Sarah Reckhow and Jeffrey W. Snyder explain the new educational philanthropy–and how it intersects with federal priorities–in this valuable article.
They spot three significant trends:
“Our analysis proceeds in three parts. First, we examine phil- anthropic grant-making for political activities and demonstrate that funding for national policy advocacy grew from 2000 to 2010. Second, we analyze the shifting policy orientation among top education philanthropies. We find that most major education foundations increasingly support jurisdictional challengers— organizations that compete with or offer alternatives to public sector institutions. Meanwhile, funding for traditional public education institutions has declined. Third, we examine the range of actors and perspectives supported by philanthropic grants, applying social network analysis to identify overlapping patterns of grant-making. We find that top donors are increasingly supporting a shared set of organizations—predominantly jurisdictional challengers. We argue that the combination of these trends has played a role in strengthening the voice and influence of philanthropists in education policy.”
What are jurisdictional challengers? These are organizations that challenge the traditional governance of education, such as charter schools. More philanthropic money goes to these challengers, less money goes to traditional public schools, and more money goes to networks of jurisdictional challengers, like the NewSchools Venture Fund and Stand for Children.
This is a fine scholarly work that confirms what many of us saw with our own eyes. The philanthropic sector–led by Gates, Walton, and Broad and their allies like Dell–prefer disruptive organizations of charters to public schools. Indeed, they are using their vast fortunes to undercut public education and impose a free market competition among competing schools. As they go merrily about the task of disrupting an important democratic institution, they work in tandem with the U.S. Department of Education, which has assumed the task of destabilizing public education.
Big money–accountable to no one—and big government have embarked on an experiment in mass privatization. Do they ever ask themselves whether they might be wrong?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I call this: Money Laundering….with govt. approval. It’s this simple, and at the cost of our young and teachers no less.
The change has been that philanthropy used to be about the giving, and the tax break. Now, it is all about the end game, and “game changing” – how the seed money that is “gifted” is really an investment on profits, eventually. With education, those profits come off the backs of taxpayers. Its absolutely devilish.
This pedestrian study manages to frame a new distractor for the billionaire-philanthropist attack on public wealth. “Jurisdictional” disruption can be discussed without ever implying the bad Samaritans might be driven by self-interest, as well as by hatred and contempt for the very children they purport to “save”.
I’ve been looking for the actual text of Gates’ “catalytic philanthropy” address to the Forbes 400 conclave in 3013. Forbes current account of it has been revised to play down the content. His theoretical framework is that billionaires need to leverage their giving, so it catalyzes profitability in corporate investment addressing the needs of the poor. If you can do math, that means diverting public and actual charitable resources available to meet human needs into his own bottom line.
So, can you play this game with me? Gates has some version of his speech up, with devotional images of himself, but it’s behind a mealy-mouthed tweet wall. Can you read his speech at all?
Sharing brings joy and freedom!
http://www.billgateswindows.com/ms/1338/bill-gates-a-speech-about-catalytic-philanthropy/
I think people get it on a gut-level, though, the huge overreach and real hubris.
Cami Anderson is essentially single-handedly writing the NJ state education code. She’s creating both a jurisdiction and a governance scheme for a public entity. She can do that because state lawmakers relinquished their responsibility and “authorized” it.
People here were shocked when they found out charters have a right of first refusal on purchase of publicly-owned school facilities. The plan was to knock down an old elementary school and turn the piece of property into a park, while building a new school elsewhere. They can’t do that without offering the building to a charter management organization first.
Cami is a mere puppet. She is not smart enough to mastermind this takeover. She is, however, a bulldozer (literally and figuratively). How, too, she is worth $300,000 salary while every other super in NJ gets capped at $175,000, other than she was anointed/appointed by Crispie Cream.
chemtchr, this? http://www.forbes.com/sites/randalllane/2012/09/18/bill-gates-my-new-model-for-giving/2/ Site has link to Bill Gates “extended interview” which I haven’t listened to yet.
On one level, I didn’t find Gates’ speech alarming; philanthropic money used to create a market cycle means creating a self sustaining system. Micro loans have been very successful at helping many poor people climb out of abject poverty.
The poison is in the motives of the philanthropic organization. If they receive or expect any economic benefit from their donation, however indirect, the danger of corruption is very high. As we have seen, it is easy to get other agencies to adopt the agenda if that economic benefit is passed along.
The other danger is in the desire to control the agenda and the paternalistic belief that they should. It is degrading to be adopted as someone’s “feel good” project especially when the participants’ thoughts and feelings are pretty much ignored. It’s like being someone’s lab rat, and you know what happens to lab rats after the experiment is over.
Micro loans were touted as the way to make committed capitalists out of third world farmers. Oops.
india’s microfinance suicide epidemic
“India’s micro-finance crisis mirrors the 2008 subprime mortgage meltdown in the US, where finance companies threw cheap and easy loans at homebuyers until prices crashed and borrowers were unable to sell their homes or pay their debts.”
