The Jindal reforms of 2012 are among the most hostile to teachers of any legislation passed in recent years. Under the terms of the law, every teacher’s job hinges on student test scores, which count for 50% of the teacher’s evaluation.
As readers of this blog know, the Jindal reforms are hostile not only to teachers but to public education, in that more than half the students in the state are eligible for vouchers, and dozens if not hundreds of charters will open, draining resources from public education.
Why would anyone outside the fringes of the far-right facilitate this bold attack on a democratic institution?
The Gates Foundation has just awarded $300,000 to Jefferson Parish to assist in implementing test-based accountability for teachers.
When I met with a very high-ranking official of the Gates Foundation last year, he insisted that the foundation was not supportive of high-stakes testing. I think there is a disconnect here. The foundation is helping a district implement a law that promises to fire teachers based on the test scores of their students.
The same is true in Florida, where a Republican legislature passed legislation that stripped away all job protections from teachers and tied their future to test scores. Hillsborough County in Florida is one of the Gates Foundation’s major teacher evaluation sites.
I wonder: how many years must we wait before we see “a great teacher” in every classroom in those sites that take the advice of the Gates Foundation?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Every week I hear of a story of a dedicated teacher of excellence leaving their job due to the pejorative conditions in NY.
I had to resign from my position in NYC in 2006. My ophthalmologist advised me to do so after I was nearly blinded, detached retina, by a student, while trying to work in the “Experimentary Small Learning Communities ”
which Bill Gates insisted upon when he so generously donated to Lord Bloomberg’s kingdom of Public Dreaducation. I thought I was a professional. But in the eyes of these two Lords we are rats in a cage.
Gates insisted upon when he so generouslymade
Just another reason to buy Apple products and support open-source code. I can’t believe that this is a business best practice.
Can anyone help me out here? What was the beginning of Gate’s interest in education and who advised him early on? I can’t believe that someone would spend money willy-nilly and continue to get lousy results. Does he honestly believe he is making a difference? (Bill can you help me out?)
I think the beginning of his interest in education was when he realized he could make money off it. The fact that he’s screwing teachers is a nice bonus for him too.
The Republicans pushing the corporate school reforms (high-stakes testing/teacher discharge, charters) are motivated, in part, by the desire to weaken teachers unions — traditional Democratic allies. However, it’s unlikely that someone in Gates’ position — worth zillions and striving for a legacy rather than more $ — particularly cares about unions. More importantly, the corporate school reforms are being pushed by several big-city mayors and even by some Democratic governors — elected officials for whom the teachers unions are usually strong allies.
In my opinion, Gates and the big-city mayors sincerely want to improve the inner-city schools and are drawing on their personal experiences — rather than scientific data — in developing school reforms. Gates and most elected officials, when they were themselves students and when they were parents of school-age children, experienced either private schools or suburban schools. These schools are not similar to low-SES-area inner-city schools; in these schools, student misbehavior and students reading far below grade level are exceptions, not the norm. Similarly, “problem” students are the exception, not the norm. By contrast, in these schools, poorly-performing teachers were a relatively important problem — that is, there were a few poorly-performing teachers and there were not many other problems. For Gates and the elected officials, their personal school experiences suppor the view that the main problems in schools are poorly-performing teachers and/or incompetent administrators. Endemic student misbehavior and endemic students reading far below grade level were not part of their personal school experience.
What is surprising is the extent to which Gates and the elected officials — otherwise logical actors — completely ignore the opinions of the veteran inner-city teachers/principals in developing their school reform ideas. Perhaps school reform is one of those unusual cases where, because everyone went to school, everyone thinks he/she has sufficient expertise regarding the subject that it is unnecessary to consult those with experience in the area.
Gates and other oligarchs may indeed “sincerely” want to improve inner city schools -although in fact their ultimate objectives target all schools- but their practice is so clouded by their own assumptions, habits of mind and self-interest as to blur the distinction between “improvement” and a “windfall for like-minded insiders.”
