Anthony Cody, who has been blogging regularly for Education Week, persuaded the Gates Foundation to engage in an exchange with him.
Anthony has written a brilliant series of analyses and critiques, explaining patiently why the Gates Foundation misses the point by blaming teachers for the ills of U.S. education.
Unquestionably his most powerful post was his description of the impact of poverty in the lives of children today. Anthony asked, “Can Schools Defeat Poverty By Ignoring It?”
He waited patiently to hear how the Gates Foundation would respond.
They responded. They said nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
They will continue their reckless course of action, demoralizing teachers and ignoring the causes of low achievement.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Geez. Why should a 501(c)(3) be allowed to advance a privatization agenda? At least make billigates pay taxes on on the revenue source for this rancid bullshit.
When Anthony Cody began his dialogue with the Gates Foundation, I thought it a bad idea. To me, it meant engaging the enemy in an attempt to collaborate–find common ground. I’m so disgusted by that approach, so I couldn’t imagine one of the best apologists for education, Anthony Cody, getting involved in such a fool’s errand. But, I was wrong. Cody apparently knew his careful arguments would render Gates dumb, and so they did.
I am disgusted a lot these days about the deformers and everything they have imposed on education, but I was more than a lot disgusted over the Gates response to Anthony Cody’s brilliant piece. Cody argued the facts about poverty and education, and left nothing out. He carefully, systematically, constructed his points, and they were flawless. The Gates foundation insulted Cody’s piece by responding to it with an argument that basically said, “we can’t afford to cure poverty, so we thought teachers should/could.” This argument was as long as it was weak, about a paragraph.
Maybe not responding is the only way to save face, and quietly admit defeat.
From the Gates foundation response: “We see great teachers across the nation making a huge difference in the lives of children, fundamentally altering their life opportunities.”
Yes, that is true but that is not our main purpose. Our main purpose isn’t to “alleviate poverty” nor to “save” every student by the force of sheer will. Our main purpose as public school teachers is to ensure that the students not only learn the subject(s) that we teach but also how to realize and enjoy their rights as guaranteed by the constitution. We are not “social engineers” and shouldn’t attempt to be so.
If we do our given charge, then yes sometimes we do make a difference and unfortunately sometimes we don’t. Every now and again we get to see that yes, we did make a difference. I just received this email from a former student (class of 2000) who had transferred into my Spanish class after a very “rough” first semester with another teacher. He actually was one of the “easier” students I’ve ever taught so I don’t know what went on with the other teacher, other than a severe personality clash (and in that case I’d say the problem was with the teacher). I’m quite interested in hearing his charter school experiences and we will be getting together to talk next week.
Señor Swacker,
Espero que todo esté bien contigo. This is my fourth year teaching Spanish and I wouldn’t have gotten here without your help while in high school. Thanks for being an awesome Spanish teacher. Currently, I teach at FHHS/FHN. I travel between the two schools. Previous to that, I taught at a charter school downtown and at HEHS. It would be great to catch up when you have time.
Atentos saludos,
J. S.
Anyone else think this Gates Foundation response (and really, just about anything from reformy types) would make for excellent follow-up reading to Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language”?
This seems a little unfair. How can one argue with the idea that good teachers are important? You may not agree with everything that the Gates Foundation is doing, but they have a right to choose what to focus on. If education bloggers believe that ending poverty is what matters most, why are they writing education blogs rather than being out working, for instance, to get the tax structure in this country changed. I’m a believer in assuming peoples’ motives are good unless there’s evidence to the contrary. Bill Gates is, after all, the guy who’s trying to eradicate polio.
Sandra, nobody is “arguing with the idea that good teachers are important”.
Please, everybody, read what Cody wrote before you call anybody “unfair”.
Sandra,
Please consider the following before you assume:
“The Bill Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) is a founding partner of the GAVI Alliance. Its initial grant helped establish GAVI and it continues to support its work. Some of the pharmaceutical companies have affiliation with BMGF to manufacture the vaccine. For instance, BMGF has $0.12 billion shares in Sanofi-Aventis, which owns Shantha Biotech, a pentavalent vaccine manufacturer in Hyderabad. BMGF also has links with Merck, another pentavalent vaccine manufacturer.
