Gates Gives $22 Million in Grants

As part of its recently revamped education agenda, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today rolled out $22 million in grants to build and strengthen student-data systems at the high school and postsecondary levels and to support new research on teacher effectiveness.

The largest single grant—$7.3 million over four years to the Princeton, N.J.-based Educational Testing Service—will back a research project to help inform the development of “robust teaching-evaluation systems,” the Seattle-based foundation said in a Jan. 22 press release.

Another grant will provide $2.9 million to the Herndon, Va.-based National Student Clearinghouse over two years to devise a national research and data system that will offer participating high schools in all 50 states access to “reliable information” on their graduates’ college...