ken m libby -

A Guide to Writing Right-Wing, Anti-Common Core Articles and Blog Posts

May 222013

Step One: Catchy Title

The title is an important part of any anti-Common Core piece. A popular choice is to incorporate the word “rotten,” which too many just can’t pass up (here, here, here, here, and here). Also popular: something connoting or indicating a leftist/Marxist conspiracy, for instance, “Common Core: Rotten to it’s leftist core,” “Obama Trying To Take Over Public Education With ‘Common Core’ Curriculum That Teaches Socialism,” “‘Common Core’ The Marxist Brainwashing Of America’s Schoolchildren,” or “Common Core GED textbook: ’9/11 hijackers were poor Afghanis.’”

Step Two: Select Your Boogeyman

The obvious choice is President Obama, but don’t limit yourself to the guy in the White House. And, ObamaCore might be catchy (here, here, here, and here), but it’s not terribly creative. Seriously, it just takes ObamaCare and changes ONE LETTER! Bill Ayers is a strong choice for a boogeyman (here, here, here, here, here, and here). Linda Darling-Hammond is the leading boogeywoman (here, here, and here). Combine two or all three for the most potent boogeyman concoction.

Step Three: Pick a Persuasive Argument

Big choice here. Once you have an irresistible title and boogeyman (or more), you need to actually construct your anti-Common Core argument. You have a few options.

You can go with the “Common Core is a socialist/Marxist/communist plot” – but those arguments are getting a lot of airplay already (here, here, here, here, here, and here). Another popular choice is the Common Core is a UN conspiracy (here, here, and here). If you’re more familiar with pedagogy, you could run with the Common Core as a progressive takeover of schools (here, here, and here).

Less common arguments are that Common Core is a secret attempt to indoctrinate students about immigration (here); that the new standards will eliminate cursive instruction (here); that examples of suggested texts are too sexually graphic (here); promotes a “homosexual agenda” (here); that it’s part of “the apology tour for American exceptionalism (here); or that the standards promote “extreme environmentalism” (here).

For those seeking bolder arguments, there is “Common Core forcing Marxism/Nazism on America’s children,” or that it’s comparable to what Hitler did while in charge of Germany (here, here, here, here, here, and here).

The argument that Common Core is federal intrusion into public education? Please, that’s soooo pedestrian and boring. It’s probably important to include so you can say something about the Constitution or states’ rights, but it’s a less flashy argument than some of the ones listed above.

Step Four: Construct a Conclusion

The title, boogeyman, and argument are all essential, but you really need to build to your concluding remarks. The smart move seems to be suggesting the new standards will be an absolute disaster (here), that we must overthrow tyranny (here), the standards cost too much (here), or that anything the feds are involved in is bound to fail (here and here).

Side Comments

In seriousness, opposition from a few key right-wing pundits (Malkin and Beck) seems to have stirred up the anti-Common Core hysteria of late. It’s also possible that the standards didn’t get much attention when they were simply words on a page as opposed to something actually happening in the classroom (at least in some places), complete with assessments tied to the standards. And, it’s completely plausible that the right just needed another topic to cause a stink about.

[Disclosure: I am working for the American Federation of Teachers this summer, although none of my work relates to the Common Core. Additionally, I composed this post on my own time.]

May 22, 2013 Posted by Ken Libby on May 22, 2013 1 Response »

Jaquelin Hume Foundation, 2001-2010

Jan 182013

The Jaquelin Hume Foundation is one of the many conservative foundations operating in the United States. Some of the foundation’s work is directly related to education, and much of the foundation’s work impacts education indirectly though tax/fiscal policy and social policy.

For this post I pulled grants listed on the foundations Form 990s for the years 2001-2010. You can download an Excel spreadsheet with this information on my data page. The rest of this post uses that data to look at the various organizations receiving funds from the foundation.

