The NCRP Debate on Market Approaches to Education Reform
A Debate About Whether the Walton Foundation and Markets Promote Equity for Students | Diane Ravitch's blog http://bit.ly/1G7UO5I
At first glance, it would have been reasonable to ask why the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy would want to host a debate between advocates and opponents of market-based approaches in education reform. What was the upside of picking that issue for a debate above any of a number of other issues in which the efficacy of market-based strategies in significant societal issues is, so to speak, “debatable?”
The “privatization” question in public policy, in which public programs are more or less ceded to the private sector (particularly the market-driven for-profit sector) to structure and implement, is at the heart of many initiatives. Examples include the proliferation of private sector builders and operators of prisons, proposals to turn over municipal water systems to private corporations, and even the turning over of child welfare services to for-profit companies.
In this instance, the roots of the debate were in an NCRP report published in May 2015, part of NCRP’s “Philamplify” series, on the Walton Family Foundation, subtitled, “How Can This Market-Oriented Grantmaker Advance Community-Led Solutions for Greater Equity?” Compared to earlier NCRP reports on the Walton Family Foundation, notably NCRP’s 2005 report, “The Waltons and Wal-Mart: Self-Interested Philanthropy,” and its 2007 follow-up, “Strategic Grantmaking: Foundations and the School Privatization Movement, it was distinctly less critical of the ideology and agenda of the Arkansas philanthropic behemoth. Both earlier reports indicated that the foundation’s promotion of school choice, charter schools, and school vouchers in education reform had led to a pernicious undermining of public school systems.
When it comes to market approaches, however, as Sherece West-Scantlebury, the president and CEO of the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation and chair of the NCRP board, noted at the beginning of the debate, NCRP is “agnostic.” In fact, for the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation itself, headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas, West-Scantlebury described the Walton Family Foundation, headquartered in Bentonville 200 miles away, as a “great partner” for her foundation’s programs. Walton has a major programmatic emphasis in its “home region,” with grantmaking focused on Northwest Arkansas and Delta region of Arkansas and Mississippi totaling more than $40 million in 2014, whileWinthrop Rockefeller is totally dedicated to Arkansas’s advancement, both with overlapping commitments to education programs in Arkansas, including the two foundations’ joint sponsorship in 2014 of the “ForwARd Partnership for Arkansas Education” initiative.
The Philamplify report on the Waltons was actually complimentary of the Walton The NCRP Debate on Market Approaches to Education Reform | Nonprofit Quarterly:
