Philanthropy magazine recently asked what current philanthropic investments would people still be talking about a century from now?
Chester E. Finn Jr. of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute cited Children’s Scholarship Fund (along with KIPP and Common Core Standards) as an education reform effort that would still be making news in a hundred years!
“Don Fisher’s investment in KIPP; John Walton and Ted Forstmann’s generous seeding of the Children’s Scholarship Fund; and the Gates Foundation’s support for development of “common core” academic standards for American schools. The first proved both that schools can succeed dramatically with disadvantaged students–and that such schools can be replicated. The second showed the appetite for, and success of, vouchers in meeting the educational needs of low-income youngsters. And the third is gradually moving the U.S. into the 21st century by establishing shared–and ambitious–academic expectations for schools across the land.”