Education Week - May 8, 2013 - 10

EDUCATION WEEK

MAY 8, 2013

www.edweek.org

Studies Find Funders Giving More to Fewer Groups
‘System challengers’
get growing share
By Sarah D. Sparks
San Francisco

As more and more foundation
money floods into K-12 education,
it is being channeled to fewer and
fewer groups, according to new research presented at the American
Educational Research Association
meeting here last week.
Researchers also found that foundation money is moving away from
traditional public schools and toward “challengers to the system”—
primarily charter schools—and
that the funders in general are becoming much more active in shaping how those challengers develop.
“We’ve only scratched the surface of looking at support from
philanthropies alongside federal
funding,” said Sarah Reckhow, an
assistant professor of political science at Michigan State University
in East Lansing, who co-wrote one
of the studies with doctoral student Jeffrey W. Snyder.
The total assets of the United
States’ 76,000 foundations has
grown from an estimated $272
billion in 1995 to $625 billion in
inflation-adjusted dollars in 2012,
according to the Urban Institute at
the Washington-based American
Institutes for Research.
The Michigan State researchers

tracked grants from the 15 foundations that gave the most to K-12
education in 2000, 2005, and 2010.
Several of those—the Carnegie
Corporation of New York, the Bill
& Melinda Gates Foundation, the
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, the
Wallace Foundation (formerly the
Wallace-Reader’s Digest Funds),
and the Walton Family Foundation—also support some coverage
in Education Week.
At the start of the decade, less
than a quarter of K-12 giving
from top foundations—about $90
million in all—was given to the
same few groups. Five years later,
35 percent of foundation giving, or
$230 million, went to groups getting support from other foundations, and by 2010, $540 million,
representing 64 percent of major
foundation giving for K-12, was
similarly aligned.
“Not only are they giving more,
but they are giving more, faster,
and we find that very interesting,”
Mr. Snyder said. “Every five years,
it roughly doubles—the number of
grantees getting at least $1 million.”

Charter Focus Expands
The type of groups funded shifted
during that time, too. In 2000, the
top five groups subsidized with
philanthropic dollars were the
Rural School and Community
Trust, based in Washington; Annenberg Challenge schools in De-

Education WEEk

troit and Chicago; the Bay Area
School Reform Collaborative, a
local California group; and the Public Education Network, a network
of local education funds whose central office has since closed.
A decade later, three of the five
top-funded groups were linked with
charter schools: the Charter School
Growth Fund, in Broomfield, Colo.;
the NewSchools Venture Fund in

Foundations also became a lot
more hands-on with the charter
sector they were helping create,
according to Rand Quinn, an assistant professor of education at
the University of Pennsylvania.
Mr. Quinn and his co-authors—
Debra Meyerson, an associate
professor of education at Stanford
University, and Megan TompkinsStange, a public-policy lecturer

“

Every five years, it roughly
doubles—the number of grantees
getting at least $1 million.”
JEFFREY W. SNYDER
Michigan State University

Oakland, Calif.; and the Knowledge
Is Power Program, or kipp, school
network, based in San Francisco.
Another top-five group was Teach
For America, a New York City-based
organization that enlists young college graduates to teach in disadvantaged schools. The last was the
D.C. Public Education Fund, which
supports school improvement in the
District of Columbia.
“We see over time that [donations to] these traditional operators—public schools, state
[education departments], and universities—decline and challengers
increase,” Mr. Snyder said.

at the University of Michigan—
tracked the influence of foundations on California charter schools.
They analyzed tax forms, annual reports, meeting minutes,
achievement-test results, and
other administrative data and interviewed 41 charter leaders and
their foundation supporters.
Beyond providing money, Mr.
Quinn and his colleagues learned,
foundations reviewed and recombined the elements of existing charters to develop new and
preferred models for schools; furthered those models by enforcing
evaluation systems that included

WEBINAR

Parental Views of

MOBILE DEVICES
For Student Learning

the elements they wished to foster for all grantees; and supported
education, training, and professional development to build up a
new pool of teachers and leaders
to staff the schools.
Mr. Quinn found that even
within the charter school sector,
foundations focused on expanding
the biggest players, the chartermanagement organizations, rather
than single-school charter holders.
In the process, both the funders
and the charter operators reported
that there was less focus on being
integrated into and responsive to a
particular community, and more on
“building a brand” for the schools
that could be scaled up quickly.
Katrina E. Bulkley, a professor
of education leadership at Montclair State University in Montclair,
N.J., who was not involved in either
study, said the changes also point
to a broader trend of their adopting
a more rational approach to making grants, focused on requiring
measurable results and providing
money to the organizations that
can produce them.
“Grantmaking is a key way of
how foundations signify who they
consider valuable contributors to
school reform,” Ms. Bulkley said.
Scan this tag with your
smartphone for a link to
“Beyond Grantmaking:
Philanthropic Foundations
as Agents of Change and Institutional
Entrepreneur.” www.edweek.org/links.

> www.edweek.org/go/webinars

REGISTRATION
IS FREE!
Thursday, May 16, 2013
2 to 3 p.m. ET
www.edweek.org/go/
webinar/ATTMobileDevices

LIVE OR ON-DEMAND

Join us for a summary of “Living & Learning
with Mobile Devices,” a new report from
Grunwald Associates and the Learning First
Alliance, underwritten by AT&T. This webinar
will provide educators, school leaders, and district
administrators an in-depth understanding on
how parents perceive current and potential use
of mobile devices for learning.
SPEAKERS:
CHARLES HERGET, associate vice-president
education leadership, AT&T
CHERYL SCOTT WILLIAMS,
executive director,
Learning First Alliance

MODERATOR:
Peter Grunwald, president,
Grunwald Associates, LLC

5-16-13_Mobile Devices half page.indd 1

Content provided by:
4/22/2013 3:08:16 PM

http://www.edweek.org http://www.edweek.org/links http://www.edweek.org/go/webinars http://www.edweek.org/go/webinars http://www.edweek.org/go/webinar/ATTMobileDevices http://www.edweek.org/go/webinar/ATTMobileDevices http://www.edweek.org/go/webinar/ATTMobileDevices

Education Week - May 8, 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - May 8, 2013