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Speech to a Conference about High Schools, May 2005 By Bill Gates

Thank you for that kind introduction. I also want to thank you, Governor Warner,
and your fellow governors, for your leadership in hosting this education summit
on America’s high schools. It is rare to bring together people with such broad re
sponsibilities and focus their attention on one single issue. But if there is on
e single issue worth your focused attention – it is the state of America’s high scho
ols. Many of us here have stories about how we came to embrace high schools as a
n urgent cause. Let me tell you ours. Everything Melinda and I do through our fo
undation is designed to advance equity. Around the world, we believe we can do t
he most by investing in health – especially in the poorest countries. Here in Amer
ica, we believe we can do the most to promote equity through education. A few ye
ars ago, when Melinda and I really began to explore opportunities in philanthrop
y, we heard very compelling stories and statistics about how financial barriers
kept minority students from taking their talents to college and making the most
of their lives. That led to one of the largest projects of our foundation. We cr
eated the Gates Millennium Scholars program to ensure that talent and energy mee
t with opportunity for thousands of promising minority students who want to go t
o college. Many of our Scholars come from tough backgrounds, and they could brin
g you to tears with their hopeful plans for the future. They reinforced our beli
ef that higher education is the best possible path for promoting equality and im
proving lives here in America. Yet – the more we looked at the data, the more we c
ame to see that there is more than one barrier to college. There’s the barrier of
being able to pay for college; and there’s the barrier of being prepared for it. W
hen we looked at the millions of students that our high schools are not preparin
g for higher education – and we looked at the damaging impact that has on their li
ves – we came to a painful conclusion: America’s high schools are obsolete. By obsol
ete, I don’t just mean that our high schools are broken, flawed, and under-funded –
though a case could be made for every one of those points. By obsolete, I mean t
hat our high schools – even when they’re working exactly as designed – cannot teach ou
r kids what they need to know today. Training the workforce of tomorrow with the
high schools of today is like trying to teach kids about today’s computers on a 5
0-year-old mainframe. It’s the wrong tool for the times. Our high schools were des
igned fifty years ago to meet the needs of another age. Until we design them to
meet the needs of the 21st century, we will keep limiting – even ruining – the lives
of millions of Americans every year.
Today, only one-third of our students graduate from high school ready for colleg
e, work, and citizenship. The other two-thirds, most of them low-income and mino
rity students, are tracked into courses that won’t ever get them ready for college
or prepare them for a family-wage job – no matter how well the students learn or
the teachers teach. This isn’t an accident or a flaw in the system; it is the syst
em. In district after district, wealthy white kids are taught Algebra II while l
ow-income minority kids are taught to balance a check book! The first group goes
on to college and careers; the second group will struggle to make a living wage
. Let’s be clear. Thanks to dedicated teachers and principals around the country,
the best-educated kids in the United States are the best-educated kids in the wo
rld. We should be proud of that. But only a fraction of our kids are getting the
best education. Once we realize that we are keeping low-income and minority kid
s out of rigorous courses, there can be only two arguments for keeping it that w
ay – either we think they can’t learn, or we think they’re not worth teaching. The fir
st argument is factually wrong; the second is morally wrong. Everyone who unders
tands the importance of education; everyone who believes in equal opportunity; e
veryone who has been elected to uphold the obligations of public office should b
e ashamed that we are breaking our promise of a free education for millions of s
tudents. For the sake of our young people and everyone who will depend on them – w
e must stop rationing education in America. I’m not here to pose as an education e
xpert. I head a corporation and a foundation. One I get paid for – the other one c
osts me. But both jobs give me a perspective on education in America, and both p
erspectives leave me appalled. When I compare our high schools to what I see whe
n I’m traveling abroad, I am terrified for our workforce of tomorrow. In math and
science, our 4th graders are among the top students in the world. By 8th grade,
they’re in the middle of the pack. By 12th grade, U.S. students are scoring near t
he bottom of all industrialized nations. We have one of the highest high school
dropout rates in the industrialized world. Many who graduate do not go onto coll
ege. And many who do go on to college are not well-prepared – and end up dropping
out. That is one reason why the U.S. college dropout rate is also one of the hig
hest in the industrialized world. The poor performance of our high schools in pr
eparing students for college is a major reason why the United States has now dro
pped from first to fifth in the percentage of young adults with a college degree
. The percentage of a population with a college degree is important, but so are
sheer numbers. In 2001, India graduated almost a million more students from coll
ege than the United States did. China graduates twice as many students with bach
elor’s degrees as the U.S., and they have six times as many graduates majoring in
engineering. In the international competition to have the biggest and best suppl
y of knowledge workers, America is falling behind.