By what right have these people been given the power to purchase educational policy and practice in this country, which is precisely what they have done?
“By what right have these people been given the power to purchase educational policy and practice in this country, which is precisely what they have done?”
Ditto that. I didn’t elect Bill Gates to control my tax money. I don’t even really like the people I did elect, but constitutionally, they at least have the right to dictate how my tax money is used.
Bill Gates and friends should be ashamed of what they did in Washington state.
Labor Lawyer,
You always make wise comments, but in this case I must slightly disagree. Gates is not indifferent to teachers’ unions, nor is he actively hostile. Please note that the foundation has funded several Astroturf teacher groups to testify in legislative hearings that they represent “the new majority,” and that they do not want seniority, tenure, or any job protections at all, and they insist that they want to be evaluated by test scores.
See Jersey Jazzman’s post today (it will be up in a few minutes), and take note of E4E, a NYC group; TeachPlus; TeachFirst; and several other groups, all Gates-funded, all claiming to represent teachers, all insisting that any rights accorded to unions in state law must disappear.
Did you mean to say that Gates is *not* actively hostile to teachers’ unions? I can’t think of what more he could do to be actively hostile.
Labor Lawyer: Here’s an example of an article that Diane is referring to.
New ideas from a new generation of teachers
By Michael Stryer,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/new-ideas-from-a-new-generation-of-teachers/2012/11/30/af0a3bcc-334a-11e2-bfd5-e202b6d7b501_story.html
Gates’ funding of the new-teacher groups is consistent with my view that Gates honestly thinks that the main problem with schools is poorly-performing teachers + that Gates honestly thinks that high-stakes testing/teacher discharge will identify/remove poorly-performing teachers.
But, even if Gates is out to break the unions, how to explain the fact that big-city mayors as well as some Democratic governors have similarly embraced the corporate school reform agenda. Teachers unions are a core constituency for these elected officials; they have little/no personal incentive to weaken the teachers unions.
Forces and/or beliefs other than hostility to teachers unions are causing these elected Democrats to support the corporate school reform agenda.
My explanation — that Gates and these elected Democrats are influenced by recollections of the own school experiences (or those of their children) in private or suburban schools — is buttressed by the fact that, in many conversations with friends who are liberal upper-middle-class suburban professionals, my friends argue vigorously that poorly-performing teachers are a major problem, that it is critically important to identify/remove these poorly-performing teachers, and that teachers unions protect these poorly-performing teachers. These friends are strong Democrats who generally support unions. However, their personal education experiences are all in private or suburban schools and they have no knowledge regarding the problems that exist in low-SES-area inner-city schools. When I challenge their discharge-the-teachers arguments, they routinely cite anecdotal evidence of a few poorly-performing teachers that they knew when they were in school or that they knew of at their children’s suburban schools.
How asinine! Like the mating call of the DODO bird, never heard, but there MUST have been one warbler in that now defunct species…great analogy to how teachers across the board are regarded; tons of press about lousy, stupid, lazy teachers, but few have been shown to us. Just as the poor DODO is now held in contempt as being dumber than a turkey (and that’d be going some), although, once again scant proof of this extinct bird’s real IQ! Just as Goebbels said, “Tell a big lie long and repeated enough and the public will believe it.” Especially where the root of all evil is a player. Once you vilify public school teachers, the public will cheer when draconian measures are pushed on them. Oh, and a word about testing: give a teacher a basic, not plush socio/econom
class whose parents value education, testing will not be a problem. BUT, give a teacher an inner city, drug riddled socio/economic environment and Socrates would run, screaming from the academy. America needs to put a modicum of thinking about what outside influences affect a teacher’s effectiveness, compared to an average middle class school. Any idiot that says socio/economic, crime levels, etc. make no difference in a teacher’s performance has a great mascot for that rot: A DODO BIRD!
The only disconnect is between what the Gates people say and what they mean. It’s that old joke about how do you know they’re lying? Their mouths are moving.
