Even with federal stimulus dollars, which won't last forever, many schools are struggling financially and must seek alternative solutions. Should public-private partnerships be formed to shore up gaps in school budgets? Does this pose ethical concerns?

Marty Strange, policy director of the Rural School and Community Trust, submitted the following:

Of course the private sector should fund public education – equitably and adequately, through a tax system that is stable, fair, and progressive.  Any other role for private funding creates a quasi-public, and therefore quasi-private, education system.  The only way the private sector can put money into schools without a quid pro quo is to pay their taxes. 

In considering how much or what sort of foundation involvement with government is desirable, it is worth looking at a prominent case: the Gates Foundation.

A recent Associated Press article opens with the line, "The real secretary of education, the joke goes, is Bill Gates."

The Gates foundation recently offered 15 states $250,000 each to help them prepare applications to the Department of Education's "Race to the Top" fund. After many other states complained, the Gates purse strings will be open to all states willing to sign off on an 8-point checklist saying, in essence, they will do what Gates wants them to do. Presumably, having Gates-funded consultants will give states an improved chance of being one of the few expected to get a piece of this federal pie.

One issue is democracy. Is Gates buying the sorts of "reforms" he wants? Probably. While Gates funding is minuscule compared to overall education funding, and federal funds for education are still less than 10 percent of  K-12 education budgets, we are beginning to see the hair wag the tail that wags the dog. Gates, in the end, is responsible only to – Gates. Yes, states can turn down the funds, but facing budget crises and intensifying consequences for not boosting test scores to meet AYP, states are offering no resistance. Indeed, they are racing to lift charter caps, though charters seem on average to do no better, maybe slightly worse, than regular public schools, and charters in states with the most rapid growth in charters fare least well.

States also are readying to use student test scores to make high-stakes decisions about teachers, also supported by Gates, despite any evidence that this strategy will actually improve student learning. It will probably further inflate state test scores, thereby perpetuating the illusion of improvement. Intensified teaching to the test will ill-serve children, teachers, families, communities and the nation as a whole.  

The Board on Testing and Assessment of the National Academy of Sciences, in a letter to Secretary Duncan that seems to have been largely ignored by major media, pointed out that a test should not be the basis of high stakes decisions (echoing the Standards of the measurement profession). It also said, based on an extensive review of the evidence, that "value added" or "growth" models (which everywhere rely just on that single test score) should likewise not be used for high-stakes decisions.

These approaches are supported by Bill Gates and his foundation, by Duncan, and presumably by the former Gates employees now working in the Education Department. The public has been assured that those employees did not talk with Gates about this. I am among those who are not reassured. The AP story concluded, "Those who receive money from the Gates Foundation often are reluctant to talk about their work for fear of upsetting their benefactor." Another blow for democracy or for the power of private money to control education?

AASA just completed the sixth in a series of economic snap shots documenting the effect of the “great recession” on public schools around the country. We found that though hard times are upon us, everyone in the school business knows that this school year is a day at the beach in comparison to what is ahead next school year, when layoffs and service cuts will be more drastic. 

We found that a significant portion of the $100 billion from ARRA was redirected to other non educational purposes that were also critical to state government (what we call the shell game). We further found that the funds in narrow categorical programs like Title I and IDEA did not benefit core purposes and programs of public schools. In short AASA found that the stimulus helped but is not of sufficient size and flexibility to bail out states, communities and public schools as well as TARP did big financial firms. 

The price of democracy is that the public must pay for the services it wants and needs. Handing the reins of government to private sources of funds in hard times is a long term recipe for the demise of the multi layered and balanced federal system practiced since the founding of the country. 

As noted by several bloggers private funds have been in public schools for years and maybe forever, but they failed to note that the amount of private funds was very small, underline very, in fact make that very, very small. And they failed to note that the small amounts were used to support directions that governors, state legislators and local school boards had determined were appropriate.

The representatives of extremely rich have spend the last 30 years lobbying to cut their local, state and federal taxes resulting in an enormous federal debt and short funded state and local governments that are unable to maintain educational, police, fire and recreational services that make communities safe, secure and functional in the face of the great recession. And now that state and local governments are short of funds the representatives and employees of extremely rich want to use the leverage of their philanthropic contributions to determine the future shape of critical services, such as education.

