Philanthropy gets in the ring
Edu-funders get serious about education policy
The year 2005 seems like a long time ago. That year, I published a hard look at education philanthropy titled With the Best of Intentions: How Philanthropy is Reshaping K-12 Education, using the dismal experience of the then recently concluded $1.1 billion Annenberg Challenge as a jumping-off point. At the same time, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was walking away from the disappointing results of its enormous investment in small high schools.
At that point, Gates foundation officials were, for the first time, seriously considering whether to play an active role in shaping public policy. Race to the Top, the Common Core, Democrats for Education Reform, and StudentsFirst were unimagined. No one regarded New Orleans, Washington, D.C., or Newark as hotbeds of school reform. Diane Ravitch was still a champion of school choice and accountability, and few had heard of Barack Obama, Michelle Rhee, Deborah Gist, or Geoffrey Canada. No Child Left Behind was still novel and fairly popular, and not a single state was trying to build teacher evaluation around value-added