In rolling out plans last week to revamp its high school strategy and launch a major new effort on the postsecondary front, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is undertaking a more sweeping approach to grantmaking that appears aimed at reshaping some core elements of the U.S. education system. The philanthropy's agenda on secondary schools aspires to transform both what students are expected to know to graduate from high school and the ways they acquire that knowledge, as well as how teachers are evaluated, retained, and paid. At the postsecondary level, the foundation intends to help create an array of supports and incentives--and even new institutions--with the goal of ensuring that students don't simply reach college, but actually finish. To bolster its work, the foundation plans to put more money into research and data-gathering, along with advocacy aimed at building public and political will.