That is the heart of the economic argument for better high schools. It essential
ly says: “We’d better do something about these kids not getting an education, becaus
e it’s hurting us.” But there’s also a moral argument for better high schools, and it
says: “We’d better do something about these kids not getting an education, because i
t’s hurting them.” Today, most jobs that allow you to support a family require some
postsecondary education. This could mean a four-year college, a community colleg
e, or technical school. Unfortunately, only half of all students who enter high
school ever enroll in a postsecondary institution. That means that half of all s
tudents starting high school today are unlikely to get a job that allows them to
support a family. Students who graduate from high school, but never go on to co
llege, will earn – on average – about twenty-five thousand dollars a year. For a fam
ily of five, that’s close to the poverty line. But if you re Hispanic, you earn le
ss. If you’re black, you earn even less – about 14 percent less than a white high sc
hool graduate. Those who drop out have it even worse. Only 40 percent have jobs.
They are nearly four times more likely to be arrested than their friends who st
ayed in high school. They are far more likely to have children in their teens. O
ne in four turn to welfare or other kinds of government assistance. Everyone agr
ees this is tragic. But these are our high schools that keep letting these kids
fall through the cracks, and we act as if it can’t be helped. It can be helped. We
designed these high schools; we can redesign them. But first we have to underst
and that today’s high schools are not the cause of the problem; they are the resul
t. The key problem is political will. Elected officials have not yet done away w
ith the idea underlying the old design. The idea behind the old design was that
you could train an adequate workforce by sending only a third of your kids to co
llege – and that the other kids either couldn’t do college work or didn’t need to. The
idea behind the new design is that all students can do rigorous work, and – for t
heir sake and ours – they have to. Fortunately, there is mounting evidence that th
e new design works. The Kansas City, Kansas public school district, where 79 per
cent of students are minorities and 74 percent live below the poverty line, was
struggling with high dropout rates and low test scores when it adopted the schoo
l-reform model called First Things First in 1996. This included setting high aca
demic standards for all students, reducing teacher-student ratios, and giving te
achers and administrators the responsibility to improve student performance and
the resources they needed to do it. The district’s graduation rate has climbed mor
e than 30 percentage points. These are the kind of results you can get when you
design high schools to prepare every student for college.
At the Met School in Providence, Rhode Island, 70 percent of the students are bl
ack
or Hispanic. More than 60 percent live below the poverty line. Nearly 40 percent
come from families where English is a second language. As part of its special m
ission, the Met enrolls only students who have dropped out in the past or were i
n danger of dropping out. Yet, even with this student body, the Met now has the
lowest dropout rate and the highest college placement rate of any high school in
the state.
These are the kind of results you can get when you design a high school to prepa
re every student for college. Two years ago, I visited High Tech High in San Die
go. It was conceived in 1998 by a group of San Diego business leaders who became
alarmed by the city s shortage of talented high-tech workers. Thirty-five perce
nt of High Tech High students are black or Hispanic. All of them study courses l
ike computer animation and biotechnology in the school s state-of-the-art labs.
High Tech High’s scores on statewide academic tests are 15 percent higher than the
rest of the district; their SAT scores are an average of 139 points higher. The
se are the kind of results you can get when you design a high school to prepare
every student for college. These are not isolated examples. These are schools bu
ilt on principles that can be applied anywhere – the new three R’s, the basic buildi
ng blocks of better high schools: The first R is Rigor – making sure all students
are given a challenging curriculum that prepares them for college or work; The s
econd R is Relevance – making sure kids have courses and projects that clearly rel
ate to their lives and their goals; The third R is Relationships – making sure kid
s have a number of adults who know them, look out for them, and push them to ach
ieve. The three R’s are almost always easier to promote in smaller high schools. T
he smaller size gives teachers and staff the chance to create an environment whe
re students achieve at a higher level and rarely fall through the cracks. Studen
ts in smaller schools are more motivated, have higher attendance rates, feel saf
er, and graduate and attend college in higher numbers. Yet every governor knows
that the success of one school is not an answer to this crisis. You have to be a
ble to make systems of schools work for all students. For this, we believe we ne
ed stable and effective governance. We need equitable school choice. We need per
formance-oriented employment agreements. And we need the capacity to intervene i
n low-performing schools. Our foundation has invested nearly one billion dollars
so far to help redesign the American high school. We are supporting more than f
ifteen hundred high schools – about half are totally new, and the other half are e
xisting schools that have been redesigned. Four hundred fifty of these schools,
both new and redesigned, are already open and operating. Chicago plans to open 1
00 new schools. New York City is opening 200. Exciting redesign work is under wa
y in Oakland, Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Boston. This kind of change is never eas
y. But I believe there are three steps that governors and CEOs can take that wil
l help build momentum for change in our schools. Number 1. Declare that all stud
ents can and should graduate from high school ready for college, work, and citiz
enship. How would you respond to a ninth grader’s mother who said: “My son is bright
. He wants to learn. How come they won’t let him take Algebra?” What would you say?
