Sarah Darer Littman has a good idea. She thinks that journalists in Connecticut should do investigative journalism and not just write what they find in the press release.
Case in point: the recent gift of $5 million from the Gates foundation to Hartford schools.
Littman calls the grant a Trojan horse because it commits the district to adopt practices that the foundation favors. These will be costly, such as a specific, expensive assessment system.
There was a time when foundations actually made gifts. They gave the recipient X dollars to do what the recipient wanted to do. It’s different now. Now the foundation decides what the recipient ought to do, and offers money to carry out the foundation’s wishes.
In some cases, the foundation offers a recipient $100,000 to do something that will eventually cost the school district millions of dollars.
The great puzzle is why so many school districts line up and ask for the money.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I don’t think they read the fine print
$5million? That’s all it talks to buy them off?
About four million of it is going specifically to a pair of charter schools. It is mendacious when the papers say that it was given “to Hartford schools”
We’re still reaping the “benefits” of Gates Foundation money in Memphis. The grant expires in 2015. I’d like to think at that point the board will evaluate the litany of changes they’ve adopted to appease Gates and drop the ones with no empirical support. That would make too much sense, though. They’ll probably just turn around and apply for another grant.
Boy Gates spent billions pushing for small schools. His money, his agenda, I get that. Many schools followed his lead and broke up large schools because of the Gates push.
Later when the “results” didn’t appear favorable, Boy gates dropped the initiative. Meanwhile massive amounts of time and money was still being misdirected because “Bill gates thinks it is a good idea and it seems to make sense”.
In truth, the original basis for the initiative was flawed and reveals a basic misunderstanding of statistics and research of Boy Gates and his crew. Smaller schools have more variation in “achievement” than larger schools and while the original “research did show a disproportionate number of successful small schools IT ALSO SHOWED a DISPORPORTIONATE NUMBER unsuccessful SMALL SCHOOLS!
But, good stories are better than nuanced understandings I guess.
Go, School Finance 101, GO!
Excellent question.
Why? Doing reformy stuff buys reformy cred for the supe & other high ranking officials. That launches them into their next reformy gig, whether it worked or (more likely) not. The district is left holding bag and the supe moves on. Rinse, repeat. Cases in point: A. Duncan, J. Klein, M. Rhee.
Good point, but this is a two-sided coin. Many school districts have mismanaged all of their revenue and piled debt on top of debt. Michigan has Detroit, Muskegon Heights, Benton Harbor Highland Park and others, and they have received millions and have nothing to show for it. It is good advice to tell them to be careful of those offering “gifts” but unfortunately when you are drowning it is difficult to sort through life preservers for the right one. Good intentions often end in poor results and there is no substitute for prudent responsible management.
Diane, in the foundation world, most non-profit organizations have a gift acceptance policy. These non-profit organizations outline the kinds of charitable gifts they will and will not accept from donors. This is important as there are times when donors want to give gifts with “strings attached” that are not in keeping with the overall mission of the organization. In other cases, donors may want to give gifts that will actually cost the organization (e.g. artwork that needs to be insured and secured, a piece of land or property that has to be sold and is not worth the value estimated by the donor). When non-profit organizations have gift acceptance policies that clearly spell out the conditions under which they will and will not accept charitable gifts, it protects everyone involved. I have thought for quite some time now that school districts should have their own version of a “gift acceptance” policy. Monies from foundations, or the USDOE for that matter, come with costs that are many times more than the so-called “value” of the grant…the point of your post. I understand how and why in these very difficult times it may be tempting to seek these types of funds, but it is becoming ever-more apparent that it’s important to take the long view and consider the ultimate costs of such grants. Thanks for your thoughtful, wise, and ardent advocacy of public education!
And terrible management is as much to blame for threats to local control because it fuels the reformer’s fire.
Malanthropy (n): the funneling of tax exempt money to foundations that further the economic interests of the donor.
See Gates, Bill and Broad, Eli.
Brilliant, did you just make that up?
Thanks. I’ve been using it for awhile, and have been trying to introduce it into the lexicon and the debate.
This ‘expensive assessment system’ is quite scary. I went to a meeting on it in Chicago this past fall, SLC Camp Chicago. The people backing it are of course Bill and Melinda Gates but one of their main partners is Rupert Murdoch. Why on earth would we want any of these people having excessive amounts of data on OUR children, especially Rupert?
The kids are data, and data is for sale.
After all, Michele Rhee did say children are our most valuable assets.
They line up and ask because money has been given to
politicians to persuade them to support it and it’s hard to change
their mind after that because as Upton Sinclair said, “It is
difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary
depends on his not understanding it.”
It all seems like bribery or coercion. Why do people take the money if you are forced into a policy.