Billionaire Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft Corp., beat out President George W. Bush as the most influential person in U.S. education for the past decade, according to a survey by a nonprofit education publisher. Gates sparked national movements to improve high schools and to create smaller schools through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that he co-chairs with his wife, said Editorial Projects in Education Inc. in a report today. The results are based on an e-mail survey by the publishing group, which produces Education Week.

Gates drew attention to U.S. high school education during a speech at a meeting of the National Governors Association in February 2005, when he said, ``America's high schools are obsolete.''  The speech, combined with the Foundation's investment in high schools, influenced education practice, policy and research, said Douglas Wood, executive director of the National Academy for Excellent Teaching in Teachers College at Columbia University. ``Governors across the country took up the mantle of high school reform and it has contributed greatly to a renewed focus on the need for high school improvement at the federal level,'' Wood said in an e-mail.

This articled appeared in the December 13, 2006 edition of the Bloomberg.net

Published Friday, Dec. 15, 2006