The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today unveiled new directions for its education giving, which include working to double the number of students who complete some kind of postsecondary degree.
Efforts also would be made to identify and reward good teaching, help average teachers get better, devise better tests and create a national set of learning standards for high schools.
Bill and Melinda Gates announced these and other plans today to a group of about 100 guests in Seattle that included many big names in U.S. education.
The leaders of the nation’s two largest teachers unions were there, as well as superintendents of some of the biggest districts in the country, including New York, Chicago, and Washington D.C. Advisers to president-elect Barack Obama also were present, as were several people who are rumored to be in the running to be the next U.S. Secretary of Education.
More here.
One interesting local side note to this issue. The current trend of making all report cards based on standards will meet a road block in MMSD high schools as our high school currently have no standards. It seems as though this issue will be a new issue the administration will be tackling in the near future.
As someone who taught in 1986 in Texas, with a lesson plan based on standards in a large High School, I find this somewhat alarming!