Dear Mark and Priscilla,
Congratulations on the announcement of your new $3 billion science effort. I know you are working just as diligently on plans for education grant making, so please permit an aging education reformer to offer some unsolicited advice.
I worry that you — and my friend Jim Shelton, the former deputy secretary of education who now leads your education program — will fall prey, as so many have in the past, to the temptation to try to reform school districts.
You, Mark, fell partway in when you committed $100 million to public education in Newark. The portion that went outside the system — to charter schools — has done some good for kids in New Jersey’s largest city. The part that went to the district, not so much.
The lessons are broader than charter versus district, of course. They speak to the profound challenge of turning around the public-education supertanker, and the extra challenge faced by private donors bent on doing this. Philanthropy is but a drop in public education’s huge bucket.
A generous donor may get the system in a particular place to add a project or activity that the philanthropist pays for — with that addition generally enduring so long as the checks keep coming. But getting a district or state, or even a single school, to alter its accustomed ways to a significant degree over the long haul takes more leverage than philanthropy can muster.
Use your independence and flexibility to make changes others are afraid to touch.
Sure, there are rare communities where the stars align and the leadership is in place to make a change that donor and district leaders agree on — just enough of them to keep change-minded philanthropists doggedly seeking more. Heartening examples can be seen in Denver, the District of Columbia, New Orleans, and New York, plus a handful of others — all of them, sadly, vulnerable to unraveling with the next election or the one after that.
Equally resistant to redirection are education’s other large institutions, most famously the colleges of education that train the nation’s teachers and principals. They are (again, with rare exceptions) about as immune to fundamental change as mountains and glaciers. (Where is climate change when we need it?)
If a philanthropist wants simply to “do good” in education, none of this matters. It’s a no-brainer to underwrite a building, a professorship, a scholarship, a summer program, a lecture series, a classroom full of laptops, a field trip, or a gala recognition dinner. You can get thanked, praised, photographed, tweeted about, or liked on Facebook. (Yes, Mark, you created that opportunity, and many thank you for it.) Such things are easy, and generally without controversy.
The challenge arises when, rather than adding to or celebrating the existing elementary and secondary system, you push to reform it. Whether your sights are set on tougher academic standards, foolproof reading instruction, greater teacher effectiveness, expanded school choice, overhauled governance, or anything else that would benefit from big-time change, the challenge is huge. Save for exceptional situations like those mentioned above, you’ll be trying to move a mountain. And you don’t have enough leverage — not even you.
I understand the temptation to try. As has been said a thousand times, the overwhelming majority of kids attend district schools; if we don’t do something about those schools, too many kids are left in the dirt. I get it. That’s why policy makers at every level have struggled to fix the district-based education system. This is among the hardest jobs they face, and when they seek your help with philanthropic dollars, you should listen.
That does not, however, mean you must do what they ask. Philanthropy is not government, and it forfeits its main advantages when it gets too intimate with government.
One of the biggest mistakes some major foundations have recently made in education has been adding their dollars, and whatever legitimacy they bring, to government efforts.
Consider the Education Department’s Investing in Innovation Fund, which requires grantees to come up with matching private dollars. A dozen foundations committed $500 million, money that was then bent to the government’s priorities and project selections.
I know, I know: Jim Shelton, who ran that program, disagrees with me. But I have to say it again: Government and philanthropy should cherish their differences. Your greatest asset as philanthropists is your independence, the singular ability to do things that government cannot do. Occasionally that means testing something that, if successful, government may then take on. This is risky, as it may force philanthropy to confine its vision to work that’s politically realistic for government. But it’s not as risky as letting government call the shots.
Please don’t let that happen to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Please urge Jim not to do it. Please don’t let either the constraints or the priorities of government shape what you do.