The foundation essentially gives to five different kinds of organizations¹:

Education organizations (e.g., KIPP, TFA, Alliance for School Choice)
Think tanks that are part of the State Policy Network, a collection of state-level free-market think tanks
A variety of other conservative think tanks or advocacy organizations that are not part of the State Policy Network (e.g., Heritage Foundation, Hoover Institution, Independent Women’s Forum)
A handful of possibly education-related organizations (e.g., Atlantic Legal Foundation, Center for Union Facts)
Other organizations (e.g., museums; mostly California-based)

Here is a list of education organizations:

[Click on image to enlarge.]

A few notes about the above:

I believe CANEC was either the precursor to California Charter School Association or the Association’s previous name.
The Personalized Learning Foundation was a project of the Center for Education Reform
I’m assuming MAPSA is the Michigan Association of Public School Academies (charter schools)

And organizations that are part of the State Policy Network, a collection of state-level free-market think tanks:

Other conservative think tanks:

Education-related organizations (that also do some non-education work):

And, finally, the other organizations:

The Hume Foundation is a well-known supporter of conservative politics, and that support is quite obviously continuing.

While the foundation supports some education organizations that are hardly conservative (e.g., Center for Teaching Quality, Editorial Projects in Education), the majority of the funding goes to conservative advocates. For instance, the Association for American Educators, Center for Education Reform, Education Next, California Teachers Empowerment Network, Foundation for Excellence in Education, and Education Action Group all received funding from the Hume Foundation, and all of those would certainly be considered conservative/libertarian organizations.

There are certainly other ways of categorizing the foundation’s grants, but these five categories seemed most appropriate. ↩

January 18, 2013 Posted by Ken Libby on January 18, 2013 No Responses »

Michelle Rhee’s Salary and SFER Funding – Some (Minor) Corrections

Jan 172013

A recent Washington Post article about Michelle Rhee makes the following claim:

Rhee, as the chief executive of StudentsFirst, which employs 124 and is based in Sacramento, earns an annual salary of $61,000, according to federal tax filings.

My best guess is that the reporter looked at the Form 990 for StudentsFirst Institute (a 501c3). That form covers October 12, 2010 through July 31, 2011 and lists Rhee’s salary as $61,250, plus an additional $1,250 from related organizations (StudentsFirst, a 501c4). However, it’s pretty likely that – at least for the years after 2011 – Rhee’s salary will be a good deal higher than that. The IRS applications for StudentsFirst and StudentsFirst Institute¹, available through the NY Charities Bureau website, offers additional information.

From the StudentsFirst application:

Note that it is actual or estimated compensation.

And the StudentsFirst Institute application:

There are (probably) two possibilities here: Rhee will be making about $200k in FY 2012, or she’ll be making about $125k. The former is simply adding the anticipated $75k from StudentsFirst in 2012 and $125k from StudentsFirst Institute (although no year is listed). The second possibility is that the $125k reported on the StudentsFirst Institute application includes any payment from StudentsFirst. Either way, the $61,000 “annual salary” is likely a good deal off.²

Secondly, a recent Nation article makes the following claim about Students for Education Reform (SFER):

SFER has received $1.6 million from Education Reform Now…

But that number isn’t quite accurate. Education Reform Now is the fiscal sponsor of SFER, a set-up that (I think) would allow SFER to receive funds before they had fully established a 501c3. From the ERN 2010 Form 990:

And:

So that $1.6 million is for StudentsFirst and SFER. I’m not sure how much ERN received for SFER, but it almost certainly wasn’t a full $1.6 million.

For those with an interest in SFER’s funding, the only donation I’ve seen (on a Form 990) is $100k from Jonathan Sackler and Mary Corson’s Bouncer Foundation in 2011. That foundation’s Form 990 is available here. Sackler is also a SFER board member. The Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation also lists SFER as a funded organization, but the foundation’s Form 990 for 2011 isn’t available yet and the website doesn’t list a dollar amount.

I tend to not thing either one of these inaccuracies is that big of a deal, but it does indicate – at least to me – that some of the information about organizations in the non-profit sector is either not that accessible, or people don’t know where to look for some of this information. Heck, I’ve spent a reasonable amount of time reading through this kind of stuff and I still get tripped up at times.

