Education Funding

The $25,000 Question

Are the Milken brothers handing out money to teachers to honor excellence or to polish a tarnished image?
By David Hill — March 01, 1998 29 min read
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“We now present the entrance of the educators!” exclaims Giselle Fernandez, co-anchor of the syndicated television program Access Hollywood. It’s a Saturday night in June, and Fernandez, looking spectacular in a red satin dress, is hosting the final ceremony of the Milken National Educator Awards, held in the Century Plaza Hotel’s Los Angeles Ballroom. One hundred and thirty-eight teachers and principals are about to receive no-strings-attached checks for $25,000, which will be handed to them by either Lowell Milken, president of the Milken Family Foundation, or his brother, Michael Milken, the fallen junk bond king.

After a brief fanfare played by six trumpeters, the winners, grouped by state, enter the cavernous room. Each delegation is led by a high school military cadet holding the state flag, followed by the state’s education commissioner or schools superintendent. Fernandez, reading from a TelePrompTer, announces each state as the educators—the men wearing black tie, the women dressed in elegant evening gowns—stream in. With Nick Perito and His Orchestra playing in the background, it’s like a cross between a Miss America pageant and a political convention.

The awardees take their seats at assigned dinner tables, and Fernandez turns the program over to comedian Steve Allen, who tells a few jokes and then does a spoof on Larry King Live. (King, who was scheduled to appear, is a no-show.) Allen introduces several other performers, including a ventriloquist and a group of students from Hamilton Academy of Music, a public high school in Los Angeles, who perform a number from “Guys and Dolls.”

Everyone seems to agree that the Milkens know how to put on a good show. A few years ago at the awards banquet, singer Michael Jackson thrilled the audience with a surprise appearance. (Jackson, a friend of Michael Milken’s, was a Milken Family Foundation board member at the time.) Steve Allen isn’t exactly Michael Jackson, but he’s funny and charming nonetheless, and the audience members—more than 1,500 teachers, principals, policymakers, and business leaders—respond with enthusiasm.

The Milken Award winners, however, are the real stars tonight, and as the dessert plates are being whisked away, the awardees make their way backstage, where they wait patiently for their moment in the spotlight.

Finally, Fernandez introduces Michael Milken, whom she calls “your co-host and resident visionary!” Milken, dressed in a fashionable shawl-collar tuxedo, introduces members of his own family, including his wife, Lori, and his mother, Fern. The awards, after all, are put on by the Milken Family Foundation, and the Milken brothers like to think of the ceremony and the accompanying three-day education conference as a family affair. Which may explain why Michael Milken proceeds to show slides of himself as a baby and pictures of his wedding. The audience loves it.

Then, at 10:30 p.m., it’s time for the main event. “We welcome you to our family this evening,” Milken tells the winners. As Fernandez reels off their names, the educators walk onstage one by one, picking up their checks from either Michael or Lowell. The orchestra plays “Climb Every Mountain.” Many winners offer hugs and kisses to their benefactors. The whole thing takes 15 minutes. When the checks have all been passed out, the 138 awardees gather around the Milken brothers and wave their prizes in the air while the orchestra plays “Hey, Look Me Over.”

A few minutes later, in the lobby, I meet Elvira Largie, an elementary school teacher from Tohatchi, New Mexico, a small town on the Navajo Indian Reservation. She is wearing a traditional Navajo outfit, including beaded deerskin moccasins and turquoise jewelry. She is standing with her husband and two sons, and she is looking around the room for the Milken brothers. “I brought some Navajo rugs that my mother made,” she says. “My mother wanted me to give them to Lowell and Michael, to show her gratitude.”

The Milken family, she says, “has touched my life. I feel very honored.”

She holds up the envelope that contains her prize. It is still unopened. “In our culture,” she says, “we say that when you receive something, you take it and you breathe it in four times. So I’ll do that here.” She puts the envelope to her mouth, takes four short breaths, then opens it and pulls out the check. She looks at it carefully, as if she still doesn’t quite believe it is real.

Most teachers, even the best ones, spend their entire careers in relative obscurity. For those fortunate enough to be honored for their work in the classroom, the awards typically range from a shiny plaque to several thousand dollars. One of the biggest recognition programs is the annual Reader’s Digest American Heroes in Education Award. The 10 winners receive $5,000 each, and their schools get an additional $10,000. But even that is small potatoes compared with the Milken National Educator Awards, the Oscars of teaching.

