Celine Coggins Reflects on Her Time at the Helm of Grantmakers for Education
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Celine Coggins
When she was in college, Celine Coggins had an experience that charted her path to the future. Her mother died unexpectedly just before her sophomore year, and her family could no longer afford the tuition. An alumnus of the college, who wanted to remain anonymous, stepped in and offered to cover her tuition through graduation. That experience not only influenced her life’s work, but “taught her the power of philanthropy,” according to her bio.
Coggins later wrote about her experience for her college’s website, observing, “I’ve learned that an education is the most profound gift one human being can give to another.” She has worked in education for her entire professional career, and helping disadvantaged students get a quality education has been a driving force behind her work.
Coggins started off as a middle school teacher in Worcester, Massachusetts. She says she’s “a community builder by nature,” and in 2007, founded Teach Plus, a teacher advocacy and leadership development network. Coggins headed the network for a decade, and the program grew to over 30,000 members.
Coggins joined Grantmakers for Education (GFE) in 2018, and led the organization through “operational growth, programmatic expansion and financial stability during the most challenging period, including the last two years of the COVID pandemic,” according to the GFE letter announcing her resignation. Coggins also led GFE’s most recent strategic planning effort, which emphasized racial equity, justice and inclusion.
Coggins will stay on at GFE through its annual conference in October (the conference theme: “Igniting Hope In a Time of Recovery”), and through the leadership transition. The organization is hoping to announce a new executive director by the beginning of next year.
We talked to Coggins about what’s next for her (spoiler alert: it isn’t education-related, at least not directly), changes she’s seen in ed philanthropy since she joined GFE, areas that could use more attention from funders, and what books are on her nightstand.
In your resignation letter, you wrote: “After much deliberation, I have decided I need to return to the front lines of advocacy, where I have spent much of my career. … I feel called to put my policy and organizing skills to use again.” Can you talk a little about why you’re leaving GFE and what’s next for you?
It’s been a little more than four years for me at Grantmakers for Education. I’ve learned a ton and hopefully contributed a lot to the organization. And, as an organization, we’ve done a lot of work on identity — really thinking and hearing from our members about the need to shift the focus to racial justice in education. And that led to two questions for me.
One question was, as a white leader with a substantial platform, is there a way to double down on that commitment to racial justice and allow someone else to step into the role?
At the same time, that identity work led me to the question, what am I proximate to? And I started to think about that in a couple of different ways. One was that a lot of leaders my age are heads down on the issues that they care about, but a lot of people my age are kind of checked out. And so, as someone who spent my whole career building networks and trying to figure out how you make the whole greater than the sum of its parts, I’ve decided that the invisibility of Gen X in civic life is the problem that I want to work on.
I’m launching something called The Legacy Years Project that is intended to bring together Gen Xers as a more visible force for good in public life. I think we’re a really important key to bridging some of the divides and polarization in the civic conversation. And so that’s where I’m headed.
In your resignation letter, you also said that the Uvalde shooting was a tipping point for you. Can you explain why this incident prompted you to try to boost the civic engagement of Gen Xers?
So there are lots of different issues that people blame on baby boomers, and whether that’s warranted or not, baby boomers have been a force in society for 35 years. But in the case of school shootings, I was in my first job as a teacher when Columbine happened, and it was shocking and horrible. But we didn’t do enough about it. Then I had three daughters in elementary school when Sandy Hook happened, and I stood outside of school with other parents and lamented the state of the world. Then we went back to our regular lives. So when Uvalde happened, here I was with my kids almost through the school system (my oldest is in college, the other two are in high school) and we clearly still haven’t done enough on school safety. And this is an issue that has clearly happened on Gen X’s watch.