I ask the governors and business leaders here to become the top advocates in you
r states for the belief that every child should take courses that prepare him fo
r college – because every child can succeed, and every child deserves the chance.
The states that have committed to getting all students ready for college have ma
de good progress – but every state must make the same commitment. Number 2. Publis
h the data that measures our progress toward that goal. The focus on measuring s
uccess in the past few years has been important – it has helped us realize the ext
ent of the problem. But we need to know more: What percentage of students are dr
opping out? What percentage are graduating? What percentage are going on to coll
ege? And we need this data broken down by race and
income. The idea of tracking low-income and minority kids into dead-end courses
is so offensive to our sense of equal opportunity that the only way the practice
can survive, is if we hide it. That’s why we need to expose it. If we are forced
to confront this injustice, I believe we will end it. Number 3. Turn around fail
ing schools and open new ones. If we believe all kids can learn – and the evidence
proves they can –then when the students don’t learn, the school must change. Every
state needs a strong intervention strategy to improve struggling schools. This n
eeds to include special teams of experts who are given the power and resources t
o turn things around. If we can focus on these three steps – high standards for al
l; public data on our progress; turning around failing schools – we will go a long
way toward ensuring that all students have a chance to make the most of their l
ives. Our philanthropy is driven by the belief that every human being has equal
worth. We are constantly asking ourselves where a dollar of funding and an hour
of effort can make the biggest impact for equality. We look for strategic entry
points – where the inequality is the greatest, has the worst consequences, and off
ers the best chance for improvement. We have decided that high schools are a cru
cial intervention point for equality because that’s where children’s paths diverge – s
ome go on to lives of accomplishment and privilege; others to lives of frustrati
on, joblessness, and jail. When I visited High Tech High in San Diego a few year
s ago, one young student told me that High Tech High was the first school he’d eve
r gone to where being smart was cool. His neighborhood friends gave him a hard t
ime about that, and he said he wasn’t sure he was going to stay. But then he showe
d me the work he was doing on a special project involving a submarine. This kid
was really bright. It was an incredible experience talking to him – because his li
fe really did hang in the balance. And without teachers who knew him, pushed him
, and cared about him, he wouldn’t have had a chance. Think of the difference it w
ill make in his life if he takes that talent to college. Now multiply that by mi
llions. That’s what’s at stake here. If we keep the system as it is, millions of chi
ldren will never get a chance to fulfill their promise because of their zip code
, their skin color, or the income of their parents. That is offensive to our val
ues, and it’s an insult to who we are. Every kid can graduate ready for college. E
very kid should have the chance. Let’s redesign our schools to make it happen. Tha
nk you very much.? ==============================
=====================
Dennis Littky and The Big Picture schools
Interview with Margot Adler. All Things Considered, April 25, 2005 · It s hard to
imagine a school with no tests, no grades and no classes. But those familiar ele
ments of education are missing at two dozen Big Picture schools in six states, e
ach with no more than 120 students. They emphasize work in the real world, portf
olios, oral presentations and intense relationships between students and adviser
s. Margot Adler visits one of the schools, called The Met, the 10-year-old model
for the schools, in Providence, R.I. Students are encouraged to discover their
passions, interning two days a week with mentors in the community who relate tho
se passions to the real world. The student might work at a hospital, a bakery, o
r an architectural firm. School projects are designed by the mentor, the adviser
and the student together -- and are presented orally, along with a portfolio, e
very nine weeks. Vimar Rodriguez, an 11th grader interested in medicine, has a n
eighborhood pediatrician as a mentor. Dr. Hector Cordero says she knew little wh
en she started interning at his office. "I think she s learning a lot," Cordero
says. "I think it is motivating her to go to medical school, which is the most i
mportant thing." Rodriguez contrasts her own life with those of her friends at o
ther schools. "They don t know [what college they are going to], if they are goi
ng to get financial aid, and here I can look at different opportunities and diff
erent choices." The school measures its success in many ways -- standardized ach
ievement scores are higher than those at the three largest Providence high schoo
ls -- but parents are most excited by these statistics: Almost every senior gets
into college, 80 percent go to college, and five years later, most of those stu
dents are still in college or have graduated. The core idea of a school is so em
bedded in everyone. I had a kid say to me "You re not a real principal." (Charli
e Plant, one of six principals)
Comments by Dennis Littky, founder of the Met School
Students have a hard time adjusting to a school that they don t know. You put 15
students in a room with an advisor, you let kids discover and follow their pass
ions, interning two days a week with mentors in the community who relate those p
assions to the real world. The students might work in a hospital or an architect
ural firm. School projects are designed by the student and advisor together and
are presented orally in a portfolio every nine weeks. Students meet three days a
week with advisors about their projects. Projects are tailored to get academic
rigor into the presentation. "We re looking at how do you look at the world scie
ntifically, how do you look at the world mathematically, do you communicate effe
ctively, what are the skills we can get out of this?"
