SEATTLE – Microsoft Corp. is offering $6 million in grants to help improve middle-school math and science education in the Puget Sound area.
The funding is part of the Redmond company’s Microsoft Math Partnership, an initiative encouraging other state businesses and governments to give more attention and resources to middle-school educators.
The money will help pay for teacher training. Microsoft also is supplying free math software to middle schools.
The partnership was announced at a luncheon Wednesday by Brad Smith, Microsoft’s senior vice president and co-chairman of the partnership. It comes after tests from the Washington Assessment of Student Learning showed that nearly half of tenth-graders did not pass the math section of the test last spring and only 35 percent passed the science portion.
Class of 2008 students will be the first required to pass the WASL math, reading and writing tests to earn a high-school diploma. Passing the science section will become a graduation requirement in 2010.
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