Nonprofits in the education sector strive to help both students and schools, but research from the University of Michigan suggests that they may unwittingly make inequities worse by virtue of who they choose to support and how much support they’re offered.
According to the study, the allocation of educational resources does not seem to prioritize schools with the greatest needs. Rather, schools with more affluent backgrounds, which collaborate with non-profit organizations, have access to a wider range of resources that can be leveraged to enhance their partnerships with these entities, resulting in an amplification of existing advantages.
Bridging the gap
The study suggests that the majority of educators and administrators strive to bridge the gap between their students’ requirements and government funding, but schools in lower socio-economic areas are grappling with challenges such as inadequate funding for essential items like computers and books. A popular workaround is to establish partnerships with non-profit organizations, a strategy promoted by education leaders and policymakers.
The author sampled six K-8 schools with varying levels of socioeconomic advantage, which has shed new light on the effectiveness of partnering workarounds for resource-constrained organizations.
The study, which comprised 62 one-on-one interviews with a strategic sample of principals, teachers, and parents, as well as a comprehensive survey of all school employees, challenges the prevailing belief that such workarounds are a productive way to bridge the gap between poorer schools and their better-funded counterparts.
Less effective
According to the study’s findings, partnering workarounds are less productive in poorer schools for two key reasons. Firstly, poorer schools have a lower partnership formation rate (i.e., the number of partnerships formed per year) compared to wealthier schools. Secondly, nonprofit relationships need to be frequently renewed or replaced, which poses a significant challenge for resource-constrained schools.
Overall, the study’s results provide important insights into the efficacy of partnering workarounds as a means to address disparities in educational funding. With these findings, policymakers and educators can better understand the challenges that poorer schools face and work towards more effective solutions that can help bridge the gap between disadvantaged schools and their better-funded counterparts.
“Nonprofit organizations do a lot of good, but that good may not always improve equity,” the author explains. “In fact, it may worsen it.
“Because wealthier schools come to have more nonprofit relationships in total, they get more benefit overall. This is how nonprofit organizations can come to maintain—even exacerbate—inequities, even as they ‘do good.’”
Wider implications
The implications of the recent study on partnering workarounds in resource-constrained schools extend beyond education. It highlights a potential drawback of scaling up in the nonprofit sector, which often involves providing a narrower benefit to more people or organizations. While this is a common way for nonprofits to measure impact, it places a burden on the beneficiaries to work with multiple organizations to meet their diverse needs.
To address this issue, the study recommends that nonprofits increase the cycle time of programs, resources, and services offered to poorer schools, without requiring additional effort to build partnerships. For instance, instead of partnering with five schools on a one-year cycle over three years (totaling 15 schools over three years), nonprofits could improve equity by working with five of the neediest schools on a three-year cycle (totaling five schools over three years).
The study also recommends that school districts play a more active role in fostering partnerships by monitoring and overseeing them more closely. One possible solution is the creation of an online platform that serves as a marketplace where schools and nonprofits can connect and establish partnerships. The platform could also provide information on which schools partner with which nonprofits, creating transparency and accountability that could lead to reputational and funding penalties for nonprofits that primarily work with wealthier schools.
Overall, the study’s recommendations provide valuable insights into how nonprofits and school districts can work together more effectively to address the challenges faced by resource-constrained schools and their students. By adopting these strategies, policymakers and educators can take meaningful steps toward creating a more equitable and inclusive educational system.
“Assuming that the mission of school districts is to ensure equity among schools in their domain, efforts such as these to reduce existing nonprofit organization-partnering inequities are essential,” the researcher concludes.
