ABSTRACT
Venture Philanthropy has a strategic aim of leveraging private money to influence public schooling in ways compatible with the following: long-standing privatization agendas of the political Right; conservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institution, and the Fordham Foundation; corporate foundations such as ExxonMobil; and corporate organizations such as the Business Roundtable and the Commercial Club of Chicago. This is part of the broader neoliberal remaking of public education that most significantly advances a privatization and deregulation agenda. Venture philanthropy is not merely a reflection of particular values and interests but also functions pedagogically by producing particular ideas and ideologies about educational obligation in a highly privatized way. One of the most significant aspects of this transformation in educational philanthropy involves the ways in which the public and civic purposes of public schooling are re-described by venture philanthropy in distinctly private ways. Neoliberal educational reform promises the student the dream world of consumer luxury found in consumer society.
