Gates Foundation Awards Grants to Expand ‘Early College’ High Schools

As part of a broader push to improve the college-going odds for low-income and minority students, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has announced grants totaling nearly $30 million aimed at greatly expanding the number of "early college" high schools around the country over the next four years.

Often located on college campuses, early-college high schools are designed to enable disadvantaged students, in particular, to earn two years' worth of college credits or an associate's degree along with their high school diplomas. In recent years, a number of philanthropies, led by the Gates Foundation, have begun making grants designed to create a national network of such schools.

Upping its total commitment to that network to nearly $114 million, the Seattle-based foundation announced on Dec. 7 that it was making seven grants worth more than $22 million to start 42 new early-college high schools. The foundation also announced a grant of $7 million to Jobs for the Future, a nonprofit organization based in Boston, to provide technical help to the network and set up a data-collection system aimed at...