Our Values
Addressing economic, social and political inequality requires measures that account for the critical role of education in society. Our work supports education reform that improves the life chances of young people from marginalized groups by expanding access, improving quality and boosting student outcomes.
Our Work
Education is increasingly essential for individual well-being and national prosperity. Our work seeks to provide young people with the education necessary to succeed in the workforce and contribute as citizens. We do this by supporting a range of efforts to ensure that all students have access to high-quality schooling. MORE
Worldwide, we fund initiatives seeking to transform the quality of secondary schools and to help students from poor or marginalized communities gain access to quality higher education. In the United States, our work in secondary education focuses on fair and adequate distribution of resources, high-quality teaching and expanded schooling opportunities. Our work in U.S. higher education supports greater access and affordability, as well as instructional innovations that increase the likelihood that students will earn degrees.
Another facet of our work is building knowledge to inform public policy on issues of social justice and to support the next generation of researchers and public intellectuals whose scholarship will contribute to this knowledge base.
We support efforts to improve access to high-quality education because democracies cannot thrive without strong public schools and higher education institutions that provide meaningful opportunities for all.
Our Focus
Transforming secondary education
In today's global economy, young people who fail to get high-quality secondary education face increasingly dim prospects. Millions of students from marginalized groups are essentially barred from economic, social and political opportunity because their schools do not adequately serve them. Our work seeks to dispel two myths: that high-quality education is a scarce commodity and that inequalities among our schools are inevitable and intractable. We work with national, state and local partners to supplant these myths with durable evidence and powerful examples of equitable, high-quality schooling for all students. We also support parents, community groups, educators and others seeking to use evidence and examples to achieve policies and practices that provide fair and adequate school funding; recruit, prepare and retain high-quality teachers; expand classroom time and learning opportunities in the school day and academic year; and create meaningful accountability.
Jeannie Oakes, Director
Higher education access and success
Despite some progress worldwide over the past few decades in making higher education more accessible, disparities persist in students' access to and graduation from two- and four-year colleges and universities. These disparities limit the workforce opportunities, democratic participation and life chances of students from poor, marginalized backgrounds. Our work seeks to generate policy and institutional reforms that improve standards of teaching and learning and remove the barriers to successful participation in higher education in the United States, the Andean Region and Southern Cone, Brazil, China, Egypt and Southern Africa. In the United States, it will focus on establishing stronger links between two- and four-year colleges; creating robust tuition and financial aid policies geared to the needs of disadvantaged and working students; and scaling up effective remedial and developmental education programs. Similarly, our work in other parts of the world supports reforms that make higher education institutions more accessible to students from excluded backgrounds and that provide financial and academic support.
Jeannie Oakes, Director
Building knowledge for social justice
The current economic crisis and political transition in the United States have kindled in the nation an opportunity to rebuild a social contract around fairness and opportunity, collective responsibility and the common good. This will not happen, however, without compelling ideas, evidence and arguments that inspire and inform concrete steps toward a society where all have fair and decent work, where difference doesn't mean exclusion and disadvantage, and where all participate in democratic civic life. Toward that end, we support think tanks, public intellectuals, scholars and media to create and communicate knowledge for social change. We also support the development of the next generation of public intellectuals and leaders whose work can inform and sustain a social contract based on justice.
Jeannie Oakes, Director