Shop at Walmart, kill a public school

With an assist from School Matters, by Valerie Strauss

The pro-charter Walton Foundation handed out more than $159 million in 2011 in 16 metropolitan areas around the country to promote school choice. It also committed to giving $49.5 million to Teach for America over five years to double its teaching corps and $25.5 million over the same period to the

KIPP charter school network to double the number of students it educates.
The foundation is one of the three big family education philanthropies — the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation are the other two — and the one that gives the most money to initiatives involving the school choice movement, such as vouchers and charter schools.

The overall sum for 2011 was a few million more than the foundation handed out in 2010. The largest single grant given last year was $22.9 million to the Charter School Growth Fund, a non-profit venture capital fund that invests in charters. The second single largest award went to Teach for America — $12.6 million in its first installment of the multiyear grant, and the next largest was $11 million to The Children’s Scholarship Fund, a school voucher organization.

The foundation’s strategy is clear from the grants: It is funding organizations that it thinks can help scale charter schools quickly and rapidly increase the pool of voucher students.