Gates Foundation Expands Support for ‘Early College’ High Schools

New grants totaling nearly $30 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will underwrite dozens of new “early college” high schools, with a goal of more than tripling the nation’s supply of such schools 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 associate’s degrees along with their high school diplomas. In recent years, a number of philanthropies, led by the Gates Foundation, have begun making grants designed to form 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 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...