This book identifies sources of power that help business and economic elites influence policy decisions.

An analysis of the role played by private philanthropic foundations in shaping public policy during the early years of this century—focusing on foundation-sponsored attempts to influence policy in the areas of education, social welfare, and public health. Winner of the Outstanding Book Award from the Ohio Academy of History In Private Wealth and Public Life, historian Judith Sealander analyzes the role played by private philanthropic foundations in shaping public policy during the early years of this century. Focusing on foundation-sponsored attempts to influence policy in the areas of education, social welfare, and public health, she addresses significant misunderstandings about the place of philanthropic foundations in American life. Between 1903 and 1932, fewer than a dozen philanthropic organizations controlled most of the hundreds of millions of dollars given to various causes. Among these, Sealander finds, seven foundations attempted to influence public social policy in significant ways—four were Rockefeller philanthropies, joined later by the Russell Sage, Rosenwald, and Commonwealth Fund foundations. Challenging the extreme views of foundations either as benevolent forces for social change or powerful threats to democracy, Sealander offers a more subtle understanding of foundations as important players in a complex political environment. The huge financial resources of some foundations bought access, she argues, but never complete control. Occasionally a foundation's agenda became public policy; often it did not. Whatever the results, the foundations and their efforts spurred the emergence of an American state with a significantly expanded social-policy-making role. Drawing on a wealth of archival materials, much of it unavailable or overlooked until now, Sealander examines issues that remain central to American political life. Her topics include vocational education policy, parent education, juvenile delinquency, mothers' pensions and public aid to impoverished children, anti-prostitution efforts, sex research, and publicly funded recreation. "Foundation philanthropy's legacy for domestic social policy," she writes, "raises a point that should be emphasized repeatedly by students of the policy process: Rarely is just one entity a policy's sole author; almost always policies in place produced unintended consequences."

What is public interest law? How effective is it? What are the limits to litigation as a mechanism for conflict resolution? In this study, economists, lawyers, and sociologists evaluate an institutional form that is new to American society and, indeed, to the world--the public interest law (PIL) organization. The book introduces the reader to the structure, resources, and activities of this "nonprofit industry," and also to the factors that affect PIL firms in their choices of cases and methods of handling them. The authors examine PIL's vast range of contemporary public policy concerns. These incude such general topics as the environment, consumerism, housing, employment discrimination, medical care, occupational health and safety, education finance, and taxation. A number of base studies are presented, and a method for economic analysis and evaluation is introduced and applied. The study points to PIL's success in advocating under-represented interests, in winning courtroom decisions, and in translating legal victories into reallocations of resources. At the same time, it notes the bias of PIL towards test-case litigation, a propensity to focus on judicial victories rather than on real social change, and a tendency to use lawyers even when other types of professionals might be more effective. Many of these problems stem from uncertainty of funding and legal restrictions on "nonprofit" organizations. The result is a set of hurdles that distracts PIL firms from their principal goals. The authors do not limit themselves to PIL, but comment on the effectiveness of legal instruments as devices for social change, and on the behavior of the voluntary nonprofit sector, a little-studied portion of the economy. The book presents a fresh approach to the study of both collective-type economic problems and institutional setting in which public interest law works. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1978.

Some of the nation's wealthiest philanthropies, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and the Broad Foundation have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in education reform. With vast wealth and a political agenda, these foundations have helped to reshape the reform landscape in urban education. In Follow the Money, Sarah Reckhow shows where and how foundation investment in education is occurring and presents in-depth analysis of the effects of these investments within the two largest urban districts in the United States: New York City and Los Angeles. In New York City, centralized political control and the use of private resources have enabled rapid implementation of reform proposals. Yet this potent combination of top-down authority and outside funding also poses serious questions about transparency, responsiveness, and democratic accountability in New York. Furthermore, the sustainability of reform policies is closely linked to the political fortunes of the current mayor and his chosen school leader. While the media has highlighted the efforts of drastic reformers and dominating leaders such as Joel Klein in New York City and Michelle Rhee in Washington, D.C., a slower, but possibly more transformative, set of reforms have been taking place in Los Angeles. These reforms were also funded and shaped by major foundations, but they work from the bottom up, through charter school operators managing networks of schools. This strategy has built grassroots political momentum and demand for reform in Los Angeles that is unmatched in New York City and other districts with mayoral control. Reckhow's study of Los Angeles's education system shows how democratically responsive urban school reform could occur-pairing foundation investment with broad grassroots involvement. Bringing a sharp analytical eye and a wealth of evidence to one of the most politicized issues of our day, Follow the Money will reshape our thinking about educational reform in America.

