Philanthropists’ Efforts to Improve Schools Get Scrutiny From ‘Governing’ Magazine

The work foundations are doing to improve education gets the spotlight in the cover article of Governing (October), a magazine that focuses on state matters.

Among the foundations whose works the article details: the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation.

While foundation spending to aid schools is hardly new, the magazine says the level of effort grant makers are providing today to influence education policy at federal, state, and school-district levels is far more vigorous and open than previous efforts.

The high profile of the education grant making has prompted some critics to accuse foundations of exerting too much influence over education policy and of operating a kind of public-education “billionaire boys club,” in which only the very wealthiest men (and they are mostly men) are being given the chance to choose the country’s education agenda. Other critics object to the policies the foundations are advocating.

The article is available online at http://governing.com

Town & Country (October) magazine highlights the philanthropic work of seven wealthy men and women under age 40. Among those featured: Carolina Gonzalez-Bunster, who worked at the William J. Clinton Foundation and Goldman Sachs before founding the Walkabout Foundation, which seeks a cure for paralysis. Ms. Gonzalez-Bunster was inspired to establish the foundation after her brother Luis was paralyzed from the waist down after a 1994 auto accident. Her goal? To “see my brother walk again,” she says. “And to make sure everyone who needs a wheelchair gets one.”