PRIVATE VOICES, PUBLIC FORCES: AGENDA SETTING AND THE POWER OF FOUNDATIONS IN THE NCLB ERA A Dissertation. submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Government. By Patrick J. Carr, M.A. Washington, DC April 18, 2012 Copyright 2012 by Patrick J. Carr All Rights Reserved ii PRIVATE VOICES, PUBLIC FORCES: AGENDA SETTING AND THE POWER OF FOUNDATIONS IN THE NCLB ERA Patrick J. Carr, M.A. Thesis Advisor: Douglas S. Reed, Ph.D. ABSTRACT The practice of directing American private wealth to community goals has long drawn media acclaim and public admiration. Such activity often occurs through foundations, which funnel money toward causes deemed important to the public good. While foundations have routinely contributed to American civil society in this way for over a century, their involvement in elementary and secondary education has been especially notable in the past decade. Coinciding with the passage of No Child Left Behind, foundations began shifting toward venture philanthropy funding schemes and away from more traditional forms of philanthropic engagement. Yet research has paid little attention to how new foundation practices influence local and federal political actors involved in the policy-making process, specifically during the agenda setting stage. Thus, through an original survey of large school district school superintendents from 2011, an original dataset of 2,021 education-related foundation grants from 2009, and personal interviews and content analysis of secondary data sources at the federal level, this dissertation helps assess the relative influence of foundations at the federal and school district level. In general, I find that foundations have conditional influence on agenda setting in elementary and secondary education. At the federal level, foundations have the most to gain. At the local level, foundations have immediate, but fleeting, influence on local agenda setting. This is particularly iii true in districts with few resources and chronic failings, where foundations’ sustained influence depends on regular but unsustainable foundation investments and is limited by the dominant governance model, i.e., the school board, to which local administrators must respond. At the federal level, I find that foundations advocate more actively than a decade ago, but still compete against a vast interest group structure that minimizes foundations’ ability to exert control and alter the status quo. Yet foundation influence is not insignificant and has been aided by a new federal commitment to engage the foundation community. My findings show that, while foundations are less powerful than critics assume, they are disproportionately effective agenda setters when viewed in the context of their relatively small K-12 education expenditures. iv Preface v The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking. I've never seen anybody really find the answer -- they think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer. - Ken Kesey An important part of any mystery is personal. The roots of my mystery, which I investigate in this dissertation, originate from a childhood spent mostly in Oregon’s blue-collar Willamette Valley. My hometown, nestled in eastern foothills that are dominated by farming and timber interests, happens to be across the valley from the town where New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof grew up. This is a relevant point because, in addition to our common geographic origins, it is his explanation of how education impacts society that has rung truer to me than any other: “When I report on poverty in Africa and poverty in America, the differences are vast. But there is a common thread: chipping away at poverty is difficult and uncertain work, but perhaps the anti-poverty program with the very best record is education — and that’s as true in New York as it is in Nigeria” (Kristof, 2011). His argument, that education can be an escalator out of poverty, led my mother to a career in public education. While she worked as a GED instructor and served on our local school board, I learned around the dinner table that education systems frequently fail children, but have the potential to help them to overcome seemingly impossible family and community circumstances. But my youthful observations always left me wondering how communities choose the ways in which children are educated. For instance, what led the federal government to support high school dropouts? How did decision-makers come to pay attention to this issue? And, how did vi educators like my mother take policy guidance and turn it into pedagogy? These types of questions motivate this dissertation. Like Kesey advised, I approach my inquiry as a mystery and do not anticipate I will find the answer. While Kesey’s framework might seem misaligned with academic research, it actually fits with the principles of social science research more readily than a quick look might reveal, a point made clear by Smith and Larimer (2008) in their summary of the policy-making process: “From the existing literature, we also know that how policies reach the government agenda is a bit of mystery.” Building on this literature, the mystery I focus on is how an American education agenda is crafted and implemented, a process that occurs through a complex chain of governments and individuals, involving multiple interest groups across different levels of government fighting for their preferences. The sheer complexity of this process, which involves 14,000 school districts, thousands of teachers, students, parents, and administrators, plus billions of dollars in government and privately funded programs, guarantees that the answers I present in this dissertation are not the answer. Given the impossibility of understanding exactly how the American education agenda is crafted and implemented, I place limits on my mystery. I investigate the influence of one political actor, ambitious, large, national philanthropic foundations (hereinafter foundations) that have made grants in large school districts, primarily in and around American cities since 2000, on agenda setting in school districts and the federal government. The period I investigate coincides with the rise of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (hereinafter Gates Foundation) and the passage of monumental federal legislation, No Child Left Behind (hereinafter NCLB), two factors that vii weigh heavily on my analysis. Narrowing my focus does not increase the likelihood I will find the answer to questions of foundation influence, but it does allow me to better grasp and explain the complexities and characters involved in this realm of education policy. In the following pages I will more fully explain my research questions and methods of investigation, attempting throughout to communicate in a direct manner, obviously complicated by some academic conventions and my own limitations as a writer. Nonetheless, I hope the key themes of this dissertation can be broadly appreciated and understood by a variety of readers. If my points are clear, it is most likely the result of my diligent editors and mentors – especially Professor Douglas Reed, who patiently reviewed draft after draft, guiding me toward a final product. Additionally, fellow committee members Professor Mark Carl Rom and Professor Steve Smith offered feedback at critical points during the process, as did the Georgetown Department of Government’s Ph.D. Student American Government Working Group. Most critical to the projects success was my wife Karen’s support of Saturday mornings and late nights spent working at the local coffee shop, not to mention her editorial assistance, which along with feedback from my parents and siblings, ensured my writing was as grammatically correct, clear, and readable as possible. Finally, any particularly inspired ideas put to paper are the result of my two-year-old daughter Annie, whom I hope contributes to, and benefits from, public education during her lifetime. For the reader, I hope this process has led to an informative and thoroughly researched introduction and assessment of foundation involvement in public education during the 2000s. viii Table of Contents Chapter 1: Grand Ambition and an Assessment of Influence____________________________ 1 Chapter 2: Understanding the Bookends of Education Reform _________________________ 26 Chapter 3: Following Foundation Money in Education Policy _________________________ 63 Chapter 4: Political Actors as Reform Conduits in Education _________________________ 126 Chapter 5: Foundations and Federal Agenda Setting ________________________________ 182 Chapter 6: Evaluating the Role of Foundations ____________________________________ 234 Appendix A: Survey Instrument ________________________________________________ 251 Appendix B: Survey Methodology and Additional Tables____________________________ 261 Appendix C: Interview Details _________________________________________________ 279 Appendix D: Background Information on Reform Agenda ___________________________ 286 References _________________________________________________________________ 294 ix List of Tables Table 1.1: Political Activity by the Top 1% in 2008 Election Year, 2009-2011