Melinda Gates

Three school districts and a coalition of charter schools have agreed to be test kitchens for some radical ideas for improving teacher quality — from paying new teachers to spend another year practicing before getting their own class to letting student test scores affect teacher pay. In exchange, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is handing them the biggest pile of cash it has spent on education reform in about a decade. The foundation announced $290 million in grants to the four groups on Thursday, plus another $45 million for education research aimed at uncovering what exactly is an effective teacher. The grants include ... Read Full Story

The Obama administration will nominate a young former executive with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to run America's top foreign assistance program, ending months of speculation and complaints about who would take the vacant post, U.S. officials said Tuesday. President Barack Obama has chosen Rajiv Shah, a medical doctor and currently a senior official at the Department of Agriculture dealing with food security, to run the U.S. Agency for International Development, the officials said. The officials — some traveling with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others at the White House — spoke on condition of anonymity pending notification to Congress and a ... Read Full Story

The Obama administration will nominate a young former executive with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to run America's top foreign assistance program, ending months of speculation and complaints about who would take the vacant post, U.S. officials said Tuesday. President Barack Obama has chosen Rajiv Shah, a medical doctor and currently a senior official at the Department of Agriculture dealing with food security, to run the U.S. Agency for International Development, the officials said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity pending notification to Congress and a formal public announcement of the choice. Shah's selection, which must still be confirmed by the Senate, ... Read Full Story

The Bill & Melinda Gates foundation is offering $30 million to help charter schools in Houston get $300 million in tax-exempt bonds to build more schools. The money will help one charter organizations — KIPP Houston — but the foundation says it is willing to help other groups get financing as well. The credit support agreement is the foundation's first attempt to use "non-traditional means" to support its other investments in global health, global development and U.S. programs such as education. The Seattle-based foundation plans to invest a total of $400 million in similar program-related investments over the next two years. The foundation may ... Read Full Story

The billionaire co-founder of Microsoft is touting what he sees as an investment with enormous returns — the money spent to improve health care in poor countries and the millions of lives saved because of it. "Global health money improves lives more than any other spending," Bill Gates told a roundtable discussion Tuesday on a new initiative called The Living Proof Project that's being launched by Gates and his wife, Melinda. The two were in Washington to urge policymakers and others to continue or even increase federal dollars spent on programs to fight AIDS, malaria and other diseases in underdeveloped nations. "We're seeing a ... Read Full Story