Dennis Littky: "Students have been told what to do for nine years. When they ent
er ninth grade, it s rough. We are saying, Follow your interests and passions, m
ake choices. They are not ready, they don t trust adults." Admisison is by lotte
ry and most students qualify for free lunch. Student scores are higher than the
average scores of the three local high school but even so, fewer than half are p
roficient. Almost every senior gets into college, 80 percent go to college and f
ive years later, almost all are still in college or graduated. Students are foll
owed for ten years. They are welcome to drop in, get some advice, the advisors a
re there for you. Advisors send letters and care packages to graduates in colleg
e. The drop out rate at the Met is 3 percent. There are kids that want a big sch
ool where they can be anonymous. It s not perfect. We separate kids from adults
in our world. So of course there is this generation gap. It s a struggle to get
trained teachers. ========================== Transcribed interviews Web Extra Au
dio Dennis Littky is co-founder of the Big Picture schools and is director of on
e of them, The Met Center in Providence, R.I. Hear Littky on:
The challenges of creating a school like The Met and in creating rigor in the st
udent s projects.
There is no harder job than a new 9th grade advisor. I haven t figured out how t
o help them have a successful year. You get 9th grade kids who are angry at scho
ol, don t trust adults, and have been told what to do for 9 years and we are say
ing, follow your interests and make choices. They are not ready. We continue to
struggle about how to get them involved, give them some structure but not too mu
ch structure. We are trying to make them learn to make decisions in life. What d
o we do in the first 9 weeks. One of our solutions was have them come in for 2 w
eeks in the summer and start learning the culture. It s easier to do in the summ
er and there s less pressure for academics. When teachers ask me how to prepare
for the first 9 weeks in 9th grade, I tell them, Go bowling to get to know the k
id, to get to know their passions. We struggle so much with it that I almost wan
t them in their internships before they start school with us. Once they find the
ir passion and interest and start to work in the internship, the rest takes over
. they change. it s not school any more. "I love this doctor s office. I m going
to read about this. I love this Architect s office, I m going to design this."
So until you get the passion, it s too much like school. The second big problem
is how to get the rigor and get the rigor ... how do you find mathematics workin
g in a radio station. how do you find the good projects? the reading and writing
is easier, but how to go deep in the analytical reasoning is the challenge.
