Billionaires Boys Club Impact on Education

This Newsweek article, titled "Back to School for Billionaires" shows the impact of over $4.4 billion in spending over the past decade. story was reported and written by Center for Public Integrity.

If just one billionaire were putting his money in non-school tutor/mentor programs, focusing on "tipping points" and leadership ideas that I've written about over the past few years, maybe the rest of the money that was spent on schools would have a greater affect.

I've used this "mentoring to careers" chart often to illustrate a funding strategy that needs to reach kids as early as first grade and stay connected to them through high school and beyond if the youth is living in one of the segregated, high poverty neighborhoods of Chicago or other urban areas of the country.

One of the foundations mentioned in the Newsweek article was the Walton family of of WalMart fame. If they just applied the same thinking that has put WalMart stores in neighborhoods all over they country, they could spur the growth of high-quality, mentor-rich youth programs in high poverty neighborhoods. This means they help identify places where programs are needed, help build programs in those places, and help provide the talent, dollars and technology each of those places needs to attract youth and volunteers and keep them coming back for many years.

What's so hard about this?

Yet, who can point to teams in big corporations who are using this concept to help volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs be in all neighborhoods with low performing/high-drop out schools?