Donors' Education Collaborative

• A video featuring Lorie Slutsky on the collective wisdom behind the Donors' Education Collaborative. Watch Video

The Donors' Education Collaborative (DEC) is a joint grantmaking effort that supports policy reforms aimed at making the New York City public school system more equitable and responsive to the needs of all children.

Since its inception, its members have shared a belief that an informed, organized, and empowered constituency of parents, educators, businesses, and community leaders is required to advocate for and sustain systemic reform that will spur increases in student achievement.

The Urban Youth Collaborative held a rally to highlight its agenda for schools, which includes making schools safer, and helping kids transition from high school to college.

DEC has invested over $14 million in projects that combine constituency building, policy research and development, advocacy, media campaigns, negotiation, and organizing to achieve reform.  It has supported many of these projects for a decade or more.

In the face of the current economic downtown, our grantees are working to ensure that education funds are not cut and are directed at those students most in need.  They continue to work with policymakers to target significant resources toward those students and enable community participation in deciding how to allocate dollars and judge the effectiveness of programs. 

DEC funding has also substantially contributed to the changed landscape for school reform in New York.  A recent analysis of 2007 media coverage of City education news found that that advocates play a more significant role in education debates than in the past.  Organizations not previously involved in educational reform, such as the New York Immigration Coalition, the Alliance for Quality Education, and many community development and housing groups, have become influential education advocates.

Moreover, networks of community-based groups have emerged as legitimate voices in policy reform, including three that DEC funding helped launch and sustain: the Community Collaborative to Improve Bronx Schools, the Urban Youth Collaborative, and the Brooklyn Education Collaborative.

Accomplishments

• In 2007 the State enacted a $7 billion multi-year increase in operating aid to schools across the state and, in 2008, in the face of increasing economic turmoil, maintained its commitment.
• A new fair and simple "foundation funding formula" was adopted by the New York State legislature, which, when fully implemented, will distribute school aid based on student need rather than politics. 
• In 2006, State financing was allocated for an $11 billion capital plan that will enable the NYC DoE to build new schools and modernize existing facilities.
• Using a concept developed by the Urban Youth Collaborative, two Student Success Centers were established in Brooklyn high schools; two more will be opened in 2009.
• The City Department of Education (DoE) has adopted policies on translation and interpretation to help immigrant parents to be more involved in their children's education. 
• The Lead Teacher Program, created by a coalition of DEC-supported parent groups in the Bronx, has been expanded by the DoE to more than 100 schools across the City.  Evaluation in the original schools showed that the program helped retain teachers and improve teacher quality in poor neighborhoods with high teacher turn-over. 
• The City DoE has committed that by 2010 every middle school will be equipped with at least one science laboratory.
• The City DoE has committed at least $30 million for comprehensive middle school reform and created a committee, composed in part of representatives of parent groups, to determine how to allocate the funds.

Partners

• Atlantic Philanthropies
• Robert Sterling Clark Foundation
• Booth Ferris Foundation
• Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation
• The Ford Foundation
• Sidney E. Frank Foundation
• Bernard F. and Alva B. Gimbel Foundation
• Charles Evans Hughes Memorial Foundation
• The New York Community Trust
• The Schott Foundation for Public Education
• Trinity Wall Street

Past and Current Grantees

• Advocates for Children
• Alliance for Quality Education
• Campaign for Fiscal Equity
• NYC Coalition for Educational Justice
• Community Involvement Project of Annenberg Institute for School Reform
• Governance Project
• The New School, Center for New York City Affairs
• NY Immigration Coalition/AFC
• National Economic and Social Rights Initiative
• Urban Youth Collaborative
• NYU-Metro Center

For more information about the Donors' Education Collaborative, please contact Trust program officer, Shawn Morehead at (212) 686-0010 x557