What Happens When the Money Runs Out?
Although a lot of school districts seem to be feeling the heat, Vander Ark says the temperature isn't hot enough yet. If major high-school reform is going to be successful, he says, institutions well beyond the foundation are going to have to step up. School boards, for instance. "The role of the school district is really critical," argues Vander Ark. "There are a few districts that are very supportive and many others that are not." What can school boards do? "School boards can set graduation requirements that exceed the state's. For example, Washington state has set really pathetic graduation requirements—it just requires two years of math. You really need school districts to set higher standards."
Ron Wurzer
Mountlake Terrace High School students Emily Smith and Morgan Redfield have firsthand experience in the Gates experiment. Some student reactions surprised the staff.
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NYU's Noguera says that real reform has to come from a change in how we look at schools and public education. "I'm convinced that the proper analogy for schools isn't business. It's health care. Like schools, hospitals can't send patients home at the end of the day. They have to keep them till they're better—not like businesses and customers. And, like hospitals, schools have to deal with a lot of issues beyond their walls that affect kids. But policymakers don't seem to get that, and neither does the public."
Next September, again ahead of the pack, Mountlake Terrace enters another crucial period in its transformation. The school's Gates grant ended this June, and one enormous unknown looms over everything.
"What do we do when the money runs out? That's a good question," says Principal Schwab. "We're wondering about that right now. There's going to be a lot more work, and teachers have to buy into the extra work load."
DeMeiro is worried, too. "Right now each school has a teacher-leader. We're funding those positions with grant dollars. Next year, without funds from DOE or Gates, it's going to be very, very difficult to sustain this level of support. That's a shame, because we're just finding our way as instructional leaders rather than conversion leaders."
"We thought $1 million was a lot of money," says Nofziger, "but it's totally insignificant. We're running out of money, and we're going to have to dismantle a bunch of programs." For now, at least, Schwab says no specific programs are in line to be cut. "Not at this point . . . but," he cautions, "at some point we're going to have to say, 'We can't do everything we were going to do.'"
The biggest issue, though, is sustaining momentum for change. It's obvious that the Gates' billions, as generous as they are, will vanish well before any large-scale or long-term systemic changes occur. The fear at the Gates Foundation is that the political will on the state and local level is going to shrivel when the foundation's money runs out. It is most likely this concern that prompted Bill Gates' blast at the governors' conference. Vander Ark soberly states, "Bill and Melinda have already committed $1 billion. They are likely to commit another billion. But that's just 5 to 10 percent of what it'll take just to address the high-school challenge. When you add in all the other schools, it's going to take a lot more than the Gates Foundation to solve this problem."
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