Ford Foundation

The Ford Foundation pledged $100 million Wednesday to "transform" urban high schools in the United States, focusing on seven cities, including Los Angeles. The seven-year initiative is among the largest philanthropic efforts aimed at improving education in the United States and, as described, could both complement and challenge aspects of the Obama administration's education reform efforts. It will fund research and reform in four areas: teacher quality, student assessment, a longer school day and year, and school funding.

Several Los Angeles schools, hit hard by budget cuts in recent years, are set to receive $1.7 million from two foundations in a major national initiative to expand learning time for disadvantaged students. The California Community Foundation is to announce Friday that it has received $1.5 million from the Ford Foundation to give children in impoverished communities the same enriched learning activities typically enjoyed outside school hours by their wealthier peers. The California foundation also contributed $200,000 to the efforts.

The Ford Foundation has awarded a two-year, $150,000 grant to Cal State Los Angeles as one of five urban commuter institutions of higher education that "have had a history of exemplary and energetic engagement of diversity issues," according to a foundation spokesman. The grant will support new curriculum and development by faculty of opportunities to increase awareness of and sensitivity to styles of learning among students of different backgrounds.

The Los Angeles Times will use a $1-million grant from the Ford Foundation to expand its coverage of key beats, including immigration and ethnic communities in Southern California, the southwest U.S. border and the emerging economic powerhouse of Brazil. Times Editor Davan Maharaj announced the grant Thursday, calling it "great news" that will bolster coverage of subjects vitally important to readers. A Ford Foundation spokesman said that as media organizations face challenges in funding reporting through advertising and traditional revenue streams, "we and many other funders are experimenting with new approaches to preserve and advance high-quality journalism.

The Ford Foundation Wednesday announced a $9-million fellowship program to help blacks, Puerto Ricans, Mexican Americans and American Indians earn doctoral degrees and become college teachers. For five years, starting with the 1986-87 academic year, the program will award a total of 120 three-year fellowships that will pay an annual stipend of up to $10,000 for tuition and fees.

Julius Adams Stratton, 93, former president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, onetime chairman of the Ford Foundation, and a developer of navigation devices. After World War II, Stratton helped establish the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT, becoming its first director. In 1949, he was appointed MIT's first provost. He became chancellor in 1956, acting president in 1957 and president in 1959.

Pomona College has received a $150,000 Ford Foundation grant to participate in a program aimed at addressing a nationwide shortage of college and university teachers and researchers. The three-year program is aimed at enhancing the skills and commitment of undergraduate students, thus expanding their potential for academic careers.

Cal State Dominguez Hills is among a number of universities to receive a Ford Foundation grant to study communities of immigrants who continue to speak their native language and observe native customs. The $350,000, three-year grant is part of a nationwide project, "Crossing Borders: Revitalizing Area Studies," which the foundation is funding.

Louis Winnick, 85, an economist who helped guide the investments of the Ford Foundation and promoted low-income home ownership, died Saturday at a hospice in Manhasset, N.Y. The cause of death was mesothelioma, a type of lung cancer, his family said. Winnick was born in Romania and came to Brooklyn, N.Y., as a child. He graduated from Brooklyn College and earned a graduate degree in economics at Columbia University.

The Ford Foundation reached agreement today to base a field office in Beijing, its first new office in Asia since 1971, its president announced. "China's increasing engagement with the outside world and the growth of the foundation's program there now make it timely and appropriate for us to have a staff resident in Beijing," foundation President Franklin A. Thomas said in a statement.

The Ford Foundation pledged $100 million Wednesday to "transform" urban high schools in the United States, focusing on seven cities, including Los Angeles. The seven-year initiative is among the largest philanthropic efforts aimed at improving education in the United States and, as described, could both complement and challenge aspects of the Obama administration's education reform efforts. It will fund research and reform in four areas: teacher quality, student assessment, a longer school day and year, and school funding.

Re "Giving, with strings attached," Opinion, Oct. 21 Scott Sherman gets it wrong. Ford Foundation grantees accept our grant letter not because they abandon their principles but because they understand the letter states Ford's values on nonviolence and nondiscrimination. Sherman frets that the grant letter limits free speech. The facts say otherwise. More than 6,000 grantees have signed the letter and continue their work unabated.

'Large foundations are timid beasts," Dwight Macdonald wrote in 1956. The Ford Foundation proved this in 2003 when its president, Susan Berresford, yielded to outside pressure and inserted dubious language into Ford's standard grant-agreement letter, language that outraged civil libertarians, dismayed members of her own staff and left executives at other large foundations shaking their heads.

Fifty artists will receive grants this year totaling $2.5 million from United States Artists, a new Los Angeles-based organization created to provide performing and visual artists with financial support and advocacy.

Louis Winnick, 85, an economist who helped guide the investments of the Ford Foundation and promoted low-income home ownership, died Saturday at a hospice in Manhasset, N.Y. The cause of death was mesothelioma, a type of lung cancer, his family said. Winnick was born in Romania and came to Brooklyn, N.Y., as a child. He graduated from Brooklyn College and earned a graduate degree in economics at Columbia University.

Four Los Angeles janitors have been awarded a total of $130,000, which could, for a time, give their families a glimpse of life outside the ranks of the working poor--a new refrigerator, new school clothes, a two-bedroom apartment. But this prize money is not destined for personal bank accounts. It's better than that, the unionized janitors said.

Three Los Angeles projects have received finalists grants in the Ford Foundation's annual Innovations in State and Local Government Awards Program. One finalist is Humanitas, an interdisciplinary, team-taught, writing-based course of study used in several local high schools and sponsored by the Los Angeles Educational Partnership, a business-backed foundation that helps fund school reforms.

Ten state and local agencies will receive grants totaling $910,000 from the Ford Foundation for finding new ways to tackle difficult problems ranging from feeding the needy to helping teen-age parents. In announcing the grants, foundation President Franklin A. Thomas said cutbacks in federal domestic programs pose new challenges and opportunities for state and local governments.

Four local leaders of the Justice for Janitors movement were awarded a $130,000 Ford Foundation grant, the organization announced Friday. Delores Martinez, Kamilo Rivera, Marisela Salinas and Rafael Ventura, all of whom live in Los Angeles, are leaders of Service Employees International Union Local 1877. They negotiated a 25% wage increase over three years for local janitors. The four leaders led a successful campaign to unionize fellow building-service workers in Los Angeles County.

Seeking to promote community-based leadership, the Ford Foundation will launch a $19-million initiative today to provide grants to people and organizations that are successfully tackling tough social issues. With two-year grants of $130,000, Ford's Leadership for a Changing World program aims to reward individuals who are making a difference but are not well known outside their communities.