When one foundation has amassed over $30 billion, it has the financial power to shape the policies of government to its liking.
The Gates Foundation has more than $30 billion, and when Warren Buffet’s gift of another $30 billion is added to the Gates fund, the Gates Foundation will have the power to direct global policy on almost any issue of its choosing.
Anthony Cody published a guest column in Education Week (funded in part by the Gates Foundation) that describes how the Gates Foundation intervenes in agricultural and environmental issues around the world, often in ways that support corporate profits rather than the public interest.
I have never believed that the Gates Foundation or the Gates family puts profits above the public interest. I work on the assumption that anyone who has more riches than they can ever spend in their lifetime or in 100 lifetimes is not motivated by greed. It makes no sense.
I believe that Bill and Melinda Gates want to establish a legacy as people who left the world a better place.
But I think their their efforts to “reform” education are woefully mistaken.
I have tried but had no luck in my efforts to meet Bill Gates. On the two occasions when I was in Seattle in the past year, I tried to arrange a meeting with him well in advance. He was never available.
I am puzzled by what I read in the column cited here. I am also puzzled by the Gates Foundation’s persistent funding of groups that want to privatize public education. I am puzzled by their funding of “astroturf” groups of young teachers who insist that they don’t want any job protections, don’t want to be rewarded for their experience (of which they have little) or for any additional degrees, and certainly don’t want to be represented by a collective bargaining unit.
I am puzzled by their funding of groups that are promoting an anti-teacher, anti-public education agenda in state after state. And I am puzzled by the hundreds of millions they have poured into the quixotic search to guarantee that every single classroom has a teacher that knows how to raise test scores.
Sometimes I wonder if anyone at the Gates Foundation has any vision of what good education is, or whether they think that getting higher test scores is the same as getting a good education. I wonder if they ever think about their role in demoralizing and destabilizing the education profession.
When Bill or Melinda Gates is asked whether it is democratic for one foundation, their foundation, to shape a nation’s education policy, they don a mask of false modesty. Who, little old us? They disingenuously reply that the nation spends more than $600 billion on education, which makes their own contribution small by comparison. Puny, by comparison. Anyone with any sense knows that their discretionary spending has had a powerful effect on the policies of the U.S. Department of Education, on the media, on states and on districts. When Bill Gates speaks, the National Governors Association snaps to attention, awed by his wealth. They are pulling the strings, and they prefer to pretend they aren’t.
But their disclaimers do not change the fact that they have power without accountability. They want accountability for teachers, but who holds them accountable?
When I see Bill or Melinda make a pronouncement on education, I am reminded of the song in “Fiddler on the Roof”: “When you’re rich, they think you really know.”
They don’t. And no one will tell them that they are out of their depth. They may be well-meaning but they are misinformed, and they are inflicting incalculable damage on our public schools and on the education profession.
Who elected them? Why should they have the power to shape American education?.
It’s puzzling.
Let’s face it, the corporations and their foundations using NGOs like UNESCO are trying to take control over everything. If you read about the UN’s educational progams, it’s all about global government. Gates is no different than the Rockefellers and Soroses of the world who want one world and to control everything. It’s a sickness. We must gut our current government and get them out of our children’s classrooms!
An earlier comment was made about looking to Sweden as an example to follow with their blended local school/voucher structure. I think a better model to look at is actually Finland. There was an article in NEA Today by Linda Darling-Hammond (from Stanford University) about the reforms Finland made that brought their ranking on international tests up from being near the bottom to being in the top 10 in all subjects tested by the PISA. I highly recommend everyone read this article:
http://www.nea.org/home/40991.htm
Finland has made more stringent requirements for entering the teaching profession and put it on par in prestige and respect with that of doctors and lawyers. Their teacher prep program is a 3 year-long graduate degree in which teachers leave with a Master’s degree (which by the way is also free with living expenses so teachers don’t go into debt to become a teacher. How nice would that be?!) They have national guidelines that are not prohibitively long (Common Core State Standards is the US’s attempt at that), no standardized testing until the end of high school, more equitable funding for schools that gives more money to the neediest schools, and give teachers plenty of time for collaboration and professional development. Because of the training and respect teachers have, they are trusted to make sound educational decisions in their students’ best interestsThe reforms Finland put into place were over the course of 40 years – they were systematic and given time to develop, not scrapped because immediate results weren’t produced. Privatization of schools wasn’t one of their reforms.
