Making Public Policy: The New Philanthropists and American Education

• Author: Robin Rogers
• Published date: 01 September 2015
• Date: 01 September 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12113

Making Public Policy: The New

Philanthropists and American Education

By ROBIN ROGERS*

ABSTRACT. Power in K–12 education is rapidly moving from local

school boards and government to extraordinarily wealthy private

philanthropists. Building networks among nonprofits, government

agencies, school districts, and others, private foundations such as the

Gates, Broad, and Walton family foundations are fundamentally

restructuring American K–12 education. The Common Core State

Standards, teacher evaluation, and charter schools are a few of the

initiatives these funders are backing. The massive influx of private

money into education policy and its influence over public education

raises questions around the proper role of philanthropy in a

democracy. In a society with increasing wealth inequality, should the

economic elite be able to gain further powerto shape social institutions

through giving? Are there or should there be any limits to this power?

Examining specific trends and events in education philanthropy over

the last 10 years, this article identifies key players in philanthropic

education reform and argues that philanthropy in education is now

playing a policy-making role—without checks and balances—that is

qualitatively and quantitatively different than before. I conclude with a

cautionary note on the dangers of letting education policy become the

domain of the economic elite.

[A] foundation . . . is a completely irresponsible institution, answerable to

nobody. It competes neither in capital markets nor in product markets . . .

and, unlike a hereditary monarch whom such a foundation otherwise

resembles, it is subject to no political controls either.

Judge Richard Posner (Reich 2013)

*Robin Rogers is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Queens College, the City

University of New York. She is the author of The Welfare Experiments and writes on

policy, politics, and philanthropy.

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 74, No. 4 (September, 2015).

DOI: 10.1111/ajes.12113

V

C2015 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.

Our foundation went through a strategic planning process to assess

where we could have the greatest impact on our nation’s public school

system in the future.

Broad Foundation Website (2015)

Gates’s speech [to the Governor’s Association], in February 2005, was a

signature moment in what has become a decade-long campaign to

improve test scores and graduation rates, waged by a loose alliance of

wealthy CEOs who arrived with no particular background in education

policy—a fact that has led critics to dismiss them as “the billionaire boys’

club.”

Newsweek (Beamish 2011)

Introduction

Billionaire Eli Broad (2012: 142), borrowing a phrase from Winston

Churchill, is fond of saying: “Never let a crisis go to waste. They are

opportunities to do big things” (Broad 2012b). Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the

Walton family, and other very wealthy philanthropists are doing big

things in American education through philanthropy. They are disman-

tling and rebuilding the system in the United States wholesale because,

Broad claims, the “data show the greatest positive outcomes for stu-

dents happen when entire school systems are either redesigned or

started anew” (Broad 2012a: 143).

But is it true? Are philanthropists really working with data that show

them unequivocally how to reform education? Perhaps more impor-

tantly, even if philanthropists are working with such data—and the evi-

dence is clear that they are not—do we want mega-philanthropists,

with their near total lack of transparency and accountability, making

education policy nationwide? Is policymaking an appropriate role for

philanthropists?

Wealthy philanthropists are coordinating networks among think

tanks, nonprofit organizations, federal agencies, and school administra-

tors on fundamental issues including Common Core State Standards,

teacher evaluations, and charter schools. Their reform agenda is taking

root with amazing speed. A Gates Foundation official explained, in an

interview with education policy researchers Sarah Reckhow and Megan

The American Journal of Economics and Sociology744

Tompkins-Stange (2015), that “anybody who cares to look would find

very quickly that all of these organizations [are] suddenly singing from

the same hymnbook.” Reckhow and Tompkins-Stange’s (2015) review

of congressional hearing records supports this official’s assertion. They

found that in 2003, 15 percent of experts testifying before Congress had

received funding from the Gates or Broad foundations. By 2011, it was

60 percent.

Funding from a few major foundations—primarily the Bill & Melinda

Gates Foundation, but also the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, the

Walton Family Foundation, the John and Laura Arnold Foundation, and

the Dell Foundation—is now ubiquitous.

Gates-backed think tanks tur n out media fact sheets and newspa-

per opinion pieces. Magazines a nd scientific journals get Gates

money to publish research and articles. Experts coache d in Gates-

funded programs write columns that appear in media outlets from

the New York Times to the Huffington Post, while digital portals blur

the line between journalism and s pin. Over the past decade, Gates

has devoted $1 billion to these p rograms, which now account for

about a tenth of the giant phi lanthropy’s $3 billion-a-year spen ding

(Doughton and Heim 2011).

Even media coverage of education issues on programs often

praised for their independence, such as PBS’s NewsHour and

NPR’s Marketplace, is often underwritten by the Gates Foundation.

The Seattle Times queried: “How can reporting be unbiased when

a major player holds the purse strings?” (Doughton and Heim

2011).

How, for that matter, can research or other media sources? Research

and media are supported and vetted for their alignment with corefoun-

dation ideas. Reckhow and Tompkins-Stange (2015) quote a Gates

foundation official:

It’s within [a] sort of fairly narrow orbit that you manufacture the

[research] reports. You hire somebody to write a report. There’s going

to be a commission, there’s going to be a lot of research, there’s going

to be a lot of vetting and so forth and so on, but you pretty much

know what the report is going to say before you go through the

exercise.

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