Throwing money at education

The New York Times Money Magazine assembled a roundtable a few weeks ago to discuss the role of philanthropy in education. Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute brought up a common pitfall foundations find when they try to “fix” education:

[G]enerally speaking, [the Annenberg grant] was a substantial disappointment. There was very little change in an ongoing, meaningful way...Organizations bake in the assumptions and the processes that made them successful. The way you hire your people, the way you reward your people, the internal practices you devise — they are all built around a certain set of assumptions and operations. When that larger world changes, it’s tough to retool. So when these reform-minded superintendents come in...they face enormous challenges. A school system is not an agile, nimble organization where if you can just hire the right people and start the right programs, you can turn things around quickly. You’ve got to work your way around outdated staffing processes, inadequate and bulky information-technology systems, abysmal and poorly conceived data-management systems.

Sound familiar?  This reminds me of the post I wrote a few weeks back about technology integration and the battle between grassroots change (lots of buy-in, but slow) and top-down change (fast, but lots of resistance).

Vanessa Kirsch, a “venture philanthropist” pointed out that the slow speed of real change is a challenge foundations and corporations must live up to:

But now that philanthropists are focused on outcomes, things are more complicated for both the givers and the recipients. A lot of programs actually take a few years to have an effect, and sometimes you need to tweak the methods along the way. And so as a philanthropist, you need to look deeper into the operations of an organization. It’s a much more complex process to be a good philanthropist if you’re investing in long-term, system-changing outcomes. But it’s also far more rewarding.

No easy answers, but the full article is an interesting read.  Check it out.

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