Mathematics has long been a challenge for U.S. students — they have made only modest gains in the subject during the past — and have yet to recover from the pandemic. Scores have remained largely flat, and where gains have occurred, it’s been predominantly for high achievers.

Recent studies show math competency is critical for adult success: the subject has an even greater impact on earnings than reading. and across the country — alongside philanthropic heavy hitters —&�Բ�����;������ to boost student performance in the subject. 

“In terms of a change on the K-12 level, I think it’s fair to say that the changes we should consider are not just about more math — we know U.S. adults believe it to be important and say it should be prioritized — they’re also about more impactful math that is relevant to students’ needs,” said Andrea Malek Ash, senior research consultant at Gallup. 

Gallup respondents listed financial math skills, data science, software and programming as the most desired out of a list of 30 math topics. The organization surveyed two groups in December 2024: 5,136 U.S. adults ages 18 and older — including 808 parents of children enrolled in K-12 — and 2,831 managers.

It found nearly all U.S. adults surveyed see math as important in their lives: 55% said such skills are very important in their work life while 40% said they are somewhat important. 

Sixty-three percent said math skills are very important in their personal life while 33% called them somewhat important. 

Financial math, including personal finance, budgeting and accounting, ranked among the most desired skills regardless of gender, race and ethnicity or educational background.

Among the 16% of Americans who describe high school math as “not at all” important or “not too important”, 81% say they held this view because high school math is more advanced than what is needed for the real world, among other reasons.

The survey found, too, that older Americans are more likely to value math than younger ones: 75% of those 65 and older said it is very important for most adults in their personal life, compared with 37% of those ages 18 to 24, Gallup found. The same held true for work life.

Asked to compare math with other topics in school, 6 in 10 U.S. adults said it should either have a “higher priority” or have “the very highest priority” in learning. 

Gallup, with support from the Gates Foundation, reports that managers noted a lack of skills in this area among their employees: 85% said they wish their direct reports had more math skills in at least one area, citing financial math as their top concern. 

Nearly 6 in 10 managers say that in the next five years it’s very or somewhat likely that they will need to hire more people with data science skills. 

The public seems to feel the same: speaking of the workforce generally vs. their own lives, 61% of respondents said math skills are “very important” in the workforce. While reading, language and technology skills ranked higher — at least 68% found each to be very important — math outranked leadership skills. 

Not surprisingly, Americans report having “complex emotions toward math,” according to Gallup: 60% said it makes them feel challenged, while 24% said they were confused by the subject. Just 1 in 5 said they were excited by math. 

The survey’s results reflect this tension, said Justin Lall, principal for global analytics at Gallup. 

“Americans can overwhelmingly feel that math is challenging, but demand more of it,” Lall said. “It bucks the narrative that we’ve had that math is not for everyone.”

Parents’ anxiety about their own math skills plays a profound role in their child’s experience. Gallup found this is acted out in practical terms at the kitchen table: Parents with positive feelings toward math are nearly twice as likely as those with negative feelings to express confidence in their ability to help their children with math homework. 

Survey responses varied based on gender, race and educational attainment: 54% of men and 42% of women have exclusively positive feelings toward math while 46% of Black respondents and half of white adults said they have only positive feelings toward the subject. 

Just 37% of Hispanics said the same as did 53% of those with a bachelor’s degree and 44% of those without a college diploma.

The Gates Foundation sponsored the Math Matters Study The Value of Math in Work and Life and provides financial support to The 74.

In the final episode of the season, Michael and Diane welcome Stacey Childress, Senior Education Advisor at McKinsey & Co., back to the show to discuss the world of education philanthropy. Stacey draws from her previous experience at New Schools Venture Fund and the Gates Foundation to analyze troubling trends in the sector. The three discuss what funders and operators can do to grow philanthropic investment in education and better deploy those funds. 

Listen to the episode below. A full transcript follows.

Diane Tavenner: Hey, Michael.

Michael Horn: Hey, Diane. It’s good to see you.

Diane Tavenner: It’s good to see you as well. I think the unofficial start of summer has happened. I know that because I had a big graduation last week. My son graduated from college, which is quite surreal. It’s also the last episode of the season, which I can hardly believe.

Michael Horn: First, congrats to you and to Rhett on the graduation. It’s very exciting news. I can’t believe it’s the end of the season. We’ve had the chance to interview many interesting people, and we’ve particularly enjoyed having one guest back on the show.

Diane Tavenner: That’s true. I’m excited to reintroduce Stacey Childress. Regular listeners will be familiar with her. We originally teamed up for a two-part series on higher education and had so much fun that we decided to do it again for K-12 education. 

Hopefully, folks are enjoying those episodes. During those conversations, we had some off-the-record dialogue about a big topic in education right now, and we decided it was an important conversation to have. So, welcome back, Stacey. We’re thrilled to have you here. We’ve covered your credentials before, but today you’re really in the expert seat, having been involved in multiple aspects of philanthropy, which is the direction we’re going.

Michael Horn: Hi, Stacey. Thank you for joining us again.

Stacey Childress: I am happy to be here. There are two things I’m reflecting on now that this is my fifth episode in a row.

Diane Tavenner: Yes

Stacey Childress: One, never say anything to you guys in an offhand way because it might become a podcast episode. Oh, we ought to do philanthropy, and now here we are. I’ve learned my lesson.

The second thing is, I feel like I’ve moved from guest to long-term guest, almost like we’re in roommate mode.

Changes in Education Philanthropy

Michael Horn: We’ll see. Diane and I are persuasive. Either way, thank you for joining us. We’re excited to dive into this topic of education philanthropy. As you both alluded to, it feels like the water around philanthropy and education is really churning right now. It feels different from how it has in the past. Maybe it’s my imagination, maybe it’s not. There was recently an article in Inside Philanthropy talking about the changing nature of education philanthropy, which struck a chord with us. Many of our listeners are running school networks, starting education nonprofits, or interfacing with donors. We wanted to dive into this important sector of the education reform movement to discuss how it is or isn’t changing and its implications for our sector. Diane, what did I miss before we dive in?

