New CEO: Gates Foundation learns from experiments

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation spent billions of dollars exploring the idea that smaller high schools might result in higher graduation rates and better test scores. Instead, it found that the key to better education is not necessarily smaller schools but more effective teachers.

Some people might cringe while recounting how much money the foundation spent figuring this out. But the foundation's new CEO, Jeff Raikes, smiles and uses it as an example to explain that the charity has the money to try things that might fail.

"Almost by definition, good philanthropy means we're going to have to do some risky things, some speculative things to try and see what works and what doesn't," Raikes said Wednesday during an interview with The Associated Press.

The foundation's new "learner-in-chief" has spent the nine months since he was named CEO studying the operation, traveling around the world and figuring out how to balance the pressures of the economic downturn with the growing needs of people in developing nations.

The former Microsoft Corp. executive, who turns 51 on Friday, joined the foundation as its second CEO after Patty Stonesifer, another former Microsoft executive, announced her retirement and his friends Bill and Melinda Gates talked Raikes out of retiring.

In the past decade, the foundation has given away nearly $20 billion, mostly in global health, global development and U.S. education.

It has been ramping up its giving since Warren Buffett, head of Omaha, Neb.-based Berkshire Hathaway, announced in June 2006 that he would make annual donations of about $1.5 billion to the foundation, with the money to be distributed in the year it is donated.

Raikes is also from Nebraska, where he grew up on the family farm near Omaha. He and his wife, Tricia, formed the Raikes Foundation in 2002 to support youth development, education and community issues in the Seattle area.

He hasn't lost his easygoing manner during his transformation from business leader to nonprofit CEO.

One of the things he's learned is the foundation must take a different direction with its education grants. The most effective path, he said, is to support good, effective teachers.

Between 2000 and 2008, the foundation spent about $2 billion toward improving America's high schools and another $2 billion for scholarships, primarily for low-income and minority students.

It saw graduation rates go up in many foundation-supported schools. But it didn't see significant improvements in student achievement or in the number of students who left high school ready to enroll in college.

Raikes said the responsibility for social innovation often falls on nonprofit organizations because the private sector doesn't see the profit margin in it and most citizens don't want the government speculating with their tax dollars.

The foundation plans to continue to experiment with its education policy.

"We're going to try some things and I'm quite confident that some things will succeed and I'm quite confident that some things will fail," Raikes said.

He noted that half of the more than 1 million students who drop out of school in the United States each year are from just 100 school districts.

What can make a difference for those kids? Raikes wants to find out.

The foundation also is investing money to improve data collection in public schools - in part, to better find out what works - and to help community colleges improve graduation rates.

Raikes talked of a study of the Los Angeles Unified School District after an initiative to reduce class sizes led to a liberalization of rules on who could be hired to teach.

The district found that whether a teacher had a certificate had no effect on student achievement.

Raikes said the district found that putting a great teacher in a low-income school helped students advance a grade and a half in one year. An ineffective teacher in a high-income school held student achievement back to about half a grade of progress in a year.

The Harvard researcher who studied the Los Angeles district, Thomas J. Kane, now works for the Gates Foundation as deputy director of education for data and research.

Kane and others will be figuring out how to use foundation money to define effective teaching, how to attract good teachers and help them improve, and how to reward them so they stay in the classroom, Raikes said.

"We really have to focus classroom-by-classroom," said Jim Morris, chief of staff at the L.A. district. "Every teacher matters just like every student matters."

The district recently examined its schools that had high student achievement despite poverty and a high percentage of students learning English as a second language, and found the schools have a lot in common, Morris said.

They have high expectations for kids, strong professional development for teachers, administrators who use data to guide teachers and learning, a group of teachers who work together to improve classroom learning, and a strong parent group.

But Morris said the key is excellent teachers. Everything else successful schools do is to support those teachers and what they do in the classroom, he said.

Because of the economy, the L.A. district is contemplating teacher layoffs, like most districts across the nation. Morris said it is trying to shrink central office staff and cut corners elsewhere to keep as many teaching jobs as possible.

Los Angeles Unified has about 37,000 teachers and expects to lay off between 2,100 and 2,500 before the next school year, he said.

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On the Net:

Gates Foundation: http://www.gatesfoundation.org

L.A. Unified School District: http://notebook.lausd.net/portal/page?-pageid33,48254&-dadptl&-schemaptl-ep