Conceived by the Milken brothers in 1985, the awards were first presented in 1987 to a dozen California teachers. Since then, the Milken Family Foundation, based in an elegant five-story office building in downtown Santa Monica, has given out more than 1,000 $25,000 checks, and the number of states participating in the program has grown to 35.

Winners are selected not by the foundation itself but by committees established by the participating states’ departments of education. There is no nomination or application procedure. Awardees, however, must meet at least some of the criteria set by the foundation, including distinguished achievement, outstanding ability, commitment to professional development, and “exemplary and innovative use of education technology in teaching and learning.” (The latter, according to foundation literature, is “highly desirable,” but in fact many of the winners I met in Los Angeles did not emphasize technology in their schools.) A number of Milken Educators, as they are called, have been honored with other local and national awards.

Most winners are notified by their state education chiefs, sometimes in surprise schoolwide ceremonies. Robert Leathers, principal of Evansville Elementary School near Casper, Wyoming, got a phone call from the district’s assistant superintendent. “He said he wanted to talk to me about a special project,” Leathers said. “So he came to the school, and we walked down to the school gym. And there everybody was. All the student body, all the principals in the district, the school board, and the state superintendent of schools, who told me I had won. It was very exciting.” Like many winners, Leathers had never even heard of the Milken awards.

A handful of winners are notified by Lowell Milken himself, who brings along a video crew to record the stunned looks on their faces. The videos, which resemble the television commercials for the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes, are shown repeatedly during the proceedings in Los Angeles.

Indeed, the conference—three days of speeches, workshops, seminars, panel discussions, buffet dinners, and general schmoozing—is a unique part of the Milken awards. The foundation provides free transportation and lodging for all 138 winners, who may bring along one guest (usually a husband or wife). The Milkens even rent tuxedos for each male winner to wear at the awards banquet. (The women, however, must fend for themselves.)

A number of past winners also attend, along with various state legislators, education experts, and business leaders. It’s a rare chance for classroom teachers to exchange ideas with colleagues and to rub elbows with politicians and policymakers. Last summer’s speakers included former U.S. Congressman Jack Kemp, technology guru George Gilder, MCI Communications Corp. Chairman Bert Roberts, and West Virginia Governor Cecil Underwood. Previous guests have included U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley, former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Reed Hundt, former Secretary of Education William Bennett, and a number of well-known scholars, including Howard Gardner, Arthur Levine, Henry Levin, Linda Darling-Hammond, and Larry Cuban.

“It’s the best conference I’ve ever been to,” said 1995 Milken winner Doug Lundberg, a biology teacher at Air Academy High School in Colorado Springs, Colorado. “Teachers are not accustomed to first-class treatment, and this was first-class all the way.”

Even the setting is four-star. The elegant Century Plaza Hotel, where rooms start at $165 a night, has long been the preferred hotel of presidents visiting Los Angeles, a fact not lost on the Milken awardees. For teachers who are used to staying at Holiday Inns, spending four nights in such splendor is a bit like Cinderella attending the royal ball. “I didn’t know people lived like this,” one teacher told me as she eyed the lobby, with its white marble columns. “I’ve seen it in movies, but I’ve never lived it.”

The glitz is all part of the Milkens’ calculated strategy to elevate the status of teachers and principals by treating educators as true professionals. “I really think that when you say to someone that they’re important,” Lowell Milken said, “and that they have the most important job in the country, you also have to treat them in that fashion.” From the start, the Milkens wanted their awards to make a splash, even if it meant upping the ante in the prize department. “We wanted to attach something significant in terms of the financial amount,” he said, “because, unfortunately in America, if you don’t attach a large financial number to something, a lot of people don’t pay attention.”

It’s hard not to be impressed by what the Milkens are doing for exemplary teachers and principals. All the educators I met in Los Angeles were thrilled to have won $25,000, but they seemed even more excited about the conference itself. “What it does is kind of elevate your thoughts about what you’re doing,” Edward Silver Jr., an elementary school teacher from Millington, Maryland, told me. “It just gets you excited about doing some things that you haven’t done before. I feel more motivated.”

Still, I figured at least some of the winners would be skeptical of the Milkens’ motives. More than a few critics have wondered if Michael Milken, a convicted felon, uses the awards program as a forum to vindicate himself.