There are definitely reforms that can be made to improve education here in the US. Privatizing education isn’t one of them. I distrust a lot of these philanthropic organizations trying to “reform” education because the money they donate comes with so many strings attached that serve to further their own agenda and don’t necessarily benefit education and improve student achievement. Our students aren’t just their test score, so I really appreciate the comments made in the articles about Finnish education in which their teachers state that they know so much more about their students than test scores can show.
Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland by Pasi Sahlberg
A review by Sandra Stotsky
Journal of School ChoiceVolume 6, Issue 2, April 2012, pages 295-300
http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/wjsc20/current
You can also google: The Serpent in Finland’s Garden of Equity
Essay Review of Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland by Pasi Sahlberg (NY: Teachers College Press, 2011)
Finland is great, but Diane is right that the PISA scores of low-poverty schools in the US are truly excellent. Poorer kids do badly on tests, and the US has more poor kids than most countries. It’s pretty simple.
I agree. I also like some of the things Finland implemented as part of their reforms. I think teachers like being able to collaborate with one another, and to actually be given time to do so would be wonderful! Currently, our district is implementing Professional Learning Communities (PLC’s) but it’s very micromanaged and we have little time to actually collaborate. I did go back and get a Master’s degree in education myself, but I always feel there is something more I can do to improve as a teacher, and I know there are areas I still would like to improve upon. The idea of having more time in the teacher preparation programs is appealing to me for that reason – I imagine how much more effective we could be as a beginning teacher with that much training beforehand.
I do agree with both you and Diane though, poverty plays a huge role in test performance and is a huge problem for our country. I just read an article by Stephen Krashen about the effect of poverty on student test scores:
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fsdkrashen.com%2Findex.php%3Fcat%3D4&h=-AQF531eSAQGJY3QTe8NqBBpWyN63Z8V5T8rRsi-2GX1o5Q
He makes some interesting points about taking the large amounts of money being spent on assessment systems for these high stakes tests and for the Common Core and instead directing those funds toward ameliorating the issue of poverty in the US. What a positive effect this could have on people’s lives, let alone these test scores, if that were done. It’s like treating the cause rather than just the symptoms.
I love the reference of new teachers without roots as “astroturf.” I guess this is why the anti-public education crowd trying to eradicate in WI don’t like us season teachers..we are like old weeds with deep roots and are hard to pull out.
Like Obama and Duncan, Gates is a hypocrite. All three of them went to elite private prep schools that offered a meaningful curriculum, small class sizes and little to no standardized testing, and they send their kids to that kind of school, but they want to impose larger classes and more testing on the rest of us.
Good observation Ed.
“They may be well-meaning but they are misinformed.” There it is. So I ask: why aren’t organizations opposed to the standardization of education and the deprofessionalization of teaching applying for Gates Foundation money? I’d have to imagine that the mid-level managers who make decisions about doling out a few hundred thousand here or there are not ideologues bent on destroying what most of us in the teaching profession know to be sound philosophy and practice.
Seriously, their coffers are virtually unlimited. And we all know that public money (if it exists at all) is difficult to obtain while our economy continues to sputter along and political decision-makers bludgeon us with talk of austerity. If the purpose is sound, it seems to me that getting money from the Gates Foundation (and others like it) is simply a matter of going through the bureaucratic motions of applying for the money. For example, would the Gates Foundation really deny a grant to, let’s say, an organization that works to promote inquiry-based learning in secondary history classrooms – a venture that is the antithesis to standardization? My instincts say no, they wouldn’t.
The problem is that folks (like me) who stand against privatization and standardization – while they are (mostly) correct – are either too proud or too blind to admit they’re shouting into the wilderness. Furthermore, they, unlike their opponents, are not properly organized. And let’s face it, Teachers Unions (god bless them) are not the vehicle through which we must effectively react to the corporate takeover of our public education system. The other side has effectively tarred and feathered them for the time being. Teachers would be better served by allocating some of their dues to non-profits that work to destandardize education and professionalize teaching.
Those of us allied with Ms. Ravitch, we educators who are against over-reliance on high-stakes testing, standardization of curriculum, and the deprofessionalization of teaching, need an attitude adjustment when it comes to the Gates Foundation and other sources of private money. While we loathe the weakening of public education, we must come to terms with the fact that power (money) has firmly shifted into private hands. Federal discretionary spending on education is a mere drop in the bucket. Many states (like mine) are broke. We need to stop complaining about reality and stop demonizing folks like Bill Gates. Rather, we must persuade private interests to help us compete with our opponents who receive the lion’s share of their money. And unless we’re prepared to start a revolution and think we can change the “system” in the short run (ha), we better start playing the game for the long run.
