Four years ago, the Gates Foundation sought to spur exponential change in math curriculum and instruction.
Now the foundation is adding its math initiative to a more complex equation: Helping students secure the education and credentials needed to succeed in a rapidly evolving workforce.
“From a K-12 perspective, I would call it a doubling down,” Allan Golston, the president of the U.S. Program at Gates, the largest philanthropy working in education, said in an interview. “We’re really evolving and building on [the math work].”
The foundation’s new North Star: Doubling the rate of growth for what it calls “credentials of value,”— career qualifications that justify the time and money students invest in them. That translates to 10 million more credentials earned by 2045, the year the foundation plans to close permanently.
Shorter term, by 2030, Gates will push toward a 5 percent increase in the share of first-generation college students enrolling in postsecondary education after high school. (That rate varies from place to place.)
And Gates wants to see the share of successfully transferred college credits—from community colleges or other institutions—rise from 32% to 40%.
Pushing toward a broad goal on career credentials
Adding the career-focused work won’t mean subtracting resources from math, Golston said.
The foundation is working to ensure more students pass Algebra 1 by 9th grade, a predictor of college enrollment. It is also working to revamp some introductory college courses, in subjects such as chemistry.
Gates anticipates its total K-12 spending will remain at about the same level as in recent years, roughly $250 to $300 million a year. (To put that number in perspective, the lower figure would fund a roughly 14,000-student school district for about a year at the national average per-pupil spending of nearly $18,000.)
(Editorial Projects in Education, the publisher of Education Week, receives sustaining support from the Gates Foundation. The media organization retains sole editorial control over its articles.)
Most of the work, which was discussed in a call with reporters July 27, is not brand new, foundation officials said.
But bringing together areas such as instruction, college completion, and technology use as part of a broader push towards the same set of ambitious goals represents a shift for Gates, they added.
“This approach really is bringing it all together, where we have to provide goals in specific areas, all laddering up to that main goal” of 10 million more credentials by 2045, Golston said in an interview.
The “credentials of value” at the heart of the foundation’s broad strategy don’t have to include a bachelor’s or associate degree, Gates officials said.
States and districts are increasingly moving away from the idea of “college for all” in favor of steering students to a mix of work-based education and postsecondary training, whether that’s college or a career credential.
But Gates officials say that, for now, there’s much more and better-quality data on what it means long term to earn a specific degree from a two- or four-year college than for most workforce credentials.
That’s why much of the foundation’s work has, up to this point, emphasized pathways that require some college.
That will remain the case until the foundation can “strengthen the data to say we know hand on heart [a particular credential] is going to lead you to upward economic mobility,” said Patrick Methvin, the director of postsecondary success at Gates.
Not ‘declaring victory’ on math achievement
In 2022, when Gates first announced its math initiative—fueled by an initial investment of $1.1 billion over four years—4th grade math scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the nation’s report card, had plummeted.
Since then, outcomes for younger students have ticked upwards, but there hasn’t been a similar trend among older kids. In fact, math results on the 2025 NAEP were essentially stagnant among 8th graders—the students who were in 4th grade when the foundation unveiled its work.
In linking its math work to broader college- and career-preparation goals, Gates isn’t “declaring victory” on math, said Golston, who will be stepping down from his role next month after decades with the foundation.
But he believes there has been “real progress” in paving the way for math achievement, including the adoption of what Gates considers high-quality curricula in big districts, including New York and Los Angeles Unified.
Golston also noted that Los Angeles has reported an 11-point jump in the percentage of students scoring “proficient” or “advanced” on math tests since the pandemic.
Back in 2022, Gates pledged to help develop an arsenal of engaging and effective math instructional materials. Once generative AI became widely available, many of those resources incorporated the technology.
Gates plans to continue its AI work as part of this broader career-credential push, including a focus on teacher training, Golston said. He pointed to Gallup survey data showing that 6 in 10 teachers use AI for their work, but that fewer than 1 in 5 has been formally trained to use the technology.
“We believe we can contribute to support teachers to have access to the [AI] tools, to understand how to use it, why to use it, and to be able to get the information that they need at the right moment, at the right time to support learners,” Golston said.
Gates is also working “directly with the supply side,” collaborating with education technology companies to ensure that their tools are “safe, effective, and human- centered,” especially given AI’s tendency to regurgitate inaccurate information and reflect societal biases, Golston said.
In particular, Gates’ focus is on investing in AI-powered and other tools to help students in grades 4 through 8 accelerate their learning in math, and ensure younger kids get the foundational skills they need.
The foundation highlighted platforms it sees as promising, including Kiddom Atlas, a tool that analyzes students’ exit tickets—a quick assessment given at the end of a class period to check how well kids understood the day’s lesson.
The platform used AI to analyze “exactly where each kid had gotten stuck, why they were struggling, and most importantly, what [the teacher] could do about it before they left the classroom,” said Michelle Odemwingie, the CEO of Achievement Network, a nonprofit organization that receives financial support from Gates.
The tool was created through a partnership among her organization and two other Gates grantees: Kiddom and Teaching Lab.
What’s more, since its math push began, the foundation says it has learned that not only do instructional materials and assessments need to be effective and engaging, they must also be complementary, or “instructionally coherent,” as the foundation describes it.
The average teacher uses five supplemental resources, according to a survey of math, English/language arts, and science teachers from the RAND Corporation.
“The worst kept secret in education is that curriculum, assessment, professional learning, and technology are still too often bought and built completely separately,” Odemwingie said. “It leaves the burden on the teachers to knit that all together in real time alone, while they’re in front of 30 kids in their classroom trying to figure out how to make some magic happen.”
AI can help with college and career counseling
The foundation has also supported the development of AI platforms that can help students research future educational pathways and career options, including CoachPossible, in partnership with the National Association for College Admissions Counseling.
The idea is for AI tools to answer lower-lift questions—basic information on different degrees, credentials, and colleges, giving counselors more room to have deeper discussions.
Lydia McNeiley, the college and career coach for the Hammond, Ind., school district near Chicago, worries about student privacy, but is still open to the idea of using AI to help her students—most of whom are first-generation college-goers—research their futures.
“AI is here,” she said. “I’m always looking for tools to help my students.”
She encouraged Gates to consider supporting career counseling for younger students, given that Indiana calls for schools to begin helping students map out their future courses and career pathways as early as middle school.
And she appreciated that the counseling resources are described as supplemental—not a replacement for an experienced counselor.
“The relationship that you’re building with that student, that’s not going to change with a service like this,” she said.
