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…

The recent emergence of "new" venture philanthropists, social entrepreneurs and neoliberal policy advocates and the new ways in which they configure and perform their political agendas have brought important changes in the way in which education policy is enacted. This study takes some of the ideas sketched in previous work further and…

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…

Current political polarization and competing priorities complicate development of sound education policy. Particularly troubling is the disconnect between research and policy, as decision makers rely more on the work of think tanks and advocacy groups than the knowledge base of the profession. The mismatch between higher education and policy…

Today powerful philanthropies exercise considerable influence over U.S. educational policy. Referred to as venture philanthropies (Scott, 2009; Saltman, 2010), foundations, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation, have emphasized high-stakes accountability and…

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.

This article begins by observing that foundations come in all shapes and sizes. The mission and grant-making philosophy of any foundation are determined by an unscientific mixture of its history, changing external realities, and leaders. The article then continues by describing The Teagle Foundation, a small, philanthropic organization with about…

Public education is becoming increasingly privatized as private philanthropic organizations, such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and corporations, such as Pearson, dominate the policy-making process, and more students enroll in publicly funded but privately administered charter schools. The privatization of education results from the…

For the past six decades, conservative foundations in the United States have targeted their funding on a transformation of the public's understanding of markets, culture , and the undergraduate course of study. These foundations, and their sponsored researchers, have specifically challenged the place of diversity and intercultural competence…

The newly created Conservative Education Reform Network (CERN) at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) invited a group of conservative education thinkers to sketch policy proposals that they would like to see in a new education agenda. The only requirement was that they offer suggestions that would complement the traditional conservative…

This executive summary describes a Wallace-commissioned report that identifies the emergence of a new kind of education advocacy organization in the United States. The report also assesses how these groups influence education policy, provides an overview of their work across the country, and offers a case study of one, Advance Illinois. The report…

This article focuses on the increased power of venture philanthropy to shape education in urban communities of color in the USA. The author situates venture philanthropy's expanded influence in urban school districts in the nexus of urban disinvestment, neoliberal governance, wealth concentration, and economic crisis. The author argues that…

The Common Core State Standards Initiative seeks to prepare all students to graduate high school without remedial needs, to improve transparency across states' accountability systems, and to foster efficiencies in the development and distribution of educational resources. The reform was adopted in more than 40 states and has been described as…

In our 2019 annual report, we provide insight into our sponsorship work during the year and the performance of our sponsored schools. We are also pleased to highlight the good work of our colleagues on Fordham's policy and research teams. Our schools' academic performance shows several schools doing very well on Ohio's value added (growth) measure…

This report serves as a legacy document for the Ford Foundation's More and Better Learning Time (MBLT) initiative. It summarizes the approaches to and outcomes and challenges of successful MBLT strategies around the country. The report includes data from a survey for Ford Foundation MBLT grantees across the country and from case studies in Denver,…