Gates Awards 15 Grants for Common-Standards Work

In a bid to help schools translate pages and pages of common academic standards into real classroom work, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has committed $19.5 million to the development and piloting of new instructional tools and assessments.

The 15 grants, announced last week, are intended to address what Carina Wong, who oversees college-readiness grants at the Gates Foundation , calls the “now-what? question.” Officials at the Seattle-based philanthropy hope they will help policymakers, district leaders, and teachers begin to figure out what to do with the standards as their states move toward adopting them. Kentucky has already adopted the standards, even though they are in draft form.

The money is intended to help develop an array of teaching resources such as course outlines, diagnostic tools, and assessments. It also will be used to find ways to establish how well the...