Overview of the Gates Project
The Rhode Island Department of Education and The Education Alliance at Brown received a one-year grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to support the development of valid and reliable local assessments – portfolios, exhibitions, and common tasks – that could be used as part of a school-wide diploma system. The pilot year funding from the Gates Foundation provided much needed capacity; specifically, these resources were used to:
- Develop Tools, Processes, and Models for Portfolios, Exhibitions, and Common Tasks – Two practitioner networks of Rhode Island educators wrote the exhibition and portfolio toolkits during the 2004-2005 school year. These support materials contain a spectrum of guidance materials, implementation and assessment protocols, and assessment tools to assist schools in designing and implementing exhibition and portfolio systems in their schools.
- Develop Common Task Resources – A common task network led by the Rhode Island Skills Commission developed a Common Task Resource Guide and provided 13 common tasks for use by any school. The task bank includes ELA and math tasks and includes instructional considerations for their use and administration.
- Establish Nine Pilot Sites – These 2004-2005 pilot sites were selected to field test the toolkit materials, host study tours for school teams visiting from other Rhode Island high schools, participate in an ethnographic study, and develop samples of student work to be used during professional development sessions.
- Provide State Conferences and Network Support – These conferences are an integral part of Rhode Island's dissemination of materials and information about the Rhode Island Diploma System. Nearly 1,000 educators representing 50 high schools attended the ten conferences offered during the 2004-2005 school year; a total of nearly 14,000 hours of professional development around the Rhode Island Diploma System were provided across the state.
- Design a Statewide Electronic Portfolio System – Rhode Island Network for Educational Technology (RINET) is working in conjunction with RIDE to commission the design of a statewide electronic portfolio platform and centralized data storage system. A beta version of this electronic template will be piloted in 10-12 Rhode Island schools during the fall 2005 and will be available statewide in the Spring 2006.