For some reason the IRS application lists the organization as “StudentsFirst Initiative” in a number of different places on the form. ↩
For what it’s worth, I don’t think Rhee is doing this for the money, and her salary – either $125k or $200k per year – isn’t out of line given the budgets of SF and SFI. ↩

January 17, 2013 Posted by Ken Libby on January 17, 2013 3 Responses »

Stand for Children’s 2012 Washington State Election Spending

Nov 122012

During the 2012 election cycle, Stand for Children spent about $750,000 on Washington state elections. The Washington Education Association (WEA) spent around $2 million. Most of Stand’s money came from in-state donors, although a few out of state donors also contributed: Reed Hastings ($50,000), Stacy Schusterman ($25,000), Katherine Bradley ($5,000) and Pamela Welch ($100).

Here is a rundown of the candidates Stand supported, the amount of financial resources dedicated to either supporting the candidate or attacking the opposing candidate, and the outcome of the race¹:

WEA didn’t endorse or support Clibborn, King, or Wilcox – but all three ran unopposed. Eric Pettigrew ran against a candidate that WEA didn’t support or endorse, Tamra Smilanich. The Pettigrew-Smilanich race wasn’t even close: Pettigrew won 88% to 12%. Aside from those four candidates, WEA also supported and endorsed all of the winning candidates listed above.

More importantly, Stand spent a heck of a lot of money supporting two candidates: Republican Rob McKenna’s gubernatorial bid, and Republican Dawn McCravey’s bid for a State Senate seat.² WEA supported the opposing candidates in each race: Democrat Jay Inslee and State Senator Rosemary McAuliffe, chair of the Early Learning & K-12 Education Committee. The WEA-supported candidates won both races.

Of the approximately $700k that went to supporting Stand’s candidates or attacking the opposing candidates, only $25,300 went to winning candidates. Only $16,900 went to candidates that didn’t have the support of WEA – and $10,100 of that money went to candidates who ran unopposed.

It wasn’t a total loss for Stand considering Initiative 1240, which would allow charter schools in the state and a clear favorite of Stand, appears to have passed by a slim margin.

Not to bring up a rather unfortunate episode in Stand’s history, but here is a comment from Jonah Edelman’s now infamous appearance at the 2011 Aspen Ideas Festival:

So in Washington state right now, we’ve got exactly the same goal [raising money to support candidates], and it’s another state that doesn’t lack for financial resources, it’s about achieving the same kind of reallocation. We could readily outspend the Washington Education Association.

Stand didn’t outspend WEA. Edelman was either bluffing, miscalculated, or the damage the Aspen video did to his (and Stand’s) reputation scared off potential (promised?) donors.

One of Jonah’s other remarks at the Aspen Ideas Festival was that you have to play win-lose politics with the unions in some states. He specifically mentioned Washington, Oregon and California. There’s a reasonable amount of overlap between the candidates Stand supported (albeit with far fewer resources) and the candidates favored by WEA. However, in terms of the two high-power candidates Stand clearly preferred in Washington state, WEA came out the clear victor.

At the time of posting, the Benton race was too close to call. Stand also contributed $5,000 to another PAC, Revising the Status Quo, which supported Cann with $4,000 in direct mailers. I did not include that $4,000 in the totals below. I also excluded about $50,000 in contributions to other PACs or independent expenditures that did not list a specific candidate. ↩
Most of the money Stand spent in this race went to attacking State Sen. Rosemary McAuliffe, including mailers and this video. ↩

November 12, 2012 Posted by Ken Libby on November 12, 2012 No Responses »

LEE’s Policy Leadership Academy

Oct 292012

A few days ago, the American Prospect posted an article titled Teach for America’s Deep Bench, by James Cersonsky. The focus of the article is Leadership for Educational Equity, a 501c4 associated with Teach for America. Cersonsky describes LEE as working “to provide resources, training, and networking for alumni who are interested in elected office or other extracurricular leadership positions.”

