The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will donate $10 million to a program designed to improve the skills of high school students in Maine, where fewer than half the graduates enroll in college. The foundation, created by the chairman of Microsoft Corp. and his wife, committed the money to help school reform in the state. Maine began an effort to create smaller, more effective schools and classrooms after the state Department of Education described training deficiencies in a 1998 report, the Seattle- based foundation said in a statement.
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