School standards - Stuart Fnd  

The Stuart Foundation’s overarching purpose is to help the children and youth of California and Washington states become responsible citizens. There are many ways to work toward this goal. Our particular approach is to help strengthen the public systems and community supports that contribute to children’s development. We organize almost all grants into three programs:

Strengthening the Public School System so that all children and youth can achieve at high levels.

Strengthening the Child Welfare System to ensure that children and youth faced with abuse or neglect grow up in a safe and loving home and make a successful transition to adulthood.

Strengthening Communities to Support Families so that families can bring up children and youth in an environment that promotes their development.

The Foundation concentrates on a relatively limited range of issues in each grantmaking program. In selecting issues to work on, we consider the opportunities for Foundation funding to make a difference by supporting efforts to strengthen policies or practices in the field in ways that have potentially far-reaching benefits for children and youth. The challenges facing our schools, communities, and child welfare system are great, and organizations must work together to meet them. We support partnerships to promote better cooperation among public and private organizations in order to improve conditions for children and youth. We believe that cooperation among donors is equally important, and we welcome opportunities to use the Foundation’s resources to complement and extend efforts funded by other organizations.

A Systemic Approach to Change

The following themes characterize our approach to strengthening public systems and communities in all three grantmaking programs.

Making public policies more effective

The Foundation supports efforts to improve statewide or local policies so that public systems and communities can support the development of children and youth more effectively.

Policy analysis/policy development. We support projects that examine the effectiveness of policies for children and youth; that improve the quality of information available to policymakers, stakeholders, and the public; and that provide a nonpartisan forum for discussion and dialogue to build understanding and consensus for improvements.

Standards/accountability. Effective practice requires accountability; accountability depends on adequate information about performance and realistic standards for service quality and results. The Foundation supports the development of standards and systems for measuring results that promote greater accountability and program improvements, and that can gain the support of policymakers, practitioners, communities, and business leaders.

Making connections/building understanding

Social problems can be solved only if people and organizations with different perspectives<educators, parents, policymakers, business people, service providers, and others<build a shared understanding and reach agreement on what needs to be done. The Foundation supports:

Stronger connections among policymakers, practitioners, and researchers to foster information exchange, fresh thinking, and creative solutions.

Collaboration across agencies and disciplines in which closely related programs integrate their work to achieve greater benefits for children and youth.

Building public understanding of key issues in education, child welfare, and community well-being, to secure a more supportive environment for effective policies and practices.

Improving practice

We support the development and dissemination of more effective practices.

Innovations/demonstrations. We fund the development of promising new practices that will help solve significant problems in the field and that can be implemented widely. Successful applicants work at the frontiers of research and practice, have a strong evaluation design, and are thinking strategically about how to ensure that their innovation will be well understood and widely infused into the work of other organizations or communities to benefit children and youth.

Dissemination. The dissemination of effective methods is key to widespread improvements in practice. We support projects that help others to understand innovative practices and use them to strengthen their work.

For details, see

http://www.stuartfoundation.org/funding.html