Several major grant makers are working together to pour millions of dollars into efforts to help improve education for children from troubled families.
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation this month announced that it would spend $16.5-million over the next three years on projects started or championed by the Buffett Early Childhood Fund.
The fund, which was started by Warren E. Buffett’s daughter, Susie, is building a national network of high-quality child-care centers, known as Educare Centers. It also supports the Birth to 5 Policy Alliance, which supports charities that work to improve state policies for disadvantaged children, and the First Five Years Fund, which advocates for greater federal spending on early learning.
The Buffett Early Childhood Fund spends about $7-million per year on the advocacy projects and the national Educare network, and another $7million on early-learning projects in Nebraska.
With its pledge of $16.5million over three years, Kellogg will become the second biggest supporter of the Buffett fund’s advocacy and national efforts.
$18-Million Yearly
All told, the Buffett fund and its supporters are spending about $18-million per year on advocacy and efforts to spread and measure the effectiveness of the Educare Centers. Other supporters of the Buffett fund’s efforts include the George Kaiser Family Foundation, in Tulsa; the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in Seattle; the Irving Harris Foundation, in Chicago; the Children’s Initiative of the J.B. and M.K. Pritzker Foundation, in Chicago; as well as one grant maker that wished to remain anonymous.
The Ounce of Prevention Fund created the first Educare Center on Chicago’s south side in 2000. Ms. Buffett brought the concept to Omaha, which now has two centers serving about 400 children each year. Educare Centers, which feature low teacher-child ratios and strong parental engagement, are also currently operating in Denver, Miami, Milwaukee, and Tulsa, and four more centers are under construction.
Sterling Speirn, Kellogg’s president, says he saw no reason to start from scratch when a good approach to advocacy and education was already in place. “It’s a network made in heaven,” he says. Mr. Speirn says he hopes to eventually open Educare Centers in the three states that Kellogg focuses on most heavily — Michigan, Mississippi, and New Mexico.
The Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina is evaluating the impact of Educare’s work.
Dan Pederson, president of the Buffett Early Childhood Fund, says early data suggest that students from low-income families who go through the program are scoring at average levels on tests of kindergarten preparedness.
“If you know anything about childhood development, scoring at the average is astronomical if you start with the poorest beginnings,” Mr. Pederson says.
Warren Buffett greatly expanded the capacity of the foundations started by each of his three children in 2006, when he pledged Berkshire stock worth roughly $1-billion to each foundation. But Berkshire stock is down more than 40 percent from its highs, and Mr. Pederson said the support from Susie Buffett’s foundation may drop in the coming year as a result. “I don’t expect we’ll be able to hold at $20-million, but I’m hoping we will,” he said.
Mixed Forecast
Mr. Pederson joked that his forecast for state and federal support for early-childhood education was “cloudy to partly clear.” In 2006, Nebraska voters approved an amendment to the state constitution that allows “perpetual school funds” to be used for early-childhood education.
But the nation’s financial crisis is hitting state budgets, which could hamper chances to enact similar legislation elsewhere. On the other hand, the federal economic-stimulus law includes $2.1-billion to expand Head Start and Early Head Start, the early-childhood programs for low-income children.
The Kellogg foundation will match the Buffett spending with $9-million over three years for the Birth to Five Policy Alliance and $3-million over three years for the First Five Years Fund.
And those supporters bring more than just money. Last May, the First Five Years Fund coordinated a meeting that included Susie Buffett and George Kaiser, the billionaire oilman, and 17 members of Congress.
“These are people who can get access,” says Cornelia Grumman, executive director of the First Five Years Fund. “They open doors and people listen to them.”
