The $500 million, five-year Walter H. Annenberg Challenge program to improve 18 urban public school systems around the nation was well-intended, but ultimately made little difference, according to an independent review of the project by theThomas B. Fordham Foundation.

The findings are compiled in the recently-released "Can Philanthropy Fix Our Schools? Appraising Walter Annenberg's $500 Million Gift to Public Education," report, which examines the Annenberg program's efforts in Chicago, New York and Philadelphia.

(The Annenberg Challenge Grant was launched at a White House ceremony in 1993 by former Ambassador Annenberg, who gave $500 million through his foundation to establish a public-private partnership. The five-year challenge required a local match of funds to "energize, support and replicate" successful school reform programs throughout the country. The grant program raised more than $335 million in private funds and $215 million in public money from local, state and federal sources, the Annenberg Foundation has reported.)

"Maybe there's a place in America where Annenberg’s gift made a big difference, but in the giant urban school systems where most of the money went, the system swallowed, said ‘thank you,’ and went on pretty much as before,” Fordham Foundation President Chester E. Finn, Jr., stated.

The Annenberg Challenge basically wasted "hundreds of millions on unfulfilled hopes and good-but-naive intentions," Finn went on to say, explaining that the program's well-intended efforts started with the assumption that outside groups could persuade large school systems to change.

"An important reality seems to have eluded the Challenge's designers. Large school systems don't want to change," he stated. "They're like great big rubber bands that struggle to retain their familiar shape even when tugged. There has to be a reason for an institution like this to change, usually because it is in deep trouble if it doesn't, not because someone says please."

In an interview with Washington Post columnist Kent Allen, former Annenberg Challenge executive Vartan Gregorian defended the effort, saying "if we succeed in 25 percent of the cases, it's a miracle. After all, the public education system is a $300 billion enterprise."

Full text of the article is currently found at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33357-2000Apr17.html