Diane Tavenner: I think you captured it well, Michael. Just a minute more on the philanthropy aspect. The article did a good job of capturing the feeling. The conversations I regularly have with folks in education, whether in nonprofits or school organizations, or anyone in the ecosystem who relies on philanthropy for their initiatives or operations, there’s a real sense of worry, stress, and fear. There’s a belief that there is less philanthropy available, and it’s confusing what is being funded, if it’s going to be there, and if long-term philanthropists will stay in the sector. This is a big conversation happening all around. Stacey, you’re in this a lot. Many people look to you as a whisperer in this space. Is that capturing what you’re experiencing?

Stacey Childress: Yes, it is. There’s a lot of uncertainty. Michael, you asked if these foundations routinely change their strategies every five years or so. Is that what’s going on here? We can talk more about that trend, but this feels different. What I’m hearing from people raising money is not just the uncertainty of where we’ll head next and what priorities givers will coalesce around, but whether they will stay in this field at all or continue funding at the same level. If you were giving $300 million a year, are you going to pause and then go to $100 million instead of $300 million? That shift pulls a significant amount out of the philanthropy market. If you were giving $100 million a year, are you going to reduce that, and what are the new priorities? The feeling is different. I had a concentrated period of fundraising from 2014 to about a year ago, and it didn’t feel like this. We always shaped the priorities of the big givers, knowing they would do a strategy refresh, but we never worried about the money going away. In fact, we were confident we could bring more dollars in. It does feel different now, and I’m glad I’m not a fundraiser at this moment.

Michael Horn: Well, with that context, but also a bit of sobering context, let’s dive into the first question. Diane and I have a bunch of things we want to ask. Can you give an overview of philanthropy in education? What are we talking about in terms of dollars? To the extent you see it shrinking, can you quantify that a little bit so we have a sense of what and who we are talking about?

Overview of Education Philanthropy 

Stacey Childress: I feel a little exposed. You called me an expert, and I have to say two things about that. One, I have an arrangement with McKinsey & Company as a senior advisor. This is not informed by my work with them, nor does it reflect their views. This is Stacey Childress: speaking personally. 

Michael Horn: But let’s put it in context. New Schools Venture Fund, obviously raising dollars and giving, Gates Foundation, you were Next-Gen Stacey, right?

Stacey Childress: Yes, I was Next-Gen Stacey.

Michael Horn: Even with the book that Rick and I did, you wrote that incredible piece around the role of philanthropy in markets. So, you’ve thought a lot about this.

Stacey Childress: Yeah, I have. I just wanted to make sure that I know a lot. So I’m not trying to be falsely modest and say I’m not an expert.

I have expertise in this area, particularly in a very concentrated part of the space. But nothing I say today has anything to do with what McKinsey would say about this stuff. It’s not related.

It’s been a while since I looked rigorously at the shape and size of this part of the philanthropic capital market for education. I can tell you what I know firsthand and how that may or may not have changed over time. When I joined New Schools in 2014, it was the first time I had to raise money after giving it away. I wanted to understand with a lot of specificity what that philanthropic capital market looked like because I wanted to get more of it for New Schools. I wanted to increase our share of that wallet if it wasn’t going to grow.

At the time, education innovation and reform philanthropists were giving a little over a billion dollars a year. So it was about 1.25 billion dollars of philanthropy to things like charter schools, charter school networks, some ed tech stuff, human capital initiatives like Teach for America, new leaders for new schools, and similar projects. There was about a billion plus dollars in philanthropy.

My sense is that it stayed pretty stable the whole time I was at New Schools. Over about an eight or nine-year period, we stayed at about a billion and a quarter as a sector.

I’m talking only K-12 and only the innovation reform wing of funders. Think of Gates, Walton, CZI, Schusterman, Dell, and similar players. There’s a kind of an East Coast, West Coast, and some middle of the country folks. That group stayed at a little over a billion, with some comings and goings within, but overall about the same.

My sense is that that’s still true. It might have ticked down just a little bit, but I could be wrong about that since it’s been three or four years since I’ve taken a firm look. Even with the pandemic shifts, that’s still what we’re talking about here.

Now, it sounds like a lot of money, and I don’t want to diminish it. It is a lot of money, especially once you’re in the billions. The thing is, I learned this the hard way, but it’s something you learn as you go.

A big question for philanthropists, whether you’re in this sector or any individual philanthropist, is that Gates was and I think still is the biggest K-12 funder of this type. They’ve stayed in the 300-350 million dollars a year range. So about a billion plus every three years, just Gates, about 1.2 or so billion, 1.5 billion every three years. But the public funding for K-12 education has grown from about 600 to 800 billion a year over the last few years. That’s 1.8, almost 2 trillion dollars every three years.

So you match up Gates’ billion plus dollars every three years against government funding for schools at over a trillion and a half. It’s vanishingly small.

It’s a lot of money, but in the grand scheme of things, not so much. The goal is to create the most impact possible in a sector that has enormous funding and is in vast need of improvement. How do you put those dollars to work in a way that, even though they’re small, they have an outsized effect on improving student outcomes, access to opportunity, and those kinds of things?

So it’s a lot of money, but in the grand scheme of things, not so much. How do you get that wedge of innovation capital in? Diane, it looks like you’ve got…

Diane Tavenner: Well, Stacey, I think this is such an important point for this conversation because I want to make sure people know what specifically we’re talking about. I think you’re really zeroing in on that. This conversation is about philanthropy that isn’t generally funding operational funds. That isn’t to say that philanthropy isn’t out there.

There are a lot of individual donors and people in communities who give money to their favorite nonprofit, schools, charity events, and galas. We’re not talking about any of that money here. We’re talking about a relatively small set of substantial foundations giving specific types of money for specific purposes, not for ongoing operations.

