 In the Spotlight
A look at innovative communications
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Nothing to Hide
Irvine
Shows How To Candidly Report Bad News
In 1999, the James
Irvine Foundation launched Communities Organizing
Resources to Advance Learning (CORAL), a major
initiative to improve education achievement in
low-performing schools in five California cities. Midway
through the initiative, the foundation discovered that
its $60 million reform effort was in danger of failing.
Drawing on in-house expertise and outside experts, the
Foundation studied the problem and made a series of
mid-course
corrections.
At the same time, Irvine decided it would not keep quiet
about about the problems it encountered during the
course of the initiative, but instead would issue a
detailed report describing to the public what went
wrong, steps taken to correct the problem, and lessons
it learned.
In a foreword to the newly released report on the CORAL
initiative, James Canales, Irvine president, notes that
much of what foundations learn from their work "rarely
gets captured or shared in any formal way." Instead,
says Canales, on those rare occasions when they do
report on their work, "foundations are often criticized
for focusing only on the good news and positive
results." In introducing Midcourse Corrections to a Major Initiative: A Report on
the James Irvine CORAL Experience,
Canales states, "This is not such a report."
 James
Canales
Instead,
the report, which was written by Gary Walker President
Emeritus of Public/Private Ventures, contains a
"complicated and difficult story, for it reveals numerous
shortcomings on the Foundation's part. We felt compelled
to share these lessons in the hope that others might
benefit from this experience and avoid similar
pitfalls."
In keeping with the
extreme candor of the report, Canales also writes that
in 1999 when he was serving as vice president, he was
part of the team that launched the initiative. Now the
foundation's president, he says: "I assume my share of
the responsibility for how this initiative unfolded, and
I sought to help in its reorientation."
For a copy of the
report,
click here.
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