Announcing the 2025 $1 Million Yass Prize Winner - Chesterton School Network
Congratulations to the 2025 Yass Prize Finalists and Semifinalists
Congratulations to the Texas Education Freedom Award Winners
Yass Prize alumni were awarded funding to position them to launch or expand innovative school models in 2026—meeting the needs of even more Texas students.
Follow the Impact
Learn about the Impact of the Yass Prize
Discover the story of the Yass Prize, an initiative dedicated to celebrating, rewarding, and expanding innovative education providers. Explore our history and the last impact of these groundbreaking efforts.
Highlights from the Power of Innovation Summit & Yass Prize Awards
Bi-weekly news brief about our Nation’s Best Education Leaders
Yass Prize Alumni Featured on Forbes.com
Timely, thought-provoking, relevant content from Yass Prize alumni contributors on Forbes.com: Explore how innovation, opportunity, and freedom are reshaping education. Learn more about the real-world impact of the STOP principles in action.
Latest News
Chesterton Schools Network Wins 2025 $1 Million Yass Prize
23 Education Providers Vie for Coveted $1,000,000 Yass Prize
Texas Education Freedom Award Dinner at UATX (October 2025)
The Yass Foundation for Education advances the four core STOP principles: Sustainable, Transformational, Outstanding, and Permissionless education. Each year, the Foundation will reward dozens of organizations, building a growing network of innovative providers that
demonstrate these qualities in their commitment to new ideas, technologies, and approaches to learning that bring education into
the 21st century. The Foundation is powered by the Center for Education Reform (CER) in partnership with Forbes.
Our newest endeavor – that was part of our Yass Prize initiative – we're bringing career and technical education into the school
I'm in the process of going through the construction of a 20,000 square foot $11.5 million dollar building dedicated to career and technical education for the students in the Philadelphia region.
Being a part of this experience has amplified the access we can give to our students in a way that nothing has, and the access is just critical.
The Yass Prize is almost like Burning Man for education reform.
Having the status of Yass Prize Semifinalist has opened doors that we’ve been knocking on for years,
including public recognition from our Governor and partnership conversations with other education innovators from around the country.
The foundation of any society is a good education.
We have a tremendously transformative model that could stand for a little disruption.
The Yass experience has given us “permission” to do exactly that.
There is absolutely zero downside to being a part of this network by submitting your application and what you will encounter is unlike any other grant.
It's actually mind blowing. I really see myself as an education entrepreneur, but this expanded me.
The Yass Prize is centered around ensuring that this [program] provides you a stepping stone...
We don’t want you to rinse, wash, repeat. We want you to build and sustain.
I’m dreaming bigger, bolder, and more bodacious [because of the Yass Prize].
It has helped me raise the ceiling on what’s possible.
One of the missions of the Yass Prize and the Yass Prize movement is really surfacing best practices in innovation—
in innovators who are doing this type of transformational work, so that others can learn from it and replicate it, so that you can actually grow yourselves.
Because of the Yass Prize, we were able to add an additional pre-K classroom.
It might be the first time you’re speaking where everyone is actually listening and cares about what you’re doing.
I don’t think I’ve been in a room as supportive as the Yass Prize Semifinalist room in Miami.
Everyone knows that without great education, our nation suffers.
Great education is a vital link for students to become successful citizens.