Program and Policy Analysis

Kronley & Associates undertakes detailed analyses of policy and programs for state and local governments and leading philanthropic organizations. Analyses typically involve review of policy and program, consideration of philanthropic and other contexts, appraisal of implementation strategies and outcomes, examination of related efforts, and presentation of learnings and detailed recommendations for the future. Many of the firm's analyses have been published. Some examples of policy and program analysis projects are:

The Rockefeller Foundation made a series of targeted investments in an effort to promote school finance reform in New York. To inform future grantmaking initiatives, the Foundation asked Kronley & Associates to examine how the philanthropic organization was able to cultivate public awareness of a controversial issue – the need to change how and how much schools are funded – and to engage key stakeholder groups while operating in a manner that reflected its traditions and values. The firm undertook a review and analysis of the Foundation’s activities that explored how the Foundation leveraged opportunities and examined its impact. The firm’s findings were presented in the report, Funding Change: The Rockefeller Foundation’s Adequate Financing for Educational Equity Initiative in New York State.

The Public Education Foundation (PEF) in Chattanooga, TN has partnered with the Hamilton County (TN) Department of Education to restructure nine failing urban elementary schools.  Though each school faced significant challenges, the partnership between PEF and the school district has led to improvements in student learning.  On behalf of PEF, Kronley & Associates prepared a report, Challenging Myths: The Benwood Initiative and Education Reform in Hamilton County, that revealed the innovative work underway in the schools to transform teaching and learning and, in the process, demonstrated that many of assumptions about urban students and urban schools are false.   PEF released Challenging Myths in 2006. 

The Center for American Progress (CAP) is a nonpartisan research and educational institute that seeks to generate and promote progressive ideas and policies regarding some of the most pressing domestic and foreign issues confronting the nation today. When CAP established a taskforce of educational experts and civic leaders to develop recommendations to improve academic achievement among all students, Kronley & Associates provided extensive research and analysis to the taskforce on a wide array of educational issues including teacher quality, curriculum standards, school readiness, after-school programs and access to higher education. Drawing on the firm’s analysis, the taskforce released Getting Smarter, Becoming Fairer: A Progressive Education Agenda for a Stronger Nation, a report that outlined their vision for public education and their recommendations for realizing it.

Additional policy analyses and implementation projects include:

• Mississippi Institutes for Higher Learning (IHL)
• Council for a Better Louisiana (CABL)
• Southern Education Foundation

On behalf of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform and the George Gund Foundation, Kronley & Associates conducted an extensive study that has led to the development of the concept of reform support organizations (RSOs) in education. Following a review of 24 leading RSOs, we closely examined RSOs in five communities - Cleveland (OH), Durham (NC), Kansas City (KS), Flint (MI), and Chattanooga (TN). A resulting report, entitled Reforming Relationships: School Districts, External Organizations and Systemic Reform, discussed the role of outside organizations in promoting the reform of public education, and included a companion guide for district administrators to use when engaging external organizations. An additional analysis, Changing Partners, provided a detailed case study of relationships between the school system and outside organizations in Cleveland.

The Carnegie Corporation is at the forefront of an emerging national movement to transform large urban high schools. The Carnegie Corporation engaged Kronley & Associates to undertake an examination of the seven urban school districts and their community partners that, together, are attempting to re-create large, impersonal high schools into small learning communities or small schools. The firm looked closely at the relationship between the districts and their partners and prepared Sustaining Partnerships: Emerging Lessons from the Carnegie Corporation's Schools for a New Society. The report analyzed the factors that make for successful philanthropic-intermediary partnerships in long-term education reform endeavors and connected these factors to elements of a foundation's theory of philanthropy.

The Edna McConnell Clark and W. K. Kellogg Foundations have been at the forefront of the philanthropic effort to improve middle grades education, going beyond funded efforts to provide active leadership in designing and monitoring various reform strategies. Kronley & Associates conducted an analysis of this effort on their behalf. The study captured the movement to reform middle grades, especially the role the philanthropic community has played in it. A report, entitled Maturing Investments: Philanthropy and Middle Grades Reform, which contains recommendations for funders contemplating support for change in any large public system, was released by Grantmakers for Education.

The firm provided strategic analysis of many of the foundation-operated programs that distinguished this company-sponsored foundation’s work in promoting education improvement in the South. Prominent among them is an examination of the contributions and the potential of the Columbia Group, a confederation of eight business-supported, statewide education groups involved in the development and implementation of education policy and promising practices. This investigation led to the development of a report entitled Southern Synergy: The Columbia Group, Business and Education Reform.