Report says education charities stingy with needy kids

A watchdog charity group has chided the nation's biggest education foundations for only allocating 11 percent of their collective grant money to the country's neediest children.

The National Committee for Responsible Philanthropy's report evaluated 672 foundations that gave at least $1 million in grants to education from 2006 to 2008. Only about 11 percent of those grants went to "marginalized communities," defined primarily as children in low-income families and minority children. And just 2 percent of those funds went to fostering long-term change through advocacy efforts and community building.

This leaves the "alarming inequities in educational opportunities" in America unaddressed, the report charges. Since about half of public school funding comes from the local level, students living in poor areas tend to go to schools that are under-funded, and kids in richer areas go to better-funded schools. This feeds the persistent achievement gap between low-income and high-income students and minority and white students.

So far, foundations haven't commented on the report, according to Businessweek.

"Sometimes, philanthropy as a sector is too polite and uncomfortable with mixing it up," Aaron Dorfman, executive director of the committee, told Businessweek.

The Ford Foundation and the Nike Foundation were among those praised for giving more than half their grants to vulnerable groups.

(Photo: Two children in a Mississippi Head Start program for low-income kids/AP.)