s program had a positive and statistically significant impact on students’ math test scores. This study, which used logistic regression, also found that the students actively and regularly used their computer and the Internet for learning.
A comparison study showed that the CFY program helped arrest the typical performance slide in 7th grade writing — scores for implementation students decreased less over time than scores for comparison students.
Student engagement
A comparison study showed that students put more effort into their English classes after participating in the CFY program, as measured by teacher ratings. This outcome was statistically significant.
A study found that nearly two-thirds of students reported working harder in school because they had a CFY computer.
Parental involvement
A multi-year study found that more than 90% of parents felt more confident in helping their children learn and more than 90% reported feeling more connected to their child’s school.
What is CFY’s Affiliate Network?
CFY’s Affiliate Network is a diverse national coalition of independent non-profit organizations united by a common commitment to help low-income families harness the power of digital learning. We currently have Network members in every region of the United States and plan to expand the Network to all 50 states. Expanding the Network’s geographic footprint is crucial for enhancing its ability to influence national education and broadband policy.
How does CFY secure funding for its work?
CFY receives contributions of cash, computers, software, and services from individuals, foundations, corporations and government. See our partner page for a listing of supporting organizations.