This past spring Milken was named the 2017 James Bryant Conant Award winner by the Education Commission of the States for exceptional individual contributions to American education. In advance of the award presentation, The Line sat down with him to talk about his approach to philanthropy over more than three and one-half decades.

Americans gave nearly $400 billion to charity in 2016 and 15 percent of those dollars – about $59.77 billion – were earmarked for education, according to Charity Navigator. Most donations come from large individual contributions like Warren Buffet’s gift of $3.17 billion in Berkshire Hathaway stock to the Gates Foundation last month or Marc Zuckerberg’s $100 million contribution to Newark Public Schools a few years back.

Large donors like these commit big dollars with the intent of bringing about big change. They are increasingly strategic, working to shape education policy and research. United in their passion to make a difference, they still have different schools of thought on how to do that. At the moment, for example, Silicon Valley is espousing technology-driven “personalized-learning” while others are looking at college readiness and completion.

For his part, Milken’s approach is grounded by his business experience and the idea that human capital – the skills and knowledge and experience of people – is the most important consideration in any enterprise. Thus, much of his work centers on educator development and advocating for raising the profile of the education profession.

“We know that in education, the single most important in-school factor driving student learning is the quality of the educator,” Milken says.

“The quality of the education is in direct proportion to the quality of the educators. That notion has defined my life’s work.”

In truth, Milken’s organizations have supported all kinds of efforts from content development to charter schools but nurturing high-quality teachers and principals is at the core of nearly everything he does. Among the education community, Milken is best-known for creation of the TAP System for Teacher and Student Advancement. He also instituted the Milken Educator Award that has given more than $68 million in financial prizes plus $70 million in professional growth opportunities to 2,700 teachers across the country.

Despite record donations to education last year and the rise of “Gilded Givers” – billionaires like Milken – he doesn’t yet see philanthropy dominating the education space given that actual education spending dwarfs philanthropic contributions. But, he wonders if that might change with an influx of boomer philanthropic dollars over the next two decades.

Milken sees this as an opportunity but getting back to his belief in the value of human capital, questions if the people managing those dollars will be equipped to do so. Will they make the right decisions about how to use that wealth? Milken knows well about the challenges of making calls about what and whom to support. He also seems to get the importance of achieving broad-based support rather than a top-down approach that, no matter how big the dollars, can fail miserably when it comes to addressing the complexity of education issues.

A More Strategic Approach to Education Philanthropy

with Vicki Phillips

Our conversation with Lowell Milken prompted The Line to tap our in-house expertise for added perspective on the current education philanthropy landscape. We turned to Editorial Advisory Board Member Vicki Phillips, Ed.D., who for more than eight years was a senior executive and member of the foundation leadership team with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. At Gates, Phillips directed the College Ready program.

With so many philanthropists making headlines with outsized gifts to education, we asked Phillips about the power of big donors in agenda-setting and, in particular, movement away from supporting traditional public schools. Phillips suggested that while new and innovative models and programs receive a lot of public attention, the reality is that many philanthropies understand the need for improvement within public schools that serve the majority of the nation’s approximately 55 million K-12 students.

Phillips cautioned against interpreting investment in innovation as a departure from public school support. “There’s a number of new and emerging models that individuals and organizations are investing in but these commitments aren’t meant to be at the exclusion of the traditional district, school or state,” she said.

Instead, Phillips surmised it’s likely that more and better collaboration between donors and the education community over the last ten years is yielding an increasingly strategic approach that has the ability to impact the current system and, at the same time, “push the edges of innovation.” That seems like a positive evolution in education philanthropy. Phillips agreed and credited the evolution in thinking and behavior by both parties.

Over time, philanthropists have become smarter and more intentional about their investments and districts, schools and educators have learned a lot about how to work with philanthropy to further strategic ends, she said. Where education leaders once embraced philanthropic dollars as a gift, they now are more cognizant of their own role in using monies strategically. Perhaps they are aware of the opportunity to make a case for future investment by their own district or through other funding sources. Good philanthropic organizations, Phillips noted, also help set expectations and reinforce those. At Gates, for example, partners have sustainability plans that challenge them to think about how they move forward without the backing of the foundation.

Phillips believes an overall more strategic approach adopted by education philanthropy is creating real results in areas like personalized learning, open education resources and more tech-enabled tools. She is also hopeful that there will be ongoing improvement. “I think you’ll continue to see big, long-term bets as well as shorter bursts of innovation working in tandem to make change,” Phillips said. “Both are important and necessary.”