Who Funds Rethinking Schools?

Rethinking Schools is an influential actor in K-12 education. Its materials are used in teacher training programs like UCLA’s, which recently taught Rethinking Schools’ “Teaching Palestine” in its Ethnic Studies Certificate Program. Rethinking Schools recruits teachers to contribute to its materials, including the current School District of Philadelphia educators who wrote “Teaching Palestine-Israel from the Perspective of Civil Rights and Black Power Activists,” which was included in “Teaching Palestine.”

Through the Zinn Education Project, which Rethinking Schools runs with Teaching for Change, it provides free lesson materials to teachers. Over a hundred thousand educators in the United States have downloaded their lessons.

One lesson written by Rethinking Schools’ Jesse Hagopian is titled: “We the People”: Whose Rights Does the Constitution Protect?” which aims to get students to question why certain rights were included in the Constitution while others were excluded. Hagopian wants students to compare the US Constitution not only to that of other countries, but to the Black Panther Party’s 10 Point Program. From the introduction to the lesson:

…the United States was the land of freedom and justice for all. Or at least, that’s what I was taught.

Across the political spectrum, the Constitution is often presented as a perfect founding document rather than an anti-democratic rule book written to advance the interests of white, landowning men.

Why are the rights we do have so often denied, especially to Black, Brown, poor, queer, and immigrant communities?

Students deserve to study the Constitution honestly, tom compare it with broader visions of justice…the Black Panther Party’s 10-Point Program, which demanded education, housing, employment, and an end to police violence…

Testimonials from teachers in Washington DC, Oregon, Washington State, and Minnesota praise the lesson:

Students were amazed to learn that clean water, food security, and employment are not rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution — and that perhaps they should be!

Students were floored that essentials like clean water, housing, healthcare, and employment, among many others, were not guaranteed in the Constitution. The conversation that followed was both productive and powerful. Students explored many possible solutions to these clear and obvious gaps in our founding documents.

To close the lesson, students added sticky notes to a hallway poster, naming the right they believe should be added to the Constitution and why. The most common theme was food and housing, with many noting, “Other rights are useless if I am dying of hunger.”

The Zinn Education Project also runs the annual “Teach Truth Day of Action” sponsored by the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers.

Rethinking Schools describes itself as a

nonprofit publisher and advocacy organization dedicated to sustaining and strengthening public education through social justice teaching and education activism. Our magazine, books, and other resources promote equity and racial justice in the classroom. We encourage grassroots efforts in our schools and communities to enhance the learning and well-being of our children and to build a broad democratic movement for social and environmental justice.

Our Zinn Education Project — coordinated with Teaching for Change — has more than 100,000 educators who have registered to access our “people’s history” materials.

Books by Rethinking Schools include Teaching Palestine (for which Rethinking Schools has sponsored educator study groups and held seminars at teachers associations); Rethinking Mathematics:Teaching Social Justice by the Numbers; and Transgender Justice in Schools.

Rethinking Mathematics: Teaching Social Justice by the Numbers shows teachers how “to weave social justice issues throughout the mathematics curriculum.” Transgender Justice in Schools includes chapters on “Teaching Trans Curriculum” and “Trans Students Speak Out,” in which students as young as 7th graders write about their experiences. The introduction to that section of the book is titled, “You May Just Be Their Only Trusted Adult.”

Magazines by Rethinking Schools include “Don’t Stop Teaching About Gaza”; “Teach Palestine;” and “Uncovering Oppression.”

“Don’t Stop Teaching About Gaza” includes “What’s Missing In Holocaust Education” from CodePink’s Marcy Winograd:

And yet the common approach in K–12 Holocaust education is to teach the Holocaust as an isolated and unique horror. Students in middle or high school are generally not taught the nightmare that followed the immigration of Jewish refugees to Palestine, where Zionist militias massacred Palestinians, burned their olive trees, and erased Arabic names from streets and towns. The failure to teach the trauma of Palestinian displacement and dispossession sanitizes the violent establishment of a Jewish state on Palestinian graves and erases Jewish voices of resistance to the colonization of Palestine. In a comparative curriculum, students could learn of the cycle of abuse — Germany exterminating Jews, Zionist militias slaughtering Palestinians — and the inherent danger in a state defined by ethnic superiority.

