Foundations and Educational Institutions to meet their ends

Principal's Policy Blog features an interesting entry, written by a blog journalist Shana Kemp, about a study on “tattered relationship between education and funders." The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching conducted this 30-month long study in order to find a way to promote the divided relationship between foundations and educational institutions.

Ray Bacchetti and Thomas Ehrlich, directors of the study, explained that foundation leaders tend to think that "they've made large investments into K-12 schools without much return." Meanwhile, they see education leaders feeling "as though foundations are quick to abandon projects if results are not produced quickly enough." In the book that the two directors co-authored, Reconnecting Education and Foundations: Turning Good Intentions into Educational Capital, they provide some tips for both foundations and educational institutions so that they can meet their ends without tension.

This study is a timely report since President Bush's "No Child Left Behind" policy is catching the media's attention as the law has to be reauthorized by the new Congress next year. How President, as a foundation, and the schools, as educational institutions, will respond to each other under the policy will provide another insight to Bacchetti and Ehrlich's study.