Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Melinda and Bill Gates spoke with students in an AP chemistry class at Hidalgo Early College High School on Wednesday afternoon. (Photo: RGG/Steve Taylor)

HIDALGO, October 23 - Bill and Melinda Gates say they are unsure how the “amazing” success of the Rio Grande Valley high school they visited on Wednesday can be replicated across the country.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has put money into Hidalgo Early College High School for the past three years. The co-chairs of the foundation toured the nationally-acclaimed school to see what its principal, teachers and students were doing right.

“We will be the first to say that in terms of getting all the high schools to be like this high school is, we don’t yet have the answer to that. The country is very, very far from having the education system that the students deserve,” Bill Gates said.

Gates was speaking at a news conference he and Melinda Gates held in Hidalgo High’s library after having toured the school and had lunch with its students and teachers.

Gates said education was the “great equalizer” in society and that the United States owes its young people a “great educational opportunity,” even more so today, “given where the economy is going.”

He also said that federally-mandated testing had “really revealed how bad high schools in America are.” In addition to “very high” dropout rates, Gates said the nation was also suffering because a lot of students that do graduate from high school are not really prepared for college.

“So, they either don’t go on or they try to go on and they end up in remedial courses and the drop out rate at the (college) level is also very high,” he said.

Gates said the goal of the Gates Foundation’s work in the field of education is to “make sure that kids throughout the country have opportunities like the kids here (in Hidalgo) have.”

After chatting with students in an AP chemistry class, Bill and Melinda Gates proudly reported that Hidalgo High is fast becoming a model for the rest of the Valley, Texas and the United States to emulate.

“What we saw today at Hidalgo High School is really nothing short of amazing,” Melinda Gates said. “To be in a building like this and to see that the kids are college-going was really an inspiration for us and a model for us for what we really would like to see around the United States.”

Hidalgo High was ranked among the top ten Best High Schools in the America in a study released last December by U.S. News and World Report. The study praised the school for providing “a good education across their entire student body, not just for some students” and for helping to “integrate a community into mainstream national culture.”

The study said all 810 students attending the school are Hispanic. Half of them come from families with parents who never finished high school, the study noted. It pointed out that Hidalgo has a poverty rate that hovers at 38 percent.

Nonetheless, the students at Hidalgo High overcome these barriers and hold a 94 percent graduation rate. An it is one of a select number of high schools across the nation that offers its entire student body the opportunity to earn up to 60 college hours at no cost by the time they reach their senior year, giving students an opportunity to obtain both a high school diploma and an associates degree upon graduation.

“Some of the things we see here, high expectations, relationships with adults, fantastic teachers who know their subject material and are motivating the students, these are common elements that we are seeing across schools that are doing well and serving students well,” Melinda Gates said.

The Gates Foundation likes to "hook-up" one high performing school with one that is not maximizing its students talents, Melinda Gates said, in the hope that administrators from the lower performing school can learn what makes the successful school tick. The foundation can then help fund the lower performing school so that teachers and administrators have the time to plan and build support for change in their community.

“We are trying to spread these models across the country, literally at the local level, and then we are working at the state and district level to also support the schools with policy work,” she said.

Bill Gates said the foundation is looking for schools where there is real interest in setting very high standards.

“We can only support some models. We give a percentage, that is actually quite small but the idea is it can be catalytic, it can help schools get into the new mode where the expectations are there,” he said.

“Amazingly, once you get into that new mode, the actual expense of running that school is actually not much higher than a school that was not achieving much for the students at all. We’ve seen some things that have worked.”

Melinda Gates said she and her husband like to visit schools without the teachers or students knowing in advance, which was the case with Hidalgo High. That way, they have a better chance of finding out what is really happening in a school. She said they like to visit schools that are “failing their kids” just as much as the exemplary ones.

“You can come to places like this and it is so amazing but you also have to see the contrast. We go to be inspired but we really go to learn – what is the magic of what has happened here,” Melinda Gates said.

There is no question that Hidalgo High is doing well, Melinda Gates said.

“When you go through these hallways and go into the classrooms and talk to the students about what their dreams are, the fact that they are all college-going, they see themselves going to college, they see themselves getting ready for that next path… they are not only getting that message, they are self-motivated, and when they hit a stumbling block in school there is somebody there to help them, to give them a tutorial session after school, to say, ‘you can do it,’ to help make sure it’s in their planner and to get their homework turned in,” Melinda Gates said.

“That’s exactly what you want in a high school because we know these kids can do this work. We are hearing it throughout the nation, that kids are saying we want to be challenged, we can be challenged, we need people to believe in us; we need to have schools like this that support us. And that is exactly what we saw in this school today.”

Melinda Gates said she was also pleased with the responses she got from the AP chemistry class students she talked to.

“We asked the kids why they are taking the class and for a lot of them it was love of learning, they had a teacher that got them alight about chemistry or math and a lot of them are saying, well, because I’m gonna pursue my medical degree, I’m getting started on that path,” she said.

“They all see themselves going there and that’s where our nation is going. Two thirds of the jobs now coming up, the high paying jobs, are going to require a post-secondary degree or college degree.”

Bill Gates agreed.

“We started out having lunch and talking to the students and every one of them had not only excitement about the school and their learning and excitement about the relationship with the teacher but a sense of the kind of career they were preparing themselves for,” he said.

“There are a lot of excuses, a lot of challenges in putting together a great school like this and it’s amazing to see that it’s come together. And, once you get a success like this, it has a certain strength where it feeds off itself. Good teachers want to work here; they learn from each other, the students help each other out.”

Asked to sum up his thoughts about visiting Hidalgo High, Bill Gates said the tour had been “fantastic” and “educational and inspiring.” He said the local community had come together to make the new high school model work. “I think everybody in the community should feel good about the investment and the opportunity that has been created,” he said.

Melinda Gates agreed. “The students are amazing,” she said.ow can we replicate Hidalgo High School across the nation, asks Bill Gates | RioGrandeGuardian.com | news source for the border