• School to career academies as a means of reforming high schools.
• School/University partnerships that provide a seamless continuum of professional development for pre-service and in-service teachers.
• Technology that transforms classroom teaching and learning.
• Leadership support for principals, districts, and the organizations that teach and train them.
• Equity for all children, to close the achievement gap by building knowledge about different teaching strategies and curriculum for students with diverse needs.
• National Board for Professional Teaching Standards to integrate the certification process for teachers with strategies for whole school change, including collaboration among teacher teams and sharing new knowledge throughout school faculties.
  

To date, these six efforts have marshaled over $6 million in funding from eleven different corporations and foundations. In addition, they afford grantmakers and corporate executives a chance to participate in the actual work of planning and implementing initiatives in schools, in the presence of students, rather than in laboratory environments.

"BASRC is a benchmarking mechanism for funders," said Wolf of the BankAmerica Foundation. "It really sets a standard, and people are held accountable to that standard." Indeed, BASRC may have cemented its reputation for high standards and meaningful accountability when in January 1999 it withdrew funding from one of its Leadership schools for failing to show the required evidence of progress.

BASRC's focus on genuinely improved student outcomes as the litmus test of a reform effort's effectiveness has had other effects, too. One program officer said that schools and other organizations that have worked with the Collaborative are beginning to provide more evidence of real progress at report time, rather than "just pulling together the information they think a funder wants to see." Another indicated his foundation planned to step up the level of scrutiny given proposals before they are funded. The Marin Community Foundation's Don Jen said that his trustees increasingly want to see "hard evidence of progress" before they continue funding a school reform project.

An interactive group of Bay Area funders of K-12 educational organizations, the FLC investigates the complex realities public schools face daily along with groundbreaking work in school reform. Gathering several times a year, the FLC's membership includes representatives of corporate, community, and private foundations. Although BASRC staff support the learning agenda from behind the scenes, the FLC is very much a participant-directed organization, with a Steering Committee made up of representatives from a variety of funding organizations. Each year, the Steering Committee lays out a plan for year-long learning. Members have developed a shared interest in such issues as shifts in state policy, technology in the classroom, leadership at the school site, and using data for accountability purposes.

Participating foundation officers--approximately twenty--view the FLC as a unique opportunity for ongoing learning in the midst of busy schedules. Most of the interviewees for this study did not profess a deep knowledge of the field, either because their organizations have only recently begun to support education or because they themselves do not have a related professional background. Nor do they commonly have access to professional opportunities for the kind of in-depth learning provided by the FLC, such as research on best practices. The FLC has helped filled this void. As one funder remarked, the FLC made her realize how much more she needed to know about what was going on in education.

Although the format of the majority of FLC events includes a formal program, such as a speaker on a particular topic, those interviewed cited networking among fellow grantmakers as one of the most beneficial aspects of the community. Respondents concurred that opportunities to exchange information with peers during the normal work week are limited. The chance for "cross-talk" provided by the FLC is all the more valuable because the FLC includes a broader base of grantmakers than other professional groups in the region. Corporate grantmakers value interaction with smaller family-supported foundations so they can learn about work in which they are typically not involved. Similarly, the FLC's focus on regional issues is of particular importance to community foundations.

BASRC has been "instrumental," explained one foundation officer, "in helping funders think differently about collaboration" and providing a "wake-up call" to make them realize that together they could do much bigger things than they could alone. "There were a lot of us out there who had been funding education for a long time, chipping away at education reform and funding our little projects," she said. "The Annenberg Challenge was a real 'stake in the ground' to encourage funder collaboration because of the national attention it drew and the signal it sent to other funders."

BASRC strongly encourages grantmakers to work together on creating and sustaining projects, and many acknowledged its role as a catalyst in the creation of new partnerships. The Noyce Foundation, for example, credits conversations among Funders Learning Community participants for its ongoing liaison with two other major foundations in addressing "what needs to be done" in their geographical area. The Noyce trustee cited joint work on projects such as the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards as "a pretty direct result of the continuing contacts we've had around the BASRC work." She also said that BASRC's School/University Partnership, which Noyce funded, was a way to "get the attention of the schools of education." Before creating this initiative, Bay Area funders had been actively seeking a way to initiate change in teacher preparation programs so that school reform became part of the curriculum.

This collaboration among funders has promoted, as hoped, a more regional approach to reform. In some instances, funders have initiated new undertakings, jointly developed and focused on mutually perceived areas of need in a particular part of the Bay Area. For example, the Sobrato Family Foundation and the Schwab Family Foundation are working with the Peninsula Community Foundation on a program to build the capacity of non-profit organizations in the Silicon Valley. Others hope to maximize their effect through involvement in regional consortia such as BaySCAN, a regional school-to-career initiative composed of Bay Area education and business leaders. And the regional collaboration required for BASRC's R & D initiatives is building momentum toward the Collaborative's goal of transforming the Bay Area into a region with common goals for its public schools.

Funders' encouragement of more collaboration among their grant recipients also has fostered a greater awareness of the need to act regionally. For example, the Noyce Foundation's early literacy steering committee comprises the curriculum directors of several area districts. At a conference in November 1998, AT & T assembled its California-based educational grantees to share expertise and explore potential partnerships among themselves.