The Gates Foundation is considering investing in programs to help prepare California teachers for Common Core. Credit: Lillian Mongeau, EdSource file
Having largely steered clear of making education grants in California over the last half-decade, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundationis weighing whether to invest substantially in helping California’s teachers successfully put the Common Core standards into practice.
Fresno Unified and Long Beach Unified are the first of a half-dozen urban school districts nationwide that Gates is awarding with a three-year, $5 million grant for innovative ways to pursue training in the new math and English language arts standards. Impressed with Fresno’s and Long Beach’s proposals, Gates will decide by late spring whether to expand that initiative to networks of districts that may affect 25 percent to 30 percent of California’s 6 million students, Don Shalvey, Gates’ deputy director of U.S. programs, said in an interview this week.
Noting the $1.25 billon that districts received in this year’s state budget to prepare for Common Core and the first assessments next year, Shalvey said, “The state superintendent, the governor and the Legislature are aligned toward quality implementation of the Common Core State Standards. That energy in California in my mind suggests we should really think about a five-yearinvestment in networks of districts that are willing to learn from one another.”
Based on the three-year grants to Fresno and Long Beach, it would appear that Gates might be
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