The largest system of higher education in the nation, the California Community Colleges (CCC) has disappeared more than one million students in the past 15 years, a 35% decrease in its student body since 2008 despite California's population increase. This dramatic shrinking of the CCC system was not an accident. It was manufactured by a vast…

Background/Context: The business and philanthropic sectors have been a persistent force in shaping U.S. schools. Recently, they have used their resources to advance policies that embody newer principles of industry--reforms that suggest that competition, choice, and deregulation can spur improvement and effectiveness. This has most notably…

Background/Context: Research on the patterns of philanthropic funding of charter schools has largely focused on the behavior of major foundations. This work has documented how the once diffuse giving by these major foundations has become increasingly concentrated on a small number of jurisdictional challengers in the form of charter schools,…

Background/Context: The traditional literature on the history of higher education in the United States focuses on linear explanations of the inexorable growth of the size, mission, and importance of colleges and universities. That approach ignores or minimizes a recurrent strain of discontent with the higher education sector, especially from…

Background/Context: Charter school policy has evolved into a major component of the current education reform movement in the United States. As of 2012, all but nine U.S. states allowed charter schools, and in one of those nine, Washington State, charter school legislation was passed by popular vote in November 2012. There is a substantial, if…

Background & Purpose: This article focuses on the growing role of venture philanthropy in shaping policy and practice in teacher education in the United States. Our goal is to bring a greater level of transparency to private influences on public policy and to promote greater discussion and debate in the public arena about alternative solutions…

This chapter examines the charter school policy and planning network and how this network is helping to grow urban charter schools and related advocacy organizations across the United States.

Background/Context: At a time when educational research is recognized as capable of improving teaching and learning, it is under attack for falling short of this promise. Part of the solution lies in improving the preparation of educational researchers. Toward this goal, the UW-Madison School of Education (SOE) participated with the Spencer…

Background/Context: In 1994, the Spencer Foundation embarked on an ambitious experimental initiative to support the preparation of education researchers. Over the 13-year span of the Research Training Grant (RTG) program, the foundation made multiyear awards to more than a dozen leading institutions in the United States and South Africa. This…

Background/Context: The Research Training Grant (RTG) program at the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education aimed to create strong research training experiences for predissertation fellows through generous financial aid, mentored research apprenticeships, and cocurricular experiences. Collectively these offerings sought to…

A major achievement of women in higher education since the 1960s has been the growth of women's studies as a formal area of teaching and research. Philanthropy played a key role, with the Ford Foundation the source of much of the funding that helped accelerate the process of change. (SM)

Introduces a series of articles on philanthropy and the nature of education, suggesting that serious study of philanthropy in education is nowhere near sufficient as a result of insufficient theory and suspiciousness characterizing attitudes and relationships between philanthropists/foundation administrators and outside scholars and investigators.…

Growing academic interest in philanthropy, voluntarism, and nonprofit organizations illustrates efforts by industry to redefine its public presence by influencing universities and scholars. The paper examines efforts to evaluate the changing place of universities in public life, the processes of university change, and the effectiveness of…

Discusses efforts by charitable foundations to improve educational quality for at-risk youth. Most grants for at-risk youth are for direct services, though research/evaluation and advocacy receive considerable funding. Some foundations provide technical assistance and brokering. Recently, entrepreneurs have entered the field of educational…

Reprints a 1979 article that responded to a request from the Rockefeller Archives Center for an analysis of one foundation's activity with public schools over time. The original article traced the Ford Foundation's role in public education from 1960 through the 1970s. An addendum traces its role through the 1980s. (SM)