Conclusion

Abstract

The chapters in this book have illustrated how educational philanthropy has been recently remade on the model of venture capital, and how this is part of the broader neoliberal remaking of public education that most significantly advances a privatization and deregulation agenda. Venture philanthropists in education have been pushing vouchers, charter schools, scholarship tax credits (neovouchers) and funding the infrastructure of the school privatization movement from think tanks and lobbying groups to political organizations to scholarship and publicity to grassroots “Astroturf” campaigns. As well, the venture philanthropists are behind the expansion of standardized test-based measures of educational value, attempts to transform educational leadership and teacher education in anti-intellectual and anti-critical formats, and the modeling of reform on corporate culture and ideals.