Philanthropic Funding and Field Agents in the Development of Teacher Education Institutions

The Rockefeller-founded and supported General Education Board (GEB) was the largest non-denominational, private source of funding for public schools in the United States in the early twentieth century. It was particularly unique in refusing to deny funds to schools for any racial or gender group, and so it became a major source of funding to develop and maintain schools for marginalized populations. In particular, my project investigates the support that the GEB offered to teacher education programs as part of this mission, and evaluates the relative importance of this philanthropic funding to other aspects of the process of developing and institutionalizing teacher education programs.