But the difference in India is that the borrowers are even poorer, with zero social security.
http://www.moneyandbanking.co.uk/indiasmicrofinancesuicideepidemic.doc
Thanks, Tauna. I’m actually looking for Forbes’ initial report on the speech, which disappeared from my search results after this essay went up.
I will be able to listen to the speech, though, and pull out the same quotes.
Richard, I’m not surprised to find that someone corrupted the concept. Providing a loan for housing they cannot afford certainly is not improving their ability to support themselves. We cannot get away from the sharks who will devour anyone for profits.
This new Philanthropy sector gives snakes a bad rap while the US DoE brings the Do Do bird back to life. Swap heads of these animals w/their human counterparts and see the resemblance.
I love how government clambered right on board with this mind-set.
They now have us applying for grants to fund our schools with our money. It’s up to the 100 people who review “grant proposals” whether we get our own tax money back for our schools. Maybe your school will be the lucky winner of the funds collected…from you.
We might have to start with the basics. Like a dictionary definition of “public”.
We might have to start with the basics. Like a dictionary definition of “public”.
and philanthropy.
This is fabulous. VP Biden is leading the “school to work” initiative. His brother, who runs a for-profit chain of schools for at-risk kids, is currently attending some charter promotion event with Jeb Bush.
I don’t know: could this DC situation get any more incenstious? We’re down to about 172 people who are in this very exclusive club setting policy for tens of millions of public school kids. Talk about the “status quo”. This is a club, and we’re not in it 🙂
Mark Naison asks if charter schools are today’s version of subprime mortgages.
I think it’s more akin to the bipartisan financial sector deregulation that began in the 1990’s and extends to today, myself.
The reliance on “data” reminds me of how “the data” told them the housing would go up in value, perpetually and forever. Janet Yellin says now there was NO indication “from the data” that the whole house ‘o cards was gonna crash. Whoops!
Deregulation of the financial sector was bipartisan, too. Incredibly stupid and reckless, but bipartisan.
“Bipartisan” is over-rated. It’s just as likely Democrats and Republicans will join in doing something stupid and reckless as it is one Party will do something stupid and reckless. We’ve seen that time and time again. “Bipartisan” may be MORE dangerous, because there’s no dissent or push-back.
Big thanks for this reference. The diagrams of interlocking directorates and projects is long overdue. The analytical structure is strong. I wish for comparable tools to map the emerging resistance. The Network was a start, but is not sufficient for understanding how deep and broad the counter currents are, to grasp aligned interests, and much else.
It’s nice that the diagrams of interlocking directorates are getting some notice, but it’s the notice that’s “long overdue”, not the diagrams.
Susan OHanian did those diagrams, years ago, and so have many other activists. We got called conspiracy nuts, remember?
Malanthropy (n): a corporate entity that uses tax-free money to advance the personal or class interests of those who fund it, while professing to be altruistic.
It makes no sense to keep calling this philanthropy. It has nothing to do with the love of humanity.
What we have here are Tax-Advantaged Political Organizations (TAPOs)..
Agree, Michael & Jon. In addition to malanthropy (which is corporate), we also have villainthropy (which is an individual or individuals, e.g., Eli Broad). That having been said, I keep forgetting–corporations ARE people, so I guess we can correctly use both together–Malanthropic (as an adjective) villainthropists, or villainthropic malanthropists. Now, if this were a math equation (or a question on a Pear$on publi$hed te$t—naw, strike the last–Pear$on te$t que$tion creator$ are NOT clever enough to include such questions {or terms!}), it would read–
villainthropists + malanthropists= BAD news for the 99%.
I read a post yesterday that covered the same ground and incorporated links to several articles and posts. http://www.publicschoolshakedown.org/the-billionaire-boys-reinvesting-a-small-percent-of-the-spoils-of-capitalism. Here’s the conclusion I drew from these writings, Citizens United provides opportunities for these like-minded “philanthropists” to have a tremendous sway on public education policy in the future. Looking ahead, I would guess that most of the contributors to both parties campaigns are enthusiastic about the direction the federal government is leading us in terms of privatization of public schools, and the payback to technology companies, for-profit start-ups, and test companies will increase… And here’s the best news for the “billionaire boys'”: the campaign contributions to both parties won’t be a consequential cost to them… and I’d predict that those political contributions will have a great return on investment! http://waynegersen.com/2014/07/22/the-billionaire-boys-roi/
I love all the jokiing about malanthropy and villainthropy, but to tell you the truth, this new power structure truly terrifies me.
Whenever I look for reactions from the established philanthropy commentariat, one discussion of a mild piece by Diane always comes up. And not much else, because they all know where their own income stream lies.
https://nonprofitquarterly.org/philanthropy/20628-diane-ravitch-takes-down-gates-foundation-role-in-us-education.html
I was frustrated by it, just now, but then I glanced at the comments and saw three stooges trying to undercut it somehow. One of them called Diane’s relentlessly polite writing “vitriol”. I laughed out loud.
For example: http://dcgmentor.wordpress.com/2014/07/14/why-isnt-aft-and-new-york-more-enraged-about-engageny/