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Funding Performance is a monograph containing a series of essays to help funders achieve more impact on the world's wicked problems. The authors, who represent a variety of different backgrounds and vantage points, speak truth to power about the ways funders frequently undermine their own grantees. And they offer concrete, action-oriented insights for funders who want to set their grantees up for success.

To thrive in the 21st century economy, all young people will need some education beyond high school. Whether in two- or four-year colleges or in programs granting credentials for employment in family-sustaining careers, obtaining postsecondary education and training has become imperative--all the more so in an era when employers now require the same kinds of skills as colleges. For Ohio to increase dramatically the number of students prepared for and completing education beyond high school, it must treat high school reform as part of a pipeline to postsecondary learning, not an end in itself. The state should give priority to policies that increase the college preparedness of high school students, smooth the transition between high school and postsecondary education or training, and reconnect dropouts to education pathways toward postsecondary credentials. The purpose of this report is to provide the Ohio State Board of Education Task Force on Quality High Schools for a Lifetime of Opportunities with strategies to consider for achieving these goals. To improve its high schools and increase their ability to prepare students for today's economy, the report recommends that Ohio must concentrate on four critical parts of its education pipeline: (1) Improve the level of high school preparation so that more youth graduate "college ready;" (2) Improve the transition between secondary and postsecondary education; (3) Reconnect dropouts to educational pathways toward postsecondary credentials; and (4) Build a supportive systemic context enabling more communication and interaction across the secondary and postsecondary sectors.

The next step in the school-to-career (STC) movement is to build upon its significant successes in today's policy and political environment. The School to Work Opportunities Act 1994 codifies a reform agenda to promote academic achievement and economic opportunity for young people during and after high school. Its general principles are that most young people need help making the transition to adulthood; effective solutions must improve educational achievement and career prospects; schools must enter into new relationships with community partners; reform must be systematic; state and local flexibility must be maximized; and gradual implementation provides flexibility. The best STC initiatives are demonstrating improvements in student attendance, motivation, and satisfaction; rigor of course selection; employer engagement; quality of adult relationships; dropout prevention; college attention rates; and wages in first jobs. The following four factors have contributed to STC's weakening as a national reform initiative: (1) political realignments; (2) complexity and ambition of the STC vision; (3) implementation choices; and (4) conflict between implementation of standards-driven reform and STC's experiential, outside-the-classroom core. Five priorities can advance what is best in STC: (1) focus on high school; (2) focus on postsecondary institutions and connections; (3) promote STC principles within other education and workforce initiatives; (4) fund the local institutional base for long-term school-community partnerships; and (5) fund research to improve design and implementation. (Contains 27 endnotes.) (YLB)

The bulk of this report describes current Mississippi efforts to develop the skills and talents of its people, and suggests strategies for Mississippi to consider in order to dramatically increase and improve these efforts. Presented are specific, programmatic recommendations following from these strategies.