So let’s spend a minute on what those grants look like when that money comes in. What do they not look like, perhaps?

So people can be really clear.

Stacey Childress: Yeah, that’s great. So, yes, that segment of donors we’re talking about funds innovation. Whether it’s startups or existing organizations in this ecosystem, they fund innovation—starting something new, creating something new within an existing structure, or radically changing the way something is done. 

Innovation capital and growth capital help when you’re on to something, have good results, and want to serve more kids, train more teachers, or expand your core business. This kind of capital can help you grow and do more in more places or with more people. The hope is always that this will lead to sustainability without ongoing funding beyond what you receive per pupil if you’re a school or a program that gets money through taxes for serving students, or through earned revenue.

If you’re more of a service-based nonprofit, you need to figure out who and what you’re going to charge to continue operating without a constant philanthropic subsidy.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah, we always call it growth capital. We would call them bridges versus piers. You’re not just putting someone in the ocean; you’re building a bridge to something sustainable, hopefully new, better, and scalable.

Stacey Childress: Yeah, exactly. The size and time frame of these grants vary.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah, obviously, it depends on what you’re doing, but it’s rare for one donor to fund your whole need. If you’re an operator, you have to think hard about that because you probably don’t want that. It sounds easier to get one big check, but it’s actually good to have a mix of revenue or investment capital with multiple investors. This dilutes the power and governance of any one investor.

Stacey, you’ve raised a lot of money too. I like having several investors because it allows us to do what we committed to our donors without answering to one set of priorities or perspectives.

In this space, you’re usually looking at multiple donors to fund what you and your team want to do, whether it’s innovation or growth. These grants are usually three years.

Diane Tavenner: Sometimes.

Stacey Childress: Yeah, sometimes they stretch to five, but often it’s a year at a time. You do a little bit, get a little more, do a little bit, get a little more, which can be quite dynamic. There are expenses associated with this that aren’t necessarily yearly. You’re usually investing in people.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah.

Stacey Childress: To get good work done, so payroll is always a consideration. It’s a good discipline. Three-year grants were common. I had a very small number of five-year grants, which were amazing but hard to get. Very rare. A lot of one and two-year grants.

Diane Tavenner: A lot of ones and twos. If it’s okay, I can put a little shape to this in terms of dollar numbers from my time at New Schools. We launched another fund while I was there. Between 2015 and 2022, I raised 550 million dollars, about half a billion, in seven or eight calendar years. Two hundred million of it was on five-year grants. For New Schools, the other 350 million had nothing longer than three years.

Stacey Childress: But we only raised that from about 15 donors. I had multiple donors, but still very concentrated.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah.

Stacey Childress: Any one of them stepping off would have been a risk, but we kept renewing them for almost nine years. The risk was always there that one of our multi-million, multi-year donors would decide we weren’t for them anymore, they were reducing their education spend, or they could do it themselves without needing us. It was a constant process of selling what we were up to and our ideas during the three-year terms because we always wanted to renew.

Diane Tavenner: I think it’s useful to reiterate that you raised all that money to give it away thoughtfully to operators. There are two groups: one raising money to deploy it to operators and another group, like me, raising money from both you and directly from big donors. It’s a lot in the weeds, but hopefully, it’s helpful to understand what we’re talking about. Michael, maybe we should return to you because you’re wondering if this is different from the past.

Michael Horn: I think that’s the question. When I was running the Christensen Institute and raising dollars, the Gates Foundation would change strategies every five years. Is the current moment different from other times in the field when we’ve seen similar shifts, or why are people asking these questions right now?

The Impact of the Pandemic 

Stacey Childress: Yeah, I alluded to this earlier. Let me get more specific about this current moment and the difference as I see it.

Michael Horn: As you perceive it, yeah.

Stacey Childress: Yeah, as I perceive it. Somebody ought to do a really good analysis of this, an actual bottom-up analytic project to sort this out.

But here’s where I think we are. The pandemic was an exogenous shock that threw us all for a loop and put us back on our heels. None of us knew what to do during those early months of the pandemic in 2020, trying to figure out how things would sort out. 

You know me. I’m generally an optimist, a sarcastic optimist if that’s a thing, but I really am an optimist. I always think we’re going to figure this out and things will work out.

During that time, I thought, this will be a wake-up call for all of us in philanthropy in two ways.

One, if we reflect back, are you kidding me that this is really where we are in March, April, May of 2020? We couldn’t even get kids learning at home effectively with decent digital content. I was devastated. I was next-gen Stacey at Gates Foundation, and we envisioned kids learning anytime, anywhere, in deep, rigorous, and engaging ways, and that learning should count even if it’s not in the classroom.

I still believe all that, but here we were, unable to do that on any kind of scale. There are lots of reasons for it, but I thought this would be a wake-up call because maybe we’ll have another pandemic, or at least the mindset shift to anytime, anywhere learning is valuable.

The other thing was, as a philanthropic sector, I hoped it would shake us out of some bad habits, or at least some standard operating procedures that don’t serve children or grantees well.

Michael Horn: Can you give a couple of examples?

Stacey Childress: I was part of two different coalitions of philanthropists that met often on Zoom during 2020, trying to sort out what we should be doing. A lot of energy and good intentions, but no principles, just staff people. Many were heartbroken, stymied, and frozen because their ways of doing business were no match for what was needed. They couldn’t provide the size of grants or the flexibility that operators needed to respond quickly.

Operators needed resources immediately, especially those with a vision for how to respond. Their current budgets didn’t allow for it, or they were doing something new and needed the money right away because kids were stuck at home, not learning.

I had off-the-record conversations where people said they couldn’t move fast enough or weren’t set up to respond quickly. I told them they could, but they had to lead and make the case to their principals or decision-makers. We had to throw standard procedures out the window, at least temporarily, to respond to the crisis.

Some institutions equate time with rigor, thinking a long process means rigor. But often, it means 15 people have to look at something, and it takes months when three people knew everything needed in the first month. Grants could have been made in a month instead of six or eight months.