Let’s convince the Gates Foundation that we are right. Let’s put their money to good use. For if we don’t, our voices will be reduced to mere rhetoric while education becomes just another commodity to be bought and sold in the “market”.
“don’t want to be rewarded for their experience (of which they have little) or for any additional degrees”
Younger workers are being systematically excluded from the economy by the boomer generation. Boomers, who entered the workforce with little student loan debt at a time when our public universities were publicly funded demand solidarity in defence of seniority rules but are strangely silent when younger generations jobs are on the line. We need those jobs to pay the tuition debt brought on by the tax cuts boomers gave themselves after receiving low cost higher education. Then, while young teachers face layoffs, they expect raises for completing online coursework from some barely accredited “university.” Give me a break. I’m not one to side with corporate education reform. I’m really not. But taking a parenthetical dig (“(of which they have little”)” at younger workers who are really, really frustrated at a system that systematically discriminates against those entering the workforce is just really deeply divisive. If boomers want us to stand up for their seniority rules and their raises then they need to start standing up for our jobs. Teachers need to stop playing defence on education reform and stop letting corporate ed reform set the agenda. Solidarity needs to extend to everyone, not just the established insiders. How do we get more and more truly talented and inspired teachers into the class, including younger teachers who can relate to students and integrate technology? How about student loan debt forgiveness and on-the-job certification for those with degrees in needed disciplines or regions? How about tapping into the many PhD with subject matter expertise who are struggling in the swamped academic job market. These are people with years of classroom experience as TAs and who can inject cutting edge knowledge and ideas into our classrooms. How about lowering barriers to entering the profession for such individuals? I am a very liberal/progressive person and I do not agree with the governor of my state on very much at all, but hen NPR interviewed a teacher’s union rep on education reform it sounded like her only agenda was to protect the jobs and raises of older teachers. Quite insultingly to those of us who might want to transition from higher ed to high school teaching, she said it is impossible to do that without going back to school for two more years to get certification. There was nothing about identifying effective younger teachers so that their jobs can be protected from layoffs. I’m not saying that corporate assessment schemes aren’t flawed, but where is the counter-proposal so that when jobs are on the line we can say “this person is a demonstrably effective teacher” and have some solidarity in protecting that job?
Eh, sorry about the ramble but I really think that many boomers are completely tone-deaf in understanding how hard it is to break through in this economy and the talking points I hear on ed reform really reflect that tone deafness. Is it really that hard to understand how I can’t get that worked up about seniority rules and raises for boomers when I can hardly feed my family on the $15,000 I make as an adjunct? When I hear that they’ve got people with no degree in math teaching high school math, but I have to go back to school (in my 30s, after completing a PhD) to get certified if I want to do the same? Give me a break. If you don’t want me to grow increasingly sympathetic to corporate education reform then start extending solidarity beyond the interests of the financially established boomer generation.
Yes Diane, if you believe that earnest disagreement is impossible, that other people disagree with you can be puzzling. I can’t imagine why Gates hasn’t spoken with you.
It is amazing that nearly all I see in some of these comments is self-concern. Imagine how some of you look from the outside: Choice advocates want a larger group of families (i.e. those not wealthy enough to buy out) to be able to choose where and with whom to send their children, and you become indignantly political to stop them? If ever there was a reliable indicator that you are pedagogically impotent, it is this.
Wow. I never knew I was pedagogically impotent. Thanks for that. I should warn you that my blog site is open to honest and frank discussion. It is open to dissenting views. It is not open to insults, especially when they are directed at me. It’s my blog. So watch out, buddy.
Self-concern…really? How many of these posts and comments have you read? People are clearly concerened about children, teaching, learning and the future of our country and you are concerend with defending billionaires who claim to be philanthropic.
You’re so tough insulting an educational historian and an educated woman that you won’t even post your name JD…..Man up tough guy.
Diane,
Maybe you could post a white paper with a detailed guide for turning around failing schools. You are obviously an educated woman and an educational historian and I am sure that many would appreciate your insight into what an optimal school should look like. Many of the posts rehash known problems but few solutions are offered.
The Education field doesn’t really promote the findings of controlled studies like medicine. If we find that giving estrogen to prevent hot flashes increases deaths we announce the findings and stop giving women estrogens.
When Head start is shown not to improve children’s outcomes. The findings are buried and the program continues to be funded.
