23 Jan 2009
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Grant Will Enhance College Readiness Indicator System
Dallas–The Dallas Independent School District has received a $3.77 million data performance grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to strengthen the district's efforts to track student performance and improve college readiness, the key to the district's Dallas Achieves initiative.
"Dallas ISD is pioneering a college readiness warning system and we are proud to lend our support to it," said Vicki L. Phillips, director of education for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. "Useful data and solid research about what works will help empower teachers, schools and the district to more effectively keep students on the path to success in college and beyond. Our education system must be grounded in reliable data that assesses what works best in the classroom and serves the interests of all students."
The purpose of the grant is to enhance a model college readiness warning system and build teacher capacity to use data to identify student needs, provide appropriate interventions and ultimately increase college readiness.
"This grant is a clear indicator that the efforts put in place through the Dallas Achieves initiative are working," said Superintendent of Schools Michael Hinojosa. "We simply cannot say thank you enough to the Gates Foundation for validating the work that thousands of educators throughout the district are making on behalf of Dallas students to prepare them for college."
Dallas ISD has already been a pioneer in the field of data by piloting real-time scorecard and dashboards thanks to a $5 million initial investment from the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. The Gates grant builds on this work to establish Dallas ISD as a national exemplar in data-driven decision making.
The grant will go into effect immediately and will continue through August 2011.