I live in Denver, CO. The Gates foundation gave Denver Public Schools a huge grant/gift. Strange, since the system’s scores are going down, even the banner elementary school of which I was a faculty member,(now, I like SO many teachers in that hostile teacher district are suing the system through the EEOC for age discrimination, retaliation, etc) and had to leave my beloved school due to the unbelievably hostile work environment that ruined my health. Now, my teacher friends who are still in that system tell people I was lucky to get out. “Lucky” may seem that way to them, but it has ruined my finances, career, and health through NO inadequacy on my part. Education is a corporate business: Period! The clutches of the wealthy elite, such as the Gates and Bushs are just the vanguard of this newest money mine the corporatists think they will plum, Crocodile tears about our perennially dropping national scores are a guise for their plans; plans often espoused on absolutely NO knowledge from university degrees, just money to dangle in front of the school boards who hope to share in the $ windfall. DPS is in the throes of a horrendous money quagmire, originated by a superintendent (who was a businessman, NOT an educator) who left the district with a growing financial bomb. He put DPS on a “business plan” that incorporated shedding older, more expensive teachers (lays open the lie to just how much this system values “Quality education”) and replaces them with an assortment of “Teacher for America” whose low paying guinea pigs flee as soon as they can, and “baby teachers” whose drop out rate after five years is soaring. Who would want such “leaders” in any field that have no working, let alone university knowledge of what they profess to remedy? Rather like getting Cheney to be in the effete ruler in a humanitarian institution! Such “tinkerers” often bring to mind the line from “Fiddler on the Roof”…”when you’re rich, they think you really know.” And I might add, “And they laugh all the way to the bank!”
I worked on the campaign of Republican candidate for governor of Washington state, Rob McKenna, who was supported by Stand for Children and brought in Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal & New Jersey Governor Chris Cristi to help his campaign. Though McKenna showed a willingness to dialogue with WEA and union members before and in the early stages of his campaign, that attitude turned caustic, beginning with campaign director Randy Pepple’s decision to withdraw precipitously from the endorsement interview process and meet with a non-union group in the time slot that had been set aside for him to meet with WEA’s PAC managers. In my opinion, the combined impact of these campaign decisions could easily account for the 50,000 or so votes that McKenna lost by. Though he was by far the best qualified candidate, reliance upon the corporate model of education reform and its champions may well have cost him the election. Efforts on my part to moderate these choices proved futile.
The very much taunted, corporate inspired remedies to the ills of public education are a study in what happens when gurus in ivory palaces concoct their newest magic to make education surpass where it was so shabbily sitting in the 60’s when I was in public school…oops! Scratch that and reverse the history because back in the 60’s the SAT scores would be considered genius by today’s dumb ed down scores! “Progress brought us; sight reading “F,” new math “F,” open concept schools “F”(but as my fellow teachers at the time raved about carpeting and no walls, at first…within in 5 months they were cursing the stupidity of “teaching in a barn,” Every year the highly paid experts parade out another magic bullet that ends up shooting the academic prowess in a school, damaging thousands of children; I’d bet these flashy, products that sink systems budgets and frustrate teachers were never tested on any living thing higher than a lemming and we all know what critical thinkers they are! And now with the advent of total novices in education, self proclaimed czars, that their only obvious attribute are gargantuan egos, trolling the public sector for mother lodes of money. Same scenario we all saw with BlackWater (who, due to their infamy, quietly changed their name…) rich pompous “evaluators” who come into public school classrooms and pass judgements on teacher’s techniques, never knowing or asking WHY the professional is employing a tested and true adjunct that actually raises scores, but not corporate pocketbooks, the ultimate goal. Now with the Chris Christys of the world who mock teachers’ need to be paid a living wage and sneer at giving teachers rights, reducing the public’s esteem to barely that of used car salesmen. With that mix, how could anyone predict anything but a car wreck when these clowns masquerading as educators of renown, but by virtue of their corporate schemes to harvest gold in sales of often laughable, bound to fail, fatuous programs…they are ignorant but arrogant leaders that rule the day and flee from the results they forced upon our public schools!