Tag Archives: Broad Foundation

Q&A: Pulling Back the Curtain on Education Philanthropy

Originally published in The American Prospect on September 21, 2016.
—-

Private foundations give millions of dollars to public education every year, but these powerful institutions typically operate behind a curtain of secrecy. In a new book, Policy Patrons: Philanthropy, Education Reform, and the Politics of Influence, University of Michigan public policy professor Megan Tompkins-Stange sheds new light on the role philanthropy plays in public education, particularly in the arena of charter schools and other market-based reforms. 

Tompkins-Stange spent five years conducting confidential interviews with foundation insiders at the Ford Foundation, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation. Analyzing their diverse, and sometimes competing, approaches to grant-giving, she raises important questions about the influence that philanthropic interests wield in American education and public life. This is an edited transcript of that interview.

Rachel Cohen: You chose to dive into a controversial topic—education reform. What kind of feedback has your book received?

Megan Tompkins-Stange: Honestly I was really scared building up to the book’s release date, especially since I am a junior scholar. For months I was like, what am I doing? Why did I decide to do this? I was terrified. But honestly, most of the response to the book has been really supportive and positive, including from the foundations. I still haven’t heard anything from the Broad Foundation, but I’ve also heard from retired teachers, and people who experienced some of the politics first-hand.

One major critique I’ve received is that I’m not vocal enough about whether philanthropic giving is good or bad. But I did this intentionally—I wanted it to be accepted as an academic and empirical book, as opposed to a piece of advocacy. I’ve taken a more critical stance in the press though, I’m now more comfortable to do so.

Your book talks about the secrecy of foundations. Can you say more?

Foundations are private nonprofit corporations. There’s very little they have to do in order to be accountable to the public. They publish their tax forms, they have their 990s. They’ve established some professional norms over the past 50 years, so many will publish their grants in a database, or put out annual reports. That’s more just good practice, though. Foundations don’t have boards that are democratically accountable, and they are very private by nature of their organizational form. They don’t have to talk to anyone.

Of course, the argument that comes up again and again is, well is that a good thing? That’s a debate that’s gone on for many years. My position is that foundations need to be much more legally accountable. They have enough power in the public realm that they need to be held to some accountability procedures beyond the ones they institute on their own. That could be a formal mechanism, or creating space for people to weigh in on efforts they’re pushing that will impact the public at large. They could have boards with some kind of public member component, or make some investments subject to an external review.

People often lump the Gates and Broad Foundations together, but you explore some differences between these two education reform-friendly foundations.

Eli Broad is the only person to have founded two Fortune 500 companies, and part of his theory of change is about getting the right people into the right positions. So Broad focuses on pipelines: training superintendents, creating leadership positions for individuals to then shape school districts. He very intentionally talks about “venture philanthropy” and having “dramatic results” and creating “transformative breakthroughs.” The Broad Foundation moves unapologetically with urgency; that is their core value.

Gates is a little more skittish about where the public stands on them, they’re more careful. They have legions of lawyers who work to make sure their advocacy doesn’t cross any line. The Gates Foundation also has a sense of urgency, but they’ve always been a bit more cautious. Some people say this may be due to some things Microsoft went through with antitrust—Bill Gates has always just been much more public and attracts more criticism and critique than Eli Broad.

Many supporters of the Common Core insist that the standards originated from the states, not the federal government. Your book recounts the many ways in which they were actually pushed forward by the Gates Foundation, on both the state and the federal level.

Gates was very much about building up the power at the state and local level, and then bringing in the federal government. That was their strategy, and the main way they did that was by getting all the governors on board in ’08 and ’09. Gates made huge grants to The Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association designed to build political will.

The grants were basically for instituting standards, educating the public, and research. It was all very above-board, but they really played that convener role to get everyone on the same page. Their strategy was to give money to elites to move the effort efficiently and quickly.

