Today at Emerald City Rotary, Edie Harding from The Gates Foundation gave an overview of the work she is doing in Education Pathways and her focus on cradle to college educational initiatives. First some numbers though.
Since 1994 the Gates Foundation has contributed $3 Billion in Washington state. Half of that has gone for health initiatives, half for education with the aim of reducing intergenerational poverty. Through their Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) study the Gates Foundation has established that teachers make the biggest difference in educational outcomes, and are investing most heavily in initiatives focused on teachers. They have quantified that a good teacher has 14 times the impact of reducing class size by 5 students.
The Gates Foundation hands out 170 grants, the average of which is $760,000. Those of you with good math skills or a calculator on your phone realize that this is a funding pace of $130 Million - per year. All in Washington state. They are focusing on college ready, but mostly community college ready, and early learning.
Their goals are not for the feint of heart:
- Increase college readiness to 75%
- Double the number of students ready for college in the hardest hit areas
- Eliminate the performance disparity found in low income students
It is safe to say that we are all very fortunate to have The Gates Foundation in our back yard.
Here is the link to the MET Study page on The Gates Foundation website.
Here is a link to Edie Harding's public Linked In page.