A Humble Approach to Place-Based Urban Education Philanthropy
Empowering individuals, associations, and local government entities to lead incremental, sustainable change in their communities
Often, those involved in place-based philanthropy believe that solving an area’s intersecting social challenges requires two values: (1) respecting the people, practices, and organizations of a community and (2) bringing dramatic, systemic change to that community.1 This report argues that those values are generally at odds and that when the two are incompatible, the first must be prioritized.2
In any given location, the “community” is made of a staggering number of relationships, compromises, habits, associations, and traditions. This is especially true in densely populated urban areas, where people from different backgrounds and with different visions of the good life have found ways to live together.
Many latent components of collective life are all but invisible. No one can map all the city’s interpersonal connections or curate all its customs and agreements. Nevertheless, these contribute mightily to the social fabric. They are everywhere. They develop naturally, without planning, and they continuously adapt based on conditions and individuals’ shifting beliefs and priorities. Moreover, since they sprout from the particulars of each location—its founding, geography, faiths, employers, ordinances, and so on—they differ from city to city. These institutions truly are of, by, and for the people of a specific place.
A massive disruption and reordering of the community’s institutions, even when done with the best intentions, can disempower citizens and destabilize the community. It can upend functional institutions.3 Community members can lose control over things important to them, and the organizations and customs they rely on can be wiped away. This is especially true with schools, which reflect so many aspects of a community and are part of the rhythm of so many citizens’ daily lives. Respecting an area’s assets and history typically requires humility, a bent for preservation, and skepticism of sweeping change.
At the same time, communities can undoubtedly be unhealthy in countless ways. An area’s constellation of organizations, interpersonal bonds, and conventions can still produce suboptimal outcomes. Schools can still be unsafe. Graduation rates can still be terribly low. Such results can be the consequence of unfair social and political factors that are outside the community’s control. For example, a long history of discrimination can lead to unjust policies, sparse investment, and institutional distrust. This is what motivates many philanthropists to simultaneously invest in a discrete location and overhaul its institutions.
Given the costs of unwise, disruptive change and the costs of doing nothing meaningful, we must avoid two types of place-based education strategies. The first misguided approach drives toward swift, extensive reform across an array of institutions and policy domains, such as schools, housing, transportation, criminal justice, and public health. This approach is especially ill-advised when the nature of the change is predetermined by foundation staff or shaped by a small number of vocal but unrepresentative community leaders. This can have a veneer of place-based legitimacy, but it will likely elevate the priorities of a select group of individuals while disordering many lives.
The second strategy to avoid simply drives more resources to the existing arrangements and the local leaders who run them. This would funnel dollars into traditional school districts, nonprofits that partner closely with districts, existing school initiatives, prominent support organizations, and so forth. This might appear place-based, but it won’t change local dynamics. If the basic system is left untouched and those currently in power simply have more resources and more ability to make significant decisions (and if those lacking power stay that way), there’s little reason to believe that big things will change. The failure of the $500 million Annenberg Challenge is a good example.4 As one assessment concluded, the grants “relied upon much the same set of relationships and processes that had yielded the status quo in large public school systems.”5 Another argued that it is wrong to believe school improvement can be built on motivated, well-resourced outside experts partnering with the existing system.6
A better approach to place-based education reform strengthens the processes that enable the entire community to engage in responsive, gradual, and meaningful change—change that addresses citizens’ needs, doesn’t upend citizens’ lives, and allows all corners of the community to engage and influence outcomes.
Citizens have three primary conduits to affect civic life: individual liberty, voluntary association, and democratic participation. That is, community members can change local conditions when they can make their own choices, cooperate with like-minded neighbors to achieve a particular end, and influence our democratic government bodies.
Said another way, a respectful, sustainable, and effectual place-based philanthropic strategy won’t aspire to disrupt or dismantle. It won’t prejudge which organizations need to be decommissioned or which laws need to be overturned. Instead, it will invest in strategies that increase individuals’ ability to control their own lives (e.g., exercising school choice), foster the development and activity of voluntary associations (e.g., creating new schools and other mediating bodies), and enable citizens to shape public policy (e.g., having greater capacity to vote, petition, testify, and advocate).
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Andy Smarick is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here.
This piece originally appeared in American Enterprise Institute