$100 Million in Walton Education Grants Will Go Beyond Charter Schools

The Walton Family Foundation, one of philanthropy’s most powerful backers of charter schools, says it has begun to broaden the scope of its more than two-decade-long education grant-making focus beyond charters to accelerate the creation of high-quality schools.

The foundation said Tuesday it is newly committing $100 million to support different types of schools and pedagogical approaches, including public school districts, private schools, and schools designed to serve special student populations.

The private foundation will also put money behind parent advocacy groups, training and support for teachers, especially teachers of color, and efforts to help students make the transition to postsecondary education and careers.

It will continue to invest in charter schools and charter networks, the Walton Family Foundation said in a report it released Tuesday laying out how it intends to move forward.

“Yet we are also embracing new strategies,” the report states. “We believe it’s essential to take a ‘both and’ approach, continuing what has worked in the past, while exploring new areas that show promise for setting young people on a path to success.”

In a letter released in conjunction with the report, James Walton, the grandson of Walmart founder Same Walton and a member of the family foundation’s board, said the “time is ripe for new visions of schooling.”

“The future of school can and will look radically different from the way it has for the last century,” Walton said. “We are overdue for finding new ways to foster the creation and growth of schools led by entrepreneurs, educators, and leaders of color, deeply rooted in the communities they seek to serve.

Top Priority

With $3.7 billion in assets, the Walton Family Foundation is one of the country’s largest. In 2016, it made $454.4 million in grants. Nearly $200 million went to elementary and secondary education, more than any other foundation priority.

It made its first school start-up grant in 1997. Last year, the foundation says it helped support 2,235 schools. Even as the foundation remains closely tied to the charter-school movement, in recent years it has made grants to public-school districts, private schools, and to other types of schools the foundation sees as creating more access to high-quality education.

In a statement, Marc Sternberg, K-12 education director at Walton, said the foundation has to do more to support educators with ideas and families looking for options.

“And in order to build on two decades of work, we need partners old and new in philanthropy and positions of civic leadership who share a vision for the day when all children have access to a school right for them,” Sternberg said.

Billion-Dollar Commitments

More than 3 million students were enrolled in charter schools in 2016-17, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education, about triple the number from a decade earlier.

The fast growth of the charter-school movement in the United States has been propelled in part by private philanthropy. In addition to the Walton Family Foundation, other major supporters include the Bill & Melinda Gates and the Eli and Edyth Broad foundations.

In 2016, the Walton fund said it would spend $1 billion over five years to build new charter schools and support existing ones. That was on top of the $1 billion it had already invested in education efforts since 2000. Some of the biggest recipients of its grant making have been the Charter School Growth Fund, Alliance for School Choice, KIPP, and Teach for America.