I’ve seen this as both a fundraiser and inside the world’s largest education funder. Things just take too long, and I don’t see that changing. Some figured it out on an emergency basis but have reverted to standard procedures, possibly with new organizational charts and consultants. It still takes a long time.

With these shifts, Michael, people are getting stuck mid-process and can’t get good information about what happens next. The staff inside these institutions are unsure of what will happen next, trying to respond to their decision hierarchies, leading to stalled processes.

Stacey Childress: I know someone working on a multi-million dollar, multi-year grant that should be a renewal. There’s no unknown about the grantee or the work, but it’s stalled due to internal churn. They need the money last month and thought the first payment would be made then, but now it’s stalled for another six or eight months with no visibility into what’s happening.

I feel like I’m rambling, but there was a moment where we could have shaken off standard operating procedures. It was clear that even with good ideas, we haven’t funded them at sufficient levels, smartly, durably, or for long enough to get where we need to go. Part of that is about how we do business. Could we take this moment to throw out old processes and reinvent them to be more responsive? We’re funding innovation and growth, but this isn’t how innovation and growth investing happens in other sectors of the economy. It’s just not. 

Sorry, I have one more thing to say about the pandemic lessons.

Diane Tavenner: It’s interesting to have this conversation, and it’s surprising to me we haven’t had it before. I’d love to share what I was experiencing at that time. Michael and I started the podcast because, like you, we were optimistic that the pandemic would create an opportunity. We hoped people would see what was wrong not only in philanthropy but in how schools were being operated, offering a moment for change. And here we are, season five.

Reflecting on it as an operator, everything you’re saying is right. People don’t understand how expensive it was to survive during the pandemic as a school system. The amount of money we had to spend on tests, masks, computers, hotspots—everything was immense.

I would argue that Summit was one of the best in the country at getting things up and running effectively, just as you described, Stacey. I had to make some tough decisions, extending ourselves and thinking the money would come in. Interestingly, the money did not come in from philanthropy, as it couldn’t cover the entire system. It came from the government, which moved pretty quickly, I would say.

One of the challenges is, and I’m a pretty savvy fundraiser, I didn’t know what to ask philanthropy for at that moment. We couldn’t innovate; we were just trying to survive. We had a lot of money flowing in from the government.

We did have one amazing funder, Arthur Rock, who came in within weeks, giving generously without a team or staff. His money allowed us to set up a mini-fund to help families in crisis, preventing them from being thrown out on the street, and ensuring they had necessities like a working refrigerator or internet access. It was immediate emergency cash for survival.

Stacey Childress: Yes.

Diane Tavenner: Thank goodness for Arthur enabling everyone who didn’t have internet to have a hotspot within days. But that was it. That was all that came through. Arthur has an interesting way of thinking where he doesn’t believe time will give him more information.

Stacey Childress: And he also trusted you to know the best way to deploy those resources. Arthur trusted me and my team, and that’s another challenge. As foundation staffs get bigger, they hire smart people who become experts lauded for their knowledge. They’re less inclined to just give the money to someone like you and let you do what you need to do.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah.

Stacey Childress: Instead, they take nine or twelve months to put you through a process that yields no more information than they had at the beginning. I’m not insulting the people who work in these places. I have many friends and people I respect greatly. But the institutions and the culture create processes that are inefficient.

Diane Tavenner: Same with schools, right?

Stacey Childress: Right. Same with schools.

Michael Horn: I remember this from over ten years ago. Giselle Huff was frustrated that they would hire people like you and not give you the autonomy to move quickly. It’s an organizational issue, not the individuals per se.

The bigger issue I’m hearing is that the pandemic didn’t break these tendencies; it exposed them. It created an existential crisis internally where people questioned their identity and purpose, leading to more pause and churn. This indecision has created a lingering hangover.

Stacey Childress: The hangover is still here. Gates might be an interesting exception, which I’ll come back to. Many institutions faced a crisis in the first months of the pandemic, realizing that what they’d spent years and billions of dollars on hadn’t made the progress needed.

For institutional funders, there was a sense of, “What did we get for it?” The principals, whether trustees or living donors, were asking good questions but not getting great answers from teams trying to figure it out and not wanting to be wrong. There was a fear of going back to donors like Bill Gates, Mark and Priscilla, or the Walton family with another failed initiative.

Giselle went to the president of the Gates Foundation a year after I was there and asked why they hired me but didn’t let me spend my budget freely. I wished she hadn’t done that, but it highlighted the issue. What are we waiting for? Who do we think will come up with a better answer? Where’s the boldness that created the wealth in the first place?

Shifting Strategies 

Michael Horn: Yeah, that’s a really interesting point. Let me ask the question this way: I’m hearing from a lot of nonprofits, and I sit on boards of nonprofits, that it’s as bad as it’s ever been. We’ve seen a bunch go out of business or be acquired for virtually nothing.

Maybe that’s what should have happened, I don’t know. But it seems different in many ways.

Another question I have is about the shifting strategies every five years and the churn you’re describing. Education is a space where change isn’t going to happen across the country in five years. This is a big, complicated 50-state country with lots of challenges that interfere with the operations. It’s messy. There’s a huge installed base.

Are we guilty of impatience, not just sticking with a good theory of action? Or is something else going on?

Stacey Childress: Yeah, yes.

Michael Horn: I didn’t mean to ask a one-word question.

Stacey Childress: No, I know. I was recently talking with someone from one of the large institutional donors. This person joined relatively recently, post-pandemic, and had been an outside observer and fundraiser from this institution. They had an insight that rang true for me: we’ve got a theory of change for what should happen in the sector over many years, but it’s not very rigorous or periodically examined with any rigor.

It’s shaped around the personality of the donor and some senior staff preferences. It sounds fine, but then we’re applying a lot of rigor at the individual grant level, creating 47-row outcome trackers for 18-month grants. We spend months creating these, and every quarterly call with the grantee digs into line items.