Several such details of BMGF’s investments in vaccine manufacturing companies and other corporations are revealed in a study by David Stuckler of Harvard University in the US. The study titled ‘Global Health Philanthropy and Institutional Relationships: How should conflicts of Interest be addressed’ was published in ‘Public Library of Sciences’ in April. It is a clear case of conflict of interest because Gates is promoting vaccines manufactured by pharmaceutical companies in which he hold shares, Stuckler says.”
From:
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/166242/vaccines-gates-foundations-philanthropy-business.html
and many more such articles.
And another thing. What is up with the false choice fallacy. We do not have to either write read blogs OR engage in other advocacy. Many of us do both.
I confess I really don’t care if there’s a conflict of interest here because eradicating polio is so important. I have a personal interest in this because I had polio (a mild case) as a child. I’d rather see more money from these very rich people go to taxes rather than their philanthropies, but I’m happy that since he’s got the money, he’s doing this one.
I would love to see Gates eradicate polio and other diseases. I would love to see him establish a health clinic in every school in a poor neighborhood.
I wish he would butt out of shaping public education because he has no idea what he is doing, and he is doing harm, not good.
Sandra, the information I posted regarding the funding of vaccines by Gates was in response to your statement about motives.
“I’m a believer in assuming peoples’ motives are good unless there’s evidence to the contrary”
I was attempting to illustrate that there is good reason to believe that the motive is profit and good PR.
Perhaps the ends do justify the means regarding Polio. Perhaps not. If there are other, better medicines or policy or procedures in existence that Gates does not happen to have a stake in and thus are not being pursued by his foundation, maybe the conflict of interest is a bad thing for Polio eradication. What if the profit motive is actually hurting/showing progress in disease eradication? Many health professionals seem to think this is a possibility.
Many people ascribe good motives and fine intentions to education reform (NCLB, Gates, RTTT, Michelle Rhee, etc), and then say it is just an accident, or bad luck or unintended consequences or a simple misunderstanding of the issues that has causes all the turmoil in schools.
This sort of conflict of interest in giving away money has been describes as “Vulture Philanthropy”.
My larger point was that The Gates Foundation attempt to drastically reshape public education does not seem to be all sweetness and light and good intentions to me.
Just a comment about motives. I think it’s important to make distinctions. The evidence is that Obama, Duncan, and Gates are motivated by idealism in their education work. Even GWB personally may have been motivated by idealism, but there were clearly people involved in NCLB that had delegitimatizing public education and moving towards privatization as their *major* goal. I believe that it’s sloppy thinking and also a poor rhetorical strategy to conflate these two groups. I don’t agree with a lot of what’s going on, but it makes a much stronger case to critique specifics rather than just turn Gates into an ogre. (Also, these discussions are often framed as if gates were doing it all personally. He obviously has a huge education team, such as the responders to Anthony Cody. People could be trying to dialogue with some of them.)
Anthony Cody is trying to dialogue with them. He put considerable effort into demonstrating the effects of poverty. Their response was evasive and vacuous.
I have never questioned Bill Gates’ motives, but I do question how he spends his money and the way his spending has taken control of the national policy agenda on education. And I question the validity of the experiments that he has foisted on the nation. And I question why a man with billions should be able to lead the national discussion on a subject where he seems uninformed.
But I have no doubt that he means well.
Sorry to say, there are many in the national debate who are intent on privatizing the nation’s public schools Some want to do this for ideological reasons, some want to do it because quite frankly there are making millions of dollars.
But I don’t question their motives either. They mean well, as they understand the meaning of the term “well.”
The thing that makes this a “dialog” is that both sides answer each other. By claiming Cody said teachers aren’t important, or poverty is destiny, or any other outright lie, corporate “reformers” are now exposed, because Anthony’s blog is right there on the Gates website, for anybody to read.
For instance, a manufactured corporate pundit wrote a column yesterday disputing a point Cody never made. He proclaims, “One More Time: Education is the Long-Term Solution for Fighting Poverty.”
http://dropoutnation.net/2012/08/20/once-more-time-education-is-the-long-term-solution-for-fighting-poverty/
It’s hard to make this a dialog, though, because he is hiding comments like the following one, which I posted yesterday. Here it is, in full:
Anthony Cody never said anything like “poverty is destiny”. What he says is that child poverty hurts children, and that it can be fought. He speaks for me, also, in that argument.
