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Board of Regents Announces Support for P-16 Action Plan’s Student Achievement Initiatives and College Readiness Programs
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and The Wallace Foundation commit $6.2 million

The Board of Regents today announced it is receiving $6.2 million in support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and The Wallace Foundation for work to improve New York State’s high school graduation rates, college readiness and college completion rates.

The support will fund a series of initiatives outlined in the Regents’ P-16 Action Plan. The Plan, adopted in October 2006, created a blueprint of actions that are focused on raising achievement for all students and closing the achievement gap. The gap is the great divide in academic achievement along lines of income, race and ethnicity, language, and disability, which is manifest in test scores, high school graduation rates, and college completion.

The foundations’ investments will significantly accelerate the state’s ongoing work.  The Regents and State Education Department leadership will focus on improving educational leadership across the state, developing a cutting-edge service capacity within the Department, identifying and implementing best practices that improve schools, revising the system by which schools are held accountable, and designing a comprehensive data system that will track the progress of individual students from pre-kindergarten through college.

Specifically, these funds will be used to further the goals of the Regents P-16 Action Plan by:

• Strengthening the State Education Department's organizational design and capacity to bring about needed reforms in low performing schools. The goal is to strengthen the Department as a school improvement and service organization consistent with exemplary national models.
• Supporting education leaders to be effective in their efforts to dramatically transform the state education system by identifying and implementing best practices in school leadership, improvement and accountability strategies. Recent legislation requires the development of a method to measure the year-to-year progress of individual students and revise the state’s system that holds schools accountable for student success.  In addition, the Regents and SED will systemically expand school improvement efforts, including the appointment of school quality review teams, intervention teams, and distinguished educators who will help under-performing schools.
• Creating the strategic plan for a statewide data system that will track the progress of individual students from pre-kindergarten through college. This comprehensive data system will be used by schools and colleges to revise instruction and improve student achievement.

 “The Board is very encouraged and enthused to be working on three important and related initiatives at the same time,” Regents Chancellor Robert M. Bennett said.  “Refining our data system, exploring best practices around the country and globe, and designing a Department that will be a high level service organization are unprecedented opportunities.  We intend to fully engage all of our constituencies in the field and key leaders in the Department in our work.  We wish to express our sincerest thanks to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and The Wallace Foundation.”

“We are building on success,” State Education Commissioner Richard Mills said. “Major parts of the Regents P-16 Action Plan were enacted into law in the last State Budget. This grant funding will help us to do three key things outlined in the Plan: design a comprehensive data system measuring student progress from pre-K through college, identify and implement the best practices in school improvement and accountability, and strengthen the State Education Department as a service organization to improve low performing schools.”

  "New York is taking important steps to improve high-school graduation rates in the state," said Vicki Phillips, director of education at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. "The support announced today aims to help the state realize that goal by advancing its P-16 Action Plan to strengthen students' academic skills. We commend the leadership of New York State and their vision to ensure all young people graduate ready for college, career and life."  

 The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and its partners are focused on improving high school graduation rates and college readiness for all students. To date, the foundation has invested $2 billion to improve high schools, including more than $150 million to districts in New York State.  

“Research tells us that among school-related influences, leadership is second only to teaching in determining what students do or do not learn in school; and, that there are virtually no instances of troubled schools being turned around in the absence of intervention by talented leaders,” stated Richard Laine, director of education at The Wallace Foundation.  “New York State has understood the importance of education leadership to bring about dramatic change in accountability and school improvement.” 

The Wallace Foundation seeks to enable institutions to expand learning and enrichment opportunities for all people by sharing effective ideas and practices, with a focus on strengthening education leadership to improve school achievement, enhancing after-school learning opportunities, and building appreciation and demand for the arts.

The impetus for the grants stems from the work undertaken in November 2005 when the Regents convened the Summit on New York Education to decide the next phase of education reform in New York. The Summit brought together more than 750 leaders from preK-12 education, higher education, libraries, museums, the professions, business, and community groups. The work done through the summit process resulted in the Regents P-16 Action Plan. The Regents then approached the Gates Foundation and The Wallace Foundation for financial support for the implementation of this plan.

The foundations’ combined $6.2 million in financial support announced today includes:

• $3 million from the Gates Foundation to contract with McKinsey & Company, which will serve as a strategic advisor to the Board of Regents and support its efforts to strengthen the Department as a state-of-the-art school improvement and service organization.  McKinsey will provide analytical and strategic support to the Board of Regents to assist in reviewing the Department’s current capacity and building new capacity where needed. 

McKinsey & Company is a management consulting firm that helps many of the world’s leading organizations address their strategic challenges. With consultants deployed in 40 countries across the globe, McKinsey advises on strategic, operational, organizational and technological issues.

• A joint $1.2 million grant from the Wallace and the Gates Foundations to secure the work of New York and national experts to help identify and implement best practices in school leadership, improvement and accountability.  This will include an initiative led by Holland & Knight, which will work with the state’s leadership to develop a method of measuring the year-to-year progress of individual students, redesign the system by which the state holds schools responsible for student success, and recommend best practices to use in school improvement. Together with an improved data system, the work will better enable district administrators and teachers to assess student progress, determine what works and what doesn’t, and intervene as needed to address difficulties that students are having.

Holland & Knight is a law firm with one of the nation’s leading education policy practices. The firm's education team has extensive experience working with leaders throughout the education pipeline, including many states, on accountability and other key areas of state and federal policy.

• $2 million in support from the Gates Foundation to help develop a strategic plan for a P-16 data system to track individual student progress in order to increase high school and higher education graduation rates. This data system is outlined in the Regents P-16 Action Plan and was approved by recently enacted legislation. The Board of Regents is working in partnership with the State University of New York, the City University of New York, the New York City Department of Education, and the Yonkers and Syracuse school districts to develop the data system. The Parthenon Group, a strategic advisory firm with expertise on systems and data used to drive education reform, will spearhead the project.

The State is currently limited by the fragmentation of its many data systems which are housed in a variety of different institutions, including local districts, BOCES, SUNY, and CUNY. Many systems use different metrics with different methodologies and identifiers. New York needs a way to provide a comprehensive view of each student’s progress across school, continuing through transitions from elementary to middle to high school and college. Access to uniform and robust data will help ease the strain of student mobility across districts by speeding access to important data, informing schools about the level of high-school preparation required for success in higher education, and aiding evaluation of the success of district and statewide programs, and much more.

The work involves a fact-based review of all current data systems and the information they provide, an assessment of the system’s performance, an analysis of what quantitative and qualitative information is missing and needed, and finally the strategic planning for a comprehensive, integrated P-16 data system across the pre-K-12 and higher education systems.

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