Center for Reinventing Public Education the Billionaires’ Advocate

By Thomas Ultican 8/26/2020

In 1993, Political Science Professor Paul T. Hill established the Center for Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) at the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs on the University of Washington campus. The research group Hill founded is steeped in public school failure ideology. On their web site Hill let it be known “The Center has a definite point of view.” Among the points listed are:

“The ineffectiveness of big city public schools clouds the futures of millions of children.”

“Incremental efforts to improve urban public education without disturbing the school boards, unions, and central office administrators have failed, largely because roles, missions, and interests of those organizations are incompatible with effective schooling.”

“There are now far too few good public schools in big cities, in part because the entire structure of city school systems, from regulation and funding to teacher selection and professional development, is hostile to school quality.”

“To create good schools in urban areas where academic failure is the norm, we need an entirely different way of creating and operating schools.”

The CRPE 1999 “about” statement says,

“The Center pursues a national program of research and development on such proposals as charter schools, school contracting, choice, and school system decentralization, via alliances with the Brookings Institution, The RAND Corporation, Vanderbilt University, and the University of Chicago.”

Professor Hill, a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute, was a member of Brookings’ cadre of researchers convinced that American public education was failing. Furthermore, they shared a general agreement that market based business principles were central to the solution. They believed teacher’s unions and governance by locally elected school boards must overturned.

In 1990, Bookings had published John Chubb’s and Terry Moe’s book, Politics, Markets, and America’s Schools in which they asserted that poor academic performance was “one of the prices Americans pay for choosing to exercise direct democratic control over their schools.” A few years later, Brookings published Fixing Urban Schools co-written by Hill and Mary Beth Celio. It was a call for running schools by contracting with private operators like the Edison Project.

From its 1993 founding thru 1999, CRPE survived by doing research projects for the Brookings Institute, the Rand Corporation, the United States Department of education, the National Business Roundtable and a few others.

Hill hired researcher Robin Lake the year after founding CRPE. Lake conducted research on charter schools, contracting, and standards-based school decentralization. She led the evaluation of The National Business Roundtable’s national systemic reform initiative.

Big Money Started Arriving

CRPE was fortunate to be in Seattle, Washington where the world’s richest man decided to implement his opinions concerning education. The fact that he was so rich appeared to be his only qualification for what became an outsized influence over public education.

Bill Gates first big education “reform” initiative was his small schools agenda. He believed that smaller schools were more conducive to learning and retention than larger ones. To implement his small schools scheme, he contracted with CRPE to do evaluations and provide implementation advice.

The CRPE web site reported their involvement stating, “The project, supported by a generous gift from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, provides a range of services to new and emerging small schools that have an organizational structure and philosophical commitment compatible with the attributes of high achieving schools.”

Because all donations to CRPE go through the University of Washington Foundation, it is often difficult to identify the specific amounts of money granted to CRPE. In 1999, the Gates Foundation donated $2,000,000 to the Daniel J Evans School of Public Affairs to support Northwest Education. It is likely most of that money went to CRPE but not certain.

In 2000, Gates donated another $750,000. This time stating the donation is ‘to develop resources which will promote the creation of small high schools.” It is a reasonable assumption that all of this money was directed to CRPE.

In 2004, CRPE proudly reported,

“Over the past 10 years the Center has received support from many organizations and foundations. We would like to recognize and thank the

• •  A+ Commission,
  • The Annie E. Casey Foundation,
  • The Atlantic Philanthropies, The Ball Foundation,
  • Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,
  • The Boeing Company,
  • The Brookings Institution,
  • The Business Roundtable, Education Commission of the States,
  •  Exxon Education Foundation,
  •  The George Gund Foundation,
  • Mann-Paller Foundation,
  • NACSA (National Association of Charter School Authorizers),
  • National Board for Professional Teaching Standards,
  • OERI (Office of Educational Research and Improvement),
  • US Department of Education,
  • Partnership for Learning,
  • The Pew Charitable Trusts,
  • Pisces Foundation,
  • RAND,
  • Smith Richardson Foundation,
  • The Spencer Foundation,
  • Stupski Family Foundation,
  • Wallace-Reader’s Digest Funds,
  • and Alcoa (grant to Brookings).”

In 2009 CRPE Struck Gold

“School choice” has a long history of fermenting segregation. That history stems back to the negative reaction in the South to the Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling in Brown v Board of Education. In Brown, the court overturned the public school policy of “separate but equal” saying it was “inherently unequal” and that it deprived the plaintiffs of the “equal protection of the law” prescribed in the 14^th amendment.

Modern “school choice” ideology promoted by many white billionaires is little different from the strategies of southern segregationist in the 1950s and 60s. It still increases segregation and creates an “inherently unequal” and racist education system.