Gen Xers are ascending into leadership roles now as baby boomers retire. We’re a pretty heads-down, pragmatic group of people who weren’t taught the skills of activism and civic engagement when we were younger; we came of age in peace times. I think this is the right moment because Gen Xers have an independent streak, but right now, it’s meeting up against one of the defining features of midlife, where you’re looking for meaning and you’re looking for connection. My own personal circumstance was that, when my oldest went to college, I started to recognize that, number one, I have more time. And number two: Where’s the community for me? I wanted something that calls me into participation. I see lots of friends who also need to be called into participation. And so that’s what I’m going to try to do, and to use the skills of network-building that I’ve learned at Grantmakers for Education and Teach Plus.
Looking back at your four years at GFE, what are you most proud of?
When I came on board at Grantmakers for Education, the board said that GFE was primarily known programmatically for our annual conference. We really wanted to be known as an organization that does year-round programming that is attuned to our members’ needs. That was what we were working on when the pandemic hit. And having everyone move online allowed us to say, hey, let’s do more webinars, let’s invite more members in to present their work to other members. Now, we have a robust year-round programming calendar that I love and I’m very proud of and think is a service to members.
Also, I’m a trained researcher, and coming out of Teach Plus, I believe that networks help people make sense of their world. I like to do a lot of polling and surveys, to analyze the results and bring that information forward into the media. So that’s been something that we’ve built on and strengthened at GFE. We do one major survey a year and that allows members to see themselves in that data, to say, “Great, we seem to be on track with lots of foundations,” or “We’re way ahead on this issue,” or “This is an issue that others aren’t interested in.” That kind of information is good for starting conversations and collaboration.
What are some changes you’ve seen in education philanthropy since you started at GFE?
I think the foundation focus on racial justice and equity that is going on now is incredibly important. And I think issues of equity in funding are the most important thing the education sector can fix. Issues like diversifying the teaching profession and some of the other issues that our members are drawn to couldn’t be more important. But I will also say that there are some issues I care deeply about that aren’t getting as much attention now. Issues like, how do you build the next generation of assessments? I don’t see too much energy for that with our members, and that is a little disappointing to me. I think some of the initiatives that characterized the last era of education reform are important, and I worry that we’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I think it needs to be about both/and, not either/or.
George Miller, the longtime representative from California who helped pass No Child Left Behind, used to say — he was on my board at Teach Plus — he used to say that when we passed No Child Left Behind, the idea was a dipstick to allow a district to ask how our kids are doing. How was this kid doing in grade three? How are they doing in grade four? That was the idea, but as it ended up, we drove ourselves to death on testing, and testing took up a disproportionate amount of a student’s academic year. And now, we have a pendulum shift to some arguing for no testing at all, saying that testing is just to the detriment of certain students and only exposes systemic racism. But I think it’s important for us to know where and how kids are learning. But ideally, high-stakes testing would only take a couple of hours a year.
So I’d love to see funders continue to dig in on these issues. Some funders certainly are continuing to do so — the Overdeck Family Foundation and Schusterman Family Philanthropies, for example. I hope others will do so, too.
Another thing I’ve observed among funders, which I think is fantastic, is a continuing and increasing focus on workforce and career pathways. We recently did a site visit with a bunch of funders in conjunction with the Rodel Foundation of Delaware. I find myself looking at the kids in those programs and saying, “Wait, why don’t my kids have that? Every kid needs this!” So we’re seeing more of that, along with greater intentionality that college should be an option for every kid, but it should not be a must-have for every kid. I love those programs and see real growth in funders’ interest in them.
We’ve tried so many different iterations to fix the American high school that have been imperfect and insufficient, but this approach (workforce and career pathways) seems to have promise. This approach takes a little bit off the backs of high schools and brings in the community, higher ed, and local industry. But it takes some effort, and that’s where philanthropy really can make a difference. (IP recently wrote about funders’ growing interest in workforce and career pathway programs.)
Have you observed a shift away from charter schools among GFE members in recent years?
