Investment summary
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will invest $60 million to support The College-Ready Promise to improve college-readiness rates by implementing groundbreaking approaches to ensure that all students have access to effective teachers in every classroom.
Background
The College-Ready Promise is a coalition of five organizations that operate public charter schools serving primarily low-income and minority students in Los Angeles, as well as several other communities in California. This partnership represents an unprecedented level of collaboration across organizations that have a deep commitment to college readiness for all students. The coalition includes the Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, Aspire Public Schools, Green Dot Public Schools, ICEF Public Schools, and Partnerships to Uplift Communities. These organizations currently serve more than 28,000 students in 85 public schools.The partnership schools have demonstrated strong academic results. More than 75 percent of the graduates over the past two years from The College-Ready Promise schools enrolled in a four-year college, well above the average for the state. Seventy-five percent of the schools that have been operating for at least three years perform in the top tenth of similar schools across California.
While their schools have shown promising results, The College-Ready Promise coalition is committed to doing more to improve the college-readiness rates of their students, ensuring that students who continue on to higher education are fully prepared to enter college-level courses. To achieve this, The College-Ready Promise will undertake a set of strategies to ensure that all teachers in their organizations are highly effective and can accelerate academic progress for students who enter school far behind grade level.
Key Components of Teacher Effectiveness Reform Plan
The College-Ready Promise is committed to dramatically boosting student achievement and college-ready graduation rates through the following actions:- Supporting teachers through residency institutes for new teachers, mentoring from highly effective colleagues, better data on student progress, and professional development that is better customized to individual needs
- Improving evaluation of teacher effectiveness, including using student achievement data as part of a set of measures that can inform how teachers are supported and rewarded
- Setting a high standard for teacher effectiveness and providing increased compensation and better career opportunities in the classroom for those teachers who are highly effective
- Supporting principals to be best-in-class leaders who can create schools where teachers thrive and where students graduate college-ready
For more information please contact:
The College-Ready Promise
Nathan James
+1.206.313.1673
