The Education of Bill and Melinda
April 3rd, 2008 | by admin |The world’s biggest philanthropists, Bill and Melinda Gates, are best known for tackling some of the most vexing issues in global health — AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria in developing nations. Their $29 billion foundation has saved countless lives, providing vaccines and other drugs in far-flung regions where health care is poor.
The couple gets far less notice for their work much closer to home — funneling huge sums into U.S. high school education reform. So far, the Gateses have spent more than $1 billion trying to fix failing high schools. And it turns out that education reform is every bit as daunting as some of the global health crises the couple is targeting. Six years into their high school reform efforts, the Gateses have had some successes, made some mistakes, and realized there is still much more to be done. They each spoke separately to BusinessWeek Seattle Bureau Chief Jay Greene about what they’ve learned and what they still hope to accomplish. Edited excerpts of those conversations follow:
On how they decided to give money to high school reform efforts
Melinda You have to understand that Bill and I are both big believers in education. It’s something we’ve talked about at home for a long, long time; as long as we’ve known each other. Even when we were dating, we talked about our own elementary and high school experiences and what a difference one teacher can make in your life to change your direction, how you think of yourself, and where you want to go.
Bill and I were also believers in technologies in the schools. We actually started with thinking about how do you put laptops in schools? Sometimes you start on a problem with what you know. I was touring a lot of schools. And it became painfully obvious that there was a much broader issue going on in our schools than something that technology alone could solve.
The piece that nobody seemed to be talking about was that high schools really were being left behind. One of the things that’s very attractive to Bill and me is to work on the problems that nobody else seems to want to face because they’re so hard. And so we decided that ultimately, we would narrow down and really just work on high school reform.
Bill It comes out of asking: What is the most important issue to the U.S. in terms of renewing the kind of great opportunities that lots of people have gotten, including Melinda and myself? We had great education and that’s led to a country that’s been very innovative and created lots of jobs. Yet when you look at it, you think the broad excellence we need and the changes we need aren’t necessarily going to happen.
In fact, if you look at things like math and science and the relative ranking of the U.S., you’d say, “Wow, that’s of great concern.” It’s a system that a lot of resources are put into. Education’s a big part of the economy. And yet the outcomes you get are so drastically different, depending on how well it’s done.
On what they hope to accomplish with their education philanthropy
Bill If you’re in high school, your education should be fun and interesting. We call it college-ready. That is, you’re not disaffected or dropping out, or distracted by non-educational things. You really are being engaged by all these interesting things you can learn.
And so we mostly focus on high schools. That’s where the U.S. goes from being pretty decent to being pretty bad relative to other developed countries. And it is an area where there hasn’t been much in terms of taking successes and getting them well understood and getting them to be used broadly.
On the importance of creating environments where students develop bonds with teachers
Melinda We thought relationships were important. That is so borne out, kid after kid. I walk into a school building and talk with a kid, and in the first five minutes, they say: “At my previous high school, nobody knew me. No teacher knew my name. No adult knew my name. No administrator. It didn’t matter if I didn’t show up. In this school, the teacher gave me their cell phone number. I can’t believe they gave me their cell phone number.”
