Education giving is also taking a hit as philanthropists' bank accounts shrink and some redirect their resources toward fighting terrorism and supporting domestic relief efforts in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. In a commentary in Education Week, the Fordham Foundation's Checker Finn and Kelly Amis express the hope that recession will prompt education donors to focus on high-yield strategies and high-impact projects with the potential to transform the K-12 system instead of just adding resources to it. Many philanthropists place their bets on strategies that Finn and Amis judge futile in most cases - strategies that assume the existing public education system wants to change but lacks the wherewithal to pull it off. Philanthropic gifts based on such assumptions only work when the circumstances are exactly right, they argue. More promising, in their view, are philanthropic efforts that seek to alter how the education system operates by pressing upon it from outside - and force it to change out of necessity - through reforms based on standards-based accountability or competition. The authors identify two philanthropists who have pursued wise reform strategies: Tom Luce, a Texas attorney who used his own time and money to launch Just for the Kids, a nonprofit organization that tracks schools' academic progress and makes it easy for parents to investigate and compare schools over the internet, and John Walton, the Wal-Mart heir who has helped launch charter schools and supported scholarship programs to help low-income students attend private schools. The authors end by reflecting on the experiences of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation in Dayton. See "Making More of Less," by Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Kelly Amis, Education Week, January 9, 2002. This commentary is a highly condensed version of a book released by the Foundation late last year. Making It Count: A Guide to High-Impact Education Philanthropy can be downloaded at http://www.edexcellence.net/detail/news.cfm?news_id=39, where you will also find instructions for ordering a free copy.
