Your view of public health philanthrophies is off target.

If you look at the major grantmaking organizations like Kaiser, Gates, RWJF in that realm, you'll see that indeed they do have quite different approaches to, say, tuberculosis. Start with kff.org and see.

I also find the public health analogy a bit misleading. Certainly outsiders may know little or nothing about what steps to take to stop the spread of tuberculosis. But health experts earn their authority by presenting evidence -- evidence which anyone could check -- showing that, having taken their recommended steps against TB, its prevalence has consequently decreased.

By analogy, when education experts present evidence (which anyone could check) showing that, say, their recommended measures helped get rid of a terrible achievement gap which once existed between black and white students, they earn credibility with outside policymakers.

It's a common refrain from education experts that, e.g., an achievement gap (the tuberculosis of education!) is down to factors outside their control like lack of funds, deeper social structures, racism...

The best way for education experts to defend their authority against outsiders who claim to know better is to present evidence (publicly checkable) that their recommended steps successfully solve educational problems.

The different levels of credibility of public health experts and education experts come from their different levels of success at solving their field's own problems.

Bild and Mik G.,

I may not have made the best analogy--perhaps a concrete example is better? Witness the scramble for Gates money to set up small schools or "schools-within-schools." Maybe I am cynical, but I find it hard to believe that all of these districts think that creating small schools is THE best high school reform. In fact, as most educators know, you can have a lousy small school--a lot more needs to happen than just changing the structure. Money talks, and I think district officials are always looking around for how to bring more outside resources into a school.

Yes, I think you're right about district officials scrambling for charitable monies, basically saying "Yeah, we believe that" to most who have a checkbook. In fact what you describe is EXACTLY what happened in Boston:

One successful small school with great teachers and a wonderful leader (Another Course To College) used to serve Grades 11 and 12 only. But they had to agree to take Grades 9 and 10 also, so that the district could get more Gates dollars. This was disappointing, since the team there felt they were really good at Grades 11 and 12, and not really "built" to be experts in Grades 9 and 10.

However, district officials might say: while the union negotiators are only "doing their jobs" in maxing out teacher salary increases, they have succeeded in making Boston teacher salary averages higher than all the other 330 districts in Massachusetts, more than even the richest suburbs.

Those teacher raises have essentially absorbs every gov't dollar.

So we have almost zero discretionary public dollars to pursue any reform.

Perhaps Gates reform isn't ideal, but what if it's the only game in town?

Our choice, say district officials, is either to do "Gates version of reform" or basically have almost no newly funded reform effort.

Do unions pursue R&D funding from these same foundations? I.e., what if the union put forward its own "School Turnaround" proposal for failing schools - something that didn't seem self-serving? Most of the teachers I know in NCLB failing schools would love something that really tackled basic decorum issues....

Baby Boomer phianthropy is quite different than that of their parents. Boomers have a 'distrust' of hierarchy and institutions that comes from the social upheaval of their youth.

As a result, they're less willing to write a check and trust the 'experts' to know best. Surveys indicate that this generation sees the K-12 education system as broken. The net result is that boomers are not willing to invest in the 'experts' they see as responsible for the failure.

Surveys indicate that this generation sees the K-12 education system as broken.

Here are results from a well-regarded survey -- http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/k0509pol.htm#assessb
69% of parents gave their oldest child's school an A or B, while just 26% of parents gave schools nationally a grade of A or B.

It seems that even as parents think the "system is broken," they somehow managed to find good schools for their own children.