Broad and the media

The influence of the Broad Foundation on public education is a hot topic in Charlotte,  and may draw even more debate as the superintendent search gears up.  So it seems like a good time to visit a question that bubbled up  in the spring:  Does the foundation that's striving to reshape urban education also influence the way reporters cover education?

A "Broad virus" blog that's gone viral in education circles suggests that one sign of "infection" is local newspapers and public radio stations short-changing controversy about Broad-endorsed reforms.  When I was on vacation in May,  "Joe Teacher" emailed to say he'd heard an announcement that Charlotte's WFAE  is sponsored by the Broad Superintendents Academy,  which trains candidates to lead urban districts.  "Is there any way to tell if Mr. Broad is donating to other local radio?"  he asked.

I heard the announcement shortly afterward,  and the academy actually sponsors NPR,  not the local station. WFAE News Director Greg Collard confirmed that,  but said the NPR sponsorship announcement once landed right after a story about teacher performance pay by WFAE reporter Lisa Miller.  "Bad timing," Collard said.

That got me thinking about a comment Broad's Erica Lepping had made during a Charlotte visit,  mentioning earlier grants to the Education Writers Association and the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media.  I asked her for more information and she said yes,  in past years the foundation has given  "small grants" to both EWA (which I'm a member of) and Hechinger ("we used to fund a few Hechinger workshops for journalists, at least one of which I believe you attended").

Says Lepping:   Each of these organizations sends us proposals every year, as do many other media outlets (e.g. radio stations) that we have not funded to date.  Our foundation rarely funds these types of efforts –  we typically stick to investing directly in efforts to dramatically improve public schools.  During the recession when our endowment decreased,  we stopped doing any media grants, in order to focus all dollars directly to school districts and ed orgs.


As you may know,  Hechinger,  Ed Week and EWA are now all much more reliant on philanthropic funding than they were in the past,  given changes in business plan models and newsrooms under the recession,  so I expect they will continue to seek funding from all the foundations going forward.

However,  in any case where we have funded media orgs,  we have never required particular content/messages to be adopted as a result.  So,  for example,  when we funded an Ed Week series 8 years ago on Leadership,  decisions regarding what leaders to write about,  sources,  story angles et al were entirely up to Ed Week (same with the old Hechinger workshops).  In other words,  we do not get involved in editorial decisions.  When we have made a grant for ed journalism,  we trusted that those particular grantee orgs and their leaders would (given their strong reputations and track records) deliver high quality journalism that helps readers critically think,  provides facts and multiple perspectives and make up their own minds.

Interesting!  I can attest that when I've gone to education-reporting workshops,  there are panels of speakers representing various views,  with an audience of journalists who are quick to pick apart spin and question the diversity on panels.  I've never been sent home with a "write about this" mandate,  though organizers sometimes ask us to report back on what we learned and send links to articles where we've used the info.

It's smart to keep an eye on how the financial picture affects reporting.  It's no secret that money is tight these days,  and if reporters go to conferences,  it's often because someone else is footing the bill.  Journalists' organizations also feel the pinch.  And, yes, newspapers are certainly looking for ways to raise revenue in an extraordinarily challenging business environment (see Editor Rick Thames' column on one such avenue).

My take:  The best defense against anyone "selling out" is the vigilance and openness of those who care about journalistic integrity.

The Broad barrage

If only I could have cloned myself, I'd have been out front on the Eli Broad story.

Last summer, in writing an application for a seminar at Columbia University, I outlined the involvement of the Broad Foundation in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and discussed my interest in exploring how private philanthropy is shaping public education. When I got there, it turned out a lot of us were asking similar questions.

Now that I've finally broken off time and gotten some information on grant money from CMS, everyone's buzzing about Broad. Readers have been sending me great links. So, for those who want to delve deeper than the print article can go, here's more.

The nudge that finally got me focused on Broad was a recent article in the Raleigh News & Observer about how Broad might influence their new superintendent, who is being mentored by fellow Broad Superintendents Academy graduate Peter Gorman. There's also a WakeEd blog item that explores that issue.

Newsweek just published an investigation of whether investments by Broad, Gates and other education philanthropists have had the desired results. The conclusion: Not usually. The magazine looks at 10 school districts, none in the Southeast.

If you're trying to sort out the Broad/CMS connection, one of the biggest challenges is figuring out the "performance management" project that's gotten big bucks from Broad, Gates and Dell. CMS officials have been talking about this for years, and I've never quite gotten my head around a way to describe it in a newspaper article. When I asked CMS folks to help me with a clear, concise description, they sent me a four-page report. Here it is. The condensed version, from Chief Accountability Officer Robert Avossa: It's about providing educators with data to make decisions and creating systems to hold people accountable for results. Testing and performance pay are part of performance management, but it's a broader effort that includes CMS's school progress reports and school quality reviews.

The Broad Foundation Web site contains some details about the CMS connection, but it takes some hunting (again, thanks to readers who got me started). Here's a description of the Broad approach to investing, and here's where they list CMS as one of the foundation's investments in "redesigned, high-performing institutions." Here's information about the academy that trained Gorman and Wake's Anthony Tata, and the residency program that has placed other administrators in CMS.

An astute reader noted that Gorman is a member of the Broad Center's board of directors, and questioned whether that makes it a conflict for CMS to be a finalist for the Broad Prize for Urban Education. Foundation spokeswoman Erica Lepping said it would be if Gorman were a foundation board member. But the center is a separate nonprofit group that's funded by the foundation, she said, and is not involved in awarding the prize, which brings national prestige and hundreds of thousands of dollars in scholarships.

On the anti-Broad side, "How to tell if your district is infected by the Broad virus," orginally posted on a Seattle education blog, is getting a lot of circulation. And here's the Parents Across America "guide to the Broad Foundation." Those who are interested in the perspective of Diane Ravitch, a PFA founder and national education writer/researcher, can find more about the role of philanthropists in her book "The Death and Life of the Great American School System."

I cringed when I saw that the "virus" checklist includes "Local newspaper fails to report on much of this." I'll take the blame for putting Broad below the breaking news about school closings, performance pay and such. If Broad has a strategy for squelching news coverage, the only part I saw in action was that the school board's Broad-sponsored retreats were often too dull to generate stories.


Got more recommended reading? Post links in comments. The spam filter may snag them, but I'll check periodically to retrieve them. Be patient, though; it is Mothers Day.