There has been a very major shift away from charters among our group of funders. Grantmakers for Education is a more left-leaning group of funders, and they are deeply skeptical, at this point, of charters. Most of our members would say, “Fix the district system.” But among more conservative funders, you’d probably get a different response, so I would say philanthropy is mixed on charters and on funding charters.
But I do think there’s been an interesting kind of resurgence with parents and choice, post-pandemic. I don’t know how long that will hold, but what we’re seeing at the start of this school year is that enrollment numbers in traditional public schools are down. For the past two years, you could attribute that to safety and people deciding that homeschooling was safer than sending kids to school. But at this point, the people who are coming back to the public school system are probably back. So I do think there’s a greater appetite for choice.
Personally, I like some basic choice. I think that a strong charter school is a great thing. But I do very much worry about vouchers that pull dollars from the public system. And as someone who has some expertise in education, homeschooling beyond a certain age seems like a challenging proposition to prepare someone for being productive in a knowledge economy. So I’m for some choice, but not all the choice in the world.
What about changes in funding practices, like trust-based philanthropy and participatory grantmaking?
I think that trust-based philanthropy is a trend that is here to stay, but some foundations are further ahead on this than others. And I think there’s a learning curve that almost every foundation has to go through on its own. When I first started hearing talk about trust-based philanthropy four years ago, when I got to Grantmakers for Education, I was a little bit skeptical because what I heard was that we were just going to turn all the power over to the community. But what I have seen is an evolution of that, which is, “We’re going to set some boundaries on what we can and can’t do, and our trustees have weighed in on some basic guardrails.” Finding that balance is something you see people working on, and it’s hard work.
What education areas could use more attention from ed philanthropy?
I think mental health is one of the biggest challenges facing schools right now. Funders are beginning to figure their way into this. Social and emotional learning is an area that many funders have gotten involved in, and I think that can mean a lot of different things — everything from character education to fidget spinners for kids. A lot of social and emotional work is about helping teachers understand the relationship-based foundation for learning. That’s great, but it is not going to get us all the way to solving some of the deeper mental health challenges that have revealed themselves during the pandemic. The pandemic has revealed a different level of mental health crisis. I think [student mental health] is an area where we need funders to help push schools into a new era and support them in figuring out, how do we add staff? How do we add training? I’m not a huge fan of putting student mental health challenges on teachers; teachers already have enough responsibility. We need to have different mental health supports in schools, and potentially deeper connections with mental health facilities. Ed funders can do a lot to help schools figure that out.
What about racial equity and justice in education? I’m sure you saw the Schott Foundation’s recent #JusticeIsTheFoundation report, which concluded that ed philanthropy’s investment in these areas is falling short?
I think it’s fantastic that [the Schott Foundation] is looking at this. I think it’s really good to have an organization tracking this and saying, “Lots of people said they were going to shift their philanthropy to racial justice in education. How many dollars are actually going in that direction?”
One of the things they’ve been tracking, and this came up in their last report, too, is that overall spending in K-12 education is going down. That’s the bigger alarm bell to me, and we’ve seen some of this ourselves. Because if there’s less funding going into K-12, there’s less funding for racial justice and all other things in K-12.
And I don’t quibble with their data, but I do think it is difficult to track where funding is actually going. We’ve tried to do a little bit of tracking on this ourselves, and it’s hard, because no program is about just one thing. Still, if the bottom line is that there is still a lot of work to be done in terms of getting more dollars to racial justice and education, I think that is true.
One last question and a shift in topic: Do you have any book recommendations?
My favorite book that I just finished is called “High Conflict” by Amanda Ripley. It’s not directly about education, but it has tremendous implications. I’ve been recommending it to people who are feeling like we’re all getting stuck in the CRT culture wars type of stuff, and we want to have a different conversation about education and about learning and about curriculum. The subtitle is “Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out.” So it’s super-relevant to education, and I have to apply some of these things in my regular life. The way I approach media consumption, for example. And thinking through, what are my strategic choices? How do I act? And it is really well written, too.
