Gates grants have flowed to schools and school systems in 42 states and the District, including $126 million to New York, $65 million to Chicago and $38 million to Oakland, Calif. The grants have helped open 1,100 schools and revamp an additional 700. The foundation also has sunk millions into education think tanks and policy and academic groups (including Hechinger). Its agenda is to create high schools with rigorous college-prep curricula, to replicate successful experiments and to convert giant, mostly urban schools into effective, manageable units.
Reviews of the Gates school initiatives have been mixed.
This fall, Denver shut down a high school that had received $1 million in Gates grants; officials cited plunging enrollment after the school was divided into three smaller ones and students fled to other schools.