Like Anthony Cody, I believe that education can lift whole families out of poverty, for generations to come. I believe it so strongly that, like him, I’ve dedicated my life to the actual education of low-income kids in high-poverty schools and districts. On Monday, I’ll meet a new year’s worth of students. Based on previous experience, I’ll be able to move maybe 20% of them up to honors math and science next year. As their cognitive integration accomplishes Piaget’s great leap to abstract operations, all of them will learn. Many will find that chemistry opens the doors to the possible lives they had secretly dreamed of.
If you or the Gates foundation also believed that our work can transform their lives, it seems to me we’d be people you’d be willing to listen to. Instead, your “reform” is destroying schools, closing doors, and choking off lives.
Cody and I believe in great teachers too, we just don’t believe that statistics about teachers can make us greater. He pointed out that the Foundation’s “advocacy” is imposing harm, not benefit, on the children it purports to serve. What he actually said about the Gates Foundation’s leveraged philanthropy is this:
“In the name of reform, the Gates Foundation has wielded its political influence to effectively shift public funds, earmarked for the service of poor children, away from investment in those children’s direct education experience. Through the Race to the Top and NCLB waiver conditions, the US Department of Education has instead dedicated public resources to creating state and federal mandates for the Gates Foundation’s costly project — making sure every aspect of our educational system is “driven by data.”
The Gini coefficient, a measure of income inequality gives us the answer to this vexing problem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality
The higher the number, the more “perfect” the inequality. With CIA figures, the US may not be Nambia, but it is clustered just below the nations of El Salvador, Rwanda, Malaysia, Argentina, the Philippines, Mozambique, Jamaica and Bulgaria. Nicaragua, Guyana, Nigeria, Macedonia, Uganda, Cambodia, Iran and Cameroon have slightly less income inequality than the United States.
The New York Times magazine article this past weekend highlights the growing problem of extreme poverty. “What Does Obama Really Believe In?” http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/magazine/obama-poverty.html?_r=1&hp
The OECD compares many other indices.
http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/united-states/
How do we quibble with stats like this:
In the United States, 89% of adults aged 25-64 have earned the equivalent of a high-school degree, higher than the OECD average of 74%.
After all, the front-page stories tell us our kids are not college-ready and unable to compete globally!!!
As I wrote previously for the Lund Report: http://thelundreport.org/resource/we_must_remove_the_cataracts_of_predatory_capitalism
In the 1920s, members of the American Communist Party first used the term “American exceptionalism”, believing that with “natural resources, industrial capacity, and absence of rigid class distinctions, America might for a long while avoid the crisis that must eventually befall every capitalist society.” With the dismantling of a healthy middle class, the crisis is upon us.
ummm. Diane? The Gates Foundation did make a statement, despite the fact that you disrespect them and don’t agree with a single word they say.
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2012/08/the_gates_foundation_responds_.html?cmp=ENL-EU-VIEWS2
Diane, with all due respect, the world you think public education is in is not reality. You are fighting the wrong fight. The problem is not the teachers, but the system that has been set up to stile their development, give them tenure like Supreme Court Justices, and offer them no flexibility to teach children the way that their brain processes information. Brain structures are different than they were in the analog world – it’s called “neuroplasticity.” I suggest you read up on it.
It is true that testing is overutilized as an indicator of student achievement, but until we all agree on how to measure teacher performance and student performance, we are stuck. And with test scores as abysmal as they are, we have nothing to prove that our kids stack up well against their international peers. I am telling you unequivocally from all of my travels to Asia – we are falling behind.
It’s time to stop looking at new ideas as a threat, and start embracing them as an opportunity! Only then will our nation have the courage to do things differently and give our children a fighting chance at success in college and career.
Other nations that we admire are not doing what we are doing. No nation, to my knowledge, is measuring teacher quality by the test scores of students. Do you know of any? Nothing coming from the “reform” movement has any evidence behind it. Don’t you think it would be wise to have some evidence before inflicting “reforms” on millions of children and teachers?
“Tenure like a supreme court justices”? Wow, where do they offer that?
Are you really that misinformed / confused about teacher tenure?
Especially in the so called “right to work states” (non union) I can assure you that we have no “magic pass” (tenure) allowing us to stink at our jobs and remain employed forever.