The Milken name certainly carries a lot of baggage. Back in the go-go ‘80s, Michael was a junk bond king who controlled a vast financial empire from his X-shaped trading desk at the Beverly Hills office of Drexel Burnham Lambert. He created an entirely new capital market out of high-risk, high-yield bonds, earning huge amounts of money for himself—$294 million one year, $550 million another—and his clients. Lowell, a tax lawyer, was the loyal younger brother, brought in by Michael to advise him on tax matters and to manage his assets and those of the other traders. If Michael was the financial genius, Lowell was the hatchet man, “the technician with the green eyeshade, the administrator of the empire,” as Connie Bruck described him in her 1988 book The Predators’ Ball: The Inside Story of Drexel Burnham and the Rise of the Junk Bond Raiders.

At the height of his power, Michael Milken would host the annual Drexel High-Yield Bond Conference—known informally as the Predators’ Ball—at either the Beverly Hilton Hotel or the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. At these legendary affairs, Milken would preach the gospel of junk bonds to the invited guests—bankers, lawyers, money managers, corporate raiders, and the like. On the last night, Milken would throw a gala dinner and show for all 1,500 guests at the nearby Century Plaza Hotel, in the very same ballroom where he now hosts the educator awards. One year, Frank Sinatra was the surprise entertainer; another year, Diana Ross dazzled the crowd. Milken, however, was always the main attraction. To his followers, he was “the king.”

Then came the fall. In 1989, the government filed a 98-count indictment against both brothers accusing them of violating federal securities and tax laws. All charges against Lowell were dropped as part of a deal in which Michael pleaded guilty to six felonies. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison but served just two after agreeing to testify in other securities trials. Still, Milken remains on probation, and federal authorities continue to investigate whether he violated a 1990 agreement banning him from the securities industry for life.

Former Wall Street Journal reporter James Stewart, in his book Den of Thieves, placed Michael Milken at the center of “the greatest criminal conspiracy the financial world has ever known.” His crimes, Stewart wrote, “were far more complex, imaginative, and ambitious than mere insider trading.”

But teachers and principals, apparently, are a forgiving bunch. At the conference, when I reminded some of the award recipients that Michael Milken was a convicted felon, I was usually given a look that seemed to say, “Party pooper.” None of the awardees I spoke with was troubled by the source of the prize money. If they were, they had found a way to rationalize it away.

“It doesn’t bother me in the least,” said Robert Leathers.

“I look at the good things he’s done, and I look at the impact he’s had on research and education,” said Joseph Modica, a 6th grade teacher from Hoehne, Colorado. “That’s what I’m focusing on. I don’t know enough of the other circumstances to really make a judgment call either way.”

“My feeling is that he’s using the money for an excellent purpose,” said David Gillam, a 2nd and 3rd grade teacher from Anchorage, Alaska. “The best thing that I can think of doing is honoring teachers and rewarding people who work really hard.”

Another teacher, who asked not to be identified, explained that he was untroubled by Michael Milken’s involvement in the awards program because “it’s the Milken family that’s responsible for this, not one individual.”

Other winners professed only vague knowledge of Michael Milken’s past. “Why did he go to prison?” one teacher asked me. “Didn’t he have his conviction overturned?”

Of all the Milken awardees I interviewed for this article, only one, Nancie Hope Atwell, a 1995 winner, expressed any skepticism about the Milkens’ motives. “The awards have been a very effective public relations tool for rehabilitating Michael Milken’s reputation,” she said in a telephone interview. Atwell, the author of several well-known education books, is principal of the Center for Teaching and Learning, a school she started in Edgecomb, Maine.

Why, then, did she take the money? “Our school is always in the red, so I treated it like a grant to the school. I signed the check over to the school. I guess because of what I did with my money, I have a clean conscience.” She elected not to attend the conference in California. “I had other professional obligations,” she told me.

When I repeated Atwell’s comments to Lowell Milken, his ever-present smile disappeared. “My response to that,” he said, “is very simple: Everyone in America is entitled to their own opinion.” Asked to elaborate, he replied: “I don’t really know what more to say. I find the comment to be incorrect, but I don’t spend my life trying to chase incorrect statements with the truth. I am really too busy a person.”

