[Am-info] City schools get $13.6m Gates grant

[Erick Andrews]

Massachusetts is the last hold-out with the monopoly settlement.
This may be good for the kids if there are no strings attached,
but it will not replace laid-off teachers.

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/189/metro/City_schools_get_13_6m_Gates_grant+.shtml

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City schools get $13.6m Gates grant

By Anand Vaishnav, Globe Staff, 7/8/2003

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is giving the Boston public
schools $13.6 million to speed up the transformation of the
city's struggling high schools from large, impersonal
institutions to smaller, more humane campuses of specialized
schools.

The donation, one of the largest ever received by the district,
will be paid over four years.  It will help 7,500 students at 19
Boston high schools, which will include five new small schools
the money will help create.  The award gives a national boost to
an elusive piece of Superintendent Thomas W. Payzant's agenda:
overhauling high schools that have tried for years to boost
achievement, curb violence, and keep students from dropping out.

The grant will pay for teacher training, develop
schools-within-schools, and link what students learn to
internships in the community, officials said yesterday.
Payzant, Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, and four local groups
that will help administer the grant announced it yesterday at
the Dorchester Education Complex -- formerly Dorchester High
School, one of the city's most troubled high schools; next year
it will be split into three smaller, independent high schools
focusing on business, public service, and technology.  The grant
represents the second multimillion-dollar donation for Boston
public schools from the Gates Foundation, the 3 1/2-year-old
philanthropic organization founded by Microsoft Chairman Bill
Gates and his wife, Melinda.  In 2001, the foundation along with
the Carnegie Corp.  gave the district $8 million for high school
restructuring."  It's about rigorous academic standards, it's
about relationships, and it's about relevance -- making learning
relevant to what's going on in this world," said Raymond J.
McNulty, education program director for the foundation, which
aims to improve global health and education efforts.  The Gates
Foundation invited the Boston public schools to apply for the
grant, said Jonathan Palumbo, a school department spokesman.

Payzant said the money will expand his vision of a 21st-century
high school education throughout a district better known for
excellence at its three elite exam schools rather than for the
large high schools that teach thousands more students.

The effort includes small "academies" at many high schools that
target a certain population or subject matter -- for example, a
ninth-grade academy at East Boston High School.  But the bolder
initiative is the breaking down of large campuses, such as the
former South Boston High School, into three independent schools
with their own specialties, budgets, and headmasters.

In addition, the grant will help create more of the smaller,
nurturing high schools in Boston that have surged in demand,
including a school for new immigrants and one for over-age
ninth-graders.  The district has about 18,300 high school
students.  Nationally, the small-schools movement has emerged as
one of the most popular ways to turn around big-city high
schools by trying to make them more personal.  New York City,
Chicago, and Denver have opened smaller high schools or
schools-within-schools.

But the movement is too new to measure whether it has helped
improve test scores and performance, Hallett said.  A report by
the non-profit research groups, SRI International and the
American Institutes for Research, which evaluated the Gates
Foundation's donations for smaller high schools, found that the
first year of such efforts primarily went toward helping
students and teachers adjust to the new format.  The report also
noted the importance of teacher involvement in the reshaping of
the schools.  In Boston, the teachers union has butted heads
with the school department over teachers' seniority rights at
the new Dorchester Education Complex, a battle some fear could
slow the initiative.

"We're happy that the Gates Foundation donated the money and
resources, but on the other hand, the protection of our rights
is essential to making progress," Boston Teachers Union
president Richard Stutman said.  The task also will be more
difficult due to financial woes that require schools to slash
budgets and lay off teachers.  The Gates grant will not replace
laid off teachers, Payzant said, but will let schools pay
teachers stipends for training or hire academic "coaches."  The
Boston-based nonprofit Jobs for the Future will be the fiscal
agent for the Gates grant, working with the Boston Plan for
Excellence, the Boston Private Industry Council, and the Center
for Collaborative Education.  Small high schools are quickly
becoming a favorite of some students.  The new TechBoston
Academy, which opened last year, will have just 140
ninth-graders and 10th- graders this fall at the Dorchester
Education Complex.

"We have better relationships with our teachers," said
TechBoston sophomore Karen Thomas, 15.  "If we're not doing so
well, we can sit down and have a conversation with the principal
and our teacher."

Payzant noted that 82 percent of students who remained in the
class of 2003 in Boston's high schools passed the MCAS test
required for graduation, a figure he hopes to improve through
smaller campuses.

"Now the trick is to get this kind of acceleration in student
achievement with the ninth grade and hold onto ninth-graders so
we can get them to grade 10 and 11," he said.  "That's what the
big challenge will be."
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-- 
Erick Andrews