It looks to me like the anti public school  portion of private sector that was unable to capture control of public schools in good times, sees an opportunity to determine the direction of public education because the current dialing for dollars political environment coupled with a historic recession make it possible. The steady erosion of the tax base and the catastrophic great recession has made states and local school districts so desperate that they will do almost anything to stay afloat. In this environment the US Department of Education apparently believes that coupling small federal competitive grants with even smaller private funds will result in needed improvements in public education but I think they forgot the adequately reflect on the effect of the new direction on local goverence.

 As my late father said to me about a million times, “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.”

Count me as a supporter and advocate of private investment in public schools, not merely as a stop-gap strategy in hard economic times, but as an integral and deliberate part of the process by which public school reforms are developed, implemented, tested and, if successful, taken to scale.

As the contributors to this blog know better than anyone, there is no shortage of ideas for improving public education. But we all also know too many examples of ideas that went from conception straight to full implementation, with disastrous results. Not every idea is a good one, and not every good idea works in practice. 

What’s needed is a process that precedes the launch of almost every commercial product and service, a process by which ideas or combinations of ideas are vetted, tried in pilot form, expanded, rigorously evaluated and improved before being instituted in wide-scale practice. And it is in support of such processes that I think philanthropy can play its most useful role in reforming public education. 

Such a model of private support for public education has been on my mind since the passing, just a month ago, of Don Fisher. Don was best known as the entrepreneur who founded The Gap and, with his wife, Doris, built it from a single store to a prosperous chain of more than 3,000 across the country and around the world. 

But as president and CEO of UNCF and as a member of the KIPP Foundation Board of Directors, which Don chaired, I came to know another side of Don Fisher: the farsighted philanthropist who played a central role in reforming public education. Don saw that our nation needed public schools to do a better job of preparing children to go to and succeed in college, and he spotted, supported and oversaw the development of two organizations, the KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) network of public charter schools and Teach For America, that knew how to satisfy that need. 

From 2000 to 2009, Don invested a total of $100 million in KIPP and Teach for America. As chairman of the KIPP Board of Trustees, he guided its expansion from two schools to 82 schools, almost all in low-income and minority neighborhoods, serving 20,000 students. Teach For America has grown, too, and today places 7,000 teachers in classrooms serving 450,000 students across the country.

Don and Doris Fisher brought much more than money to KIPP, Teach For America and the other education organizations they supported. They brought decades of experience in helping organizations expand, building on past success, locating in communities that needed what the organizations had to offer, and benefiting from lessons learned.  

As much as they have grown, and as effective as they have been, organizations like KIPP and Teach For America cannot be the answer. They are far too small. The public schools are the answer, they must be the answer. Nor can private philanthropy be the complete answer. Reforming our public schools is a simply too large a task. 

But organizations can find the answers, and engaged philanthropists like the Fishers can help them. Not simply by supplying them with funding—although that is part of it. But by bringing something else to the partnership: the insights developed through their philanthropic ventures, the insights developed in the enterprise whose success forms the foundation for their philanthropy.

So we should not look to private philanthropy only to fund the educational revolution that our country needs. We do look to private philanthropy to fund the process that will lay the groundwork for the revolution. To fund the best ideas, evaluate their results, and expand those that work. And to disseminate positive and negative outcomes and lessons learned, so they can be improved and replicated.

Private support for public education is nothing new. In many affluent communities, nonprofits raise money to support their schools. Successful school principals hustle for funding for after-school computers, computers and the like. Corporations have made in-kind and cash contribution to the community schools in Chicago and elsewhere. You can even think of the bake sale, a school institution, as a form of public-private partnership.

Are such arrangements problematic? Certainly not because they’re temporary—if private funds can help schools through these financially strapped times, they’re a godsend. (Savvy school districts will seek a multi-year commitment.) And not because private involvement is itself problematic—enlightened self-interest leads businesses to view an investment in schools as an investment in their own communities, one that pays off both in good will and local economic prosperity.