Barbara Miner’s 2010 Rethinking Schools article about Teach for America included a bit of information about LEE. The organization was still very young at the time and, as Miner’s encounter describes, LEE refused to take a stand on various issues. Cersonsky’s article provides some updates and contends that LEE is “training the next generation of politicians, who have very specific ideas on school reform.”

And there’s good evidence that LEE is gearing up for a more politically active role. In late June of 2012, Isabel Oregon Acosta of the Broad Foundation sent the following email to Chris Cerf (full email available here):

Hi Chris,

I wanted to reach out because I’m helping Leadership for Educational Equity (LEE) to put together their inaugural Policy Leadership Academy and wanted to extend an invitation to you to speak on a panel that will discuss human capital policy. The goal of the panel is to describe leading efforts to attract and retain excellent people in school systems and which aspects of these efforts are best accomplished through policy, as opposed to implementation or specific efforts by school leaders. LEE wants to drill down on how policymakers can best help establish the context for schools to be successful without micromanaging them. Tim Daly of TNTP is moderating the panel and Jordan Henry of NewTLA, a reform caucus of the Los Angeles teachers union will be speaking on it (a draft agenda is attached). We also just secured Jean Desravines from NLNS for the same panel.

The session is slated for Friday, July 27th, from 10:30-12pm at the CityBridge Foundation at 600 New Hampshire Avenue in Washington, DC.

As context, LEE is a new organization aimed at changing policies and laws by accelerating the leadership of Teach For America alumni. The Policy Leadership Academy is an effort to get Teach For America’s 40 senior-most alumni with an interest in policy more educated about the big questions/dilemmas in education policy. The audience will be about 60 percent candidates for local and state office and elected officials, 25 percent policy officials at the state and local level and 15 percent advocates from all over the country. The aim is to help build participants knowledge base and skill set so that they can not only get elected, but be effective in working to close the achievement gap once in leadership roles.

Do you think it might work for you to be in DC on the morning of July 27th? I think your perspective would beinvaluable.

Best,

Isabel Oregon Acosta

Assistant Director

[The Broad Foundation - Education]

The contents of the email was released through an OPRA request filed in the state of New Jersey. The email was released because it contains communication between a representative of the Broad Foundation and Commissioner Cerf.

Included in the communication is a draft for the three day Leadership Policy Academy. A few notes about the draft agenda:

According to a LAUSD teacher cited in Cersonsky’s article, LEE was working to “strategically promote folks who have a different politics,” including NewTLA. I’m not sure including NewTLA in the Policy Leadership Academy qualifies as “promoting” NewTLA, but LEE is certainly including the group in discussions.
The Broad Foundation was clearly helping LEE get this work started. The event was held at the CityBridge Foundation, another education-related philanthropy. The Gates Foundation paid for the “School Budget Hold ‘Em” described in the draft schedule.
Education Resource Strategies posted about attending the event. An accompanying slideshow about the “School Budget Hold ‘Em” could be something that indicates preferred policies (e.g. merit pay, ignoring reductions in class size in favor of other policies, shifting special education funding, reducing labor costs)

Do keep in mind that things may have changed; this was only a draft of the agenda. Regardless, it provides some evidence of how LEE is networking with other education-related organizations and the kinds of policies or reforms favored by the group.

October 29, 2012 Posted by Ken Libby on October 29, 2012 1 Response »

Laura and John Arnold Foundation and New Jersey?

Oct 222012

Recently, the Laura and John Arnold Foundation (LJAF), one of the newer education-related foundations, announced $15 million in new grants to New Orleans education causes. According to EdWeek’s Sean Cavanagh, a variety of education advocacy organizations and alternative teacher preparation programs are the main recipients.

Earlier this year, New Jersey state Senator Loretta Weinberg filed an OPRA request for documents related to LJAF and the NJDOE. As John Mooney noted, the request was “largely a repeat” of a request made by the Education Law Center. The emails were eventually released to ELC.