Why is no one finding a program that counter acts the effects of poverty? A good education helped me rise from poverty. We need to replicate my success, but the data for urban schools looks hopeless. I was fortunate to be educated in a rural environment with fewer potential distractions. The data on urban students living in poverty makes me want to get a bus and ship them all to my little school on the prairie.
Forgive me if you have already posted something similar to what I have described. I just found your site yesterday and started poking around.
Core Knowledge Schools
“Who elected them? Why should they have the power to shape American education?.”
Good point – who elected the NEA? Why should they have the power to shape American education?
Unlike the big foundations, the NEA represents teachers who work in schools every day. They are not shaping American education. They work hard every day to take care of our children and teach them, often under trying circumstances. The NEA was elected by its members: the teachers of America.
They have a P.R. problem. They are far too political. Obama stabs the teachers in the back and they come out and support him. They could have at least taken a neutral position in this next election to maintain SOME credibility.
They are record for saying it’s all about their “power”. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkLGvDQsvmY
Parents would like to see the NEA show genuine concern for their children. Admit what is NOT working and work towards improving the quality of education.
If that was their commitment, it would go along way.
I understand they are a union and their concern is for their own power and representing teachers. However if they would at least shift focus from political extremism to quality education, the P.R. would improve.
I have to fight everyone on the issue of teachers because they’ve lost SO much credibility because of the union membership. They come across as political extremists.
Gates is a dangerous man who has joined the cabal of dangerous corporations and foundations who have hooked up with the UN, a dangerous NGO, and now partnering with gov’t to control our kids, the population and everything else not just education. Everyone should be upset about this.
Perhaps your sense of surprise will fade when you consider that Bill and Melinda Gates aren’t really that well educated and don’t really care about education in the traditional sense of the word. Bill Gates may have attended fancy prep schools and Harvard, but he dropped out from that school to pursue his business career. And his wife’s degrees in computer science and management don’t suggest a deep education either.
Instead, I suggest both Gateses reflect the dominant intellectual philosophy of the computer geek and hacker, and business, cultures–a rejection for any formal process of intellectual development and a disdain for any culture in which intellectual development takes place by masters tutoring and coaching students. The culture of the hacker-geek and MBA places a heavy emphasis on technical knowledge and conspicuous achievement, such as getting rich in business ventures or demonstrating dominance of a technical subject. In this world, there is a clear pecking order that is determined by each person’s abilities; thus only those abilities that can be quantitatively measured count. This world does not value ideas such as wisdom, on which the humanities and liberal arts are founded.
In short, these people are far closer to Meno than to Socrates. Their efforts clearly refect a desire to re-cast education in the image of materialistic competition, in which the virtuous are those who gain the greatest material wealth. Not surprisingly, they want to destroy any system that is based on communal and altruistic values, like public education and the liberal arts, and replace them with systems that relect their materialistic values and thus provide them great material rewards.
It isn’t about how much you have; it’s about how much more you get.
It seems obvious to me at this point that whatever Gates wants to happen in education – no matter how misguided – is going to happen. Done deal.
“I have never believed that the Gates Foundation or the Gates family puts profits above the public interest. I work on the assumption that anyone who has more riches than they can ever spend in their lifetime or in 100 lifetimes is not motivated by greed. It makes no sense.”
One of the ongoing struggles of humans is fighting and protecting themselves against those whose greed knows no bounds. Making sense has nothing to do with it. This is the human condition. Frankly, the previous comment sounded shockingly naive.
Also, people are not all evil v all good. Nazi officials only killed some children, but had fondness for others. Gates may have some good intentions, and didn’t the Nazis want to make Germany a stronger place?
If we are headed toward fascism, as I believe we are, then Gates would be my number one choice for The Leader. Americans confuse wealth with intelligence, and business acumen with wisdom. Many Americans would fall all over themselves to support him blindly.
This discussion about Gates is very important. Please keep it going. Keep watching. Eventually our Internet comments may be censored, so get the info out while you can.
You obviously don’t get it.
You’re puzzled?
Allow me to solve the puzzle.
This exchange from the film “Chinatown” explains it all:
Jake Gittes: How much are you worth?
Noah Cross: I have no idea. How much do you want?
Jake Gittes: I just wanna know what you’re worth. More than 10 million?
Noah Cross: Oh my, yes!
Jake Gittes: Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What could you buy that you can’t already afford?
Noah Cross: The future, Mr. Gittes! The future.
Everything clear now?