Each day we sail for a different port.
We wake up in Singapore or Mombasa. Let's get off the boat and explore the city.
Speech to a Conference about High Schools, May 2005
By Bill Gates
The Kansas City, Kansas public school district, where 79 percent of students are minorities and 74 percent live below the poverty line, was struggling with high dropout rates and low test scores when it adopted the school-reform model called First Things First in 1996. This included setting high academic standards for all students, reducing teacher-student ratios, and giving teachers and administrators the responsibility to improve student performance and the resources they needed to do it. The district’s graduation rate has climbed more than 30 percentage points.
These are the kind of results you can get when you design high schools to prepare every student for college.
At the Met School in Providence, Rhode Island, 70 percent of the students are black or Hispanic. More than 60 percent live below the poverty line. Nearly 40 percent come from families where English is a second language. As part of its special mission, the Met enrolls only students who have dropped out in the past or were in danger of dropping out. Yet, even with this student body, the Met now has the lowest dropout rate and the highest college placement rate of any high school in the state.
These are the kind of results you can get when you design a high school to prepare every student for college.
Two years ago, I visited High Tech High in San Diego. It was conceived in 1998 by a group of San Diego business leaders who became alarmed by the city's shortage of talented high-tech workers. Thirty-five percent of High Tech High students are black or Hispanic. All of them study courses like computer animation and biotechnology in the school's state-of-the-art labs. High Tech High’s scores on statewide academic tests are 15 percent higher than the rest of the district; their SAT scores are an average of 139 points higher.
These are the kind of results you can get when you design a high school to prepare every student for college.
These are not isolated examples. These are schools built on principles that can be applied anywhere – the new three R’s, the basic building blocks of better high schools:
The first R is Rigor – making sure all students are given a challenging curriculum that prepares them for college or work;
The second R is Relevance – making sure kids have courses and projects that clearly relate to their lives and their goals;
The third R is Relationships – making sure kids have a number of adults who know them, look out for them, and push them to achieve.
The three R’s are almost always easier to promote in smaller high schools. The smaller size gives teachers and staff the chance to create an environment where students achieve at a higher level and rarely fall through the cracks. Students in smaller schools are more motivated, have higher attendance rates, feel safer, and graduate and attend college in higher numbers.
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By Bill Gates
The Kansas City, Kansas public school district, where 79 percent of students are minorities and 74 percent live below the poverty line, was struggling with high dropout rates and low test scores when it adopted the school-reform model called First Things First in 1996. This included setting high academic standards for all students, reducing teacher-student ratios, and giving teachers and administrators the responsibility to improve student performance and the resources they needed to do it. The district’s graduation rate has climbed more than 30 percentage points.
These are the kind of results you can get when you design high schools to prepare every student for college.
At the Met School in Providence, Rhode Island, 70 percent of the students are black or Hispanic. More than 60 percent live below the poverty line. Nearly 40 percent come from families where English is a second language. As part of its special mission, the Met enrolls only students who have dropped out in the past or were in danger of dropping out. Yet, even with this student body, the Met now has the lowest dropout rate and the highest college placement rate of any high school in the state.
These are the kind of results you can get when you design a high school to prepare every student for college.
Two years ago, I visited High Tech High in San Diego. It was conceived in 1998 by a group of San Diego business leaders who became alarmed by the city's shortage of talented high-tech workers. Thirty-five percent of High Tech High students are black or Hispanic. All of them study courses like computer animation and biotechnology in the school's state-of-the-art labs. High Tech High’s scores on statewide academic tests are 15 percent higher than the rest of the district; their SAT scores are an average of 139 points higher.
These are the kind of results you can get when you design a high school to prepare every student for college.
These are not isolated examples. These are schools built on principles that can be applied anywhere – the new three R’s, the basic building blocks of better high schools:
The first R is Rigor – making sure all students are given a challenging curriculum that prepares them for college or work;
The second R is Relevance – making sure kids have courses and projects that clearly relate to their lives and their goals;
The third R is Relationships – making sure kids have a number of adults who know them, look out for them, and push them to achieve.
The three R’s are almost always easier to promote in smaller high schools. The smaller size gives teachers and staff the chance to create an environment where students achieve at a higher level and rarely fall through the cracks. Students in smaller schools are more motivated, have higher attendance rates, feel safer, and graduate and attend college in higher numbers.
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