t
1983-2000: Re-focusing on Teacher Reform
u
collaborating on professional development schools.42 These schools also captured the attention of the Exxon Education and Rockefeller Foundations, the Lilly Endowment and others.
1989
The First National Education
Summit, planned by the National Governors A few years earlier, in 1983, Ford had begun an effort to seed
Association and the George H. Bush
local education funds (LEFs) in over 40 communities around
administration, assembles congressional
the nation. In part a mechanism to build community support for
leaders and governors in a bi-partisan effort
public education and a means to generate additional resources
to establish education goals. Subsequent
for schools, many LEFs focused on supporting teachers. They
summits are held in 1996, 1999, 2001 and
often established small grant programs that enabled teachers
2005.
to test new instructional or curricular innovations. Some LEFs have built substantially on these activities to fill an expanded role in the reform process. They have developed considerable expertise, frequently in issues connected to teaching, to both partner in and prod for comprehensive reform.
1990
Teach for America (TFA) is founded
by Wendy Kopp with $2.5 million start-up funding primarily from the business sector. TFA is based on the premise that top college
Responding to the growing proportion of minority and
students would choose teaching over more
immigrant children entering public schools, Ford, along with
lucrative opportunities if a prominent and
other funders, sought to increase the supply and quality of
professionalized teacher corps existed. While
minority teachers. The BellSouth Foundation, for example,
first focused on increasing the supply of
invested in partnerships between leading schools of education
teachers, particularly in high-need schools,
and historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). These
TFA launches a debate about what type of
partnerships were intended to create a pipeline for minorities to
preparation teachers need, and inspires
the teaching profession, seed best practices at the HBCUs, and
other philanthropically-backed teacher
connect faculty at the institutions to each other.
training start-ups.
Reforming School Districts
1990
Wisconsin legislature enacts the
Some investments in teachers and teaching were embedded in
Milwaukee school voucher program, giving
other reform efforts. The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation
approval to school choice but provoking
was among several funders that launched middle grades
fierce resistance from teachers’ unions
reform initiatives in the mid- to late-1980s. Improving teacher
contending that vouchers will siphon money
knowledge and skill was a key element of the reform work of
and students away from public districts.
Clark’s grantees, much of which occurred initially at the school site. Clark was among a group of funders that recognized efforts
1991
to improve teaching would be limited and unsustainable if
school law; other states follow. Teachers’
districts were not also transformed to support improvements in
unions oppose charters on the basis that they
schools.43 This recognition helped shift some philanthropic focus
operate outside of union/district contracts.
Minnesota enacts the first charter
to district reform, most visibly with the Annenberg Challenge, launched in 1993. With an investment of $500 million by the Annenberg Foundation, the Challenge was then the largest public/private effort to improve public education. It sought to transform urban districts as along with 700 rural schools around the country.
42 Ford made investments in two other areas connected to teachers and teaching – increasing the supply of minority teachers and fostering higher achievement in math among minorities and girls. 43 See Maturing Investments: Philanthropy and Middle Grades Reform (Robert Kronley and Claire Handley, Grantmakers for Education, 2003) for a more detailed description of the activities undertaken by the Clark Foundation as well as those of Carnegie Corporation, the Lilly Endowment and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to foster systemic middle grades reform.
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