Gates Foundation: Before we spend $1 billion on school ‘networks,’ tell us how they should work

Bill Gates announced last Thursday that his foundation would pour more than $1 billion into a new effort to improve schools. Today, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is asking how to do it right.

Specifically, the foundation wants existing “networks” that help public schools improve to explain how they spend their money and what’s already worked for them. The Gates Foundation wants to fund more of those organizations, like Chicago’s Network for College Success, starting in 2018.

The Gates-funded networks will be focused on helping middle and high schools get more students to graduate and then succeed in college — specifically black, Hispanic, and poor students, according to the foundation’s website.

“We know there are organizations with strong perspectives about what it takes to do that work,” it says. “We want to hear about where great networks come from, how they operate, and under what circumstances they have been successful.”

The Gates Foundation is also a funder of Chalkbeat.

In his speech Friday, Gates said the foundation will spend $1.7 billion on U.S. education over the next five years, and more than 60 percent will go to expanding these networks and improving the curricula that students use.

You can read the request for information here. The foundation won’t be asking groups to officially apply for funding until January, and it expects to launch the effort in summer 2018.