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Re: Scrutinizing Gates's claims

I don't think that the claims are out of order, but I don't know that they'll hold up, either. Keep in mind that his stats for early college schools come from 3 schools. I don't know if he's counting Providence's Met school as one of them, but it's a pretty special place. Of the 125 schools he claims, 104 have opened in 2004-2005 or later. Of the 71 schools in operation in 2005-2006, the average enrollment was about 167 and more than half were on college campuses. It might be that college campuses can throw the needed resources at such schools.
Givne how percent of graduates is often calculated, that 95 percent might not include those who returned to their previous schools or dropped out.
Gates says the kids are "low-performing" and that they must enroll in college-level courses. It's sorta hard to accept those two statements without further elaboration. This part is all pretty vague and one wonders, then, how they are selected/recruited and what the selection does to the sending schools. 

Material can be seen at www.earlycolleges.org

JB
----- Original Message ----- From: <Cbgord@aol.com> 
To: <arn-l@interversity.org>
Sent: Saturday, March 10, 2007 10:33 AM
Subject: [arn-l] Scrutinizing Gates's claims



I came across these comments by Bill Gates this week to a Senate  Committee
on "Strengthening American Competitiveness." I've excerpted a couple of his most "amazing" claims, involving spectacular gains in high school graduation and in acceptance to four-year colleges. Does anyone on the list know more about these "examples"? For example, who goes to these schools? How many of them require students/families to sign a contract as a precondition for acceptance and meet its requirements or get booted out? How are the "average graduation 
rates" calculated? And so on.
Thanks.
Craig Gordon


Thursday, March  08, 2007
Bill Gates: U.S. Senate Committee Hearing on  Strengthening American
Competitiveness

http://allintellects.blogspot.com/2007/03/bill-gates-us-senate-committee-heari
ng.html



New  York City  has opened almost 200 new schools in the last five years,
with many replacing the city's most underperforming schools. Our foundation supports this effort through advocacy and grant-making. The first set of new schools achieved an average 79 percent graduation rate compared to graduation 
rates ranging from 31  to 51 percent at the schools they replaced.

Early-college high schools  are perhaps the most innovative initiative
underway nationally. The approach is to recruit low-performing students to attend 
high schools that require  enrollment in college courses. The results are
astounding. Currently, there are more than 125 early-college high schools in operation around the country. So far, more than 95 percent of the first class of ninth graders at the original three early-college high schools have graduated, and over 80 percent of students have been accepted into four-year colleges. 


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