Big grant, bigger task.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Twenty-five million dollars is a lot of money by anyone's standards - well, almost anyone's: It won't make much of a dent in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's $24 billion endowment. Nor will $25 million, doled out over a five-year period, restore Oregon's educational system, which may receive as little as $4.8 billion in state support during the next two-year budget period, to budgetary health. But it's enough money to make a big difference in a few carefully targeted areas.

The $25 million, five-year grant was announced last week by the Gates Foundation and the Meyer Memorial Trust, which is contributing $10 million of the total amount. The grant is the largest private donation Oregon schools have ever received. The money will be used to improve education at the high school level - primarily by boosting achievement and reducing dropout rates among low-income and minority students.

The Gates Foundation has made high school and college education a priority, having doled out more than $450 million to high school programs around the country. The Meyer Trust has distributed $75 million in education grants in Oregon over the past two decades. Both see education as the key to a healthier economy and a better world - and both believe the educational system, in Oregon and elsewhere, is leaving too many young people behind.

The grant will finance the creation of new, smaller high schools where students can learn in more personalized settings. Some of the schools won't actually be new, but will be created within existing, larger high schools. Smaller schools, the foundations' research shows, do a better job of retaining and motivating students who might otherwise become discouraged or uninterested.

Five million dollars a year amounts to about 0.2 percent of the state's share of the annual budget for public schools. For the school system as a whole, it's a drop in the bucket. But such amounts of money, directed toward specific schools for specific purposes, can have a significant effect - and if the grant-funded programs achieve good results, the programs' successes can be replicated elsewhere. That can make $25 million look like a really big grant, even in the context of a multibillion dollar school system.