Anthony Cody has worked for nearly two decades in the Oakland public schools. He knows what poverty does to children. He knows what hunger and violence do to their lives. He thinks the Gates Foundation should stop pretending that it can end poverty by putting “a great teacher” in every classroom. How will that feed children? How will it end the violence to which so many are exposed? How will it change the terrible conditions in which so many live?
In this post, Anthony Cody brings the facts to light that never figure in the Gates’ plans. Let’s hope that the executives at the foundation pay attention.
It is time for the Gates Foundation to take a risk and prove what they promote.
Instead of scattering its billions around the nation and chanting incantations about great teachers, why doesn’t the Gates Foundation select one school district–say, Oakland or Newark–and use that district to demonstrate its theories for all to see? What we have now is a multi-billion foundation using its clout to spread unproven ideas everywhere. How about evidence before pushing the entire nation’s education system over the edge of a Gates-built cliff?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Underestimating the impact of poverty is easy to do when you are not face to face with its victims on a daily basis. Every teacher who works with the neediest children (who endure chronic and acute stress due to their living conditions) understands that they come to school with emotional issues. We also understand that their brain has adapted for their survival and is not in a “learning ready” mode. This part of neuroscience is now known and documented, so why isn’t the Gates Foundation researching how we can best begin to undo the damage these children experience? Making excuses for poor teaching is bad. But, ignoring the impact of poverty on young minds and hearts is far worse.
Would gates and the other so called reformers do this to any other profession? Would they reform patient treatments in a hospital? There is science behind our pedagogy . ISince teaching is primarily a female profession, they go after us. What does Bill Gates know about education?
Read this..
NY1 Exclusive: DOE Finds Almost 70 Percent Of City Students Live In Poor Households
By: Lindsey Christ
“There is research showing that when a school has more than 50 percent of its students in poverty it will have a harder time achieving at the levels it should be achieving,” Sweet said. “And the greater the concentration of poverty, the more of a challenge it is to educate all of the students adequately.”
It is a challenge more educators face, as the number of schools with the highest poverty rates has multiplied.
“Statistically speaking, if a school has a 97 percent poverty rate, you’d would expect that school to have a really hard time making achievement goals,” said Sweet.
As NY1 reported last week, schools with the highest poverty rates are also likely to have above-average percentages of special education students or students learning English. But not all their numbers are so high, as many of the highest poverty schools have among the lowest test scores.
http://www.ny1.com/content/top_stories/166790/ny1-exclusive–doe-finds-almost-70-percent-of-city-students-live-in-poor-households
My close encounter of a Gates kind. This is a little off topic, and was several years before I became a public school teacher, but it goes to show how little Bill Gates actually seems to care about the consequences of his actions or behaviors, and how his money lets him get by with trampling over ordinary people…. Some years ago, my husband and I were attending a matinee play in a tiny local theater. It was during one of our rare hot spells, and the theater was not air conditioned. (Very few buildings or homes are here.) This theater had strict rules against coming late, because the only way to seats was to walk across the stage. The announcement came for the final seating, because the play was going to start. The lights went down, and absolutely nothing. After a few moments the light came back on, and we were given no explanation as to why the play hadn’t started, but were told to remain seated at frequent intervals. About 45 minutes later, the Gates arrived, and the play started immediately afterwards.
There was not so much as a apologetic glance, and I seriously doubt that there were any thoughts about any inconveniences the rest of the audience might have suffered, such as, dinner reservations, ride arrangements, trips to pick up friends from the train station or any other plans.
Clearly here were a couple of people who did not believe the ordinary rules of courtesy and respect apply to them. The theater people felt beholden to disrespect and inconvenience the rest of us in light of the endowments provided by the Gates.