Gates Pushes District-Charter Collaborations

Bill Gates attends a ceremony earlier this year in Washington, D.C. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced today that it is funding charter schools and traditional school districts in nine cities to share best practices and solve problems together.

—Jacquelyn Martin/AP-File

By Mary Ann Zehr

Seeking to promote closer ties between charter schools and other public schools, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced Tuesday that it is providing grants to enable charter schools and traditional school districts in nine cities to share best practices and solve problems together.

The nine collaborations are set to receive $100,000 each to carry out signed agreements, and they will compete to be among three selected for significantly larger grants from the foundation. The foundation did not specify dollar amounts for the larger grants.

“It’s new that we have funded districts and charters to come together in this way,” Vicki L. Phillips, the director of K-12 education initiatives for the Seattle-based foundation, said in a telephone interview. “For a long time, there have been tensions between districts and charters over an array of things, from facilities to recruitment and retention of staff. This [effort] is designed to say, ‘We want the highest-performing charters to be successful and the highest-performing districts...