Plenty needs doing to improve the schools. But you have to choose: Will Chan Zuckerberg be a pilot fish — a brain trust, prod, and fount of matching dollars — for government? Or will it function as an autonomous player that does very different things, including challenging policies and practices that engage the government but that no politician is brave enough to touch? For example, America’s 40-year-old approach to educating disabled students needs a makeover, but nobody in government (and practically nobody in philanthropy) will go near the topic. Will you?
Mostly, though, just avoid government and its issues. That means not following grant makers like Bill and Melinda Gates and Eli Broad, whose foundations have enthusiastically teamed up with government, done its bidding when it wasn’t doing theirs, and traded key staff members back and forth.
As you can see, I’m urging you to use your independence, flexibility, and money to press for change outside the district structure. Which doesn’t mean the initiative must come from you. Donors who embrace “venture philanthropy” or “strategic philanthropy” have been carried away by the conceit that they know best what needs to happen, and they often confine their support to those who do their bidding. Be a little humbler here. There’s much to be said for the older philanthropic tradition in which the donor waits to be approached by someone who might have a plan, a project, or an idea with merit that never would have occurred to the people with money to give.
What sorts of things am I suggesting? Charter schools remain a fine example, but don’t limit yourselves to the inner-city kind. The charter approach can also be deployed to help kids with all sorts of needs, interests, and possibilities.
Likewise with alternative pathways into education. There are great outfits today (like Teach for America and the Relay Graduate School of Education) that assist talented people who want to work in education without forcing them through the traditional certification hoops. But they’re Lilliputian when compared to public schools that employ close to 4 3 million teachers, 100,000 principals, and any number of others across the country. Much more is needed on this front.
High-class technology with solid content for use in “blended learning” classrooms — the kind that combine flesh-and-blood teachers with on-screen instruction — is a no-brainer for you. Indeed, a serious push to personalize kids’ education hinges on far more adept use of both hardware and software than anyone is now making.
By all means, encourage further development on this front. But also please think further outside the usual box. Consider, for example, that while we’ve recently seen a raft of rigorous new academic standards and better tests, all of them said to be aimed at making every student “college- and career-ready,” most kids still haven’t a clue whether they’re truly “on track” for such a future.
Indeed, millions of today’s young people will be sent into remedial courses on campus because their education did not prepare them to succeed there. Millions are destined to have their hopes dashed after graduating from high school. The fact that they don’t discover this until then is an outrage. Through technology and social media, you could find ways to raise awareness among kids that they are not on track for success. Then help them understand what to do about it.
There’s truth in the lament, voiced from both left and right, that American society is separating into haves and have-nots; the prospects of upward mobility are dimming, and that’s entangled with flaws in our education system. But it isn’t likely to be solved by that system. Part of what’s needed are better opportunities — in school and out — for high-ability poor and working-class kids. Unfortunately, few of them have the pushy parents or attend the posh schools that are serious about “gifted” education. These kids need scholarships to go to other schools and partake of the great outside programs that upper-middle-class parents arrange for their bright daughters and sons.
Another route to mobility is through career paths that run through top-notch technical education and apprenticeship programs. Think, for example, about all the nonphysician roles in health care that call for exceptionally sophisticated preparation but — other than tradition and perhaps status creep — don’t really require a college degree. What they require is demonstrated evidence of exceptional prowess, which can be acquired in many settings. Here, too, Chan Zuckerberg could make a huge contribution.
Mark, you brought something wholly new into the world: a new medium for sharing, connecting, consuming, and advocating that represents one of the great creative accomplishments in human history. You didn’t “reform” or “improve” or even “change” the system. You invented something no one had ever imagined.
Bring that spirit into education. Focus not on the system but on innovators who are creating something wholly new. And tell my friend Jim that this is finally his chance to support breakthroughs in schooling that government, even when “investing in innovation,” is too risk-averse to touch.
Sincerely,
Chester E. Finn Jr.
Chester E. Finn Jr. is distinguished senior fellow and president emeritus at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and a former assistant U.S. secretary of education.