But there’s no intermediate view of how the ecosystem around these grants is doing because we’re not clear about what those are. We’ve got four or five areas we’re willing to fund, but even then, we’re not looking at the portfolio. We’re not seeing how individual grants add up to those areas.

So, big idea, not a lot of rigor around developing it, and then intense rigor at the grant level. My time at Gates wasn’t quite that loose, but there were features of it, especially the one-at-a-time approach, which isn’t true rigor. It often meant lots of people, lots of rows on a spreadsheet, and many conversations, but that’s not true rigor. 

You spend five years and have three model grantees to show the principal, but you’ve spent $800 million or more. The pandemic opened up good questions for which there aren’t good answers yet. 

Gates narrowed its focus to math, committing $1.2 billion over three years. This isn’t an additional billion; it’s their regular funding but focused mostly on math. This narrowing means if you were funded by Gates before but aren’t focused on math now, you’re out. This has led to many organizations no longer fitting into Gates’ funding categories. 

Diane Tavenner: Yeah.

Stacey Childress: The downside is if, after three or five years, they can’t achieve what they want in math, then what? We’ve been through system-wide transformation, charter schools, standards, teacher systems, next-gen schools, and now math. If they keep switching every three to five years, what’s next? 

Michael Horn: Right.

Stacey Childress: If the next cycle doesn’t work, they might consider an exit.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah.

Stacey Childress: I know what I would do, but in that institution, now 25 years in, by the time the math cycle ends, they’ll be 26 or 27 years in. Now what?

Michael Horn: That makes sense.

Stacey Childress: People worry the “now what” will be an exit.

Diane Tavenner:  Yeah, that’s what people are worried about, for sure.

Stacey Childress: And Gates isn’t the only one. I use them as an example because it illustrates the issue cleanly.

How Operators Can Help 

Diane Tavenner: Everything Stacey is saying resonates with me. Michael, what I’m thinking about a lot is our conversations about innovation. If we go back to the top of this conversation, this is philanthropy for innovation.

I won’t go into the long history we’ve had of trying to innovate within a giant, decentralized system because that is a massive challenge. What you’re talking about, Stacey, is how does anyone tackle that? Clearly, no one can tackle that entirely, so we start to narrow our focus and aim to be successful at something specific. 

I’m not going to quibble with focusing on math because, in the work I’m doing now, I see how critically important it is for the future of the workforce and the country. However, that’s probably not going to transform schools in the way the three of us want them to be transformed.

This creates a sense of angst for me because most schools in America are just doing the same old thing. They’re taking federal, state, and local money and running the same schools, with no real prospect of change.

For those of us who believe change should happen, what are the levers? How does this relatively small amount of money create the change we want?

Stacey, as we were talking through this, you mentioned a list of things you want funders to do. I thought of a list of things I want operators to do—those who want to innovate and raise philanthropy to do it. It’s worth spending a moment on that because I think there are two sides to this.

There are things that operators, like myself and my peers, need to do to be compelling and retain capital in our space. If you’re not doing compelling, interesting things, your projects aren’t going to get funded.

First, I’ll call it “getting your conditions in order.” This refers to work done by several people, including folks at the Gates Foundation years ago, and more recently, Transcend has partnered with others to define the conditions of an organization ready to innovate. Michael, you and I talk about this all the time. You need structures and mindsets to be able to innovate. Use the available tools to ensure you have the right conditions. If you’re trying to get innovation money without knowing if your conditions are in order, you’re not primed to raise money.

Second, do you actually have innovations that others aren’t working on that could potentially move the needle? You need to understand the field and what others are doing to ensure your innovation is truly unique and impactful. This requires discipline and hard work.

When you do this, you earn trust and face less scrutiny because it becomes apparent that you’ve done the groundwork. Lastly, I have always tried to see this as a collaborative venture rather than a competitive one. My experience is that many operators fall into a competitive mindset, seeing funding as a zero-sum game. This competitiveness is counterproductive because no one can do this alone. Acting more collaboratively could attract and keep more money in the innovation space and sector.

That would be my wish list for operators.

Changes Funders Can Make

Stacey Childress: That’s very good and definitely rings true. As an operator running a fund and having to raise money, I share your perspective. You mentioned visionary leadership, and both words are important in fundraising—a vision you can articulate clearly and compellingly about what the world should look like if it worked better for young people. Lead on it. Don’t wait for a funder to have a strategy you can fit into. Lead.

Spend time socializing that vision with other operators and donors. Donors will follow a compelling vision and leadership. You and I have both seen it happen and have caused it to happen as leaders.

For the donor side, the first thing I wish they would do is just give away the money.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah.

Stacey Childress: Remember the fundamental purpose of what you’re organized to do and what you’re given significant tax breaks for: to give away the money. You’re not organized to have internal meetings, PowerPoints, memos, politics, reorgs, and conferences. Those things can help your aims but can also distract from them. Give the money away. That’s your whole job, not the coalitions and communities of practice. Those should support moving the money. 

It sounds silly, but it’s frustrating. Your whole job is to give the money away. Increase, not decrease, your giving now. What are you waiting for? If not now, when? There’s not one answer; there are many. Fund them, learn from them. Stop with the 47-row spreadsheet metrics. 

Fund the people doing the work, listen to them, believe them, recognize patterns, and fund lots of things. More gifts, bigger gifts, right now. Go. What are you waiting for? Go. Make decisions faster. 

You’re not going to fund everything. Say yes fast and no faster. As soon as you know it’s a no, tell the operator. You can’t imagine how much time and energy is spent waiting for a yes. 

Diane Tavenner: And say no fast.

Stacey Childress: Say no faster. It’s not the last day of the process that you decide no. As soon as you know it’s no, tell the operator. They spend so much time waiting for your decision, having conversations with their board and other donors, making plans. Time is huge. Tell them no fast. Yes fast, no even faster. If your processes get in the way of that, rip them down.

Diane Tavenner: Yep.

Stacey Childress: Do something different and do it now. One of the reasons this animates me so much, beyond the obvious good of getting the money into the field and letting smart, intelligent, visionary leaders and their people do what they can with it and learn from it, is that for donors who have, say, over a billion dollars in net worth, their fortunes are growing faster than their lifetime philanthropic commitments suggest they will get the money out the door. 

A few years ago, when I was in a fundraising cycle and was counting on a donor to come in at a certain level on a renewal, I got the sad news. I was trying to get tens of millions and got multiple tens of millions, but not as much as I had hoped. It was an enormous grant, something to celebrate, but I was disappointed because I had planned for more. Silicon Valley is like a neighborhood, and the donors all talk to each other. Many of them talk to me, and I knew that this person was at cocktail parties and other gatherings saying they had a billion dollars in their donor-advised fund at a community foundation because they couldn’t find enough good things to fund, including education. And they had just given me multiple tens of millions.

What are you waiting for? When I first joined New Schools and was figuring out the investment footprint before we did a specific strategy, I realized that what we had wasn’t working. It was a quiet secret in the field. The theory had run its course, and New Schools had been struggling to raise money for a couple of years. It was time to rethink it.

Someone who was a contemporary of Vinod Khosla, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, told me that when he first became a VC, he realized something new was coming from closed network systems. It had to do with packet switching and the internet. He convinced his partners at Kleiner Perkins that they needed to fund everything in these nascent categories because they didn’t know who would win. They backed great teams and more than one in each category. This humble approach, funding lots of things with a vision for how the industry would change, led to massive financial success.

From where I sat at New Schools in 2014, I felt like we were in a similar moment. We had glimpses of what the future could look like for kids, and our strategy was to push everything onto the table for this vision. Rather than trying to find the answer, we should take a broad view of the space and fund every good team and idea.

Stop thinking that you have all the answers inside your foundation. Most of the smartest people don’t work for you. Fund, learn, and fund again. Give the money away.

I wish people would do more with intermediaries. If I were the leader of a foundation with $350 million a year to give away, I would convince my principal to give $300 million to four or five grantees in large chunks, and those would be intermediaries. I would have a staff of no more than 10 people, each managing relationships and helping us learn and adapt. Intermediaries offer leverage, expertise, and nimbleness.

Follow MacKenzie Scott’s example: big gifts, unrestricted, lightweight process, fast decisions, little to no reporting requirements. It’s not perfect, but it gets the money out the door.

Diane Tavenner: It is.

Stacey Childress: Yes, it can be tough to figure out how to get in the pipeline and some transparency issues, but those challenges are far outweighed by getting the money out the door. Let’s do it. Get that money out the door. If not now, when? Be honest with yourself. What are you afraid of from going big and visionary and moving lots of resources quickly to people doing important work?

Michael Horn: Well, Diane, as we wrap up five seasons here with our final episode, I think we finally had our Jerry Maguire moment. It’s no longer “show me the money,” it’s “give away the money.”

Stacey Childress: Give away the money.

Media Recommendations 

Michael Horn: And Stacey, you have nailed it. So with that as a segue, as we wrap up an episode, I’ve learned a lot from both of you. Thank you both. Let’s finish up with some things we are reading, watching, or whatever. Stacey, we’ll call on you first. Hopefully, it’s not Jerry Maguire, but if it is, we understand.

Stacey Childress: It’s not Jerry Maguire. Sadly, I’m still watching and listening to heartbreaking, disappointing Astros baseball, but hope springs eternal. 

A new thing: there’s a relatively old, about 10 years old, documentary on Prime Video called The Wrecking Crew. It’s a deep dive into a loose group of studio musicians in LA in the ’60s and ’70s who backed 60-70% of the big radio hits of that era. They backed artists like the Righteous Brothers, the Mamas and the Papas, Sonny and Cher, and the Beach Boys. The Beach Boys performed live, but The Wrecking Crew played on their studio albums. They were behind so many iconic songs. It’s fascinating.

Diane Tavenner: Well, this is what happens when you have an episode with two of Stacey’s passions: philanthropy and music. It’s so exciting. I agree with everything you’re saying. I hope it happens because I feel like we’re at an early 2010-2011 moment again. I hope people jump on and in. No one else in the world is ahead of us yet in redesigning their education systems. We have an opportunity in America right now, and I’m deeply optimistic.

I’m reading an early advanced copy of 10 to 25, Dr. David Yeager’s new book. I love him. He had such an impact on our work at Summit. He’s an amazing researcher who connects research with actual work in schools. The book talks about a mentoring mindset, a continuation of the growth mindset. It’s incredibly powerful and will be out in August.

Michael Horn: You’re going to have to dig in then. That sounds exciting, Diane. I’m glad you’re reading it. I’ll just wrap up mine. My kids went away for their outdoor nature’s classroom for a few days, so my wife and I went to New York City and saw a couple of shows. We saw Merrily We Roll Along, which I highly recommend, and Enemy of the People. Both were terrific. 

Like you, Stacey, I’ve been watching a lot of sports, but the Celtics are having more success than your Astros. I recently finished Outlive by Peter Attia. It was great, with a few new tips, some things I already knew, and a lot of common sense.

Stacey, thank you for joining us and enlivening the last five episodes. We’ll see where that goes. Diane, as always, thank you for the partnership. For all of you listening, thanks for joining us for five full seasons of Class Disrupted.

The study, commissioned by the , surveyed more than 1,700 high school juniors and seniors, with 83 percent saying they value professional development leading to a job compared to 72 percent who value a four-year degree.

In collaboration with and , the study also surveyed more than 3,000 non-enrolled adults ages 18-30 who either chose not to attend college or left their postsecondary program.

Both groups not only placed higher value in on-the-job training, but also licenses and professional certificates.

But a panel of experts came together yesterday to discuss the report’s findings — expressing concern over the growing apathy high schoolers and non-enrolled adults are showing in a college education.

“This is an acute concern to us particularly because our North Star is pretty simple,” said Patrick Methvin, director of pathways and postsecondary success strategies at the Gates Foundation, “to dramatically increase opportunity for the socioeconomic advancement of Americans and to eliminate race, ethnicity and income as predictors of student success.”

“Because we know a postsecondary credential is the most sure path to that, these attitudinal changes are a concern,” said Methvin.

Despite the empirical value of a college degree, Methvin said high schoolers’ waning trust comes from the negative media they consume, including the Supreme Court decision ending race conscious college admissions — which students view as an attack on — along with crippling student loan debt.

But Methvin insisted a college education is still the most valuable option.

“People are living in very different worlds where they’re getting their information and what that’s doing in terms of influencing their choices,” Methvin said.

This data builds on a that examined students’ declining enrollment in higher education.

“The postsecondary value narrative has been prevalent in policy wonk circles for some time, but the interesting thing from this research is we’re hearing those exact same words now from students themselves,” Methvin said. “They are talking about value. They are talking about [the return on investment] in ways they weren’t 10 years ago.”

Here are four key takeaways from the report:

1. High schoolers and non-enrolled adults value on-the-job training the most out of all postsecondary options.

Terrell Dunn, founding partner and consultant at HCM Strategists, said students value on-the-job training because they’re “shorter and cheaper options” that lead to well-paying jobs — such as careers in the oil and gas industry that offer six figure salaries without needing a college degree.

Adam Burns, chief operations officer and senior research analyst at Edge Research, said there’s “uncertainty” that investing in a college degree will help students reach their career goals.

“When it comes to paying for college, this is when the gloves come off [and] folks really seem to have a lot of problems,” Burns said. “They’re really lost in understanding how much college really costs, how financial aid works and even just managing when to fill out the forms and how to fill out the forms.”

2. High schoolers are more likely to align college importance with future job placements and income.

High schoolers that value a college education are focused on real life concerns such as earning more money and getting a better job — as opposed to learning or networking.

Pam Loeb, principal at Edge Research, said high schoolers main focus is finding the best pathway to a well-paying job.

“How do I find the right job once I’m finished? How do I choose what classes to take so I’m not wasting my time and money as I go through the college process,” Loeb said. “A concerted effort to engage and reach out to [high schoolers] is really needed.”

3. The importance of a college degree declined among non-enrolled adults compared to those surveyed in the fall of 2022.

The top reasons non-enrolled adults value earning a college degree aligns with high schoolers — to earn more money and get a better job.

But every reason for getting a college degree declined across the board for non-enrolled adults compared to those surveyed in the fall of 2022.

Burns said non-enrolled adults’ declining value stems from the “opportunity cost” of transitioning away from their full-time jobs to work towards a college degree they’re already skeptical about.

“They need help from someone who can connect the dots [and] make sure they can see the return on investment,” Burns said, such as ensuring they will secure an internship or full-time job after graduating.

4. Most non-enrolled adults see more value in licenses, professional certificates, and trade schools compared to a four-year degree.

About 75, 72 and 63 percent of non-enrolled adults respectively value licenses, professional certificates and trade or vocational schools — an increase of five percent compared to those surveyed in the fall of 2022.

But just 57 percent value a four-year school — a three percent decline.

“A lot of their concern is around making the right choices…at each juncture of their journey,” said Jessica Collis, director of advocacy and change management at HCM Strategists.

Dunn said non-enrolled adults might find value in a college degree if higher education institutions were more intentional about reaching out to them.

“They’re pretty rational in weighing their opportunity costs as they think about higher education,” Dunn said. “So although they’re skeptical…they’re also persuadable.” 

Disclosure: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provides financial support to The 74.

But some in education say it’s time to reconsider this de facto requirement: Many schools — particularly those serving large numbers of Black, Hispanic or low-income students — don’t offer the course. And even when they do, it’s of dubious value, they say. 

“High school calculus is a complete waste of time and a form of torture,” said Alan Garfinkel, professor of integrative biology and physiology and medicine at UCLA. “The view … that math is a bunch of symbolic expressions, and you bang on them with tricks to get other symbolic expressions, is a bankrupt concept of math, dating from the 19th century.”

The course, as it’s often taught at the high school level, is inaccessible and often perceived as irrelevant to students’ interests, critics say. of high school graduates earned credit for calculus in 2019, according to data culled by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a statistic no doubt shaped by its unavailability. 

Only 52% of schools with high student of color enrollment offered the course in 2017-18 compared to 76% of schools with low student of color enrollment, according to a from the Learning Policy Institute. 

The study, which analyzed data primarily from the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection, found the course was also scarce in more impoverished communities: Just 45% of high schools enrolling a high proportion of students from low-income families offered the class compared to 87% of high schools with a low proportion of these students. 

In addition to its uneven availability, some say calculus isn’t entirely relevant to college-level studies and that other classes, including those in statistics and data science, should be considered just as worthy. 

“There is a perception that calculus is required for admission to selective colleges, regardless of the fact that only about a handful of higher ed institutions in the U.S. actually require the course for all students,” said Melodie Baker, national policy director at , an organization that promotes math policies that support equity in college readiness and success.

The push for calculus, said Dave Kung, director of policy at the , harkens back to an earlier era in U.S. history: It was all about producing physicists and engineers to beat the Soviets in various ways. Other mathematics, including statistics and linear algebra, took a back seat, he said.

“The fact that calculus is the default college math pathway is an artifact of a time that’s now long gone,” he said. “Other branches of mathematics have risen in importance in the digital age, but our curriculum hasn’t been updated to reflect that change.”

Sarah Spence Adams, professor of mathematics at Olin College of Engineering in Needham, Massachusetts, said she understands why high school counselors place such power in the course: College admissions officials had come to rely upon it, perhaps unfairly. 

