No longer just an interest, there is now a demand for accountability and a focus on tangible, measurable results that is taking root in the private philanthropic market place. Grantmakers for Education recently published their first ever benchmarking report on education philanthropy in the US. One of the key finding in the report indicates that private funders have adopted a much more focused approach and have become much clearer about the outcomes they aim to accomplish and the tangible results that they desire to see. ...

It’s not a secret that companies want to enter emerging markets and cater to the new and exploding middle class in countries such as India and China. It’s also nothing new to hear about the development of sub-market products to increase access to new technology and ideas. Case in point, the $100 laptop per child (it’s now actually $200). Business and innovation target markets from the top-down and the bottom-up. As a result, the line between business and social value is becoming hazier. ...

Campbell has introduced a new strategy to advance its goal of supporting American agriculture.  They have set a goal of growing over 1 billion tomatoes across the country.  How are they going to do that?  By sending seeds to people who want them. ...

A recent New York Times article highlights an increasingly popular way of reporting academic performance, standards-based report cards.  Rather than the congenital A, B, C, D, and F grades (given by subject in the aggregate), students are assessed on their performance on specific skills against appropriate grade-level expectations. ...

Education.  Math and science.  K-12.  All are common targets of corporate philanthropy.  So, in a world where corporations want to differentiate themselves through social impact, why do so many resort to the same traditional strategies? National Instruments (NI) is bucking the trend.  They have teamed up to deliver the Lego League World Festival, a team competition of student-designed Lego robots.  Each team has an NI mentor (boosting employee engagement) and uses NI products and software (building awareness among future decision-makers). ...

This morning the HBS Club of Chicago hosted Julia Stasch, VP of the MacArthur Foundation, for a speech on the topic of "Philanthropy 2009: Charity or Change?"  Stasch posed the question:  Are foundations better suited to fund direct service ("charity") or systemic policy ("change")? Stasch argued that despite MacArthur's $260M annual giving, the Foundation will never be able to solve the world's problems by responding to individual needs.  Rather, she suggested that broader impact would occur through systemic change "spilling over" into policy. ...

"We're going to reward those states and those districts that are willing to challenge the status quo and get dramatically better," Education Secratary Arne Duncan said, March 16 at the White House. "Those who keep doing the same old thing, however, won't be eligible for the money," he added. The conversation around improvement has become central to access to stimulus money for schools. The challenge remains: how will we measure this success? How will we measure the impact of this money on Education in the U.S.? Duncan has specifically pointed States to these areas of improvement: ...

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A recent article on EdWeek.org points out that "The recession tearing into the U.S. economy is not only straining the public coffers that support K-12 schooling, it’s also taking a toll on education philanthropy."  On balance, this is clearly not good news.  However, there may be a silver lining in these storming clouds. ...

Six states - Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Utah Arizona, Delaware, and New Mexico – have committed to the “Tough Choices or Tough Times” education reform agenda created by the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce.  The Commission argues that today’s education system in the US fails to prepare workers for global competition; US graduates are ‘mediocre’ against international competition in the labor market. ...

There is an enormous opportunity ahead for ED, states, districts, schools, principals, teachers and, of course, students, to rewrite the rules of education in the US. Beyond the programs and innovations, the most meaningful advancement that can materially change the landscape of education in the US is longitudinal data systems that can follow individual students throughout their formal education. We are flying blind in the education reform world and without data (read truth and transparency) we will only have limited impact for few students rather than radical improvement for all students. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123723145666945761.html ...

'On track' measures academic performance in the first year of high school and guages whether a student is making sufficient progress to be on track to graduate within four years.  This measure, defined by the Consortium on Chicago School Research, is a better predictor of high school graduation than eighth grade test scores or student background characteristics.  It has been implemented by the Chicago Public Schools, and may prove useful to other school districts and systems. ...