Ford Foundation Commits $100-Million to Change Public Education

The Ford Foundation has pledged $100-million over seven years to support efforts to improve American public education.

The New York philanthropic fund said the money will go to “reformers whose visions of a just and fair public-schooling system can galvanize all the players — parents, students, teachers, and community leaders, as well as scholars and policy experts.”

The new program will focus on seven cities — Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Los Angeles, Newark, New York, and Philadelphia. It will encourage schools to focus on four goals: raising the quality of teaching, exploring the idea of how lengthening the school day and year can improve learning, using new ways to measure school and student performance, and examining why states often do not offer adequate financial resources to poor school districts.

The new grant-making effort will seek to “shake up the conversations surrounding school reform,” said Luis A. Ubiñas, president of the foundation, in a statement.

The new program comes as Ford is struggling with the effect of the economic downturn. Due to a decline in its endowment, the $9.6-billion organization closed offices in Vietnam and Russia, eliminating 30 staff positions, and 60 of its 550 staff members took buyouts that were offered earlier this year.

Mr. Ubiñas, who joined the foundation last year, has said administrative cost cutting helped the fund save $40-million, which was steered toward its grant-making budget.

The foundation provided about $528-million during its 2009 fiscal year, which ended September 30. It hoped not to cut that amount drastically in fiscal 2010.

Read The Chronicle’s article about the staff changes at the Ford Foundation.