At least one state, New York, does not participate in the Milken Educator Awards because of Michael Milken’s involvement. The New York Board of Regents and the state commissioner of education, with support from New York State United Teachers, turned the Milkens down eight years ago. “That exemplary teachers could be proud of this [award] and go back to their classrooms saying, ‘I got all this money from Michael Milken,’ that raises some questions,” Chuck Santelli, the union’s director of policy and program development, said at the time.

But other states can’t wait to join. In Los Angeles, I met Robert Bedford, Florida’s deputy commissioner for education programs, who was invited to the conference even though his state does not yet take part in the awards. “We’re looking at them, and they’re looking at us,” he said. “We’d love to be part of it. We hope the foundation is impressed by us.” Representatives from several other states were also at the conference, eager to make their pitches.

New York notwithstanding, Lowell Milken hopes eventually to sign up all 50 states and the District of Columbia. “That would be the long-range goal,” he said.

Even if Michael Milken did become a philanthropist for less than altruistic reasons, he would hardly be the first wealthy individual to see the image-building benefits of giving away large sums of money. Andrew Carnegie, the steel magnate, was despised by many Americans after the infamous Homestead Strike of 1892, during which 16 men were killed. Yet he gave away millions of dollars to establish more than 2,500 libraries in the United States, and he contributed generously to public education. His philanthropies—including the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching—have taken on identities of their own. Today, when you mention the name Carnegie, the first thing most people think of is Carnegie Hall; the Homestead Strike is all but forgotten.

Legend has it that Ivy Lee, the inventor of modern public relations, persuaded client John D. Rockefeller, an oil mogul and cutthroat capitalist, to carry a roll of dimes and hand them out to children to polish his image.

Defenders of the Milkens point out that the brothers established the awards program, as well as other charitable endeavors, before Michael Milken came under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. That’s true, but it’s also true that the awards were first given out in 1987, the same year the clouds began to gather over the Milken empire.

Then there’s the question of whether the Milken Family Foundation’s assets—worth more than $300 million—are somehow tainted because of Michael Milken’s illegal activities. Author Benjamin Stein thinks so. In his 1992 book A License To Steal: The Untold Story of Michael Milken and the Conspiracy To Bilk the Nation, he writes, “Money from the Milken family foundations, clearly traceable to large-scale misconduct by Michael Milken, is sought by worthy causes all over Southern California, from orphanages to operas.” Others have pointed out that even though Milken paid more than $1 billion in fines and settlements as part of his plea bargain, he and his family, including his brother, were allowed to keep an estimated $500 million. (James Stewart estimates the Milken family fortune to be even greater, perhaps as much as $1.2 billion.) In other words, this line of thinking goes, Milken got off easy.

There’s no denying, however, that the Milkens are doing positive things with their money. In addition to the National Educator Awards, the Milken Family Foundation has established a number of charitable programs. There’s Mike’s Math Club, an enrichment program for 5th and 6th grade students. There’s the Association for the Cure of Cancer of the Prostate, or CaP CURE, founded by Michael Milken in 1993, when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. (His disease is now in remission.) There’s the Milken Exchange on Education Technology, which supports the use of technology in elementary and secondary schools. The exchange underwrote “Technology Counts,” a report on technology in schools released this past fall by Education Week, which, along with Teacher Magazine, is published by Editorial Projects in Education Inc.

The goal of the foundation, according to a mission statement, is “to discover and advance inventive and effective ways of helping people help themselves and those around them lead productive and satisfying lives.”

The Milken name certainly hasn’t prevented the foundation from adding some heavy hitters to its roster. Thomas Boysen, senior vice president in charge of education, was Kentucky’s commissioner of education from 1991 to 1995; he helped implement the state’s landmark education reforms. Lewis Solmon, a senior scholar and senior vice president, is the former dean of UCLA’s graduate school of education. Cheryl Lemke, the foundation’s vice president in charge of education technology, previously served as associate superintendent for learning technologies for the Illinois state board of education. Former football star Rosey Grier sits on the board of directors and also serves as program administrator for community affairs. Last year, the Milkens snagged Donald Straszheim, chief economist at Merrill Lynch, to become president of the Milken Institute.

In the end, perhaps it really doesn’t matter that Michael Milken is a convicted felon or that his intentions are somehow suspect. The man is giving away a lot of money—who cares what his motives are?