HistPhil, a blog about the history of philanthropy, hosts debates about what’s changed in the modern landscape of philanthropic giving. Your book describes some shifts in education philanthropy over the past few decades. What do you think has changed?

HistPhil is such a valuable website, I really appreciate the role that they’ve taken in advancing the conversation and bringing it back to history. There’s a tendency in political discussions about philanthropy to argue that today is the biggest it’s ever been. The truth is that foundations have been really powerful for more than a century; if you look back at some of the press from the 1920s and 1930s, there are very similar arguments being made about the influence of the Rockefellers.

All that’s old is new again. I think that what’s changed is that people today are more concerned about the size of foundations. It’s the first time in many decades we’ve seen foundations that are in excess of a billion dollars, and the growth of their assets has also grown significantly. The presence of market-based values and the influences of neoliberalism over the past 30 years is a big deal, too. People tend to get hyperbolic because there are wealthy people in tech and business who are more assertive in ways that foundations haven’t been in the past.

Your book suggests “evidenced-based” policies are often far less rigorous, and far more political, than their proponents suggest.

Right, what is evidence? I’m working on a book proposal now with [political scientist] Sarah Reckhow about teacher quality debates. We look at the new industry of advocacy research, and its influence on policy discussions. So many ideological arguments have the veneer of neutrality confirmed by the label “evidenced-based.”

We’re in the midst of a presidential election that actually has a significant focus on philanthropy. Both Clinton and Trump have foundations, and particularly the Clinton Foundation’s influence is regularly in the media. Do you see this having any import for the education philanthropy conversation?

It’s an interesting question because the broad public doesn’t really know what a foundation is, or what it does. Clinton’s foundation doesn’t make that many grants, it’s more like brokering and convening. I teach a class on philanthropy and I start by asking my class “what is the foundation you most admire?” Students will say things like the Salvation Army. Most people really conflate foundations and public charities, and there’s not a real understanding of who gives the money and who does the work on the ground. There’s a real lack of knowledge about what power these different groups have, which also carries implications for our democracy.

The national conversation around inequality has grown far more pronounced. Has this impacted the public’s focus on philanthropy?

That was fascinating for me. Literally I kept having to add things to the book as we were going to press. ESSA passed, Bernie Sanders became a real viable candidate. I think people are starting to realize that philanthropy is inextricably linked to an unequal society. You can’t have philanthropy without having some people who have a lot more than others.

 

 

Advertisement

On New Philanthropy, Education Reform, and Eli Broad’s Big Plan for L.A. Schools

Originally published at The American Prospect on September 22, 2015.
—–

The Los Angeles Times published a confidential document yesterday, which seems to confirm earlier reports that the Broad Foundation wants at least 50 percent of L.A. public school students educated in charter schools over the next eight years. Currently, 16 percent of students in L.A. Unified attend charters, and according to the report, getting to 50 percent would require creating 260 new schools, for 130,000 students, at a cost of $490 million.

“Los Angeles is uniquely positioned to create the largest, highest-performing charter sector in the nation,” the report stated. “Such an exemplar would serve as a model for all large cities to follow.”

Hmmm. That sounds familiar.

Earlier this month, veteran Washington Post journalist Dale Russakoff published a new book, The Prize, which explores education reform efforts in Newark from 2010-2015. Her book details the goals, mistakes, and challenges reformers encountered as they tried to “transform” Newark’s struggling school system—largely through expanding charters, closing “failing” schools, and implementing new teacher pay scales. The political drama and backroom dealings led by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg offers humbling lessons to all those working to improve public education, no matter where one comes down on the policy specifics.

Like Eli Broad’s vision for Los Angeles, a key goal for Newark education reformers was to make the city a model for the rest of urban America. Booker wanted Newark to be transformed into “a hemisphere of hope” and repeatedly told Zuckerberg that their goal was not just to fix local education, but to develop the “high impact programs and best practices” that could fix education in all major cities. Booker believed that if he could succeed within a difficult district like Newark, then he could succeed anywhere. He emphasized that Zuckerberg’s investment could help lead to the “blueprint for national replication across America’s urban centers to transform its youth.”

