Philanthropic contributions are a quiet but integral part of American education funding.
In 2016 (the most recent year for which good data are available), philanthropists contributed nearly $5 billion to US public schools, with $800 million stemming from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation alone. Private schools are not much different — the National Association for Independent Schools reported in 2023 that their member schools secured $4.87 billion in philanthropic funds to continue their missions.
This might seem like a drop in the bucket. After all, American schools received nearly $800 billion from all sources last year. But most education spending gets tied up in paying off debt, subsidizing pension funds, or paying salaries. Schools never see the vast majority of revenue their districts collect. Philanthropic donations, on the other hand, carry real value. If the Kennedy Center comes in and says “here’s $20 million, create an arts program for disadvantaged students,” more often than not, it gets done. That said, the evidence on whether educational philanthropy really works is, at best, mixed.
This state of affairs has generated a lot of criticism. Many scholars claim that educational philanthropy harms “democracy” because it directs schools’ attention away from liberal or pluralist values and more toward market interests. Others attribute educational philanthropy’s woes to the knowledge problem, as many foundations naively assume that they alone can solve education’s intractable problems. Others still argue that philanthropy harms liberal education by injecting wokeness and other shenanigans into America’s schools.
To a certain extent, all these critiques are valid, but they miss the bigger picture. Of course educational philanthropists are going to pursue programs and policies that benefit them — whether or not their activities are good for those of us who value human freedom depends on a given philanthropist’s values and aptitudes. Neither is this a new problem; schools and communities have been dealing with this for as long as there have been schools and communities.
Take, for example, San Antonio, Texas back when it was under Spanish and Mexican administration. In 1811, after a failed revolution against the Spanish crown, a group of the town’s well-to-do citizens decided to found a school together. The school’s purpose was to take the riff-raff’s children and turn them into loyal Spanish citizens who would never even think to question the crown’s authority. Spain, so the school would teach, was a benevolent actor who only had their best interests at heart. The Spanish royalists would meet any resistance or misbehavior with harsh discipline.
One Don Bicente Travieso — a prominent cattle rancher who had business interests with the Spanish government — offered to invest his own wealth, as well as take custody of public funds, to make the school a reality. What happened next is unclear. Some historians claim that Travieso ran off with the funds, purchasing only the worst-quality materials in order to retain his wealth. Another view is that Travieso made an honest effort to supply the school, and encountered unforeseen difficulties in planning the endeavor. Regardless, the school failed, and it may have never even operated.
This school would not have been liberalism’s friend. It was meant to indoctrinate a revolutionary community’s youth to secure an authoritarian regime’s political and economic interests. In that sense, educational philanthropy can harm a liberal democracy. But that’s not the only reason it failed — and many of the reasons for its failure are still reflected in modern educational philanthropy.
The royalists failed because they overpromised, assumed they could control all possibilities, and didn’t care what anybody in the surrounding community had to say. Modern educational philanthropists do exactly the same thing, and yet are surprised when they experience similar outcomes.
Look no further than the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which contributes hundreds of millions of dollars a year to charter schools, accountability schemes, and teacher performance metrics. When parents, schools, and teachers complained that the Gates Foundation was not listening to them, and misunderstood the situation on the ground, the Foundation ignored them, arguing instead that their models and know-how held all the answers.
The results were predictable — everything they’ve tried hasn’t worked. The Gates Foundation took some responsibility, but mostly blamed others. For example, when technology investments failed to generate meaningful results, Bill Gates called students “unmotivated.” When the group’s Common Core project met resistance and performance failures, Bill’s response was to double down. In effect, the Gates Foundation repeatedly attempted to slam a square peg in a round hole, much to the chagrin of all other stakeholders.
Fortunately, San Antonio’s history offers another path forward. In 1828, after the Mexican War of Independence, the city wished to promote its new Catholic-democratic bonafides. To that end, six leading men, along with the powerful General Anastacio Bustamente, resolved to found a new school. These students, they reasoned, would be the ones to steward the young, fragile democracy into a new age. In this effort, they had widespread community support, and also received funding from the state government. Everybody shared the same fundamental values, and everyone wanted their new, democratic society to prosper.
Unlike the Spanish royalist school, this one had a firm, independent curriculum — reading, writing, math, arithmetic, and the values and virtues needed to live a good life in a liberal-democratic society. The school’s teacher was primarily left alone, and discipline was no harsher than what might be expected in the United States at the time. The goal (a free society) and the means (a solid education) were clear, but the execution lacked resources. In other words, the philanthropists’ role was to facilitate what the community already wanted.
The school operated from 1828 to 1834, a good run by nineteenth century Mexican standards. Towards the end, after funding from the state government dried up, the school sustained itself almost entirely on donor funds. Many of its alumni became fervent liberals who actively resisted tyranny in Mexico and beyond. If the school’s goal was to cultivate a liberal body of citizens, it was an outrageous success. In this sense, it greatly benefited liberal democracy by creating citizens who actively wanted to live in a free society.
This model worked because the philanthropists acknowledged and acted within the community’s values. It also worked because the philanthropists did not try to coerce outcomes, nor did they intervene in the school’s day-to-day operations. Even today, a handful of educational philanthropists get this stuff right. Those investing in leadership development, for instance, often garner a significant amount of community support — something that’s helped kids in Columbus, Ohio, across Florida, and even in China.
Educational philanthropy is a complex but important field, and there’s a great deal of ambiguity as to what’s happening now and what comes next. When applied detrimentally, educational philanthropy can do a lot of damage to human freedom. But those of us worried about the future of liberalism need not despair. There are ways to do it right, and ways to fix the damage — even within the same community.