Lesson Learned - The Gates Foundation in Seattle High Schools

Aired Thursday, December 1, 2005

By Kirsten Kendrick

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Anchor Lead: Kirsten Kendrick reports on what went wrong with the Gates Foundation's efforts to change large schools in the Seattle School District into smaller, more personalized learning communities. Jennifer Wing contributed to this story.

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Bill Gates is known as a problem solver. In Microsoft, he's built one of the most successful companies in history. He gives millions to charitable causes every year. Many wonder if there is anything the richest man in the world can't do.

Making sweeping changes to the nation's public education system may prove to be his toughest challenge yet.

Gates has harsh words about America's public high schools. In a speech at an education summit earlier this year, he said things must change.

When we looked at the millions of students that our high schools are not preparing for higher education - and we looked at the damaging impact that has on their lives - we came to a painful conclusion: That is, America's high schools are obsolete.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is trying to change the face of public education in the U.S. Its work is based on research that says smaller schools give students a better chance to succeed.

The Gates Foundation has converted hundreds of existing high schools into smaller, more personalized learning communities. Many Washington school districts have received Gates funding to make these changes.

The Seattle School District was one of the first. In 2000, the district was awarded a 26-million-dollar grant. Some say, a lot of that money was wasted. Rick Harwood is the former principal at Seattle's Cleveland High School.

Oh I think it's in an incredible missed opportunity. I mean, 26-million dollars and I don't think there's a whole lot to show for it. I don't think you can point to, except in a few cases, improvement in student academic achievement in Seattle schools.

The relationship between the Gates Foundation and the school district in its hometown has become rocky. Earlier this year, the foundation withheld the final installment of its grant until Seattle provided a better plan for how the money would be used in high schools. The foundation eventually released the money, but did not renew Seattle's five-year grant.

To find out what happened, KPLU reviewed hundreds of district and foundation documents, obtained through the state Open Records Act. Each side appeared to have a different idea about how the money would be used.

The original grant agreement was broad. It did not specifically mention smaller schools. Instead, it states that school reinvention grants will be (used) to assist in the transformation of all schools to performance-based standards aligning with the Foundation's Attributes of High Achievement Schools.'

An update to the grant agreement spells-out what those attributes are. Personalized, small schools is listed as one of seven attributes.

That left a lot open to interpretation.

Steve Wilson is now the Chief Academic Officer for Seattle Public Schools. When the grant began, he was principal at Ingraham High. He says the district did not send a clear message.

They may have had a focus, but I'm not sure what it was. Even as principal at Ingraham, we talked about transformation and we were told to transform, but there wasn't really any specific direction or even suggested prescriptions for that.

As a result, he says, many Seattle high schools did not spend a lot of their Gates money.

Cleveland High School was the only one making the change to smaller schools. Former principal Harwood says they didn't get much help.

As a school leader myself I didn't get the sense that the Seattle district leadership really put the attention into the work, and the support into the work to make it happen.

Harwood was forced out as principal last year. His abrupt departure has left the future of small schools at Cleveland in doubt.

Although still well below the state average, Cleveland's scores on the Washington Assessment of Student Learning are up. Longtime teacher Terry Cornelius attributes that to small schools.

A lot of our kids have a lot of problems, a lot of needs. They also have a lot of potential. And I'm seeing students who probably wouldn't have realized their potential as well as they have, had Cleveland just been a 700-person, comprehensive, small high school.

There are trade-offs in the switch to smaller schools. Teachers are taken out of the classroom for training. Substitutes are used to fill the void. Gabrielle Griffin is a senior at Cleveland. She says students felt short-changed.

It was a little bit more confusing because if you had a substitute every day - different substitutes on top of that, not the same one - and, yeah, it was like you were not learning a lot because you couldn't learn a teacher's style.

At the time Cleveland was making these changes, the district and the Gates Foundation were at odds over how the 26-million-dollars was being spent.

The foundation further clarified through its evaluations to the district that it wanted smaller high schools. But Wilson, the district's chief academic officer, claims it wasn't a mandate.

It was a push but it was never a directive that everybody had to do that. It certainly was something that the Gates Foundation wanted people to go to, but I never heard it as a dictum.

This was a period of much upheaval in Seattle Schools with changes in superintendents, a new school board, and a huge budget deficit.

It was at this time that the foundation grew frustrated with Seattle's lack of progress. In a 2003 evaluation obtained by KPLU, the foundation said, There has not been monumental progress in high school reinvention. This is attributed to significant turnover in high school leadership and to staff resistance.

Tom Vander Ark is in charge of education giving for the Gates Foundation. He says they learned a lot from the experience with Seattle. He admits it's hard to take large high schools and break them up into smaller ones. Especially as a first step.

Leading with that strategy, using that as an entry point for high school reform is very difficult. It's especially difficult if it's attempted with limited guidance and limited outside support.

That's why, he says, the foundation has now changed its strategy. It no longer requires districts to make the drastic move to small schools without first making changes to curriculum and classroom instruction. Knowing what they know now, Vander Ark believes the foundation and Seattle would approach the partnership in a different way.

You know there are some neighborhoods that just had a much higher level of challenge and our grant making wasn't as sophisticated as it should've been to help the district see that different schools need different things.

Back at Cleveland High School, there is another challenge. With its building on Beacon Hill undergoing a massive renovation, the school has temporarily moved to West Seattle. In the process, it lost about 100 students and several teachers and had to eliminate one of its four small learning academies.

Many say the next few years will be crucial to determine whether Cleveland will stay with small schools. New principal Donna Marshall tells KPLU they're in the process of looking at what is really working for (their) students. She says they will continue with the small learning environment. But whether they'll stay with the academy model beyond next year, they don't know.

The future of the relationship between the district and the Gates Foundation is even more uncertain. Wilson hopes the foundation will give them another shot.

We're in their backyard. And if we can't be successful in Seattle with them in our backyard and us without a lot of the urban problems that a lot of urban cities have in this country, where will it be successful?

Vander Ark says they're taking a wait and see approach with Seattle.

In his view, the bigger obstacle lies with the state. He says Washington has not been aggressive enough about developing small schools, from the ground-up.

The Gates Foundation has helped build 800 new schools across the country - many of them charter schools. Washington is one of nine states that doesn't have a charter school law. That could be a barrier to our state receiving Gates funding in the future.