In the United States, we work toward one overarching goal: more opportunity for everyone in this country. Bill and Melinda Gates believe an excellent education is the most direct path to opportunity, especially for low-income young people, so that is the focus of our efforts.
Since 2000, we have invested $4 billion in schools and scholarships. In 2008, we deepened and extended those investments based on lessons we have learned over the years.
Most importantly, we learned from students that the hypothesis we started with was correct: All students can succeed, given the right support. In our 2006 annual report, we highlighted the great progress in New York City, where students are graduating from dozens of new high schools at impressive rates. In our 2007 annual report, we described the work of Green Dot Schools, one exemplary partner that is getting excellent results with the same low-income students who struggled in other schools.
However, we also learned that changing the size and structure of schools, which had been at the root of our strategy, often isn’t enough by itself. In the years to come, our grants will also focus on effective teaching. This approach aligns with a growing body of research showing that effective teaching is the most important school-based factor in student achievement.
Finally, we learned that graduating from high school isn’t enough. In today’s economy, a postsecondary credential is no longer just nice to have; it’s virtually a requirement for jobs that pay enough to support a family. Yet only a quarter of low-income students ever get a postsecondary degree.
In November, we held a forum in Seattle to report on our progress to many of our partners. Our leadership team outlined our strategy for achieving two ambitious education goals: ensuring that 80 percent of students graduate from high school with the knowledge and skills they need to complete college, and doubling the number of students who earn a postsecondary degree or certificate by age 26.
Hidalgo Early College High School
Hidalgo Early College High School is one of the schools that proves all students can succeed with the right support. Hidalgo is located in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, one of the poorest places in the United States. More than half the students at Hidalgo have a parent who never finished high school. And yet Hidalgo’s graduation rate is almost 90 percent, more than 10 percentage points higher than the Texas average. How does Hidalgo do it? Part of the answer is that it’s an early college high school, which means students complete high school while taking rigorous college courses. Many of them earn so many credits that they graduate not only with their high school diploma but also with an associate degree.
The early college model works, especially for students who belong to groups that are under-represented at colleges, because it helps them get further, faster—and for less money, which is critically important for low-income students. Hidalgo is one of more than 200 early college high schools created since 2002 with support from the Gates Foundation and other partners.
Bill and Melinda Gates visited Hidalgo in October 2008 to get a better understanding of the school’s success. In meetings with students and teachers, two themes came up over and over again. First, high expectations. All the students Bill and Melinda talked to expected to continue their education after graduation. Second, close relationships between teachers and students. Hidalgo extended the school day by a half hour so it could fit tutoring into the curriculum, and the students thrive on the one-on-one contact with their teachers. One student told Melinda that Hidalgo “is like a second home."
Moving Toward Common Standards
One of our goals is to help promote the shared conviction that all students should graduate from high school ready for college.
In 2005, two key partners, Achieve and the National Governors Association (NGA), co-sponsored the National Education Summit on High Schools, where Bill Gates called on the governors to publish data that tracks graduation rates clearly. At the time, many states calculated the rates in a way that obscured the extent of the dropout problem.
Bill's speech was part of a much larger push among education leaders to get an accurate picture of how many students were graduating and how many were dropping out. Eventually, all 50 governors agreed to use a single, accurate, and clear method of calculating graduation rates.
The leadership of the states paved the way for federal action. In April 2008, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings introduced new rules that require all states to report graduation rates based on the formula agreed upon by the governors.
This is an important milestone as states move together toward adopting more rigorous education standards that will help their students graduate prepared for college-level work. Working through the Council of Chief State School Officers, Achieve, and NGA, many state leaders have committed to raising standards.
These organizations built enough consensus around the issue of standards that the administration and Congress made them a key part of the stimulus package.
Accelerating Learning
One of the reasons so many low-income students fail to complete college is that their high schools don’t prepare them to do the work. Forty-three percent of students at open-admission two-year community colleges—the most affordable and convenient options for many students—need some kind of remediation when they get there.
But remedial education was never supposed to be a cornerstone of higher education. It’s happened by default as a result of the shortcomings of so many high schools. Consequently, postsecondary institutions don’t see remediation as part of their core mission, they haven’t thought about it strategically, and they don’t have sufficient evidence about what works and what doesn’t.
In December 2008, we made a grant to MDC Inc., an organization that works with community colleges, to help start closing that knowledge gap. MDC’s Achieving the Dream network includes 84 community colleges. Our grant will work with up to 15 of those colleges and five states to analyze data about which instructional practices, curricula, and technology help more students catch up quickly and eventually graduate. This research is a first step in a much larger process of addressing one of the hidden barriers to college completion.
Additional Priorities in the United States
The United States Program also includes initiatives that complement our core investments in high school and postsecondary education.
For more than a decade, we have been working with libraries across the country to help them provide computers and high-speed Internet access. Now we are helping them develop strategies to sustain technology programs over the long term.
In our home state of Washington, we collaborate with hundreds of partners on a variety of projects. In 2008, we made progress on two long-term projects. In early childhood education, we helped launch two pilot sites to test the most effective approaches to helping young children learn. In family homelessness, after wrapping up our successful Sound Families program in 2007, we spent 2008 incorporating more preventative measures into our strategy to reduce family homelessness in Washington by 50 percent.
Throughout the United States, we continue to see evidence that when people have opportunities, they seize them. We are optimistic that, with our partners, we can help millions of people in this country get access to more opportunities.