BILL & MELINDA GATES FOUNDATION

Policy and Advocacy | Program or Practice | Research | Information Sharing

POLICY AND ADVOCACY

Achieve: To assist and encourage specific states to adopt high school graduation requirements that align with college entry requirements and to help states align secondary school math expectations with the demands of post secondary education and work.

Alliance for Excellent Education: To support an advocacy, communications, and policy development initiative to promote effective federal high school policy reform.

American Youth Policy Forum: To organize field trips for state policymakers from NGA Honor States and some ADP states to help them better understand promising and effective programs, strategies, practices, and policies to support high school redesign; To organize and hold Capitol Hill forums on high school reform issues.

Center on Education Policy: To support an analysis of exit exams across the states.

Council of Chief State School Officers: To leverage dissemination tools and professional activities to engage chief state school officers in high school redesign efforts; To support a brain trust of chiefs and other state leaders.

Education Trust: To support the National Association of System Heads to engage higher education leaders in high school redesign; For general operating support.

KnowledgeWorks Foundation: To support advocact activities in Ohio aimed toward making systemic change around high school redesign and improved college access and success.

National Association of State Boards of Education: To leverage dissemination tools and professional actitivies to engage State Boards of Education in high school redesign efforts.

National Council of La Raza: To increase Latino graduation rates by advocating for improved assessment practices, authentic accountability systems, and the strengthening of federal programs and policices serving high school students.

National Conference of State Legislatures: To support high school redesign efforts in the NGA Honor States by getting state legislators information about high school reform efforts and state policy.

National League of Cities: To support the Institute for Youth, Education, and Families' Municipal Leadership for High School Reform project, including a paper on local policy barriers and opportunities and the coordination of intermediaries in the Alternative High Schools Initiative; To support the Education Policy Advisors Network.

PROGRAM OR PRACTICE

Center for the Social Organization of Schools, Johns Hopkins University: To build capacity to expand the Talent Development High School model to 200 high schools across the country by 2010; To support the implementation of Talent Development in Los Angeles Unified School District; To support planning and implementation of Talent Development for up to three high schools in New York City.

Chicago Community Trust: CCT is the fiscal agent for the Chicago High School Redesign Initiative (CHSRI), which is funded in partnership with Gates and several local funders.

Coalition of Essential Schools: To support the creation of new small high schools and the conversion of large existing high schools into autonomous new schools through a process of mentorship from existing CES small high schools.

The College Board: To support the CollegeED program, College Board Schools, Centers of Learning, and EXCELerator Schools.

Commonwealth Corporation: To support the Diploma Plus High School program.

Institute for Research and Reform in Education: To support the development of and field test tools and processes that allow school districts to measure and examine student outcomes data and effective school practices; To support the expansion of First Things First in LAUSD, Milwaukee Public Schools, Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri.

Jobs for the Future: To support a portfolio of excellent high schools in Boston; To support a variety of work related to early college high schools.

Middle College National Consortium: To support 30 Middle College High Schools.

National Academy Foundation: To support five year capacity building plans to improve performance of existing career academies, strategically add new academies to the network, and ultimately serve a large number of academies across the country.

National Association of Secondary School Principals: To provide Breaking Ranks II trainings for principals in the NGA Honor States.

National Council of La Raza: To support the Charter School Development Initiative and the Early College Project.

RESEARCH

Consortium on Chicago School Research: To support a study of the high school-college transition of Chicago Public School graduates; Indirectly funded through intermediaries to study and evaluate 23 Gates-funded small schools.

MDRC: To support a conference series focused on high school-related research; To support evaluations of Talent Development and First Things First high schools.

INFORMATION SHARING

Annenberg Institute for School Reform: To manage a process of knowledege generation and sharing, in collaboration with other reform support organizations and site-based practitioners, for redesigned school systems.

KnowledgeWorks Foundation: To support knowledge sharing and use among school-based and district-level practitioners in the Ohio High School Transformation Initititive and ECHS schools