The Center for Public Integrity

An investigation by iWatch News has found that tens of thousands of children attend schools on military installations that are falling apart from age and neglect, and fail to meet Defense Department standards. 

As we reported in our story, three in four of the 194 schools run by the Defense Department on military bases are either beyond repair or would require extensive renovation to meet minimum standards for safety, quality, accessibility and design. Schools run by public systems on Army installations don’t fare much better: 39 percent fall in the failing or poor categories, according to a 2010 Army report.

Have you had an experience with a school on a military base? We're interested in hearing from parents, students and teachers who have been involved with military base school overseas or in the United States. Your insights will givie us a better understanding of current school conditions and help inform our reporting.

For years, lenders enticed students to take out loans by splashing university names, logos, colors, and mascots on their advertisements – giving inexperienced borrowers the impression that the schools provided the loans.

Congress sought to ban the practice, known as co-branding, in a 2008 law and hailed it as a way to prevent lenders from misleading students.

“We are another step closer to ensuring that students understand the products they are buying to help finance their education, and that unfair and deceptive practices in this market are outlawed,” Democrat Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, former chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said when the panel passed his version of the legislation.

But as often happens in Washington, when regulators write rules to carry out a new law, loopholes quietly emerge.

A mix of congressional ambiguity, regulatory initiative, and special interest lobbying has assured that co-branding can continue. And some students still may find themselves confused about the relationship between the sources of their financing and colleges that are required by the law to act in students' "best interests."

The law’s language left the scope of the co-branding ban open to interpretation by federal rulemakers, enabling the Federal Reserve Board to write a little-known guideline that exempts some lenders from the ban. So long as the lenders are endorsed by the school -- recommended, for instance, on a list of "preferred lenders" -- co-branded advertisements can continue.  The advertisements must contain a disclaimer noting that the school isn't actually making the loan.

The sexual assault expert hired by Reed College last year has submitted his resignation with the elite private college still embroiled in turmoil over its sexual assault policies, a set of disciplinary procedures that the college itself recently determined were partially out of compliance with federal law.

With Reed faculty joining their voices to a mounting student campaign for change, the college has already made changes in its polices to meet federal legal requirements. Kevin Myers, director of strategic communications for
Reed, said additional policy changes are on the way. Some of those changes were announced to students Wednesday.

The sometimes fierce debate on campus has caused clashes between students and administrators, provoked alumni, spurred graffiti and flyers on campus, and prompted guerilla theater in the college dining room. Though the college hired a sexual assault expert last year, in part to help navigate reforms underway since August 31, the expert, Pete Meagher, has told the college he is leaving May 31, with changes still pending.

Fifty-eight percent of Reed College students signed a petition urging policy reform, presented to the college president, board of trustees and faculty and student governments April 22. Faculty also submitted a petition, saying the college may be inadvertently harming sexual assault victims through its policies, and some student victims and advocates think Reed is violating federal law.

The richest man in America stepped to the podium and declared war on the nation's school system. High schools had become "obsolete," and were "limiting — even ruining — the lives of millions of Americans every year." The situation had become "almost shameful."

Bill Gates, prep school grad and college dropout, had come before the National Governors Association seeking converts to his plan to do something about it — a plan that would be backed by $2 billion of his own cash.

Gates' speech, in February 2005, was a signature moment in what has become a decade-long campaign battle to improve test scores and graduation rates, waged by a handful of wealthy CEOs who arrived with no particular background in education policy — a fact that has led critics to dismiss them as "the billionaire boys' club."

Their bets have been as big as their egos and their bank accounts. Microsoft chairman Gates, computer magnate Michael Dell, investor Eli Broad, and the Walton family of Wal-Mart fame have collectively poured some $4.4 billion into school reform in the last decade through their private foundations.

Has this big money made the big impact that they — as well as teachers, administrators, parents and students — hoped for?

In a first-of-its-kind computer analysis, iWatch News analyzed the graduation rates and test scores in 10 major urban districts — from New York City to Oakland — which collectively took in almost one-fourth of the total money poured in by these top four education philanthropists.

The results, though mixed, provide dispiriting proof that the billionaires have not found a one-size-fits-all solution to education reform and that money alone can’t repair the desperate state of urban education.

iWatch News examined the track records of the four billionaire philanthropists who have taken the lead in trying to use their private money to reform school districts around the country over the last decade. Here are their report cards.

Grades were assigned based on the amount of money and time invested by charities in specific reforms, as well as interviews with district and foundation officials. Among the factors affecting grades were decisions by the foundations to abandon or modify signature efforts based on initial results they found disappointing.

The Broad Report Card

Giver: Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation

Grade: B-

Amount Spent: $440 million

Where Started: Los Angeles in 1999

Goals: To further urban education by focusing on leadership training, competition through charter schools, and teacher effectiveness.

Examples of Expenditures: Invested $116 million to train principals and superintendents, but pulled out of the principal programs. Superintendent graduates lead 43 urban school districts; Broad says two thirds of superintendents serving for three years are heading up districts where student achievement has improved faster than similar districts. Spent $97 million on charter schools, $25 million on district financial controls and restructuring, and $25 million on teacher evaluation and merit-pay schemes.

The Dell Report Card

Giver:  Michael & Susan Dell Foundation

Grade:  B-

Amount Spent:  $400 million

Where Started: Austin, Texas, in 1999

Goals: To improve education for the urban poor through charters, school leadership programs, and data systems that track student performance.