…

While students throughout the United States read Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl to imagine themselves cooped up in an attic for two years, hiding from Nazi storm troopers, few learn of the Nakba. Even fewer are taught the Holocaust and the Nakba simultaneously or back-to-back, not as isolated historical chapters but as interlinked tragedies of scapegoating and ethnic cleansing that continue to this day.

A reading of Anne Frank could be followed by the story of Hind Rajab, a 5-year-old Palestinian girl who dreamed of becoming a dentist.

…

In his chapter in The Holocaust and the Nakba detailing the Kowalskis’ story that began this article, Confino asks us to imagine a “counterfactual” history, a “what if” scenario: “What would have happened if the Jews, whose justification for settling in the land of Israel derived from the Bible, would have exercised a policy in 1948 based on the principle ‘What is hateful to you, do not do to others’[sic]?”

Now that’s a question for classroom discussion.

(emphasis added)

Key Funders

National Education Association: The National Education Association is the largest education association in the country.

Rethinking Schools’ members speak at NEA conferences and give seminars at NEA events, and its materials are advertised in the NEA’s magazine. The NEA partners with the Zinn Education Project to hold the annual “teach truth day of action.”

Rethinking Schools also has a presence at NEA-affiliated teachers associations, including the New Jersey Education Association, where Rethinking Schools held a “Teaching Palestine” seminar.

In 2010, the National Education Association gave Rethinking Schools a grant of $23,500 for “financial assistance.”

Lannan Foundation: The Lannan Foundation was founded in 1960 to support the arts. Its mission, according to the Lannan Foundation:

Lannan is dedicated to cultural freedom, diversity, and creativity through projects, organizations, and movements of exceptional contemporary artists and writers, as well as inspired Native activists in rural indigenous communities.

Lannan recognizes the profound and often unquantifiable value of the creative process and is willing to take risks and make substantial investments in ambitious and experimental thinking. Understanding that globalization threatens all cultures and ecosystems, the Foundation is particularly interested in projects that encourage freedom of inquiry, imagination, and expression.

However, its mission expanded, or drifted, to support various progressive social justice causes. In 2022, the Lannan Foundation announced it would be shutting down in 2032 and would spend allits assets.

Lannan Foundation’s executive director is Brenda Coughlin. A former board member, Coughlin was appointed executive director in 2022. Coughlin co-founded “Voices of a People’s History” with Howard Zinn, namesake of Rethinking Schools’ Zinn Education Project. Indeed, the Voices of a People’s History links to the Zinn Education Project (ZEP) website and encourages educators to use ZEP’s resources.

Coughlin’s areas of interest are described as: “Climate Change, Racial Injustice, Mass Incarceration & Criminal Justice Reform, Privacy and Surveillance, Conflict, Security & Peace, Technology & Data, Labor issues, Human Rights[.]”

In 2020, the Lannan Foundation gave Rethinking Schools $50,000 ($42,000 for general operating expenses and $8000 for the Sowing the Seeds Fund).

In 2022, Lannan Foundation gave Rethinking Schools $100,000 for “General Support.”

Apart from Rethinking Schools, the Lannan Foundation has supported the Middle East Children’s Alliance; Angela Davis; Mohammed El-Kurd; and Mosab Abu Toha.

In 2020, Lannan Foundation gave $57,000 towards its Teach Palestine project, $75,000 to send a delegation of teachers to “Palestine,” and a further $4800 in general support.

In 2021, Lannan Foundation gave MECA’s Teach Palestine $67,000. It also gave MECA $110,000 for “emergency aid to the Middle East,” $4600 for general support, and $6000 for support for Gaza and youth photography in Gaza.

In 2022, Lannan Foundation gave MECA’s Teach Palestine program $20,000 and MECA a further $155,400 for “general support.”

In 2023, MECA got $6900 for general support, and in 2024, another $4500.

The Network Contagion Research Institute has demonstrated ties between MECA and groups with links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Samia Shoman, project leader for Teach Palestine, also co-edited Rethinking Schools “Teaching Palestine.”