Waldemar Nielsen, author of Inside American Philanthropy: The Dramas of Donorship, pointed out that “a number of the largest fortunes in the United States were gathered under conditions that can be criticized.” But the important thing, he said, is what the person is doing with his money now. “Look at the facts,” he told me. “Is he generous? Is he purposeful? And is he intelligently purposeful? Is it real generosity? Or is it just a little amount of money designed to get his name in the papers? If he’s willing to be generous, he should be applauded. God knows, there are plenty of rich people out there who don’t do a goddamn thing with their money.”

In other words, judge the philanthropist by the philanthropy.

If the Milken Family Foundation National Education Conference makes one thing clear, it is this: Michael Milken is determined to rehabilitate his public image. Once a symbol of all that was wrong about the “decade of greed,” the former junk bond king has repositioned himself as a major philanthropist. When he shows up on Charlie Rose’s PBS talk show to discuss prostate cancer and CaP CURE, his status as a convicted felon is never mentioned. But others won’t let him forget it.

“Milken,” according to a 1996 Los Angeles Times article, “has thrown himself into his community service and charity work with the same zeal he once directed at junk bonds. Yet he remains recalcitrant when it comes to his criminal record, portraying himself as a misunderstood visionary who will one day be vindicated in the court of public opinion.”

In 1996, when Fortune magazine ran a cover story on Milken’s return to the public eye (“Milken’s Back” proclaimed the cover), Steven Rattner, managing director of Lazard Freres, a Wall Street investment firm, sent a letter offering this appraisal: “Michael Milken’s efforts to rehabilitate his image should be kept firmly in context. It is absolutely true that Milken is a financial genius who should receive full credit for inventing the high-yield bond, the most important financing tool of modern times, which has allowed thousands of small companies to grow and create jobs. It is also true that Milken is a convicted felon who pleaded guilty to relatively minor infractions to avoid facing far worse punishment. . . . It should also be remembered that Milken’s overzealousness caused billions of dollars of unsound paper to be stuffed into S&Ls, insurance companies, and other financial institutions, resulting in the most expensive string of failures since the Depression.”

Milken declined to be interviewed for this article. To other reporters, he has referred only obliquely to his past misdeeds, referring to them as “my problems from the ‘80s.” In the Milken Family Foundation press kit, there’s no mention of Milken’s fall from grace, nor even a reference to his high-flying days at Drexel Burnham Lambert. Instead, there’s this vague sentence: “Over the last generation Mr. Milken was instrumental in financing hundreds of companies and creating millions of jobs around the world in industries ranging from cable and telecommunications to home-building and health care.”

At the conference, Milken—a gaunt figure with sunken cheeks, deep-set eyes, and a high-pitched, nasally voice—talked about the importance of providing “access to capital,” but he made only indirect references to his past life as a bond trader, and he never once uttered the words “Drexel Burnham,” “junk bonds,” or even “high-risk, high-yield bonds.” Only George Gilder, a longtime defender of Milken’s, spoke of “Michael Milken’s junk bonds,” in a reference to how they were instrumental in financing Barnes & Noble Booksellers. Not once, however, did I hear anyone mention Milken’s prison stint.

To be sure, Milken has always had his staunch defenders. Jack Kemp, before his speech, praised Milken for his “vision” and for making “a profound contribution to society.”

“I want to salute Michael,” he said. “Michael Milken has seen things that are invisible to other people.”

Daniel Fischel, a professor of law and business at the University of Chicago Law School, went so far as to write an entire book defending Milken. In Payback: The Conspiracy To Destroy Michael Milken and His Financial Revolution, Milken is portrayed as a scapegoat, the victim of an out-of-control government investigation. “He was driven out of business and forced to plead guilty to crimes that previously did not exist,” Fischel writes. “The unholy alliance of the displaced establishment and the ‘decade of greed’ rich-haters, aided by ambitious but unscrupulous government lawyers like Rudy Giuliani, combined to destroy him. The whole episode is a national disgrace.”

In any case, Lowell Milken, not Michael, is the front man for the educator awards. He is, after all, president of the foundation, while his brother sits on the board of directors. Many of the teachers at the conference seemed unsure of what to make of Michael, with his intense gaze, black-on-black outfits, and ever-present entourage. When he walked onstage on the morning of the last day to moderate a panel discussion on “The Entertainment Industry and Education: The Challenge for the Next Century,” he was greeted with warm but not overly enthusiastic applause. Lowell, on the other hand, got a standing ovation when he stepped up to give his keynote address—before he had even uttered a word. Throughout the conference, Lowell was constantly in demand by awardees who wanted to thank him personally for his generosity.