In a May 2011 email with the subject line “Policy and Legislative Supports for Education Reform in New Jersey,” Cerf describes the revamped NJDOE to LJAF’s Education Program Manager Esther Trichoche.

While there’s no evidence that LJAF funded anything to do with the NJDOE, it certainly indicates there has been some communication – and not just idle chatter – about NJDOE plans. It’s also possible the foundation is supporting important advocacy efforts in the state, particularly Better Education 4 Kids and StudentsFirst.¹ We should have a better idea of LJAF’s activity in the state (if there is any) by mid-November when the foundation’s Form 990 for the year 2011 is due.

This kind of communication between state education heads and representatives of philanthropic organizations is of interest for two reasons. First, it provides some pretty specific details about what foundations, in this case the LJAF, are looking for when they think about giving out money. Second, it provides fairly strong evidence that philanthropies are trying to help, influence and shape public policy (in this case a state DOE).

Some may not appreciate the (often) heated rhetoric about the Billionaire Boys Club, but it’s hard to dispute the fact that a handful of influential philanthropies play a moderate to significant role in some important changes going on in education.

LJAF is a known funder of StudentsFirst. These two advocacy organizations – StudentsFirst and Better Education 4 Kids – are working in tandem in New Jersey. ↩

October 22, 2012 Posted by Ken Libby on October 22, 2012 No Responses »

Arne Duncan, Billionaire Matchmaker?

Sep 022012

From Eli Broad’s recent book, The Art of Being Unreasonable: Lessons in Unconventional Thinking¹:

Facebook came to my attention in a personal way in 2010, when U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan asked if I would meet with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and brief him on our decade-long efforts to reform public education.

Broad, Eli (2012-04-19). The Art of Being Unreasonable: Lessons in Unconventional Thinking (Kindle Locations 2160-2162). John Wiley and Sons. Kindle Edition. ↩

September 2, 2012 Posted by Ken Libby on September 2, 2012 No Responses »

New Kids on the Block: the Laura and John Arnold Foundation

Aug 122012

The Laura and John Arnold Foundation (LJAF) is a relatively new foundation. Established in late 2008, the foundation supported only a handful of education-related organizations/causes during its first few years: KIPP, TFA, Yes Prep, the DC IMPACT program (through the DC Public Education Fund), a few school districts, and a small amount of research. Below is a summary of education-related grants for the years 2009 and 2010 (the years for which Forms 990s are currently available):

Although the foundation gave out a few grants in 2008, none went to education.

The foundation is one of the few confirmed funders of Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst.¹ This is hardly a surprise given the foundation’s earlier support of the DC IMPACT program. Other funders of the DC IMPACT program include the Robertson Foundation, Broad Foundation, and Walton Family Foundation. The latter two are confirmed funders of StudentsFirst.²

John Arnold serves as a board member of TNTP. Laura Arnold serves on the board of Teach for America. Although currently available Form 990s do not list contributions to TNTP, the foundation has contributed to the organization for work in the Houston Independent School District and possibly other programs as well.³

~~According to the foundation’s website, the foundation “currently focuses on four major levers for change”: efficient markets, human capital, learning systems, and performance management.~~ [Update 10/12/12: the foundation’s website now lists three levers: “more high-quality schools and educators,” “active public engagement,” and “creating an environment of innovation.”

The foundation ended 2010 with approximately 2/3 of a billion dollars in assets.

See here. ↩
See the Walton Family Foundation’s list of 2011 grantees (here) and the Broad Foundation’s 2011 Form 990 (available here). ↩
For instance, the LJAF is listed as a TNTP contributor in TNTP’s recent report, “The Irreplacables.” ↩

August 12, 2012 Posted by Ken Libby on August 12, 2012 1 Response »

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Teacher Quality – An Overview

Aug 112012

Over at EdWeek and the Gates Foundation’s blog, Anthony Cody and foundation leaders are exchanging letters about a variety of topics. Vicki Phillips recently posted about the use of student data in teacher evaluations, a post that received a bit of praise and a lot of criticism from Cody.