Only when there’s a quid pro quo—“We’ll give you money if you agree to plug our product”—is there an ethical issue that’s worth pondering. But we’ve already crossed that line, with sports teams garbed in Nike apparel and computers branded by Dell. Public universities herald their corporate sponsorship, with buildings named after major business donors. What makes the public schools different?  

The charter school sector has been leading the way on both fronts. Many individual charter schools have excelled at raising funds to supplement their basic educational program – creating longer school days, better nutrition programs, and innovative use of technology to name a few. Many of the successful charter innovations that are now being transplanted into district schools were originally supported by private funds.

In addition, some of the authorizing agencies that oversee these schools have turned to foundations to implement school evaluation processes and more robust data systems. The value from these relationships exceeds the dollars themselves, as schools and authorizers benefit from the knowledge and experiences that these foundations bring to the table.  Here again, all of public education benefits from these partnerships.

Diane Ravitch

Private money has long found its way into the public schools in one way or another. Assuming the readers have their own long list from experience or other knowledge, I won't take the time or space to recount the many ways this happens, often and potentially for the good.

I have a note of caution, though. School folks ought to be sure of two important things in seeking and taking private resources:  1) Go after funds that principally will help low income students, and 2) Go after funds that are consistent with, and do not divert you from, your core mission. Chasing after dollars - public or private - just to get extra marginal resources conflates the enterprise with the many and often wayward goals of  donors. This amounts to terrible, if not unethical, management.

On a more interesting topic, I was hoping to see more opportunity in crisis--leaders using the recession to make important policy or administrative gains including:

• closing failing schools
• replacing struggling alternative schools with blended models like AdvancePath that can do a better job for half of what most districts spend
• maintaining a long day/year by going partially blended like Rocketship in San Jose (1 of 5 periods in their elementary schools are spent in a learning lab)
• offering more courses online
• brining more partners on campus; Match uses work-study students from near by colleges to provide Saturday tutoring
• streamlining central administration and pushing more budget authority out to schools
• inserting performance in teacher layoffs like Michele Rhee did in DC

There's still time to take advantage of two more terrible budget cycles.  Districts will be going into budget planning for 2010-11 in the next 120 days and should think hard about ways to incorporate the innovation agenda to help cope with budget woes.  

Everyone has a role to play in student success

Quite simply – everyone has a role to play in ensuring that young people have the rigorous academic knowledge and skills they need to succeed. The public and private sectors must – not should – collaborate with educators if we are to achieve real and lasting improvements. 

As a foundation, we can play a critical role in funding programs and activities that the government may not be in a position to fund, and we can do so quickly. For example, foundations can fund efforts to;

·         Raise public awareness and build public will

·         Provide technical assistance

·         Develop tools

·         Invest in experimentation, demonstration and innovation

·         Support research and evaluation

·         Partner and/or serve as a critical friend at district, state, and national levels

Public-private partnerships work

One notable example is our historic partnership with the U.S. Department of Education around the growth of the 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21st CCLC) program. 

With an initial funding commitment to the partnership of $2 million to fund these efforts to now over $120 million, Mott's investments in the past 10 years has helped increase the 21st CCLC funding from $40 million in 1998 to a high of $1.1 billion in 2008, for a total of $8.5 billion in federal funding dedicated to afterschool programs for low-income children and youth.

Mott leveraged its grants to build public awareness and support public policy development recognizing that these efforts were critical to the long-term success of increasing the quality and quantity of school-based/school-linked afterschool initiatives. In addition Mott supported training and technical assistance, identification of promising practices, research and evaluation, and disseminating these findings and promising practices to improve content and delivery. 

Foundations for the future

While the federal dollars included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will not last forever, they provide a critical opportunity for foundations to work together to leverage these funds to have lasting impact. The Foundation for Education Excellence (http://www.foundationcenter.org/educationexcellence/) is one effort underway in which we are a part that is working with the Department to align local, state, and national efforts focused on the priorities as identified for the ARRA implementation and other reform strategies to better ensure effectiveness, innovation and sustainable implementation.

Whether partnering at the local, state or national level, too often the dollar amount of the partnership is the story that is told. Yet, the real story – and the real power for scalability and sustainability - lies in the roles that individuals in the public and private sectors are playing together and the rich opportunities provided to young people as a result.