With a Hefty Education Grant Come Equally Great Expectations

Gates grants have flowed to schools and school systems in 42 states and the District, including $126 million to New York, $65 million to Chicago and $38 million to Oakland, Calif. The grants have helped open 1,100 schools and revamp an additional 700. The foundation also has sunk millions into education think tanks and policy and academic groups (including Hechinger). Its agenda is to create high schools with rigorous college-prep curricula, to replicate successful experiments and to convert giant, mostly urban schools into effective, manageable units.

Reviews of the Gates school initiatives have been mixed.

This fall, Denver shut down a high school that had received $1 million in Gates grants; officials cited plunging enrollment after the school was divided into three smaller ones and students fled to other schools.

In Lebanon, Ore., parents and school board members rebelled after a foundation-backed effort broke up the lumber-mill town's high school and cut back on traditional vocational classes. Gates pulled out abruptly in May, and the school system lost half of its $950,000 grant.

"Sometimes I'm not sure Gates wants all the headlines they get," Lebanon Superintendent Jim Robinson said. "When things get a little rocky, safer ground is easily found elsewhere."

The foundation, through research it has commissioned, has found that Gates-funded schools have strong attendance and more rigorous English and reading assignments. But the research also showed that test scores have improved only slightly, and math performance has been stagnant or lower compared with other schools.

So far, the foundation and intermediaries have spent about $4 million in the District. Most has gone to charter schools such as Chavez, which receive public funding but are independently operated. Gates officials have shied away from larger investments in the turbulent and troubled D.C. school system.

But now the foundation is considering a larger effort. Mayor-elect Adrian M. Fenty (D) has asked for its guidance in a possible bid to take over the public schools.

Irasema Salcido could offer the incoming mayor insight on working with Gates.

* * *

Salcido, an administrator for 12 years at Bell Multicultural Senior High School in Northwest Washington, opened the first Cesar Chavez Public Charter School for Public Policy in 1998 in a Southwest Washington supermarket basement. The school, named for the late Mexican American labor and civil rights leader, seeks to offer a college-prep curriculum to kids whose families earn less in a year than the annual tuition of pricey private schools.

The school days are long and expectations lofty. After-school tutoring and summer school are required for all students regardless of academic standing. So are internships and service projects with community groups or think tanks. Four-fifths of the students are African American, and most of the rest are Latino.