How Walton is Doubling Down on Charter Schools
Recent volatility in the stock market has been giving investors plenty of jitters lately, but the Walton Family Foundation has no such worries about its investment in the nation's charter school movement.
The funder is so confident, in fact, that it just announced a major new initiative to grow new charter schools and keep existing ones running. Walton announced it will spend $1 billion—that's billion with a "B," folks—over the next five years. That's almost equal to the amount the funder has spent on K-12 education initiatives in the last two decades, and signals that the the funder will continue its high funding levels in this area of recent years. (WFF spent around $200 million on K-12 in 2014, a big jump from the previous year.)
The Walton announcement also comes a few months after the unveiling of a $500 million plan, spearheaded by the Broad Foundation, to double the number of students in charter schools in Los Angeles. That ambitious effort, which involves a number of foundations including Walton, suggests that key ed reform funders haven't lost faith in charter schools despite questions about their effectiveness over the years.
The Walton announcement also comes on the heels of news that several members of the Walton family recently set aside $400 million for philanthropy—above and beyond the normal flow of funds into the family's foundation. The bigger picture, here, is that the Waltons are reducing the size of their stake in Walmart, which has the potential to free up vast new resources for philanthropy. Collectively, the Walton heirs were worth nearly $150 billion last year, according to Forbes.
It's not surprising that the Waltons would choose to double down on charter schools, which have been a signature focus of the family's giving for years, along with the infrastructure that supports such schools. Charter management organizations, charter school associations, pro-charter policy advocacy and research, and organizations such as Teach For America—a major source of teachers for the nation's charter schools—all have received funding from Walton. About a quarter of charter schools nationwide have received start-up grants from Walton. Last year alone, the foundation supported 100 new charter school startups with more than $20 million in grants—or one in five of all new charter schools that opened in 2015.
Walton plans to spend the new $1 billion over the next five years in areas where the funder already has a presence. The funding will create new charter schools and develop "pipelines of talent," according to Marc Sternberg, Walton's director of education philanthropy. The foundation also indicates that it will continue to invest in K-12 research and policy advocacy, an area that it has given a lot of attention to in recent years.
In a public five-year strategic plan, the foundation says that it's realized that it needs to do more to promote environments that support school choice. Originally, it says, the "thought was that more choices would generate more competition. Competition would catalyze systematic How Walton is Doubling Down on Charter Schools - Inside Philanthropy: Fundraising Intelligence - Inside Philanthropy:
