Blended Finance Starter Kit: 10 Questions About Mobilizing Private Capital for Better Development Results

Lead author. March 2020.

This report draws heavily upon the work of Convergence Blended Finance.

1. WHAT IS BLENDED FINANCE?

Blended finance is the strategic use of development funds, such as those from government aid and philanthropic sources, to mobilize private capital for social and environment results, such as improving infrastructure, education, agriculture, healthcare, and more. Blended finance strategies are designed to encourage members of the private sector, such as companies and investors, to invest in activities and projects that can achieve both financial returns and positive social and environmental outcomes.

2. HOW CAN BLENDED FINANCE ENCOURAGE INVESTMENT INTO DEVELOPING COUNTRIES?

Investors constantly weigh the potential return of an investment—the money it makes over time—against its risk—the possibility of the investment incurring a financial loss instead of a return.

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Close-Up: The INVEST Initiative and Partner Network

Lead author. October 2019.

Close-Up: Expanding Investment in Off-Grid Energy Access in Kenya

Contributing author. October 2019.

The Progressive Roots of Charter Schools

September 2019.

Improving public education has long been a cornerstone of the Democratic platform. Because progressives understand that access to a quality education is the gateway to a better life, our decades-long struggle to promote equal rights and opportunity for all Americans has been deeply tied to our struggle to create an effective public school system.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, progressive thought leaders conceived of a new organizational model for our public schools, a system designed for the Information Age rather than the Industrial Era. In this new system, the state or local school board could grant performance contracts to groups of individuals or organizations that applied to open new public schools. These would be exempt from many of the rules and mandates that constrained district-operated schools. They would be encouraged to innovate, to create new learning models that would appeal to children bored or otherwise dissatisfied traditional public schools.

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Do-Something Congress No. 10: Fighting Inequality by Reinventing America’s Schools

with David Osborne. May 2019.

Progressives are rightly concerned about inequality, but some overlook the crucial role that underperforming public schools play in perpetuating poverty and inequality in America. The poor quality of many school systems is a serious impediment to social mobility for children from low-income and minority families, who can’t easily pick up and move to communities with good schools. The number of students taking college remediation classes has soared, and too many students graduate high school underprepared to enter either college or the workforce.

First-rate schools are key to delivering on America’s core promise of equal opportunity. That’s true for U.S. students everywhere – not just for kids trapped in poor schools in poor communities. In international comparisons, even students from America’s best suburban school districts consistently score below students from other advanced countries in Asia and Europe.

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The Need For Equal Funding for Indiana Charter Schools

with David Osborne. December 2018.

Charter schools are tuition-free public schools operated by independent organizations. Freed from many rules and topdown policies constraining district-operated schools, charter school leaders have direct control over most school-level decisions.

Indiana has the best charter school law in the country, according to the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools, because it allows full operational flexibility and provides true accountability for school performance.

Indiana’s brick-and-mortar K-12 charter schools serve a higher percentage of students of color and low-income students than the traditional public schools. Yet, on state standardized tests, these charter school students outperform their peers at traditional public schools. In both 2016 and 2017, the state rated a higher percentage of charters as “A” schools and a lower percentage as “D” or “F” schools than traditional public schools serving similar student populations.

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Why Suburban Districts Need Public Charter Schools Too

October 2018.

On November 8, 2016, while the rest of the world anxiously awaited the outcome of the U.S. presidential election, a subset of voters with a keen interest in education had their eyes on Massachusetts. This was the day Bay Staters would vote on Ballot Question 2, a proposal to raise the state’s cap on public charter schools by up to 12 new schools per year.

Massachusetts is home to some of the highest performing charter schools in the country, with especially impressive gains at schools serving urban, low-income and minority students. In Boston, one of the eight districts in the state to have reached its cap on charter schools, students at charters learn the equivalent of an extra year of math and reading each year, when compared to their peers with similar demographics and past test scores at the city’s traditional public schools.1The local school district, Boston Public Schools (BPS), enrolls about 53,000 students in a city of about 77,000 students. Currently, public charters enroll only about 10,000 students, but there are more than 32,000 children on waitlists for these schools.

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Can Urban Districts Get Charter-like Performance With Charter-lite Schools?

with David Osborne. August 2018. 

Over the past 15 years, cities across the country have experienced rapid growth in the number of public charter schools serving their students. When implemented with fidelity, the charter formula – autonomy, choice, diversity of school designs, and real accountability –produces continuous improvements in school quality, with impressive student gains in charter schools serving high-minority, high-poverty populations.

Facing competition from public charters, urban school districts from Boston to Denver to Los Angeles began to look for ways to increase student achievement in their schools. Some attempted to spur charter-like innovation by granting traditional public school leaders more autonomy. District-run “autonomous” schools are a hybrid model – a halfway point between charters and traditional public schools. They’re still operated and supported by district employees, but they can opt out of many district policies and, in some models, union contracts.

The theory behind school-level autonomy is that students can achieve more if those who understand their needs best – namely, principals and teachers, not the central office – make the decisions that affect their learning. While the amount of autonomy afforded district run autonomous schools differs from district to district, quite a few have invested in this strategy. In this report – which is based on analysis of test scores from 2015 and 2016 and interviews with participants in Boston, Memphis, Denver, and Los Angeles – we will examine different models, look at their results, and draw out lessons for other districts considering an autonomy strategy.

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Analysis: NAEP Scores Show D.C. Is a Leader in Educational Improvement — With Powerful Lessons for Other Cities

with David Osborne. April 16, 2018. Read it at The 74. 

Analysis: Is Chicago Really America’s Fastest-Improving Urban School District? Why Claims Made by the NYT & Others Are Misleading

with David Osborne. January 7, 2018. Read it at The 74.  

Union's Retrograde Report Earns Failing Grade: A Response to the NEA's Policy Statement on Charter Schools

with David Osborne. July 2017.

Last week, the National Education Association (NEA) voted to adopt a new policy statement1 on public charter schools. Ignoring mounting evidence that the best charter systems are finally giving urban children a shot at a decent education, the NEA calls for a moratorium on the creation and expansion of public charter schools.

The NEA says it based this new statement on yearlong research conducted by its Charter Taskforce. Unfortunately, the taskforce report2 is a shoddy piece of work that echoes the same old falsehoods about public charter schools, including that the schools “counsel out” the worst students and that they increase segregation. The former has been heavily refuted3. The latter is also unproven. Charter schools’ demographics are not significantly different than their neighborhood public schools4(They do, however, produce significantly better academic results with a similar student composition5).

And, of course, the NEA beats its favorite drum, claiming that public charter schools drain resources from public schools—which is impossible, since charters are public schools.

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