This book examines case studies of eight public and eight private schools that investigated different identifiable and transferable private school practices that public schools could adopt to improve student outcomes. Data came from interviews with administrators, teachers, parents, and students from diverse schools. Chapter 1, "Accountability to Parents," discusses resistance to parents, structural limits to parent accountability, managing participation at parochial schools, lower-income parent participation, cases of formal accountability to parents, and observations about accountability to parents. Chapter 2, "Clarity of Goals and Expectations," discusses the religious character of parochial schools, broader educational goals versus testable outcomes, anchoring expectations in scripture, and clarity of goals. Chapter 3, "Behavioral and Value Objectives," discusses different approaches to discipline and the teaching of ethical and religious values in public and private schools. Chapter 4, "Clear Standards for Teacher Selection and Retention," includes faculty collegiality, hiring standards and teacher quality, formal and informal teacher evaluation, teacher retention and dismissal, and observations on selection and retention. Chapter 5, "Similarity of Curriculum Materials," discusses formal curricular similarities. Chapter 6 discusses "Competitive Improvements." Chapter 7, "Conclusions," suggests that similarities between public and private schools and the problems they face outweigh the differences. Differences are determined mainly by parent socioeconomic and cultural factors. Case study descriptions are appended. (Contains 17 references.) (SM)

In this timely interdisciplinary volume, William Watkins has brought together leading scholars and activists to address some of the most urgent issues facing public education. What is underneath and behind the language of choice, efficiency, and improvement in current neoliberal discourse? How will urban and poor populations be affected? Will privatization lead to increased stratification in our schools? How can public education not only be saved but re-imagined? In accessible language, renowned contributors explore and critique corporate school reform to both inform and serve as an organizing tool for teachers, parents, students, and citizens committed to genuine public education. Book Features: A comprehensive critique of how corporate power is disrupting universal public education. An illumination of how corporate school reform threatens unions, racial progress, and democracy. An illustration of how private wealth forges public policy. A case study of the public school system in New Orleans. Contributors: Pauline Lipman • Kennneth Saltman • Alfie Kohn • Jack Gerson • Malila N. Robinson • Catherine A. Lugg • William H. Watkins • Ann G. Winfield • Kristen L. Buras William H. Watkins is a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and author of The White Architects of Black Education. “As The Assault on Public Education makes so very clear. . . we are witnessing the growth of a destructive set of policies in education and the larger society. This book provides us with a set of articulate analyses of what the future will likely hold if we do not engage in the hard and committed labor of countering these dangerous tendencies today.” —From the Foreword by Michael W. Apple, University of Wisconsin–Madison “The Assault on Public Education is a powerful assemblage of scholars, practitioners, and activists who are willing to stand up to the entrenched interests arrayed against public education as we know it. This is a must read for thinking citizen scholars.” —Gloria Ladson-Billings, University of Wisconsin-Madison “Today is a pivotal moment for America and its schools. Teachers and others who envision schools that enhance democratic life will find critical theoretical and practical guidance in this book. Use it.” —Daniel Perlstein, Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley “Watkins has produced an important and timely work—a much-needed corrective to the dumbing-down of educational policy discourse. The essays here offer a very real challenge to those who have confounded market-based policy with school reform and the well-being of children with the well-being of corporations.” —Charles Payne, University of Chicago