The Walton Family Foundation (WFF) has for the past thirty years helped seed educational innovation by supporting the creation and growth of many schools. Public charter schools of course form the overwhelming majority of the schools the foundation has used its resources to launch over time. According to Sternberg and Holley (2018), the foundation has started more than 2,200 charters through investments amounting to more than $420 million dollars. It has done this with the belief that education for all students can be partly improved through high-quality charter schools which it considers critical in this respect. Initially, the foundation had been working with individual schools. It has however recently started partnering with willing school districts as well. In our group’s presentation we researched the overall impact of The Walton Family Foundation’s philanthropy, but because most people just want to focus on how they impact public charter schools, the overall impact of the foundation is missed.
There are many who believe the Walton Family Foundation is the main cause of the demise of traditional public schools. Some research provided to prove that public charters are not working as referenced in the Cashing In on Kids article states, ‘ Sadly, extensive research efforts (many of them funded by WFF) on the academic impact of public charter schools have suggested that after 20 years there is little across-the-board improvement to show for it. At best, it appears that some charter schools perform very well, but that the majority perform no better, or even significantly worse than neighboring traditional public schools. Our group presentation did not dive into if the impact was actually successful in any traditional public or charter schools, therefore this is the area I chose to research further. The School District of Atlanta is one of the traditional public school districts where the foundation has had and continues to have impact. Through partnerships between traditional public schools and charters, the WFF has positively impacted and yielded success for students in Atlanta as well as other charter school students. My intent in this research is to outline the success that has been noted and to reiterate that privatization and the charter movement are not a silver bullet but they are an option that should not be pushed aside.
The foundation runs a direct charter startup program in which it helps school developers launch new schools by providing them with grants. Of note here is that this program does not work in the same manner as other charter programs which only seek to help in the expansion of already existing charter schools, such as the Charter School Growth Fund for instance. Those applying for the grant must show that their new school will be located in one of the school districts in which the focus of WFF’s K-12 education grant-making lies. They should also show that a substantial proportion of low-income students will be served by the school. Finally, the applicants have to convince the WFF that their school will potentially provide education of high quality. In order to determine this potential, the foundation appoints a committee of experts to thoroughly review the school’s plans and procedures (Carr and Holley, 2014). The result of this application process has been the creation of new charter schools that provide quality education that is aligned with the needs of students from low-income families.
A study conducted in 2014 sought to find out whether charter schools funded by the WFF performed better than their peers over the previous three years. It featured the various school districts in which the foundation operates, Atlanta included. It gathered the performance estimates for the various schools over the three years. As per the estimates, ‘charter schools supported by WFF significantly outperformed peer schools on both reading and math exams’ (Carr and Holley, 2014). There were quite large magnitudes of difference for both subjects. In reading, there was an effect size of 0.39 while in math, the effect size was 0.58. Translated into days, these results meant that peer schools that were not under the support of the WFF needed 273 additional days in reading and 406 days of learning in math in order to be at par with the WFF-supported charter schools over the period of three years (CREDO, 2013). Even so, there would still be considerably large average annual effects 0.13 in reading and 0.19 in math approximately.
The 2014 study also revealed that more generally, charter schools funded by the WFF performed slightly higher than those funded by other organizations or foundations. In addition, these other charter schools did not perform any better as compared to their peers in the district both in math and reading (Carr and Holley, 2014). This speaks of the difference that there is between the impact of WFF and other foundations on Atlanta students. Hall (2017) confirms this difference by stating that ‘While there have been some success stories, much of the empirical evidence is mixed, with many charter schools performing no better than many traditional schools.’ From the Carr and Holley’s research findings above, this statement is true and these success stories are majorly associated with the WFF. The other charter schools that are not posting convincingly better performances than many traditional schools are ones that are supported by other organizations and not WFF. This is probably because WFF is the most committed private supporter of charter schools in the United States. As observed by Hall (2017), ‘No foundation has done more to advance charters.’
The study results discussed above are proof that the investment approaches used by the Walton Family foundation towards starting up new charter schools have been a success in supporting low-income students by ensuring they attend new, high quality schools. Specifically, what have been pushing the foundation to invest heavily in charter schools have been the greater improvements in test-score performances that the schools have been posting. After comparing the performances of these schools to those of other charter schools and local district schools, it decides whether or not to make significant investments in the schools. The comparison is done at a level that is practically and statistically significant. This focus on better performance has been good for students in the district. This finding shows that the WFF’s approach to the charter schools it supports is sufficient and that the investment is worthwhile ‘and may offer a promising avenue for other foundations interested in investing in the creation of charter schools’ (Carr and Holley, 2014).
An example of a charter school that the WFF started under its ‘Create Quality Schools’ initiative in the district is Westside Atlanta Charter School which it funded at a tune of $30,000 (Strauss, 2013). The foundation’s work in Atlanta is further noted by Philanthropy News Digest (2017) which stipulates that ‘The foundation is a longtime supporter of public schools in Atlanta, having awarded nearly $9.2 million since 1999.’ The core strategy of the foundation in doing this has been to ensure that the country’s K-12 education system experiences competitive pressure by ‘increasing the quantity and quality of school choices available to parents, especially in low-income communities’ (Schneider, 2016). WFF believes that without competition schools will never feel a need to do better.
