The Leonore Annenberg
School Fund for Children
Purpose: This Fund provides educational resources to United States elementary schools in which at least nine out of ten children are poor. The resources must be of immediate and direct value to, and use by, the children. Beyond that, educational resources are broadly understood to be resources for the development of the whole child: perhaps a school needs new books and writing journals, math manipulatives, or new playground equipment. Maybe a school needs to open a before-and-after-school safe haven program, or requires specialists to work directly with certain students, or needs additional health services such as vision and hearing screening with follow-up. Perhaps teachers wish to start a new, age-appropriate civics program, or enhance an existing program in the arts.
While important, this Fund does not support resources of direct value to faculty and staff, such as faculty and/or staff professional development.
Rationale: Schools with extremely high concentrations of poor children are all of a kind and we know them well. A subset was described in horrific detail by Jonathan Kozol in his book, Savage Inequalities.
In one sense these elementary schools and their children are the least important institutions and individuals in the United States. Deep in the cores of our largest cities or far away in our rural expanse, if the schools are in ruin few will know about it. If the young children who attend these schools are poorly educated, they have no voice to say so. If they do not succeed in life that leaves room for the millions of more fortunate children we do insist must succeed. It is easy to ignore these schools, to keep our focus on what we commonly understand to be our schools: our own local schools educating our children.
But there are several other senses in which these schools and these children are our most important. First, what does it say about us that we allow these schools and children to exist as they do? At a very deep level, improving these schools and the learning lives of these children will have a greater impact on us, as individuals and as a nation, than anything else we can do. The well-being of these children is the key to our own.
Second, there is a mountain of evidence that by almost any measure, these schools have the worst records of performance. One recent testimony to this fact appeared in the Dayton, Ohio, Daily News, showing that if you line up the school districts in the Dayton area by median family income and test scores, the school districts with the lowest median family incomes performed, by and large, the least well on the Ohio tests.
Finally, while these elementary schools have no voice, the actions of some of their children, once grown, speak volumes. As Theodore Roosevelt said to Congress in 1909:
“Each of [our] children represents either a potential addition to the productive capacity and the enlightened citizenship of the Nation or, if allowed to suffer from neglect, a potential addition to the destructive forces of the community.”
In one of these schools, in one recent year, there were 68 violent incidents, including 16 assaults on students and 16 assaults on teachers and administrators. This is a K-4 school.
So there are strong moral, educational and societal grounds for thinking of our schools with the highest concentrations of poor children, as our most important. Indeed, one would be hard pressed to find any other set of institutions that, were we to improve them, would affect our individual and national well-being so profoundly.
We have however learned, through bitter experience, that the complete improvement of even one of these schools may well be beyond our grasp. But through this Fund Leonore Annenberg strives to perform good educational deeds in many of these schools, deeds that shine so brightly that the children build upon them positively even into their adult lives. Maybe as a result of one such deed the children in one school become excited about reading for the rest of their lives, or get and stay healthy, or stay in school and out of trouble, or become great writers and artists. Any one of these outcomes would change whole lives for the better.
Working with our most important schools to provide for our most important children in this way is the mission, the reason and the hope for the Leonore Annenberg School Fund for Children.
How the Fund Operates: The Fund currently works in New York, Philadelphia, Houston, in high-poverty rural areas, and other parts of the country.
Using Federal and state data, staff at the intermediary organization identifies a pool of elementary schools with at least 90% of their children receiving free or reduced-price lunches through the Federal School Lunch Program. The nomination process includes the following considerations: school location and stability, total student population, racial/ethnic composition, enrollment history and average daily attendance, student suspensions, the number of serious incidents, teacher experience and expertise, performance level distributions and any available narrative information about the school, its students and its neighborhood.
Intermediary organizations conduct school visits. Each visit includes meetings with the school principal, chief financial officer and at least two key teachers. Before or after the visit these school personnel will fill out a School Fund application form and submit it through the intermediary organization to the Annenberg Foundation.
Annenberg Foundation staff receives the application forms and adds them to each school’s dossier. Based on the complete dossier, Annenberg Foundation staff presents up to 10 schools to the Leonore Annenberg Scholarship and School Funds Council for final approval. Intermediary organizations will monitor schools receiving awards to ensure that funds are used appropriately and for educational resources of direct value to the children.
Council: The Leonore Annenberg School Fund for Children is one of three Funds known collectively as The Leonore Annenberg Scholarship and School Funds. The Funds are governed by a Council whose members are: Vartan Gregorian, President, The Carnegie Corporation of New York; Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Walter and Leonore Annenberg Director, The Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania; Michael Delli Carpini, Dean, The Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania; Gail Levin, Executive Director, The Annenberg Foundation; and Scott Roberts, Director, Annenberg Media.
Location: The Leonore Annenberg School Fund for Children is administered by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. The Fund is currently housed at the Annenberg Foundation.