Lowell’s keynote address was more than just a speech: It was a high-tech, multimedia presentation, guaranteed to dazzle. After taking the stage, Lowell—impeccably dressed in a double-breasted, navy blue suit, white shirt, and red geometric print tie—presented a slick video segment touting the achievements of the Milken Family Foundation. There was Norman Schwarzkopf, his image projected onto four giant screens, praising the Milkens and their work. There was President Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, the late Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, all doing the same. Then Lowell switched gears and began showing slides of his family. He even introduced his 5th grade teacher, Lou Fosse, “a great teacher; he set high standards for every student in the class, and in doing so, without explanation or fanfare, he made it clear to us that excellence was as much about quality of effort as it was about quality of achievement.”

In his address, titled “For Ourselves and Our Posterity,” Milken called for a national, comprehensive system of early childhood education and care. The price tag for such an undertaking: $52 billion in new federal funds. “The fact is,” he said, “there are certain services that yield far-reaching social benefits, and they must be funded from public sources. And the ones that respond to the needs of the nation as a whole should be the responsibility of the federal government. I am arguing that a comprehensive, early childhood education and care system is one of these.”

It was odd to hear a businessman like Lowell Milken call for more, not less, government spending. It seemed likely that the Milken brothers’ many friends in the business world would oppose any such expansion of government services. But the teachers in the audience seemed receptive to the idea, and they gave Milken another standing ovation at the end of his speech. “We just don’t do enough for our children,” a teacher sitting next to me said as the applause died down. She was also impressed by Lowell’s speaking abilities. “He’s dynamic,” she said. “He’d make an excellent teacher.”

On the plane to Los Angeles, I read an article in the Atlantic Monthly called “The Computer Delusion,” by Todd Oppenheimer, associate editor of Newsweek Interactive. Classroom technology, Oppenheimer argues, has been oversold. There’s no good evidence proving that computers boost student achievement, he writes, yet school districts are spending huge amounts of money to get on the bandwagon, cutting scholastic programs in the process. And teachers are partly to blame.

“In a poll taken early last year,” Oppenheimer notes, “U.S. teachers ranked computer skills and media technology as more ‘essential’ than the study of European history, biology, chemistry, and physics; than dealing with social problems such as drugs and family breakdown; than learning practical job skills; and than reading modern American writers such as Steinbeck and Hemingway or classic ones such as Plato and Shakespeare.”

Three weeks before the Milken conference, the Los Angeles Times ran a two-part series titled “Classroom Computers: A Progress Report.” Like Oppenheimer’s piece, the articles raised serious questions about the claims being made for classroom technology. “Hefty investments in school computers have, thus far, produced few academic gains at most schools,” the first article concluded. “The machines work fine, and students benefit from learning to operate computers. But educators are finding that even the best technology cannot make students smarter or teachers more capable.”

But there was little debate at the conference, at least from the panelists and speechgivers, about the benefits of computers in the classroom. Only Sharon Nelson, then-chairman of the Washington State Utilities and Transportation Commission, acknowledged a “dark side” to education technology, citing the Atlantic Monthly article for raising “a number of critical and provocative questions.”

Michael Milken now gushes about technology with the same enthusiasm he once reserved for junk bonds. “Tomorrow’s promise is grounded in the marriage of education and technology, in interactive networks that will bring ideas, knowledge, and new ways of thinking to people young and old, in schools, homes, and workplaces,” he has written. “Satellites, data-compression technology, CD-ROM, and speedier computers have all brought new worlds of information to ever-larger audiences. The prospects are limitless for students of any age, for training, retraining, and pure knowledge enhancement.”

Milken and Lawrence Ellison, chairman of Oracle Corp., have even started a company, Knowledge Universe, that will merge education, technology, and entertainment. Their first order of business was to buy shares in Hasbro Inc., the toy company. “The Hasbro characters,” Ellison told a reporter at the time, “have enduring value. Mr. Potato Head might be able to teach you arithmetic.”

Lowell Milken, too, has spoken of the “enormous potential” of computerized schools. “Education technology offers much of the assistance that schools need in order to serve children fairly and well,” he said at the 1996 conference. “This is not a hunch. It’s what we’ve observed in schools from coast to coast, and it’s what we’ve concluded from extensive research and personal involvement.”

