Annenberg’s $500-Million Failed to Change Schools, Report Charges

The $500-million school-reform effort financed by the philanthropist Walter Annenberg has done little to improve education, contends a report released last week.

The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, in Washington, issued a report analyzing the Annenberg program, which was begun in 1993 to help urban and rural schools.

The Fordham report, which includes case studies of three cities that received money -- New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia -- concludes that the grants did have some influence, helping in New York, for example, to bolster the work of advocates of small schools and to improve achievement of children in those schools.

But the report charges that the Annenberg grants failed to achieve a broader goal of changing the school systems themselves because they did not invest in efforts that challenged the status quo.

“Maybe there’s a place in America where Annenberg’s gift made a big difference,” said Chester E. Finn, president of the Fordham Foundation and a top official at the U.S. Department of Education during the Reagan Administration. “But in the giant urban school systems where most of the money went, the system swallowed, said ‘thank you,’ and went on pretty much as before.”

Free copies of the report are available from the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, 1627 K Street, N.W., Suite 600, Washington 20006; (888) 823-7474; fax (202) 223-9226; e-mail fordham@dunst.com. The report is also available on the foundation’s World Wide Web site at http://www.edexcellence.net.