“Without that stamp of approval, it may be seen as harder and more labor intensive to determine if college applicants have pushed themselves academically,” said Spence Adams, who also teaches electrical and computer engineering. 

She does not believe a single course is necessary for college success. 

“I am rightfully worried that the disproportionate focus on calculus is unfairly excluding students, particularly students who come from backgrounds that have been historically excluded — and are still being excluded — from STEM majors and the well-paying careers that can follow,” she said. 

Access to the course varies across the country, influenced by race and wealth. Only 27% of New York state high schools with high student-of-color enrollment offered calculus compared to 81% of schools with low student-of-color enrollment, The Learning Policy Institute found. In New Jersey, the organization reported, the difference was 50 percentage points: It was 49 percentage points in Maryland, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Those who question calculus’s importance are not just considering students who wish to pursue the humanities: They say it might not be a necessity for those who want careers in STEM.

“A background in calculus is certainly helpful — and many colleges do expect it for students pursuing STEM degrees — but research shows that deeper mastery of prerequisites for calculus is more important than calculus itself,” Baker said. “High school students should not rush through the curriculum to take the course. And even most selective colleges can support students who didn’t have access to calculus in high school.”

Bill Tucker, senior advisor of the Pathways Program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said the current sequence of mathematics courses from middle to high school means many students are being placed on a track starting in the fifth grade. 

Oftentimes, he said, neither they nor their parents know why, but the availability of algebra at the 7th- or 8th-grade level also can be a predictive factor. 

“Students are on the calculus track — or not,” Tucker said, adding all high schoolers should have the option of taking the course. 

The Gates Foundation has devoted $1.1 billion over the next four years — the start of a decade-long pledge — with the goal of improving the availability and quality of mathematics instruction to students across the country with a focus on Black, Latino and low-income children. 

The money, which arrives after years of pandemic strain and related learning loss — particularly in mathematics — will support the creation and use of high-quality instructional materials designed to increase student motivation, engagement and persistence. 

It will also be used to boost the number of teachers prepared to provide top-notch math instruction and to better align the math course pathways leading from high school to college. 

“Having calculus as the gatekeeper for competitive college admissions doesn’t make sense because of all of the inequities … and because it is taking one form of math and giving it a special place,” he said. “We want to have that equal opportunity … but we don’t want to make it so every student has to go to that door.”

Baker was among several who said the unofficial standard must change. 

“The focus on calculus in high school is a vicious cycle that needs to stop: It’s inequitable and will not lead to a stronger body of college applicants or a stronger society,” she said. “It will lead to more of the same and delay 21st-century advancement that relies on data and technology.”

Disclosure: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provides financial support to The 74.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s investment marks the beginning of a decade-long strategy to prioritize math gains, particularly for Black, Latino and low-income students, making the subject its primary K-12 investment for the next decade.

The Foundation’s work in math is , but making it their top priority signals a major shift: from roughly 40% of its K-12 budget to 100% through 2026.

“Math helps students make sense of the world. It gives them critical thinking and problem solving skills they can use later as adults,” said Bob Hughes, director of the Gates Foundation’s K-12 program on a press call earlier this week. 

“And even before the pandemic, too many students did not have equitable , advanced coursework, high quality curriculum, tutoring or other resources necessary to master, enjoy and succeed at math.” 

New programming will likely roll out next year, targeted in states with high numbers of Black, Latino and low-income students who disproportionately struggle with math: California, Florida, New York, and Texas.

Nationwide, the latest math scores from suggest the pandemic eliminated two decades of growth and exacerbated gaps along racial lines. 

Such a setback will have long-term impacts on students’ economic and social mobility. Research has long-affirmed students who , for instance, are twice as likely to graduate high school and . 

In efforts to flip the bleak script, the Foundation’s strategy includes focusing on elementary and middle schools and funding teacher preparation; research, along with culturally, socially relevant curricula and materials. In feedback sessions, parents told the Foundation their children want to know why math matters in their lives. To make the connection, Gates will prioritize applied statistics and data science-related math pathways in high school, courses that help students make sense of political polls and health risk assessment amid the pandemic.

To address historically persistent shortages of math teachers, the Foundation is backing alternative models to build up pipelines. Districts that Gates already partners with in western Texas are building residency programs — modeled after medical residencies, providing in-house preparation — for community members and staff to become licensed without the financial barriers of traditional programs. In Baltimore, lead and early career teachers are paired up to support Algebra learning.

“We’re spreading the expertise, but also giving other teachers who might not be at that level the opportunity to come alongside and support in real time,” said Sonja Santileses, CEO of Baltimore City Schools. “…There are ways of inducting folks into mathematics teaching as well as looking at teaching not as just one teacher in front of the classroom anymore, which we’ve been talking about for years.”

Gates officials also anticipate efforts, like improving assessments or professional development, will benefit other subject areas. 

“Improving math isn’t a pipe dream. We can create classrooms and instruction where everyone is good at math. So today is the beginning — much remains to be done,” Hughes said, adding more funding may be on the horizon, to be determined with the next budgeting cycle in 2026. 

For now, financial resources will be shifted away from English language arts — historically about 20% of the K-12 budget — to fund more math initiatives, though the Foundation is working with other philanthropies to ensure funding in the humanities remains. 

“We don’t want the entire field to follow us to math,” Hughes said. “We’re really hoping to go deep to understand what does the professional development need to look like around something as concrete as fractions … understand the barriers that young people or teachers face in enacting instructional visions and then use that to inform the entire field.”

The $1.1 billion for math, while comparable to recent funding for teacher effectiveness, is four times the amount dedicated to the Foundation’s . Hughes said the experience reaffirmed the reality that every district has different assets and priorities to consider when adopting new curricula — it can’t be prescribed as a one-size-fits-all. 

“We’re instead saying, we’re going to try to improve materials,” said Hughes, “give you greater insight into what’s effective for different types of students and populations, and work to ensure that you have those tools.”

Disclosure: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provides financial support to The 74.