A few weeks ago, I wrote about Memphis City Schools’ Teacher Effectiveness Initiative and what it could mean for both the city and the state of Tennessee.
But, b/c of scheduling conflicts, one thing that was never included in the story was how Memphis came to be awarded more than $90 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
About a year and a half ago, the foundation began a request for proposals from certain school systems among the nation’s roughly 15,000.
“We decided we wouldn’t go with the very largest systems and we wouldn’t go with the smallest systems,” says Colleen Oliver, senior program officer for the foundation.
Because of the foundation’s focus on issues of poverty and access, they also wanted school systems with a certain level of poverty, and in states where student growth could be used to measure teacher effectiveness.
The end result was about 22 school systems, of which MCS was one, that Gates approached about the idea of partnering with them.
