8 1/2 Million Dollars an Hour

Philanthropist Donald Bren just gave $8.5 million to THINK Together, an L.A.-based nonprofit group that runs afterschool programs, to extend the school day by an hour in 30 or so Santa Ana and East LA schools. That is one huge private donation to expand THINK's afterschool programming, which stands to really help these kids--largely low-income and English-learning--gain the extra learning they probably need. Still that's one seriously expensive hour so I hope a chunk of that goes to evaluate the program's impact . Anecdotes and testimonials are nice but they won't be enough to sustain that kind of expansion beyond Bren.