Wondering what to make the $10.4 million gift from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation? So am I.
There are two problems. First, there is no disaggregated data for the themed high schools or schools within a school, so we do not know if these programs are working. An increase in funding should come with some evidence that students in these schools are either 1) performing better than their peers or 2) making greater individual gains than before.
Second, the data for Learn and Earn/Early College programs clearly shows no positive gains in student performance. With very few exceptions, test scores and graduation rates are lower than state averages, even though class sizes are much lower than average.
I am willing to grant that these programs will experience some implementation lag. Much of the lag could have been avoided had the New Schools Project established a research-based pilot program that could have made implementation much smoother. Instead, the Governor and the Gates Foundation have conspired to fund the haphazard expansion of the program with little more than a promise that this high school reform will work wherever and whenever it is implemented.