How do you do a transcript for colleges? We give our kids narratives, we don t g
ive our kids grades. These are two-page detailed reports about strengths and wea
knesses, every 9 weeks for four years. Colleges can t look at that. We put the a
reas that the colleges want to see, English, History, Math. The transcript can s
ay English and it has the kid s project in there. Admissions officers can see th
at there are 4 English and 3 science credits and that s how we do it. Our job wi
th narratives is to give kids feedback about how to get better. The job for the
transcript is to help colleges know what s going on. The question: How do you ma
ke the outside world understand what you do? I believe deep down when you ask pe
ople, "What do you remember from chemistry class?" or trigonometry class, they d
on t have any answers. "Where did you learn to be a writer?" I ask them. "Did yo
u learn it in journalism school, did you learn it from guidelines?" The answer:
"No, I really learned when I was working and writing. People were being critical
with my writing on the job." In theory, I believe I can get most people to see
that we learn when we re involved in something. There is no learning theory that
says that lecturing to adolescents is the way to get people to learn. The way t
o get people to learn is to get them to be motivated and interested. The more yo
u are involved in something, the more you construct knowledge, the more you lear
n, we know all that. The problem is every human being went through a regular sch
ool, so we keep falling back on that model. Critics laughed when they saw we had
internships. Then they saw that we had the highest attendance rate in the state
. We had the lowest drop-out rate in the state. But they really became believers
when they see that every kid got accepted to college. Five years later they re
still in college or graduated? Sometimes you need to show those results so that
people can accept the method. Every test that the other kids are taking, our kid
s are taking. We keep pushing ahead and trying to show that this is a way to hel
p kids get educated. We outscored the three largest high schools in mathematics
and we don t teach a mathematics course. The kids learn to think like mathematic
ians, to solve problems and use their minds. The scores are not great, but they
are moving up. Colleges are impressed with how articulate and passionate our kid
s are. Creating Big Picture schools around the U.S., and the difficulty of getti
ng good teachers
If you have the right philosophy, every child has a learning plan, you find real
work, you find their passion, it works. We put a big emphasis about training th
e teachers for a year before putting them into schools. If you get the combinati
ons together, it can be a success. It s hard to find adults who are certified to
be teachers, who are generalists and want to give up teaching their subject mat
ter to really truly teach kids. As a teacher, you have nothing to protect yourse
lf. There s no textbook to get in the way or to guide you, it s raw.
You have to have that relationship with that kid. It s very hard work to do. Our
schools vary in how good they are. It s the hardest work in the world because y
ou are dealing with kids lives, you get so deep with them. Many teachers tell m
e, "I ve taught for seven years, I’ve been a good teacher, but I ve never got so c
lose to kids as I have here." When you have 150 kids, you can t get that close.
By the way, critics say, "You just have 15 kids." Well, we get the same amount o
f money per student as the rest of the state gets. It s how you use your money.
The ratio in most high schools of adults to kids to around 1 to 15. The classes
are 1 to 30 because you have department chairs, you have guidance counselors, th
ere are people around. We do it with the same amount of money that California gi
ves out, which is less than what Rhode Island gives out. 40 percent of our stude
nts are Latino, 30 percent are African American, 5 percent Asian. The free lunch
population ranges from 60 to 80 percent, 70 percent of the kids have never had
anyone in the family go to college. All of our kids are accepted in college abou
t 80 percent go, 75 percent of our kids are still in college or graduated from s
ome program. The national statistics are if you enter college as an African Amer
ican or Latino, there is less than a 20 percent chance that you will graduate. O
ne of the things we try to do is beat that. How do you get the kids to have such
skills and passion that they overcome the barriers that the other 90 percent do
n t make it? How kids in good schools are losing out too, and why (The Met s acc
omplishments) What makes me cry daily is when I hear a kid describe how he or sh
e was before, and then how they found their passion and it changed their life. I
t s really about the environment that we built to help the kid find his passion.
That comes from having respect for the kid and giving the kid time to learn. Ha
lf of our great work is because the kid got there when the kid grew up and got m
ore mature. We were just patient. But in most cases, the kids never get to, they
get stopped before they did something stupid or they weren t interested. By hav
ing the faith that the kid will learn and by struggling with that through the ye
ars, we can see how far they ve come. Our secret is that we have the patience an
d the belief that anything is possible. Whatever you need to help you get passio
nate about something is what we do. it s the true belief in the student. Every s
chool says that they respect kids. If you give kids work that is not important,
you re not respecting them. I think my frustration with the world is that in man
y suburban districts where parents move to send their kids and the students come
home with their As and Bs, the parents are satisfied, but they never look deepe
r, so they think those are good schools. They have the highest SAT scores, they
have the most kids going to Ivy League colleges. Those kids are losing too. They
are not dropping out because they are playing the game. When you ask them, "Hav
e you made any decisions in school? Do you care about anything, are you passiona
te about anything that goes on during the day besides drama club or football aft
er school?" They re getting the short end. They aren t allowed to get engaged wi
th their work and go deeper. "My kid did well at that school." Yeah, but where c
ould your kid really go if your kid got to work with a doctor in 9th grade, foll
owing her around, and really going in depth? The other frustration is kids are d
ying daily. They are dropping out daily. In some cities, 20 percent graduate hig
h school. Nothing is changed drastically enough.
I appreciate the accountability part of No Child Left Behind. There were some sc
hool districts that were not clear about standards and the law is helping them f
ocus. The law is not going to help poor kids really achieve. Taking tests is not
going to help improve kids. We have to engage them, help them find their passio
n, we have to respect who they are and where they come from. ===================
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