Empowering families to have several quality school options to choose from has fully motivated all schools in the School District of Atlanta to provide students with the best possible education. It has brought about a sense of competition whereby school administrators feel the pressure to do their best in order to convince parents to choose their school for their children. The net result of this competition is that it works in the best interest of students as it improves the quality of education in the entire school district. This way, the foundation has shown that higher academic achievements and meaningful improvements for all students can be inspired by parental choice (Schneider, 2016). Someone told me years ago that parents vote with their feet. If you are a quality option for parents then they will choose you and if you are not a quality option then they will vote with their feet.
Sternberg and Holley (2018) point out that even though various tactics may be applied, the net effect of partnerships between traditional public schools and charter operators is that they culminate into better student outcomes. This is because through the partnerships, more schools are funded and the autonomy of educators significantly increased. Granting more autonomy to educators in Atlanta’s charter schools has put them in a position to grow what works for student success. They no longer have to wait for their initiatives or programs to be approved by the district before they implement them. Once they try and find that a program suits the students’ needs, they go ahead to implement it while modifying it for the better. As Sternberg and Holley (2018) observe, improvements from these efforts are already being seen and appreciated by communities, families, and children in Atlanta and elsewhere.
There have been those who have criticized and even opposed the idea of charter schools, arguing that it is a threat to the public school system. This is a misleading argument because even in Atlanta, the growth of charter schools as supported by the WFF and other foundations have not led to the closure of public schools. It has only served to increase school choices for parents, which is a positive development. Besides, the charter schools remain accountable to the district with regards to student achievement in spite of not working within the authority of the district when it comes to academics and operations (Sternberg and Holley (2018). This makes the opposition of the schools less irrelevant.
Another successful charter-district partnership school that is receiving funding from the WFF is Thomasville Heights Elementary School. The school is a K-8 model serving students from high poverty families and one that before the foundation’s intervention, was among the persistently poorest performing schools in Georgia. For example, ‘As of 2016, only one out of every 10 students in 3rd grade read at or above grade-level targets’ (Sternberg and Holley, 2018). The school would however change in August the same year when Purpose Built Communities offered to make it a better school. The organization is involved in helping in the establishment of high-performing schools and is a grantee of the Walton Family Foundation. Upon stepping in to help the school, it hired new staff, new leadership and a dedication to develop an improved school culture. In just 18 months, the school had made tremendous improvements. Student enrollment had gone higher, there had been additional 360 minutes of weekly activities of enrichment, and the number of full-time instructors had increased by 32 (Sternberg and Holley, 2018). Additionally, the number of guardians and parents attending parent-teacher conferences whenever organized had increased six-fold. According to Atlanta Public Schools (2018), the 2016-2017 school year saw the students of the school move to the 30th percentile from the 21st percentile in math, thanks to Purpose Built Communities’ input. On the same note, they registered a remarkable improvement in social studies as they moved to the 30th percentile from the 19th percentile, as per Mathematica Policy Research (2017).
The WFF’s charter partnerships with public schools in Atlanta have also influenced other public schools in the district to adopt successful academic practices. The first source of motivation for such influence is competition whereby the other schools are feeling the pressure to perform better. The second source is the direct involvement of district education leaders who are working with the support of Walton and other funders. So far, the leaders have intervened in nineteen public schools all over the district by hiring additional specialists in math and reading. They have also provided professional development for teachers and subjected students to extended learning time (Sternberg and Holley, 2018). Pairing of out-of-school supports with in-school efforts has also ensured that parents can easily access information about the performance of their children and their respective schools. Information on school quality can now be accessed by district parents through a website that was launched by the district’s public schools.
The impact of the Walton Family Foundation in Atlanta and other cities has revealed the hard work that lies ahead with respect to improving persistently underperforming schools. There is no solution that can be said to be one-size-fits-all or easy to implement. This challenge was also depicted by a study conducted by the U.S. Department of Education in 2017. The study found out that federal effort to improve public schools that were performing alarmingly low by increasing their funding by $3 billion was almost futile. The move had little impact on college enrollment, high school graduation, and student achievement (Mathematica Policy Research, 2017). This further gives more credence to the WFF-supported charter schools since they have registered improvements in all the three mentioned aspects. As we studied during this class money alone cannot change the outcomes of children and it is never a silver bullet. The question becomes what is the solution?
Conclusion
I believe that as a society we should not continue to wait on a silver bullet option and we should not shoot down opportunities because of our own biases and lack of research, but we should investigate every available opportunity to provide more students with high quality schools. We have to start seizing the opportunity or we will be having this same conversation 10 years from now, while another generation of children are failed. As I have made clear throughout this class I am a supporter of high quality education for all students. Partnerships between traditional public schools and charters are just one opportunity. The studying of WFF has led me to the conclusion that they have brought immense success to students in Atlanta. The foundation operates on the premise that school improvement can only be realized if after being well funded, a school is placed in the hands of visionary leaders and educators who are risk-takers. The research findings discussed herein are a testament that indeed the foundation has been successful in not only charter schools but also traditional public schools, such as Atlanta, who were willing to be risk-takers.
