The Gift of Education pp 79-98 | Cite as
The Gift of Corporatizing Educational Leadership: The Broad Foundation and the Venture Philanthropy View of Leadership
Abstract
Venture philanthropies have sought to transform K-12 schooling in part by radically transforming administrator preparation. No institution is more aggressive in pursuing such changes than the Eli and Edythe Broad Education Foundation. Its initiatives include creating educational leadership training projects specifically designed to recruit noneducator corporate, military, and nonprofit leaders. The Broad Foundation also seeks to deregulate teacher and administrator preparation programs that will take such programs away from the purview of universities and allow for their privatization. They create scholarships to fund schools and students that reward “achievement gains,” emphasize standardized test-based performance achievement tracking, and also create test databases for long-term tracking of student test scores to direct educational policy and determine the effectiveness of teacher and administrator preparation programs. The Broad Foundation also works to expand charter schools and “franchise” charter management organizations. While on the surface these initiatives may not seem closely related, they share a common set of ideals and a cohesive vision for public schooling that can best be understood as an expression of the ideology of corporate culture/neoliberal ideology applied to education.
Keywords
Public School Educational Reform Charter School Educational Leadership American Enterprise InstitutePreview
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Notes
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