About CPER

Communities for Public Education Reform

Communities for Public Education Reform (CPER) is a partnership of donors who support grassroots organizing and advocacy efforts to achieve equitable opportunities and outcomes for low-income students, particularly in communities of color. CPER is grounded in the belief that community engagement is a critical lever in successful school reform. The Fund is a project of Public Interest Projects (PIP), a 501(c) (3) New York-based public charity.

Background on CPER

Launched in 2007, CPER has so far raised $26 million from 75 national and local donors, and has committed over $20 million in grants and fieldbuilding supports to date to 124 organizations (including coalition members). Through a leveraged, dollar-for-dollar match, CPER offers up to $500,000 in national match funds to local dollars raised in six regions across the country.

CPER supports local, state, and regional education organizing groups, research and advocacy allies, and national coalitions working to achieve change in policy and practice on the school, district, state, and national level. By providing multiyear support to engage, amplify, and strengthen parent and student voices in a cross section of U.S. school districts, CPER addresses the political and cultural dimensions of school reform, builds strong local leadership, and challenges the policy, practice and power relations that have institutionalized inequitable and inferior opportunities and outcomes for public school students.

Reach and Issue Areas

Local grantees currently operate in six sites across the country: California, Chicago, Colorado, Mississippi, New Jersey and Southeastern Pennsylvania. The Fund also shares knowledge resources and learning opportunities with national coalitions and education organizing groups in affiliate sites (Boston, New York City, and Washington, D.C.) and related funding consortia (such as the Just and Fair Schools Fund and the Elev8 Middle School Initiative).

CPER is a multi-issue fund. Grantees across the country pursue a very broad array of campaigns, including education finance reform; improving teaching quality; advancing college readiness and access; ending harsh disciplinary policies; enhancing positive school climate; promoting expanded and redesigned learning time; and reducing the achievement gap. Across specific campaigns and regions, CPER aims to grow and strengthen the field of education organizing and to advance a strategically coordinated and politically effective national movement for educational justice.

Fund Activities

Beyond grantmaking, CPER engages in strategic field building activities to strengthen and grow the community of donors, organizers, researchers, and policy advocates committed to achieving educational justice.

Donor Education
The Fund’s highly diverse funding community includes national and local private and corporate foundations whose program priorities include education, community organizing and engagement, youth, leadership development and public policy. CPER brings these funders together to share information, strategize, and exchange ideas to enhance philanthropic impact. The Fund aims both to increase philanthropic support for education organizing and to deepen awareness of the critical role students, parents, and community members can and must play in achieving and sustaining successful education reform.

Learning Opportunities
Each year, the Fund brings grantees and donors together for an annual convening to strategize, network, receive skills training, and learn content about critical issues in education. The convening provides an opportunity for grantees to connect local and statewide education organizing efforts to federal education policy initiatives. Annual convenings also spark sustained, face-to-face learning exchanges and strategizing opportunities across CPER sites, as grantees receive funds to visit each other, attend conferences and trainings, and share tools and resources on common campaign issues.

Technical Assistance
Grantees receive technical assistance, tailored to the needs of an individual organization or a CPER site, to address needs that include, among other things, organizational development, campaign strategy, and alliance building. CPER’s on-line communication vehicles supplement face-toface exchanges.

For more information about CPER, please contact:

Melinda Fine, Ed.D., CPER Director, mfine@publicinterestprojects.org, 212-378-4095 Public Interest Projects 45 West 36th Street, 6th Floor New York, NY 10018 www.publicinterestprojects.org

CPER Funders 2007-Present

National

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Carnegie Corporation of New York
Charles Stewart Mott Foundation
Cricket Island Foundation
Edward W. Hazen Foundation
Ford Foundation
Marguerite Casey Foundation
Prudential Foundation
Schott Foundation for Public Education
Surdna Foundation
W.K. Kellogg Foundation

California

Chicago

Colorado

Mississippi

New Jersey

Southeastern Pennsylvania