Gates’ money headed to state High schools to get $10M

Maine has been awarded a $10 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to help improve high schools throughout the state.

The money will be used to make schools “more challenging, relevant and interesting,” said Colleen Quint of the George J. Mitchell Scholarship Research Institute, which will manage the grant.

“There are too many kids just gliding their way through high school and coming out the other end without having been changed by the process and growing as much as they really could,” she said.

The announcement was made at Portland High School on Thursday.

With the grant, 12 schools will be selected to receive $50,000 annually for five years to hire consultants and to purchase resources to help them carry out ideas contained in “Promising Futures,” the 1998 report of the Commission on Secondary Education, whose members were appointed by Commissioner J. Duke Albanese.

The report emphasizes learning opportunities “that really meet kids’ very different learning styles and needs,” said Quint Thursday afternoon during a phone conversation.

It encourages schools to get away from traditional learning in which teachers lecture while students take notes and then “regurgitate” what they’ve learned on tests, she said.

Recommendations include offering: diverse, challenging learning opportunities that are interesting and relevant to students; individualized learning plans for each student; teacher advocates for each student throughout high school; and collaborative learning where students work together on problems.

The schools will be chosen through a multistep application process that will last the winter, Quint said. But selections won’t be made “on the basis of “who puts together the nicest looking and most articulate proposal,” she said.

“The key factor will be a commitment to change, because it won’t be easy. It’s not about adding a program here and there. It’s about fundamentally turning the place upside down,” she said.

In turn, the schools “will have a real obligation to share what they’ve learned … seeking out and interacting with other schools, sharing ideas, getting feedback, and providing models,” she said.

Details of the application process will be sent to schools in a couple of weeks, according to Quint. The program will start next September.

Calling the 1998 report Promising Futures “the best high school planning effort done by any state in the country,” Tom Vander Ark, the Gates Foundation’s executive director for education, said Maine was selected to receive the grant for a number of reasons.

“The state is embarking on the most aggressive education technology initiative in the country,” he said, referring to Gov. Angus King’s laptop program.

“We’ve been impressed by how the state has approached that, ensuring that it’s not just about student access to technology, but better teaching supported by extensive professional development.”

Also involved in the project are the Maine Department of Education, the Maine Learning Technology Initiative, the Maine School Leadership Network at the University of Maine, the Seymour Papert Institute in Blue Hill and Southern Maine Partnership at the University of Southern Maine.