Please read up on due process and what teacher tenure is/ is not.
Diane, we are measuring teacher quality against more than test scores. And there is nothing wrong with using it in the equation. But it should be a SMALL part of the equation, and it is folks who are taking aggressive stances on both sides that are making it impossible to come up with a collaborative solution that measures teacher effectiveness.
Actually, Diane, to your point, I think it is unwise to take the “stage-gate” approach to reforms that you note above. That was how it was done in the analog world. With technology, we should be doing an iterative approach, where we experiment and research on the fly. If we did it your way, we’d never have any reforms. So frankly, I think it is unwise to NOT implement new ideas to millions of children and teachers until we had everything nice and neat as you would like. That’s not how innovation works.
If we took a look at best practices in other nations, like Singapore which has the highest quality teacher development program in the world, perhaps we wouldn’t be losing our innovative edge.
Unfortunately, the NEA is not helping the cause. The way we test has to change, and testing is an indicator only of student achievement. We are forcing kids to memorize facts without context, but when 2/3 of college students can’t compare two editorials reliably or compute the cost of office supplies, what does that say about the state of education in America?
So lets stop with the labels and fix a system that hasn’t been changed in more than a century!!
The reforms we need are better working conditions and lower class size, not public schools refashioned into failed corporate models. You are caught up in some idea of “reform” that in no way works. Let’s work on income inequality, tax reform, and school-based wrap-around services for our kids. Forget the corporate policies that have managed to reduce creativity and outsourced jobs.
Candace, anything can work if you have the courage to try. You have to change your frame of reference. You feel that way because you can’t innovate in a system that is outdated, bureaucratic, and unwilling to change how it does things. Given your frame of reference, I can certainly understand why you’d feel that way.
Your last sentence I take issue with. That’s political labeling and mumbo jumbo. I can say unequivocally that the corporate policies have NOT been the reason why we have lost our creativity. And what “failed” corporate models are you referring to? Have you read Michael Horn’s work? He’s spot on and I think he offers the roadmap for successful reforms. I’d like to know what failed models you are referring to, because in public education, you can’t do simple things like fire a teacher for cause or poor performance and districts are largely run by educators who have little experience with making business decisions about cost structures that are highly inflated and woefully inefficient.
Here’s one example of a failed corporate policy that has become a template for education, http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2012/07/microsoft-downfall-emails-steve-ballmer.print
Do you work for the Gates Foundation?
no I do not, Diane. And I have no interests there, other than they are investing an incredible amount of $ into trying to fix our public schools, and instead of berating them, we should be trying to work with them to ensure they are funding areas with the greatest probability of successful outcome.
And here’s a perfect example of how misguided our public schools are. It’s a trivial point, but not for this Ohio kindergartener who was BANNED from wearing a Michigan t-shirt!! Seriously??
And your point is????
Candace, that article has absolutely nothing to do with this discussion. If that is your example which has NOTHING to do with K-12 education, then I truly feel sad for you. What does the culture of one company have to do with this discussion? Maybe if you referenced a textbook publisher like Pearson and made the association, we could have a constructive dialogue.
I can post links too, but an educator would state intelligently why that article has any relevance to the discussion at hand. Where is the logic? The critical thinking? I can post plenty of links too that demonstrate the stifling culture of school districts!
why don’t you do research and experimentation, and NOT impose your schemes on 46 states all at one time with no research, no evidence, no experimentation? have you ever heard of pilot tests?
there are plenty of pilot tests going on. That’s what RTTT was for. Some ambitious reforms are going on in Nashville, for example. They are not schemes, and I truly wish you would stop over-exaggerating every new innovation (e.g., public charters, digital learning) as the coming of the apocalypse. The status quo is clearly not working, and if the system won’t change its ways, then perhaps a bit of disruption is in order….
The bottom line is this. This may roil your teachers and their union, but I come from a family of public school teachers, and I am certain they would agree with me about this point:
The best analogy I can make here is the transition from the earth at the center of the solar system, to the Copernican map where the Sun correctly became the center.
The teacher is NOT at the center of the education ecosystem, Diane. The CHILD is! When we start putting the student at the center, then we will see favorable outcomes. Teachers have a major role to play, but the union does not put the child at the center. It starts right there.