Helping Disaster-Impacted Communities Get Back to Learning

IMPACT > DISASTER RECOVERY

To date Learning Undefeated has served more than 25,000 students in disaster-impacted communities with the country’s first STEM-focused education recovery program. What began as an emotional response to a natural disaster has grown into a robust education program serving K-12 students across the Texas gulf coast for over two years. 

More than two years after the storm, many communities are still without operational school facilities; some have been hit multiple times by damaging floods. Our mobile laboratory program provides critical access to science equipment and supplies for schools, and valuable morale-boosting experiences for students. 

“In the midst of widespread devastation and confusion, we have witnessed the best in humanity. Following the hurricane, science lab experiences would be significantly limited. On the contrary, Refugio ISD students have had access to state of the art, relevant science instruction, equipment and material.”

– MELISSA GONZALES, SUPERINTENDENT, REFUGIO, TEXAS INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT

In many cases, students in communities damaged or destroyed by a disaster would be in jeopardy of achieving the state education requirements for laboratory science. In Texas, high school students must spend 40% of their time in a laboratory setting in order to meet the state curriculum.

In one community, Learning Undefeated was instrumental not only in getting students back to class, but our program allowed the school district to receive state-level honors. Read more about our success in Refugio, Texas >

“In the two school years since Hurricane Harvey, Refugio ISD was awarded an Academic Distinction for Science from the Texas Education Agency in 2018 and in 2019 Refugio High School earned the same honor. Our deepest gratitude to Learning Undefeated for helping make those honors possible.”

– MELISSA GONZALES, SUPERINTENDENT, REFUGIO, TEXAS INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT

of teachers we worked with in disaster-impacted communities reported that our mobile STEM laboratory…

  • Provided vital equipment and/or supplies that they could not access due to damage to their school and/or classroom.*

  • Increased their students’ ability to focus on learning during a difficult time.*

  • Allowed them to teach content that would have otherwise been omitted or skipped.*

A majority of teachers also reported that our programming allowed their students to achieve the course requirements for laboratory learning, and that their students would have missed out on laboratory learning without the Learning Undefeated mobile laboratory coming to their school.*

*Data collected through focus groups conducted with teachers from three school districts, representing 3,850 students served by the mobile laboratory during the disaster education recovery period of November 2017 – February 2019. 

All Learning Undefeated program evaluations are conducted by an external evaluation firm.