The new educational philanthropy
AEI's Rick Hess sits down with Education Next's Michael F. Shaughnessy
1) Rick, you and Jeff Henig have just edited a book, The New Education Philanthropy. What brought this about?
Just fifteen years ago, there were concerns that the nation’s philanthropic community was retreating from K-12, frustrated with what they regarded as school districts’ stubborn resistance to change. In March 2002, the $500 million Annenberg Challenge, which had been unveiled in 1994 at a joyous White House ceremony, petered out on a disappointing note. In the early 2000s, some traditional major funders redirected their efforts away from K-12 to pre-K or to other sectors. Education philanthropy has since roared back with a vengeance. The new giving is often targeted and policy-focused. As a result, philanthropy has taken on a shape that once would have been astonishing. This new approach, with its emphasis on metrics and advocacy, has proven hugely controversial.
Where it was once rare to hear attacks on education philanthropy, today many education funders are subject to furious backlash. Yet you don’t find a whole lot of measured assessment or scholarly looks at all this. The subject is a tough one because, all else equal, it’s not all that appealing for edu-scholars to write anything that might annoy those giving large sums to edu-scholars. The result is that we see remarkably little substantive examination of education philanthropy (though there are a few happy exceptions, like Dale Russakoff’s The Prize and Sarah Reckhow’s Follow the Money). I’d tackled all this a decade ago in the volume With the Best of Intentions, and Jeff and I agreed that it was time to revisit the topic.
2) Why now? Why a book on this topic?
Some of this touches on what I just said. To dig a bit deeper, in 2005, With the Best of Intentions examined the role of philanthropy in K-12, using the disappointing example of the Annenberg Challenge as a jumping-off point. At that point, Gates foundation officials were, for the first time, seriously considering whether to play an active role in shaping public policy. No one regarded New Orleans, Washington, D.C., or Newark as hotbeds of school reform. In short, it was a different educational world ten or fifteen years ago. This book is framed by our sense that what foundations do has changed in notable ways and that these changes matter. Our experience suggests that funders have become more intentional in their strategy, attentive to politics, focused on metrics of success, and aggressive about changing policy. These changes can be both good and bad, and the contributions to this volume try to help readers think about why that is and what it all means.
3) Who were some of the contributors to this text and what did they tackle?
Jay Greene, who had authored a seminal chapter on the limits of philanthropy in With the Best of Intentions, explores why big foundations overestimate their ability to drive policy change. Researchers Sarah Reckhow, Megan Tompkins-Stange, and Jeff Snyder document the extent of giving by a number of major foundations, their funding strategies, what gets funded, and some of the resulting dynamics. Andrew Kelly and Kevin James offer a pioneering look at how edu-philanthropy is playing out in higher education. Alexander Russo interviews a raft of current and former foundation officials to see what lessons they think they’ve learned over the past decade. Dana Goldstein dives deep into the history and lessons of the Gates Foundation’s wildly influential Measures of Effective Teaching project. Michael Q. McShane and Jenn Hatfield examine the extent, nature, and dynamics of anti-foundation backlash. And the inimitable Larry Cuban delves into the role teachers play as “classroom gatekeepers” and how it explains the disappointing track record of so much philanthropy.
4) What are a few of the key findings reported in the book?
Let’s see. There are a bunch, so let me flag a few interesting ones that come to mind. Jay Greene finds that more than two-thirds of philanthropic giving is non-self-sustaining; that is, it goes to efforts that don’t generate supporters who can The new educational philanthropy - AEI:
