Giving Compass' Take:

• Martin Levine reports that Dylan Matthews argues that billionaires should leave education philanthropy to tackle other issues where they can make more of an impact. 

• How can philanthropists best identify the issues they can make an impact on? 

• Learn about one failed education intervention funded by Gates Foundation. 

The Gates Foundation, the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, and the Walton Family Foundation are just of a few on a long list of mega-funders who have set their sights on improving the nation’s public education system. Sharing the conclusion that America’s schools are failing their students and are providing a sub-par education that dooms too many to lives of poverty, these organizations have poured billions of dollars into various improvement strategies but have shown few positive results for their sizeable investment. Why have they gotten this so wrong? Is this a case of very bright and successful donors and foundation professionals failing to come up with the right set of actions, or a problem they cannot and should not try to solve?

From the perspective of Dylan Matthews, writing for Vox, these philanthropists have failed because the problem is not solvable in the manner in which it is being approached. Matthews thinks it is time for philanthropists turn their attention to problems on which their money is more likely to have a positive impact. He writes,

Improving the American education system, while important, is neither a neglected cause nor a tractable one. It is a system on which hundreds of billions of dollars are spent annually by diffuse governments whose policies are difficult and expensive to change, where matters of importance are intensely contested, and where interest groups tend to fight each other to a standstill.

And it’s a system where, even after investing millions if not billions in research, we still don’t have a lot of confidence as to which interventions are helpful and which are not.

From Matthews’ perspective, it is time for the Gates Foundation and others to move on because there are times when the billionaires are not only not being effective, but are causing additional problems.

Read the full article about leaving education philanthropy by Martin Levine at Nonprofit Quarterly.