This month, HistPhil, a blog that explores the history of the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors, has been running an excellent series on philanthropic involvement in education. Their effort is well timed: As billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and Eli Broad continue to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into education reform, the need to understand what’s historically new, and what’s not, is more important than ever.

Sarah Reckhow, a political scientist and author of Follow the Money: How Foundation Dollars Change Public Schools, contributed to the HistPhil series by looking specifically at Mark Zuckerberg’s experiment in Newark. Reckhow notes that there exists a “perennial drive” for philanthropists to create national reform models. She points to the Ford Foundation’s Gray Areas program in the 1960s, an effort that philanthropists had hoped could serve as a national model for urban policy. “The fallacy of the national replication model—at the expense of truly listening and understanding local circumstances—is a lesson that philanthropists must relearn time and again,” Reckhow says.

Other cities experimenting with education reform are similarly interested in “scaling” their efforts. Many point to the academic gains seen in New Orleans—the urban district with the highest percentage of charter schools in the country—as reason to implement their reforms elsewhere. “We don’t know if similar efforts can be replicated in other cities,” argued Neerav Kingsland, a prominent New Orleans reformer. “But we owe it to the children of this country to try and find out.” Tulane economist Doug Harris, who has conducted the most rigorous research on New Orleans reforms to date, says it’s questionable whether their model would work in other cities given the unique economic and political conditions present in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

OK, so reformers and philanthropists are drawn to ideas that can scale—and apparently have been for a long time. Still, how should we be thinking about Eli Broad’s plan to “charterize” L.A.? Is there anything new about today’s crop of philanthropists? Several contributors to the HistPhil blog argue yes.

Sociologist Robin Rogers says that the ideas held by modern philanthropists reflect those commonly seen in the venture capital world. She cites an influential article from 1997 in The Harvard Business Review that encouraged philanthropists to pursue social change using tactics commonly employed in the business sector. “Considered to be more muscular than traditional approaches to philanthropy, the new philanthropy appeals to many men who made money in tech or finance sectors,” Rogers writes. “These (primarily) men have great faith in the tools and techniques that they used to disrupt the old economy and usher in the new one.”

While modern philanthropists share some similarities with their rich predecessors, Rogers argues that today’s bunch are far more likely to focus on “institutional pressure points” rather than provide support for a diverse set of projects. (She points to the Gates Foundation’s involvement in promoting the Common Core standards as an example, as well as dogged support for expanding charter schools).

Jeffrey W. Snyder, a postdoctoral research fellow in education, philanthropy, and advocacy at the University of Michigan and Michigan State University, also wrote a HistPhil post exploring differences between “old” and “new” philanthropy—specifically in terms of their priorities and philanthropic methods. For one thing, Snyder finds that “new foundation granting in recent years far surpasses the total given by old foundations.”

Source: Jeffrey W. Snyder, HistPhil blog

Source: Jeffrey W. Snyder, HistPhil blog

He also says that newer foundations do indeed have different priorities compared to older ones. The latter tends to give substantially to university-based programs and research that aims to improve existing educational systems, while newer foundations donate heavily to charter schools and other organizations that push for more radical change.

We don’t yet know what’s going to happen with Eli Broad’s plan to “reach 50 percent charter market share” within Los Angeles public schools. And it wouldn’t be fair to assume he’ll behave just as Mark Zuckerberg did in Newark, or as other billionaires have elsewhere. Still, paying attention to historical precedent is important, and there seems to be sufficient reason to be wary. As The Washington Post’s art critic Philip Kennicott wrote just days ago, Eli Broad “is a self-made man…who has also built and burned bridges all across [Los Angeles]. Ask around, and no one seems to like him, though many call him effective…They admire his brilliance, covet his money, fear his power and lament his character, which is described as imperious, egomaniacal and relentless.”