Catching Education’s Windfall : Funding: L.A.-area school reformers prepare pitches for some of the $500 million offered by philanthropist Walter Annenberg.

One evening in mid-May, USC President Steven B. Sample hosted a dinner in his campus conference room for about three dozen handpicked guests. They included teachers, public school administrators, union leaders, local education reformers and a state senator who has been a key player in efforts to improve California schools.

The next morning, Sample’s list for a breakfast meeting that stretched till noon included Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, executives from some of the city’s most influential corporations and representatives from several private foundations.

Both groups got some tantalizing news and the same assignment. Walter H. Annenberg, the philanthropist and former publishing mogul who has announced plans to give half a billion dollars to education reform, was considering the Los Angeles area for a chunk of the funds. But first, Annenberg wanted to know how leaders here would use such a gift.

If their ideas find favor with Annenberg and his advisers, unprecedented amounts of fresh capital could flow in to help spread reform efforts of those who are grappling to reinvent schools on shoestring budgets.

“We are conceiving this as a way to turbocharge the reform efforts already under way in the Los Angeles area,” said Theodore Mitchell, dean of the UCLA Graduate School of Education. Mitchell and Guilbert C. Hentschke, dean of USC’s School of Education, were asked by Sample to write an initial proposal, based on talks with the Annenberg representatives and the views expressed at the two USC sessions and subsequent meetings.

The still-evolving proposal for the Los Angeles Metropolitan Project (LAMP)--which sent a draft report of its ideas to the Annenberg people last week--envisions the money going directly to small groups of schools across Los Angeles County.

According to people who attended the meetings and helped fashion the proposal, schools hoping to participate would have to show they have the support of parents, teachers and community and business leaders. Because the money would go directly to groups of schools instead of to school districts, a nonprofit organization would be set up to oversee efforts.

While schools would have great autonomy in using the money, they would have to demonstrate a commitment to high academic standards and an intimate campus setting so students get individual attention. Schools would also have to show how they will be accountable for student progress.

Many of these principles are common to reform projects already under way, including LEARN, the Los Angeles Educational Alliance for Restructuring Now, which involves community groups, business leaders, parents, the teachers union and officials of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

“We’ve been at this for 10 years now, and there is not much disagreement in this city about what reform looks like,” said Peggy Funkhouser, president of the Los Angeles Educational Partnership, a business-backed group that works with area public schools and participates in LEARN. “There were a lot of nodding heads in that room,” said Funkhouser, who attended the dinner session at USC.

Mike Roos, LEARN’s president, called the Annenberg project “a timely bridge” between local reform ideas and the means to put them into wide practice. “It’s just a super opportunity for Los Angeles,” Roos said.

Sample pulled together the meetings at the request of Vartan Gregorian, the president of Brown University and longtime Annenberg friend who was asked by the philanthropist to advise him on how to distribute his $500 million “Annenberg Challenge” gift. Gregorian was accompanied by Theodore R. Sizer, a nationally known education reformer and Brown professor who is expected to be a key player in the gift decisions. The Annenberg National Institute for School Reform is based at Brown and headed by Sizer.

Rather than start another new program, Annenberg and his advisers want to focus on proven reforms, a position emphasized when the gift was announced Dec. 17 in a White House ceremony. The Annenberg Institute will get $50 million to expand its efforts, including the 700-campus network of public and private secondary schools founded by Sizer in 1984 and known as the Coalition of Essential Schools. Several local districts have affiliated schools.

Another $50 million is earmarked for the New American Schools Development Corp., which has collected private donations for nine groundbreaking school design projects, including one developed jointly by the Los Angeles Educational Partnership and United Teachers-Los Angeles.

An additional $15 million will go to the Education Commission of the States, which is aiding reforms in several states.

Much of the remaining $385 million is expected to go to local school reforms, with about a third to be concentrated in the nation’s urban areas. Don Ernst, policy director for the Annenberg Institute, said schools will be required to match them in some way, to demonstrate community support.

Detailed terms of the gifts still are being worked out, Ernst said. What is firm is that recipients must demonstrate that they have autonomous schools that have formed alliances with universities and business and community leadership and have developed a set of proven principles.

Proposals have been solicited and received from groups in New York City and Chicago in addition to Los Angeles. Leaders in Detroit are working on a proposal, and the institute may consider including Philadelphia and an alliance of New England cities in the first wave of local grants.

Some participants in the Los Angeles meetings said the group proposed that some of the funds go to LEARN schools or to affiliates of the New American Schools Development Corp. Other recipients would include members of Sizer’s Coalition of Essential Schools or the Accelerated Schools Project, developed several years ago at Stanford University and producing results at several campuses that serve disadvantaged minorities.

Mitchell, of UCLA, said the document forwarded to Annenberg is likely to change as it is disseminated to wider circles for comment.

“We tried to take the ideas that came up in the meetings and coalesce them into something that reflected the cross-section of the community’s interest,” Mitchell said. “We believe we now need to broaden the discussion in the community.”

The Annenberg gift is the latest by the 86-year-old former ambassador to Great Britain. Annenberg took over his family’s struggling publishing empire and grew wealthy with the likes of TV Guide, Seventeen magazine and the Daily Racing Form.