Yesterday, the Bill Gates Foundation announced that they would be investing $1.7 billion in programs in U.S. schools to develop and test new methods of learning and teaching. According to The Washington Post, 60 percent of the funding will be going to traditional public schools, and outcomes of any programs will be tracked so other schools and organizations can learn from the impacts.
Another 15% of funding will be doing to charter schools, and helping students with disabilities. Lastly, the final 15% of the funding will go towards “big bets” in R&D for education. Schools will be able to “drive the process” for themselves, and can “request for information” about the investments starting this upcoming Monday.
Speaking at Council of the Great City Schools conference in Cleveland, Bill Gates mentioned what the foundation’s investment means for the future of education:
“Every student should get a great public education and graduate with skills to succeed in the marketplace…he role of philanthropy here is not to be the primary funder, but rather to fund pilots, to fund new ideas, to let people — it’s always the educators coming up with the ideas — to let them try them out and see what really works super well and get those to scale.”
Bill Gates is no stranger to helping schools, as the Microsoft co-founder long showed support for computer programming education. This latest investment is definitely another step forward, and it will hopefully help in building a better future for all children here in the United States.
