Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching summary

Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (CFAT), U.S. education research and policy centre, established (1905) in New York, N.Y., as the Carnegie Foundation with a $10 million gift by Andrew Carnegie. In 1906 the foundation broadened its original mission (to provide pensions for retiring college teachers) to encompass areas of education reform and renamed itself the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (CFAT). During the 1930s and ’40s CFAT emerged as a leader in the development of standardized testing for students at all levels. As early as 1937, CFAT was involved in efforts to develop a test, the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), for admission to graduate and professional schools. Beginning in the mid-1950s, CFAT moved toward a more cohesive vision of reform, emphasizing the goal of equality of educational opportunity in addition to quality of education. That vision was pursued in numerous influential reports published in the 1960s and ’70s that examined issues such as campus unrest, social justice, accessibility, the structure and finances of higher education, the role of federal funding, and the preparation of students for post-graduation employment. By the late 1970s CFAT was compelled to address widespread concern about the quality of teaching, which it did in reports focusing on secondary education (1983), undergraduate education (1987), and the conflicts between research and teaching obligations experienced by university faculty (1990). CFAT relocated to Princeton, N.J., in the early 1980s and to Stanford, Calif., in 1997.