In 2020, Davis received $117,000 for the Lannan Cultural Freedom Fellowship. In 2021, Davis received $233,000 for the Lannan Cultural Freedom Fellowship.

According to the Lannan Foundation

Cultural Freedom awards and fellowships were granted to individuals in recognition of their extraordinary and courageous work promoting social justice and the human right to freedom of imagination, inquiry, and full cultural expression. These individuals are typically advocates for education justice, prison reform and abolition, environmental justice and protection, social and economic justice, human rights, and press and journalistic freedom.

In 2021, El-Kurd received $150,000 for the Cultural Freedom Fellowship. On October 7, 2023 El-Kurd posted on X:

In 2021, El-Kurd posted frequently to X denying Jewish indigeneity to Israel, comparing Zionism to genocide and Nazism and comparing Israelis to Nazis. In his book of poetry, also published in 2021, El-Kurd claims that Israelis harvest and eat Palestinian organs.

In 2020, the Lannan Foundation awarded Abu Toha $30,000 for a Cultural Freedom Fellowship. Abu Toha has used social media to make incendiary claims disparaging Israeli hostages and casting doubt on the fate of the Bibas children.

Common Counsel Foundation: The Common Counsel Foundation (CCF) is a nonprofit foundation made up of grantmaking organizations. It describes itself as “a national social justice organization, not defined or contained by geographic bounds. We advise, provide fiscal sponsorships and build operational capacity for movement organizations, and are home to multi-funder collaborative initiatives.”

CCF was the fiscal sponsor of the Movement for Black Lives, one of the key organizations involved with Black Lives Matter.

In 2023, CCF gave Rethinking Schools a grant of $30,000 for “general operating” costs. It gave Rethinking Schools the same amount in 2022 and $20,000 in 2021. In 2020, CCF gave Rethinking Schools $10,000. A total of $90,000 over four years.

Pathfinder Fund: The PathFinder Fund is a private foundation run by Pat and Ann Goudvis. Pat Goudvis is a photographer and documentary filmmaker. Her work has featured in Rethinking Schools - she provided the cover photograph for “Rethinking Columbus.” Pat Goudvis is also noted as a colleague with Teaching For Change, Rethinking Schools’ partner in the Zinn Education Project.

Anne Goudvis is a K-6 grade teacher and author of educational books.

Pathfinder Fund began funding Rethinking Schools in 2002, with a small donation of $100. In 2008, it gave Rethinking Schools $1000. In 2010, it jumped to $5000. In 2011, it gave Rethinking Schools $10,000. In 2013, it gave Rethinking Schools $25,000, and the same in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2023. In 2021, it gave Rethinking Schools $35,000. In 2022, it gave Rethinking Schools $15,000.

In total, from 2002 until 2023, Pathfinder Fund has given Rethinking Schools $291,100.

Mako Foundation: A Chicago-based private foundation, Mako Foundation began funding Rethinking Schools in 2015 - providing $5000 each year, listed as “general operating support/annual gift”, except for 2019, when the gift was doubled to $10,000.

A total of $50,000.

Communitas Charitable Trust: Communitas Charitable Trust is a Chicago-based private foundation which provided grants to Rethinking Schools in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2020, for a total of $26,000.

Donor Advised Funds: Rethinking Schools also benefits from several DAF groups. These include;

Jewish Communal Fund - In 2011, Rethinking Schools got $50,000.

Network for Good - In 2017, Rethinking Schools got $14,147. In 2018, Rethinking Schools got $8,233. In 2019, Rethinking Schools got $10,980. In 2020, Rethinking Schools received $13,237. In 2021, Rethinking Schools got $19,703.

Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund: Between 2017 and 2023, Rethinking Schools amassed approximately $31,800.

Schwab Charitable Fund: Between 2016 and 2024, Rethinking Schools received approximately $78,500 from Schwab Charitable Fund.

This is only a subset of the organizations that fund Rethinking Schools - and therefore only a subset of the grant money flowing to the organization.

Aside from grants, Rethinking Schools also generates revenue from its publications and subscriptions. According to Rethinking Schools’ most recent 990, revenue from publications for FY 2023-2024 was $306,473, while subscriptions brought in $132,903, for the year before it was $324,010 for publications and $153,156 for subscriptions.