Indeed, classroom technology has become the primary education focus of the Milken Family Foundation. “It’s definitely going to be a high priority within the foundation for the next five to 10 years,” Thomas Boysen told me. Last February, the foundation launched the Milken Exchange on Education Technology, which Lowell Milken calls “a nerve center of an emerging national network of educators, public officials, and business leaders who are advancing technology, pedagogy, and policy.”

The exchange commissioned a survey on the role of technology in the classroom, and the results, announced at the awards conference, showed that 85 percent of American voters believe schools that are well-equipped with computers and up-to-date technology have a major advantage over those that are poorly equipped. The survey also found that most voters would be willing to pay $100 more in federal taxes if the money were used to equip public schools with computers.

It was clear that some of the Milken Educators had been selected in part for their innovative uses of classroom technology. According to biographical information published by the foundation, Bruce Whitehead, principal of Hellgate Intermediate School in Missoula, Montana, turned his failing school into one of the most successful in the country, and the transformation was largely due to a comprehensive technology effort. Mark Lueckenhoff, an elementary school teacher in Ewing, Missouri, “has incorporated computer and media technologies throughout the curriculum to better prepare his students for jobs of the future.”

But other winners said they use little or no technology in their classrooms, and some were downright suspicious of the claims being made at the conference. “I think if we use technology as a tool, it’s good,” teacher Joseph Modica told me. “But if we use it for the end result, I don’t think it’s good. Literacy is still the key.”

Ronald Scutt, who teaches in a one-room schoolhouse in Stehekin, Washington, a town that can only be reached by boat or by plane, thinks technology is great for older children. “We use it for our 7th and 8th graders,” he told me, “because they’re at an age when the intellect is ready to go into full swing, to blossom.” But for younger students, he said, nothing compares to direct, hands-on experiences.

“The Milken Family,” he said, “puts a tremendous emphasis on technology, which is going to be important for education. But I find myself asking that they also consider developmental stages—are we putting the appropriate tools at the appropriate time with children? In other words, should children at an early age be working with clay to make geometric forms, or should they be using a mouse to select them on a computer screen?” He then answered his own question. “There’s no doubt—the clay.”

On the Sunday morning after the banquet, I ran into Scutt, his wife, and two sons in front of the hotel. Dressed in shorts and T-shirts, they were waiting for a rental car. They planned to spend the day at the beach before heading back to Stehekin the following day.

Scutt was still basking in the glow of Saturday’s awards ceremony. “Last night was absolutely great,” he said. “Before I went onstage, my heart was beating so fast, I thought, uh oh. My legs were literally weak. I didn’t know it would hit me like that. But after I started walking across the stage, I regained my composure, and I was able to thank Lowell for his graciousness here.”

His wife, Kim, was equally enthusiastic. “It’s been excellent, beyond all expectations,” she said. “They treated us like royalty all the way.”

And with that, they were off to Venice Beach. The weather report was calling for clear skies and warm temperatures.

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A version of this article appeared in the March 01, 1998 edition of Teacher Magazine as The $25,000 Question

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Education Funding Biden's Budget Proposes Smaller Bump to Education Spending
The president requested increases to Title I and IDEA, and funding to expand preschool access in his 2025 budget proposal.
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President Joe Biden delivers remarks on lowering prices for American families during an event at the YMCA Allard Center on March 11, 2024, in Goffstown, N.H.
President Joe Biden delivers remarks on lowering prices for American families during an event at the YMCA Allard Center on March 11, 2024, in Goffstown, N.H. Biden's administration released its 2025 budget proposal, which includes a modest spending increase for the Education Department.
Evan Vucci/AP
Education Funding States Are Pulling Back on K-12 Spending. How Hard Will Schools Get Hit?
Some states are trimming education investments as financial forecasts suggest boom times may be over.
6 min read
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F. Sheehan for Education Week / Getty
Education Funding Using AI to Guide School Funding: 4 Takeaways
One state is using AI to help guide school funding decisions. Will others follow?
5 min read
 Illustration of a robot hand drawing a graph line leading to budget and finalcial spending.
iStock/Getty
Education Funding A State Uses AI to Determine School Funding. Is This the Future or a Cautionary Tale?
Nevada reworked its funding formula hoping to target extra aid to students most in need. What happened could hold lessons for other states.
13 min read
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