Education Development Center


Education Development Center is a global nonprofit organization to improve education, promote health, and expand economic opportunity across the United States and in more than 80 countries around the world. EDC has its world headquarters in Waltham, Massachusetts, and main offices in Washington, D.C., New York City, and Chicago, with other locations in the United States and globally. EDC has 1,400 employees worldwide.
In a number of countries, EDC uses technology, most notably radio, to provide educational opportunities for hard to reach learners. For instance, during the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Liberia, EDC and its partners used radio to provide lessons to students whose schools were closed due to the disease.
Research conducted by EDC on teen smoking has been cited by communities and states as they consider raising the age to purchase tobacco to 21. EDC also works to improve the knowledge base in early childhood development.
Named twice to The Boston Globe’s “Top Places to Work,” EDC maintains a staff composed of scientists, researchers, mathematicians, educators, and health and technology specialists. Staff expertise includes research, training, policy, curriculum and materials development, and education technology, and their activities range from small seed projects to large-scale national and international initiatives.

History

EDC is known for creating the curriculum. The organization was founded by Jerrold Zacharias, an eminent physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who started the Physical Science Study Committee, and is credited with developing PSSC Physics funded by the National Science Foundation. PSSC Physics focused on science as the product of experiment and theory, constructed by real people. EDC introduced it successfully in schools across the country and eventually in many parts of the world. Zacharias is credited with changing the way physics is taught in secondary schools and many of the PSSC films are still used in classrooms today.
In 1964, ESI received funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York to address the high rate of college dropout among African American students. In response, EDC established pre-college centers at six Historically Black Colleges and Universities to increase opportunities for low-income students. The approach was later scaled up to become the model of the federal government’s Upward Bound program. In 1968, ESI merged with the Institute for Educational Innovation to form EDC.
EDC is known for many of its curriculum development programs in the fields of science, social studies, and mathematics and for its contribution of new ideas and methods of inquiry for improving the content and process of education. One of EDC’s earliest projects was the Elementary Science Study funded primarily by the National Science Foundation. In the 1960s, EDC developed dozens of classroom kits and accompanying teacher guides for teaching science and mathematics in the elementary and middle grades. Many spawned variations still in wide use in schools today. Examples include Attribute Blocks and their variants which can be found in most elementary school classrooms. Also, Pattern Blocksare ubiquitous in U.S. classrooms, still in the very same form as EDC originally created them more than 50 years ago.

Leadership

EDC's president and Chief Executive Officer is David Offensend. Previously, Offensend was chief operating officer at the New York Public Library, the nation's largest public library system with 90 affiliated branches.
A 12-member Board of Trustees is chaired by Vivien Stewart, vice president, Asia Society.

Work

EDC's work includes projects addressing major education, health, and social challenges such as injury, violence, and suicide prevention and early childhood development and learning. EDC has worked in 80 countries around the world and has programs in all 50 U.S. states.
EDC's work focuses on:
  1. Early Childhood
  2. School Improvement
  3. STEM
  4. College and Workforce Success
  5. Suicide, Violence, and Injury Prevention
  6. Substance Misuse Prevention
  7. Innovation in Practice and Leadership
  8. International Development focused on Basic Education, Youth Workforce Training, and Health Promotion.
EDC is home to several national programs and centers including the Regional Educational Laboratory Northeast & Islands which helps education leaders in the Northeast, Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands use education research and data to improve student achievement. It is funded by the Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education.
EDC supports states in expanding the supply of care for school-age children through the National Center on Afterschool and Summer Enrichment. NCASE is part of system of nine national centers working on behalf of the Administration for Children and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Serving states, territories, and tribal communities, NCASE works to increase access to high-quality afterschool and summer learning experiences for school-age children in families of low income.
For more than 50 years, EDC has advocated for the health and wellness of young children through its long-standing programmatic support of the federal Head Start program. This legacy continues with EDC’s work on the National Center on Early Childhood Health and Wellness, one of nine federal centers advancing best practices for linking health and early childhood education systems, health professionals, and families.
Also based at EDC is the Center for the Application of Prevention Technologies, funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. EDC also manages and staffs the Suicide Prevention Resource Center, the nation’s only federally supported resource center devoted to advancing the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention. SPRC is funded by under grant no. 1U79SM062297. EDC also serves as the secretariat for the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention.

Services