Bill and Melinda Gates recently joined fellow billionaire Warren Buffet in urging the superwealthy to donate their fortunes to charity. And the Gates are practicing what they preach: the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently announced a grant of $3 million to the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University.
The grant is intended to help the institute develop College Readiness Indicator Systems that schools can use to identify students who are in danger of dropping out of high school. Research has found a number of factors, including attendance patterns, suspensions and course failures, can predict which students are on track to graduate and which are in danger of failing out or repeating a grade. The money will also be used to help develop ways to reduce the number of high school students who are graduating unprepared for postsecondary education or a job.
The Annenberg Institute has been working to address these issues since 1993, when an anonymous $5-million gift helped the program get started. A year later, Ambassador Walter H. Annenberg gave the institute $50 million as part of his $500-million Challenge to the Nation to improve public education in America. The new funds enabled the institute to considerably expand the scope of its work, and it was subsequently renamed in Annenberg’s honor.
"Ideally, high school completion and college readiness would be one and the same, but they aren’t," said Ellen Foley, clinical assistant professor of education and principal associate at the Annenberg Institute. "That’s what we’re trying to address with this grant. We want to build similar systems that are just as practical and just as useful, but put the focus on college readiness."
The institute will select six school districts to participate in its College Readiness Indicator System program.