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July 31, 2006

The Gates Foundation against the backdrop of history

Diane Ravitch points out some important history:

When judged by their influence on education, foundations have a decidedly mixed record. The most successful American philanthropists by far were Andrew Carnegie and Julius Rosenwald. Carnegie, the steel magnate, used his foundation to build 2,500 free public libraries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most of which are in the United States, and his name became a blessing to readers across the nation.

Rosenwald, who headed Sears, Roebuck & Co. in the early 1900s, directed his foundation to underwrite the construction of more than 5,000 schools in poor, rural, mainly African American districts in 15 Southern states, as well as to endow Tuskegee, Howard, Fisk, Atlanta and Dillard universities, which were (and are) predominantly black. Rosenwald's munificence saved a generation of black students.

At the other extreme, the most spectacular blunder by a foundation was the intervention of the Ford Foundation in the politics of New York City's public schools in the late 1960s. In a struggle for control of the school system between minority activists and the teachers union, the foundation funded the activists. Ford-sponsored community groups ousted union teachers from their schools, and the union responded by striking and closing down the schools for two months in the fall of 1968.

The ugly confrontation, accompanied by charges and countercharges of racism and anti-Semitism, poisoned black-Jewish relations in New York City for three decades. The Legislature defused the crisis by decentralizing the 1-million-pupil school district into 32 community districts, an arrangement that satisfied few people but remained in place until 2002, when the Legislature gave control of the school system to Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

So what does this mean for GatesBuffett?  As Ravitch points out, the Gates Foundation has already made its share of blunders (for more on those missteps, go here).  But as stated earlier, Buffett believes in Gates, which really is a pretty big deal. 

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