I'm headed to New Orleans tomorrow for the wedding festivities of my dear friends Lauren and Will. They've been together six years and are so supportive of one another--they share a beautiful life all about family, friends, film, art, and travel. I know they have a lot to look forward to, and I'm so honored to stand with them on Saturday!
I'll see you all back on the blog after Columbus Day. In the meantime...
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Magazine deadlines everywhere! So apologies for not blogging up a storm this week. If you're looking for some good education reading, check out John Schmitt's contribution to the neverending "is college worth it?" debate. Schmitt says, quite rightly: "Why is it that when confronted with compelling evidence that college pays a big financial dividend, so many young people still don’t get a college degree? Heather Boushey and I argue that the short answer is that for a surprising share of college graduates, the large price tag may actually not pay off."
Another interesting read: Bill Gates tells the Wall Street Journal that his current education philanthropy priorities include research and leveraging private money to change government funding priorities.
Music break!
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RIP Amy Winehouse. You were an instant classic.
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I'll be off the blog this week, since I'm in Chicago researching women teachers and feminist labor politics at the turn of the century. In the meantime, my friend Michelle Goldberg has written a delightfully devastating review of Life of the Party, a new memoir by former GOP flack Lisa Baron. You should also check out this Russell Baker essay on Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt's unconventional marriage and political partnership.
In other non-news, I am contemplating one of the great pop music mysteries of the hair band era: How did these guys manage to write this song, which came on in a Walgreen's today, reminding me of its cheesiness, but also its awesomeness and correctness. Enjoy...
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I find it ridiculously painful to watch video of myself. In any case, here's an excerpt from a Bloggingheads segment I did with Amanda Marcotte this morning, on the latest in the Anthony Weiner scandal. What should he do next in his career?
Now I will return joyfully to researching teacher unionism and feminsm in early 20th century Chicago.
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With the NewSchools Venture Fund Summit kicking off this evening, I thought I'd do an overview of the state of K-12 education philanthropy.
The NewSchools Venture Fund is one of the founding institutions of "venture philanthropy," a school of charitable giving that borrows its ethos from the world of venture capital. Venture philanthropists seek out non-profits that pursue social change while embracing data-driven corporate accountability standards. These donors often seek to bring promising local reforms "to scale" as quickly as possible, and many explicitly look for "innovative" programs--reform models that prioritize new technologies or new management and governance structures. Some examples: Online learning, national charter school networks, and advocacy on behalf of mayoral control of school districts.
For a helpful synthesis of the entire venture philanthropy ideology, read the Gates Foundation's "Guiding Principles." An excerpt: "We identify a specific point of intervention and apply our efforts against a theory of change. We take risks, make big bets, and move with urgency. We are in it for the long haul."
All of this is relatively new. Let's look at a chart created by Sarah Reckhow, an up-and-coming political scientist--and former Baltimore public school teacher--who researches the role of foundations in shaping education policy. Reckhow combed through tax documents and discovered that back in 2000, when NewSchools was just 2-years old, the "New Big Three" education foundations (Gates, Broad, and Walton) donated about the same amount to American schools as the "Old Big Three" (Ford, Carnegie, and Annenberg). Just five years later, the New Big Three were spending almost four times as much as the Old Big Three.
Why do we care? Well, the priorities of the Gates, Walton, and Broad foundations--charter schools, mayoral control, and teacher evaluation and pay tied to student test scores--not only match up with one another, but stand in contrast to some of the priorities of the older funders. Ford, for example, prioritizes school-funding equity and neighborhood-school partnerships, alongside accountability. Annenberg funds arts and civics education. Carnegie, like the newer donors, focuses on teaching.
Often working in tandem, the New Big Three exercise an enormous amount of sway over national education policy-making. In a typical year (one without a stimulus bill), the federal Department of Education has just about $20 million in discretionary funds to play with outside of its big, pre-defined funding streams, such as Title I and IDEA. But in 2009, the last year for which data is available, the Gates Foundation gave away over $373 million to American education, the Walton Foundation donated approximately $134.1 million to school reform efforts, and the Broad Foundation about $39.1 million.
Reckhow calls the results philanthropic "convergence." Her research shows that a handful of popular non-profits ate up 35 percent of all foundation dollars to public education in 2005. NewSchools is one of these groups; others include Teach for America, KIPP, New Visions for Public Schools, and Pacific Charter School Development.
There was convergence in education philanthropy in 2000, too, but the beneficiaries of the phenomenon back then were a far different group, including Harvard University, Columbia University Teachers' College, and the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education.
In American education philanthropy, a lot has changed over the last decade. So it's worth thinking about how the dispersal of all these billions of dollars shapes our political and cultural debate about education reform.
If you made it this far, I owe you a drink. And a Bay Area-themed song.
reporting for this blog post made possible by the "Private Money, Public Schools" workshop at the Columbia Journalism School
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...attending the NewSchools Summit in San Francisco and then heading to L.A., where I'll visit Animo Pat Brown and Crenshaw High to do book reporting.
I hope to blog from the NewSchools conference, which is a one-day extravaganza connecting the big-name ed reformers (Joel Klein, Rhee-sucessor Kaya Henderson, KIPP) with the corporate and foundation donors who fund their work (Mark Zuckerberg, Target, Google, Walton Foundation, Broad Foundation). The big focus this year seems to be on technology: how virtual learning, distance learning, and gaming can be employed in the classroom.
We know from Joel Klein's Atlantic essay that some reformers argue that technology makes it feasible to drastically reduce the size of the teaching force. It'll be interesting to observe how the politics of all this are discussed at the summit.
Now I'm off to frantically complete chores before an early morning flight tomorrow. Stay tuned for news from the West Coast. Until then:
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Dear Readers,
Great news! I'll be in California the third and fourth weeks of May. First, I'm attending the New Schools Summit outside of San Francisco. Then I'll be reporting for my book on the politics of teaching in America. I'm looking to interview teachers and former teachers who participated in the early years of Teach for America and KIPP; a chapter of my book will be devoted to these organizations' rise to national prominence and their growing voice in education policy-making.
I'm also looking to interview teachers who have been active in local debates around teacher quality, value-added evaluation, student assessment, and other hot-button issues.
Please send reporting tips my way: dana /at/ danagoldstein.net.
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