By Ted Lord
Senior Partner
The Giving Practice

“Better together” – the belief at the core of Philanthropy Northwest’s mission – got strong validation last week when seven school districts in South King County (Washington state) and South Seattle won a $40 million Race to the Top grant for their innovative work together as The Road Map District Consortium. Lynne Varner of The Seattle Times captured the excitement around this three-year old collective action:

“Keep an eye on south King County schools. They raced successfully to the top…This is exciting for its potential to change the academic trajectories of south King County schools. Credit district superintendents and teachers union leaders for working together. Credit local mayors and even the King County Housing Authority for understanding the responsibility for educating children stretches beyond the schoolhouse. Equally as impressive is Mary Jean Ryan, a longtime education advocate and executive director for the Community Center for Education Results. Her vision of a regional partnership is a smart template that ought to be picked up in other places.”

Philanthropy Northwest supports The Road Map Project by hosting quarterly luncheon meetings of The Road Map Aligned Funders (the next meeting is Thursday, January 24, 2013). The Giving Practice, Philanthropy Northwest’s consulting service, provides consultant support to this group dedicated to developing common indicators and investments, as well cross-cutting activities such as data, advocacy, and parent engagement. Email me if you’d like more information or are interested in attending The Road Map Aligned Funders meetings.

Click here to read the full press release announcing the $40 million award and the anticipated impact that the funds will generate. To learn more about the progress made by the Road Map Project over the last year, read their recently released 2012 Results Report.

If you’re interested in harnessing the power of collaboration in your field, contact The Giving Practice for help. Philanthropy Northwest members are eligible for one free hour of consulting service each year and are provided with member discounts for further consulting services.

By Dionna Anderson
Program Assistant
Philanthropy Northwest

and

Erin Okuno
Program Officer
Foundation for Early Learning

With President Obama announcing last week that Washington had been selected to win the Race to the Top – Early Learning Challenge Fund grant, Philanthropy Northwest members working in early learning were pleased with the news.  Washington State, along with California, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, and Rhode Island will share $500 million in grants that will go to support children from birth to age 5 become ready for Kindergarten.

“This is a great accomplishment for Washington and reflects years of collaborative work by many early learning partners.  The award will allow us to build on the statewide early learning plan that was developed in 2010 under the leadership of the Washington State Department of Early Learning, Thrive by Five Washington and the Office of the State Superintendent of Public Instruction and supported by a cast of hundreds,” said Nina Auerbach, president and CEO for Thrive by Five Washington. 

Erin Okuno, program officer for the Foundation for Early Childhood Learning also talks about the collaboration in applying for this grant. “Many organizations contributed by writing letters of support and outreach. There was also support from several Early Childhood Learning advocates who worked hard to prime the state to get this funding and they deserve a lot of credit too.”

The Race to the Top – Early Learning Challenge is a federal grant competition run by the United States Department of Education and United States Department of Health and Human Services. It was designed to help states build infrastructure around early learning including data collection and aligning services. Thirty-five states, plus Washington DC and Puerto Rico competed for grants.

Washington State will receive $60 million to support Early Childhood Learning. Erin talks about how the grant will assist children in Washington State. “Children in Washington will definitely benefit from the infusion of $60 million. For starters any time positive attention is given to early learning it helps all children. A child born today doesn’t have three, five, ten years for adults to figure out what is best—they don’t stop growing or learning. The grant money will help to align systems and get people talking to each other.” The United States Department for Educations has an Early Learning Challenge chart which illustrates the priorities for the grant. 

Two programs that will benefit from the Early Learning Challenge grant are Washington’s Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS) and Washington Kindergarten Inventory of Developing Skills or WaKIDS. “It will be exciting to see implementation of QRIS and WaKIDS. QRIS will give parents and caregivers needed information on the quality of the child care they are placing their child into and gives teachers and child care directors the recognition they deserve and ways to improve. WaKIDS will help teachers, parents, and most importantly have smoother transitions to Kindergarten. It will also give us much needed data on the readiness of children as they enter kindergarten. Other programs such as Reach Out and Read and the Washington State Child Care Resource & Referral Network  may also see a boost,” says Erin. 

Nina shares her thoughts on what this grant means for Washington State, “Our plan for Race to the Top will help us to catapult the development and implementation of our state’s QRIS, which is designed to improve child care quality so that more children will enter school prepared to succeed.  It will also help us to reach statewide implementation of WaKids, our state’s kindergarten assessment process.  And it will provide funds for the widespread dissemination of our state’s new Early Learning Guidelines.  All of these things will help us provide a stronger, more coordinated early learning system for our state’s most vulnerable children and families.” WaKIDS is funded with state, federal and private funding. Thrive by Five is one of its private funders along with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. 

Although the Early Learning Challenge grant will do a lot for children in the state of Washington, Erin is quick to remind funders that there is still more to do. “As funders our job isn’t done. A one-time infusion of cash doesn’t solve all of the problems. We need to continue to take an interest in early learning. It was through private funding that some of the infrastructure such as WaKIDS and home visiting were ready to go.”

By Mindie Reule
Program Manager, Public Policy
Philanthropy Northwest

On June 1, Governor Chris Gregoire officially announced that Washington state submitted its application for the U.S. Department of Education’s Race to the Top competition. Philanthropy Northwest would like to take this opportunity to recognize the philanthropy community’s contributions to this effort. A group of Washington funders—including corporate giving programs, family foundations and a community foundation—came together to make Washington’s Race to the Top application a reality.

There was no requirement that the state seek support from private funders, but Bezos Family Foundation, the Boeing Company, JP Morgan Chase, the Laird Norton Company, Microsoft Corporation, Nesholm Family Foundation, Raikes Family Foundation, and the Seattle Foundation saw Race to the Top as an opportunity for education leaders in Washington to join forces to augment the education reform process. These funders pooled their resources to support Washington’s Race to the Top application efforts by making a grant to the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI). This grant allowed OSPI to a hire professional consultant to help the cash-strapped state government agency complete the application.

This effort is a perfect example of the role foundations can play in education reform. No foundation in the world has enough resources to fund the cost of public education, but foundations can fund smaller projects—like this grant to OSPI—that will potentially leverage more federal dollars for education.

The collaboration of government agencies, nonprofit organizations, school districts, labor unions and funders that went into putting this application together was remarkable and the process itself was good for Washington. Even if Washington doesn’t get funding, this group has a detailed plan to continue to address education reform in Washington and going through this process has only made those efforts stronger. We hope that funders across the region will continue to push the envelope for continued improvements in our public education system.

You can view the full application that was submitted to the Department of Education here.