Walton Foundation’s new education investment strategy: Scary or what?
The Walton Foundation is one of the biggest players in the education philanthropy world, having poured some $1.3 billion in K-12 education over the last two decades largely to support charter schools and fuel the “school choice” movement. But foundation honchos aren’t exactly satisfied with the results of their work and now they are using a new investment strategy to make a broader impact. For people who like the foundation’s philosophy, that’s good news. For those who think the foundation works against public education, it’s scary.
[Why are out-of-state billionaires putting big money into Louisiana’s board of education elections?]
A paper recently released (see below) titled “Investing in Change: The Walton Family Foundation Charts a New Course” looks at what the foundation has — and hasn’t — accomplished in its effort to fulfill what foundation K-12 Program Director Marc Sternberg calls its “moral obligation” to provide families with high-quality school choices. It quotes Walton Family Foundation Executive Director Buddy Philpot, who wrote in the foundation’s 2014 annual report released this year:
We know that empowering parents and students with options works, but now we want to do more. We have learned that while choice is vital, it is not enough.
Choice isn’t enough? So what is? Apparently dismantling traditional public school systems and creating collections of charter schools across cities. The report, written by Michelle Wisdom and published by Grantmakers for Education (a national network of hundreds of education philanthropies) says:
There are a lot of similarities between the Walton Family Foundation’s approach and what has come to be called a “Portfolio Strategy”—a concept researched and supported by the Center for Reinventing Public Education (CRPE). Portfolio Strategy identifies the entire city as the unit of change with respect to school reform, and tasks education and civic leaders with developing a citywide system of high-quality, diverse, autonomous public schools. These systems prioritize school autonomy, parental empowerment, and system leader oversight and responsibility for accountability.
Wisdom’s report points to Walton’s involvement in cities with big charter presences, including New Orleans, where nearly all of the schools are charters, and Washington D.C., where nearly half of students attend charters. These are hailed as successes in school reform. In the section about Walton Foundation’s new education investment strategy: Scary or what? - The Washington Post:
