Case Study 29.2 — Two Grant Applications
A composite, illustrative case contrasting two education-grant approaches. The teachers are composites; the dynamics are real. Verify specifics with your funders.
Why this case: the student-centered case, made visible
Case Study 29.1 followed one teacher up the ladder. This case isolates a different variable — the case itself — by contrasting two teachers applying for the same kind of technology grant for comparable classrooms. One writes a stuff-focused application; one writes a student-centered one. The difference decides who gets funded, and it teaches what an education-grant case must do.
Application A — stuff-focused
A teacher writes: "Our students need access to modern technology to develop 21st-century skills for the future economy. This grant will provide 24 tablets to support digital learning and prepare students for success in a technology-driven world."
It sounds reasonable. But test it against the student-centered standard (Section 29.4). It is vague (generic buzzwords: "21st-century skills," "the future economy," "a technology-driven world"), stuff-focused (it centers the tablets, not the students), and gives the reviewer no actual children to picture and no concrete outcome to believe in. The reviewer can't see who benefits or how their lives will be better. The application is about a teacher's wish for equipment, not about students.
Application B — student-centered
The other teacher, for a comparable classroom, writes: "My third-graders at [a Title I school] have no reliable internet or devices at home, so they can't practice reading on the adaptive program that helped their peers in better-resourced schools gain a full grade level last year. These 24 tablets, loaded with the reading app, will let my students practice 20 minutes daily — closing a gap that currently widens every year. Last year, the eight students who had any home device access ended the year reading nearly a grade level ahead of those who didn't."
Test it: it shows specific students (the teacher's third-graders), a specific need and equity barrier (no home devices, a widening gap relative to better-resourced peers), a concrete, believable change (daily reading practice closing a measured gap), and even evidence (last year's device-access gap). The technology is framed as the means to a student outcome, not the point. The reviewer can see the children and believe their lives will be better.
What happened
The funder, who funds student impact, funds Application B. Application A — despite comparable students and the same equipment request — doesn't move the reviewer, because it gave them no students to see and no change to believe in. The equipment was identical; the case was not. As the review-panel voice in the chapter put it: "Make me see the students and believe their lives will be better, and you've made the case."
The deeper lesson
The two applications requested the same tablets for comparable classrooms — but one made the student-centered case and one didn't, and that alone decided the outcome. This is the education-grant version of a lesson that runs throughout the book: funders fund outcomes for people, not things, and the proposal that makes the human impact vivid and specific beats the one that lists what it wants to buy. For education grants specifically, "the people" are students, and the case must let the reviewer see them and believe in the change.
What this case teaches
- Funders fund student impact, not stuff. Center the students and what will change for them, not the equipment.
- Specific beats vague. Specific students, a specific need and barrier, a specific change — and evidence where you have it — beat generic buzzwords every time.
- Frame the "stuff" as a means. The tablets (or books, or materials) are how you produce a student outcome, never the point itself.
- Make the reviewer see the children. The case succeeds when the reviewer can picture the actual students and believe their lives will be better.
🔄 Retrieve: Without rereading, name (a) the three things that made Application B student-centered, and (b) why Application A failed despite requesting identical equipment. (Answers above.)