Here is the part of Cody’s response that I am going to focus on in this post:

Ms. Phillips’ post focuses almost exclusively on the work of the Measures of Effective Teaching Project, an initiative of the Gates Foundation. While the Gates Foundation has invested upwards of $300 million in this project, they have spent several billion over the past few years funding other groups who are active partisans in the war on the teaching profession. We have not yet seen enough of the systems under development by the MET project to really understand them, so I will focus my attention on the other fruits borne by Gates Foundation investments.

The first question that arises when discussing teacher effectiveness is how we measure student learning. While Ms. Phillips distances herself from the use of test scores, this has been central to the reforms advanced by the Gates Foundation thus far. It is possible that the MET project will chart new ground, but before it does so, it will need to reverse all the policies and laws mandating evaluation systems that rely on test scores that have been passed at the insistence of the Gates Foundation and programs it has funded.

I’m going to avoid the issue of “the war on the teaching profession,” but I do think it would be helpful to have an overall picture of how the Gates Foundation is supporting various teacher-related issues. I’m particularly interested in teacher assessment and human capital management for the following reasons:

To say there is a lot of debate about how teachers should be evaluated would be a gross understatement. The debate intensified during the past few years, at least in part due to budget struggles and requirements for the Obama Administration’s Race to the Top. We’ve also seen a flurry of legislative activity regarding teacher evaluations (e.g. NY, TN, FL, LA).
The way the teaching force is managed – including, but not limited to teacher preparation, professional development, certification, tenure, evaluation, benefits, hiring, and firing – is a big deal for both current teachers and future teachers.

The primary purpose of this post is to review the Gates Foundation support of teacher-related issues through advocacy, professional development, evaluation, and other means from 2008 to the present. I am going to exclude all grants related to the Measures of Effective Teaching Project and all Washington State grants. I excluded the former since Cody’s post is specifically about the non-MET Project work of the foundation, and I think it’s better to treat the Project as separate from the rest of the foundation’s teacher-related work. I excluded the Washington State grants because the foundation’s giving is markedly different in their home region and better addressed as a separate issue entirely (see here).

2008-2010:

I started with the “B&MGF Spending, 2008-2010.xlsx” dataset (available here) that I used for an earlier post. I’m looking at those three years for the following reasons:

They are the most recent years for which IRS Form 990s are currently available.
These three years cover the first two years of the Obama Presidency, including the earliest version of Race to the Top.
The foundation started focusing on teacher quality issues in 2009. Bill mentioned this transition in his 2009 Annual Letter.

I then selected grants that impact the teaching profession in one of the following ways:

Grants for advocacy related to teacher quality
Grants for research by academics, private companies, or think tanks
Grants for supporting current teachers
Grants for teacher evaluations
Grants for human capital development

An Excel file (“BMGF Spending, 2008-2010 TQ.xlsx”) listing these grants is available here. For the most part, I selected grants based on the descriptions provided by the foundation’s Form 990s. In a few cases, I included grants that do not specifically mention the teaching profession, but that likely did contribute to issues regarding the profession (e.g. EdTrust). Needless to say, it is entirely possible that a different person would include slightly different grants. For instance, one could argue that anything related to the Common Core State Standards should be considered teacher-related. I tried to err on the side of only including grants that were specific to teachers in some way. Here is an overview of the foundation’s giving:

