This fascinating, exhaustively researched, and important book traces the growing scope and impact of philanthropic money in education politics and policymaking, a topic that has been the subject of much speculation but little systematic research to date. Sarah Reckhow explores four central questions. The first two deal with the mechanics of foundation influence: Where and how do foundations focus their reform efforts, and when foundations do get involved, which local actors gain influence and which lose? The second set of questions looks at the political consequences of foundation engagement in education: How do local constituencies respond to foundation-funded reforms and what are the implications for democratic decision-making and political accountability? Reckhow frames her analysis theoretically with the policy feedback and civic capacity literature in political science, and particularly the work of Eric Patashnik and Jeff Henig.
One of the book’s greatest strengths is its methodologically diverse and sophisticated approach to answering these questions. Unlike many education scholars, she employs a multi-method research design that incorporates large-scale data analysis, detailed case studies, surveys, interviews, and social network analysis. This approach has enabled her to craft a nuanced and multi-faceted analysis of foundation influence and impact and created a rich new trove of data that will be invaluable to other scholars (such as an original data set of 2,800 major foundation grants between 2000 and 2005). She shows how the increasing role of the federal government in education, the rise of market-based reforms, and the changing nature of philanthropy have “pried open the cocoon around school districts” and permitted foundations to play a larger and more direct role in education reform (p. 16). Newer foundations such as Gates, Broad, and Walton increasingly act like policy entrepreneurs and embrace a “results oriented” brand of venture philanthropy in a way that stands in stark contrast to earlier foundation activity in education such as the $500 million Annenberg Challenge of the 1990s.
I applaud Reckhow for developing a new term to describe the contemporary education reform movement, “Boardroom Progressives,” rather than the term often used by its critics, “corporate school reformers.” This choice has significant implications for how her argument unfolds, as well as how it is likely to be received, as it signifies that she is approaching the topic in a scholarly, objective way rather than with an axe to grind (which is unfortunately all too often the case in education scholarship today). The term “corporate school reformer” is ideologically charged and has been utilized by those who oppose the standards, testing, accountability and choice agenda that has emerged over the past decade. The phrase implies that these reforms are being pushed primarily by conservative business interests whose primary goal is the privatization of education. However, the motives and membership of the coalition that supports this reform agenda is in reality quite a bit more complicated than this characterization, and many of the leaders of the “reform” movement—including President Obama and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Rhode Island Education Commissioner Deborah Gist, Stand for Children’s Jonah Edelman, Student First’s Michelle Rhee, and the left-leaning Center for American Progress to name just a few—are Democrats who support the reforms in pursuit of greater equity in education.
As Jesse H Rhodes argued in the pages of this journal in 2011 ("Progressive Policy Making in a Conservative Age? Civil Rights and the Politics of Federal Education Standards, Testing, and Accountability” 9(3): 519-44), civil rights and anti-poverty groups have played a central role in advancing accountability reforms as a way to address large racial and socio-economic achievement gaps in American schools. Indeed, Reckhow draws an interesting parallel between the Boardroom Progressives of today and Progressive reformers of the early twentieth century, noting that both movements were elite-driven, had faith in standardized testing, focused on urban areas, and were suspicious of politics and special interests (even as they differed in other tactics and goals). My biggest criticism of this otherwise outstanding book is that it does not devote more attention to exploring how and why the progressive movement in education (and its foundation allies) evolves over time—in particular why it shifts from a focus on integration and resource equity during the 1950-1970 period to a more recent focus on accountability and choice. Too often in Reckhow’s account it seems that the causal arrow runs from foundations to government and not the other way around. But, a close historical analysis of the rise of the accountability movement in education such as in Paul Manna’s School’s In: Federalism and the National Education Agenda (Georgetown University Press, 2006) and my own No Child Left Behind and the Transformation of Federal Education Policy 1965-2005 (Kansas, 2006) demonstrates that much of this reform agenda emerged in the 1990s prior to the engagement of the foundations she discusses.
In addition, Reckhow rightly observes that the two dominant streams of policy ideas in education reform today are accountability and markets, but the myriad ways in which these ideas can be incompatible needs further articulation. As Neerav Kingsland (CEO, New Schools for New Orleans) has noted, there is a profound tension at work today in education between the reformers and the relinquishers—the former seek to use centralized government power at the federal, state, and district level to mandate school improvement policies while the latter work to free schools from bureaucratic red tape that stifles innovation and leadership in individual schools. Reckhow acknowledges this tension at the district level in her excellent comparative case studies of New York City (which used mayoral control to enact a top-down agenda) and Los Angeles (which embraced a more bottom-up, charter-driven approach) but the similar dynamic between the federal government and states and between states and districts goes largely unexplored.
None of this is to take away from this excellent and pathbreaking book. Three of Reckhow’s findings warrant particular attention. The first is that foundation grant making has been very strategic and concentrated on a small number of urban districts—generally cities where the political conditions on the ground (often mayoral or state control)—seem more fortuitous for foundation influence and rapid policy change. She also demonstrates how foundation giving in recent years has become increasingly aligned on a common reform agenda and converged geographically on a small number of cities (such as Chicago, Boston, Oakland, LA, and NYC). The second is that foundation funding has shifted away from direct support to public schools and towards the nonprofit sector—particularly charter management organizations (CMOs) and reform advocacy groups. (For more on these advocacy groups see: Patrick McGuinn, “Fight Club: How New School Reform Advocacy Groups Are Changing the Politics of Education,” Education Next [May 2012].) Her third—and most important—argument is that in their push for rapid transformative change in school districts, foundations have accepted (and sometimes even demanded) that broader public engagement and deliberation in the process be forsaken. Reckhow cautions that cities like New York that enact major reforms by mayoral control but fail to build a coalition of support among educators, local citizens and community groups may ultimately see that the policy victories won in the short term are ineffective or unsustainable over the longer term. She notes that in Los Angeles, by contrast, the pace of reform was slower and more contentious but ultimately may prove more enduring and transformative due to the development of civic capacity. Reckhow also rightly reminds us that whether one agrees with the “reform agenda” in education or not, the unprecedented size and prescriptiveness of contemporary foundation grant making in education today—and the lack of transparency that often surrounds it—raises a number of important questions about democratic governance and accountability.