Promoting “school choice” has become a specialty at CRPE.

“Doing School Choice Right” was a CRPE project funded by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Annie E. Casey Foundation, and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. CPRE listed two salient goals for their study:

• • “Create models for how school districts can oversee public schools in multiple ways—including direct operation, chartering, contracting, and licensing private schools to admit voucher students. This study is conducted in partnership with the National Charter School Research Project.”
  • “Examine issues involved in moving toward pupil-based funding, particularly technical, legal, and regulatory barriers.”

Out of this study, the “portfolio school” management model was created. In October 2009, CRPE published “Portfolio School Districts for Big Cities: An Interim Report.” Lead author Paul Hill and associates stated,

“The report introduces the idea of a ‘portfolio school district,’ and shows how some leading school districts have put the idea into practice. A portfolio district is built for continuous improvement through expansion and imitation of the highest-performing schools, closure and replacement of the lowest-performing, and constant search for new ideas.”

In other words, it is an organized idea for managing the charter schools, innovation schools, public schools and voucher schools that make up the mix of schools in a district. Using standardized testing as a proxy for measuring quality, some percentage (5%) of the lowest performing schools will be closed every year. Invariably, the closed school will be replaced by a privatized structure outside of the purview of an elected school board.

Professors David Berliner and Gene Glass are leading experts in the education research community. In a recent article they convincingly demonstrated – again – that the only strongly correlated outcome associated with education standardized testing is family wealth.

That means that under the “portfolio school district” scheme public schools in poor neighborhoods will be closed and replace by privatized “choice” schools.

This novel idea brought CRPE a new mix of funders. Between 2012 and 2018, foundation tax records show that the Walton Family Foundation (EIN: 13-3441466) granted almost $4 million, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (EIN: 56-2618866) granted over $6 million, the Laura and John Arnold Foundation (EIN: 26-3241764) granted more than $4.5 million and the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation (EIN: 36-4336415) gifted more than $1.3 million.

Unlike the other contributors to the University of Washington Foundation, The Gates Foundation does not explicitly name CPRE in its tax records. The $6 million dollar figure is a conservative estimate made from tax record descriptions.

This year, a CRPE news release stated that the Walton family had granted another $650,000 in support of 2020 operations. The new portfolio model induced funding stream appears to be continuing.

For the fiscal year ending June 30 2018, The University of Washington Foundation (EIN 94-3079432) took in grants totaling $132,838,893. After distributing the money they had a balance of $9,300,536 which is consistent with its past practices. Interestingly, Bill Gates Sr. is a Director of the fund.

By 2019, CRPE quit sharing who it funders are. In 2018, their listed funders were:

• • The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
  • Carnegie Corporation of New York
  • Laura and John Arnold Foundation
  • Michael and Susan Dell Foundation
  • US Department of Education
  • Walton Family Foundation  

Changes at CRPE

CRPE went through big changes in 2012. Paul Hill stepped down as director (semi-retired) and was replaced by his longtime associate Robin Lake. The Center moved from the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs to the Bothell campus also on the University of Washington campus.

That same year, CRPE for the first time announced “policy partners.” They stated, “CRPE is one of five national education policy organizations that co-founded the Policy Innovators in Education (PIE) Network, whose mission is to build, support, and promote a network of education advocacy organizations working to improve K-12 education in their states so that every student graduates world-ready.”

Image Clipped From PIE Home Page

The other “policy partner” listed in 2012 was CEE-Trust. In 2010, Doug Harris and Ethan Gray of The Mind Trust founded CEE-Trust. Its mission was to become a catalyst for new Mind Trust style organizations nationwide promoting school choice. The CEE-Trust web site revealed,

“CEE-Trust is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and The Joyce Foundation. CEE-Trust is also grateful for the past support of the Carnegie Corporation of New York.”  

After a debacle in Kansas City, CEE-Trust changed its name to Education Cities in 2014. By 2015, CRPE was listing three “policy partners:” Education Cities, Policy Innovators in Education and a new one the National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools (NCSECS). Today, CRPE Director Robin Lake is the board chair of NCSECS.

Education Cities was broken up into two new organizations in 2018. The founder, Ethan Gray, became a founding partner at John Arnold’s and Reed Hastings’ new organization The City Fund. Matt Barnum of Chalkbeat reported, “With big names and $200 million, a new group is forming to push for the ‘portfolio model.”’

It appears CRPE has found another deep pocketed “policy partner.”

Tags: Bill Gates, CEE-Trust, Center for Reinventing Public Education, CRPE, John Arnold, Michael Dell, Paul T. Hill, Robin Lake, The City Fund, US Department of Education