The foundation funded a number of organizations that have supported test-based accountability for teachers: Teach Plus, Stand for Children, TNTP, EdTrust, Educators 4 Excellence, Parent Union, Advance Illinois, the PIE Network, and The National Council on Teacher Quality. The foundation has also made a few grants to the NEA and AFT for issues relating to teacher evaluations.
Teach for America, the Relay Graduate School of Education (“Uncommon Knowledge and Achievement”), TNTP, the Coalition of Urban Teacher Residencies and AUSL received grants that involve teacher training and preparation.
While the grants to organizations listed above get a good amount of attention, there are two other categories of grants that deserve attention: grants for research, and grants for development of specific tools related to teacher quality.
ETS, Harvard University, Teach for America, Public Agenda, and Urban Institute received funding for research related to teacher quality issues.
The foundation also supported five states in building data systems that will likely be used in teacher evaluations. Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Ohio received grants “to develop and implement of model common definition of teacher of record and standard business process for linking and validating teacher and student data at the SEA level and a representative sample of districts.”
The Recovery School District, Atlanta Public Schools, D.C. Public Schools (through the D.C. Public Education Fund), Houston Independent School District, Newark Public Schools (through the NewSchools Venture Fund) and Tulsa Public Schools received grants related to changes in teacher evaluations and/or human capital management.
In a handful of instances, the foundation provided funding for programs designed to assist teachers, presumably with additional resources or tools.

That is not a comprehensive list of grantees, but I think it fairly represents the main strands in the foundation’s contributions.

2011-present:

Since Form 990s for the years 2011 and 2012 are not yet available, I pulled grants listed on the Gates Foundation website in order to get a look at the foundation’s teacher-related grants. Specifically, I searched for all grants from 2011 and 2012 related to College-Ready Education, Advocacy & Public Policy, and Research & Development. I believe that encompasses all Gates Foundation education grants announced during those years. A list of these grants is available here.

There is one key difference between the information collected from the Gates website and the information from Form 990s. The website lists grants announced (i.e. new grants), and grants may run for multiple years; Form 990s list money actually distributed during that year, and some, like Gates, include promises of future payments (although I did not collect info on future payments). For 2011 and 2012, the lists below are only new grants; there are still funds going out to organizations that received a multi-year grant during a previous year.

It’s worth looking at the 2011 and 2012 grants more closely. These are the most recently authorized grants and may be more likely to reflect the foundation’s current direction(s).

First, here is a list of all grants with commitments over $1,000,000 announced during 2011 (excluding the MET Project and Washington State):

Here is a list of all grants with commitments between $999,999 and $500,000 announced during 2011:

And a list of all grants with commitments less than $500,000 announced during 2011:

Below is a list of the Gates Foundation’s teacher quality/evaluation grants through July of 2012 (excluding the MET Project and Washington State):

August 11, 2012 Posted by Ken Libby on August 11, 2012 No Responses »

Robertson Foundation, 2002-2010

Jul 202012

Started by well-known hedge fund manager Julian Robertson and his family in the mid-1990s, the the Robertson Foundation supports a variety of forms of school choice, organizations focused on human capital, and an assortment of other education programs.¹ As is the case with some other high-profile philanthropies, the Robertson Foundation looks to reform school systems, and create new schools to exert external pressure on existing schools.²

I gathered Form 990s for the fiscal years ending in 2002 through 2010, and pulled information about contributions made during each of those years. You can find all of these Form 990s through Guidestar.org or Foundation Center’s 990 Finder. You can download a full summary of grant information contained on the foundation’s Form 990s here.

A few notes:

While the foundation education-related grants are partly NYC-focused, a few high-profile national organizations (e.g. KIPP, TFA, NSVF, BAEO) receive support as well.
Since this only looks at K-12 funding, I have not included the Robertson Scholars Program, a scholarship program that sends students to Duke and UNC. I included a few contributions to the University of Arkansas because this money is likely dedicated to the School Choice Demonstration Project at the Department of Education Reform.
The grants to the DC Public Education Fund support the DC IMPACT program. Other funders of the DC Impact program include the Walton Family Foundation, Broad Foundation, and Arnold Foundation.
Spencer Robertson, son of Julian Robertson, is the Executive Director of PAVE Academy, a NYC charter school.
Unfortunately, the foundation’s Form 990s do not include grant descriptions.

The foundation supports a variety of non-education-related causes as well, but I’m interested in the education-related grants. ↩
See the foundation’s Public School Reform page. ↩

July 20, 2012 Posted by Ken Libby on July 20, 2012 No Responses »

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