Updated: 10/7/2003; 6:52:34 PM.
Urban Educ8r: A Wickerblog
This weblog is dedicated primarily to the discussion of Education issues and policies, as well as to chronicling the author's experiences as an inner-city school teacher. These days, the education discussion is too much in the hands of ignorant politicians merely doing what they need to gain re-election, and not enough in the hands of knowledgable professionals with first hand experience.
        

Saturday, September 20, 2003

Gates Gives Money to New York City to Start 67 Schools. Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, announced $51.2 million in grants to create 67 small, theme-based public high schools in New York City. By David M. Herszenhorn. [New York Times: Education]

I'm very interested to see how this pans out over the next several years. The small, themed schools intrigues me. In fact I think it's a breath of fresh air from the national trend towards assemblly-line education that attempts to mold eveyone to the same standard. And here is New York going for smaller, while my city continues to close schools and consolidate-- in order to save money. Of course, Bill Gates' treasure chests help. My school was recently awarded a $1 million grant from the GE foundation, and I'm feeeling skeptical about how well it will meet it's stated purpose (increasing the number of graduates going to college  by some lofty amount). Money is not not in itself a cure-all, but when doing something radical and creative with it, it will much more likely serve its intended purpose.


8:44:11 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 Greg Wickersham.
 
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