How private money is driving public education policy
In this era of school reform, private foundations and wealthy philanthropists have used their money to play a big role in helping to shape public education state and federal policy. Here’s an interesting piece that describes the history of such giving and considers whether it is a good idea. It was written by Stanley N. Katz, who teaches public and international affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University and is president emeritus of the American Council of Learned Societies. This essay appeared in Stanford Social InnovationReview, Spring 2013, and on Larry Cuban’s School Reform and Classroom Practice blog.By Stanley N. Katz
Twenty-five years ago, if I had been asked to describe the attitude of the major foundations toward education policy, my answer would have been that they were predictably supporting the reform ideas of the leading K-12 academic specialists, who were then concentrated in the best graduate schools of education, especially those at Stanford and Harvard Universities. Lots of ideas were circulating, of course, but the “hot” idea, largely emanating from Stanford, was that of “systemic reform”—the notion that we had not gotten very far by undertaking piecemeal improvements. We needed to come up with grand strategies to improve the entire public education system.
This movement was very much a collaboration between university experts, leading national K-12 organizations, and large foundations. In those days nearly all of the big foundations (Rockefeller, Ford, Pew, MacArthur, and Atlantic) had senior program officers (and
Is the Common Core Standards initiative in trouble?
Education Secretary Arne Duncan recently met with Chamber of Commerce leaders and urged them to be more vocal and forceful in defending the Common Core State Standards. Why? Duncan made the appeal, which was reported by Education Week, because the … Continue reading →
A brief history of Pearson’s problems with testing
A few days ago I wrote a post about how Pearson, the world’s largest education company, was forced to apologize for making errors in its scoring of assessments for entry into gifted-and-talented programs in New York City public schools. I … Continue reading →
