The Gates Foundation Just Gave The Reason Foundation Almost A Million Dollars For Education.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded a grant of $900,117 to the Reason Foundation. The award’s stated purpose is “to ensure that State funding adequately and equitably supports the pursuit of improved educational outcomes for low income, Black and Latinx Students.”
The Reason Foundation is a think tank whose stated purpose is to advance “a free society by developing, applying, and promoting libertarian principles, including individual liberty, free markets, and the rule of law.” They use “journalism and public policy research to influence the framework and actions of policymakers, journalists and opinion leaders.” They favor limited government and market-friendly policies.
The Gates Foundation has long pushed policies in education, including the financing of the ultimately-unsuccessful small schools initiative and widespread influence in the creation and implementation of the controversial Common Core State Standards.
According to the Gates database, they have never before given a grant to the Reason Foundation. The two are not an obvious match; in fact, Reason was highly critical of the Common Core initiative that Gates spent millions to promote.
Reason’s approach to education has emphasized choice, particularly school vouchers. Over the years they have cranked out papers to support these market-based policies, though these papers have not met with enthusiasm from education policy analysts, who have used phrases like “carefully selected examples intended to support a particular perspective,” “off the rails,” “not a credible policy document,” “little more than a polemic,” and “reckless and irresponsible.”