Bill Gates shared his wisdom about how to solve the world’s biggest problems with readers of the Wall Street Journal. It is likely to encourage the worst instincts of the business world, which needs constantly to be reminded that human needs are more important than profit, and not everything that counts can be measured.
How do does Gates believe the world’s problems can be solved? Measurement!
Even though many researchers have ridiculed his massive investment in measuring teacher effectiveness, Bill doesn’t know it. He still thinks that if you mix a certain proportion of test scores, observations, and student surveys, you can solve the teacher quality problem. And how does he know that the problem is solved? Because test scores went up in Eagle County, Colorado.
If test scores were all there was to measuring education quality, he might have a point. But as Governor Jerry Brown stated so eloquently in his state of the state speech last week, the goal of education is not easily reduced to data.
Brown said:
“In the right order of things, education—the early fashioning of character and the formation of conscience—comes before legislation. Nothing is more determinative of our future than how we teach our children. If we fail at this, we will sow growing social chaos and inequality that no law can rectify. ”
How do you measure the fashioning of character and the formation of conscience?
Governor Brown said:
“The laws that are in fashion demand tightly constrained curricula and reams of accountability data. All the better if it requires quiz-bits of information, regurgitated at regular intervals and stored in vast computers. Performance metrics, of course, are invoked like talismans. Distant authorities crack the whip, demanding quantitative measures and a stark, single number to encapsulate the precise achievement level of every child. We seem to think that education is a thing—like a vaccine—that can be designed from afar and simply injected into our children.”
Which matters most? The young person with high test scores or the young person with character and conscience?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Yes, we all know that if you keep weighing the pigs, they’ll grow. And here’s the neat thing about pigs: even if you DON’T weigh them, as long as you feed them, they STILL grow! And if you let them eat instead of constantly standing in line to get WEIGHED, they get to eat more and grow more.
How can such an ostensibly brilliant guy be so THICK!?!?!?
That is a good questions. BG can keep all the gadget data he wants but he should stay out of education.
LOVE YOUR COMMENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well said, Jerry Brown! Students are people and as such cannot be reduced to a series of measurements.
This is a hobby for Bill…an experiment on everyone else’s children, not his. This is his world and we are all lab rats. I intend to ignore him. I am a professional so I will use my judgement. He doesn’t know my kids. I know my kids.
Time once again to remind people about the Data Shield. Used wisely, it can be powerful: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ahlness/5516514694/
Thanks for the reminder. We need the Data Shield now more than ever.
This does not apply to the schools and teachers of his own children, no doubt.
Diane — I will ponder those questions as I think about the recent scandalous events surrounding Lance Armstrong. What has happened to character and conscience ?? When did it disappear??
Marge
Let us attempt to measure the value of Billionaire Gates’ software. Hmmm… Let us measure it according to how many times it crashes and delivers the dreaded blue-screen-of-death. Let us measure it according to how many times it has to be updated due to security flaws. Let us measure it according to how much it costs. Let us measure it according to how much time it takes to install (or uninstall).
And then let us encourage (read: demand) Mr. Gates to replace all of his carefully selected, highly trained staffers with recruits from other fields (maybe former educators would be interested) after giving them only a few short weeks to ramp them up to speed.
We should not forget to force his company to comply with LOTS of rules, regulations, mandates and dictates created by people who have no knowledge or experience with computers.
And what if “trusted” media, pundits and philanthropists were to constantly trash talk his beloved company? Well, I guess he shares that problem with teachers 🙂
Kindergeek, I am sure you love instructive trivia, and I bring this up only for your own good, so here goes…
Many years ago The Bill and his henchmen, er, loyal subordinates, had a small but very annoying rival, some minor software/hardware company named after a fruit, Grape or Orange or something like that, headed by an impossibly eccentric and impractical fellow named Stephen Task [I could have his name wrong, but I do know he had a curiously unnatural affinity for useless non-number thingies like typography and design]. Anyway, due to The Bill’s countless innovative practices such as data-driven rank-and-yank [aka forced ranking, burn-and-churn, stacked ranking] and his insistence that user interfaces be as incomprehensible as possible, the Microsofties [as he and his merry band of Excellent Innovators called themselves before infesting EducationLand] did such a thorough Job erasing the aforementioned company and individual off the earth that nowadays no one even knows that a no-account Fruit company and its oddball head even existed.
I bring this up only to caution you against railing against his many Excellencies in Innovation, both in the business of computers and the business of education. His proven record of succe$$ surely qualifies him as an unqualified expert in anything he sets his OverMind to. I have no doubt you wouldn’t want to suffer the same fate as that rather sad little man who seemed so infatuated with fruit, now would you?
Forewarned is forearmed. You can’t say I didn’t warn you.
🙂
oh TA. you so Krazy!!
Thanks for pointing out this column by Mr. Gates. I’m going to post part of the column because I DON”T think he is saying that, as the headline asserts, “Data will solve the world’s biggest problems.” Here is part of what Gates wrote:
“The lives of the poorest have improved more rapidly in the past 15 years than ever before. And I am optimistic that we will do even better in the next 15 years. The process I have described—setting clear goals, choosing an approach, measuring results, and then using those measurements to continually refine our approach—helps us to deliver tools and services to everybody who will benefit, be they students in the U.S. or mothers in Africa. Following the path of the steam engine long ago, thanks to measurement, progress isn’t “doomed to be rare and erratic.” We can, in fact, make it commonplace.”
Please note that Gates says we need to set clear goals, choose an approach, measure results and use those measurements to continually refine our approach. This is more complex that just saying, “Data will solve the world’s problems.”
Gates funds also helped developed the Hope Survey, which is not a standardized test. It does help assess whether students are gaining a sense that they CAN set goals and solve real world problems. Having hope and a belief that you can make a difference for yourself and others, turns out, according to University of Kansas researchers, to make an important difference in whether a student not only enters, but graduates from some form of higher education.
Our organization has received substantial funds from Gates to work with district and chartered public schools. I agree sometimes with his assertions. But I think it is important to be accurate about what he (or anyone else) says, before deciding whether to agree, disagree, or agree in part and disagree in part.
Students set goals and solve real problems without Gates money. They do it all the time in public schools across the country. Why is it such a big deal when Gates funds something that has been and is done routinely and without his involvement?
I don’t really care what he says. I value my professional colleagues, my students and their families. We don’t stare at data points in a foundation office. We look at moving and breathing children daily. I don’t value the “research” that seems to always agree with the opinion of a billionaire…and it somehow supports the opinion he had
before the research was completed.
Chemtchr wrote and posted this recently…very interesting indeed:
When the federal government made $4.35 billion in federal Race to the Top awards available–favoring applicants that agree to link teacher pay to test score gains, increase the number of charter schools, and adopt common curriculum standards–the Gates Foundation paid for consultants to prepare applications for 24 states, as well as the District of Columbia.
~Daniel Golden, Bill Gates’ School Crusade
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2012/07/the_gates_foundations_educatio.html
Linda – Beautifully stated!!! Let’s start asking where do Bill Gates’ children go to school?? What’s the class size?? Are they taught according to the Common Core? Do they take standardized tests? Will their test scores be stored in a data warehouse? Are their teacher’s evaluation open for public scrutiny? Will they attend a longer school day? A longer school year? Just exactly how is their learning measured??
I agree. Many of us have been teaching our students to communicate better with each other, to set goals, to understand that with hard work, they can achieve their goals. We also allow them to have fun. When I first began teaching, I had a very good professor at ASU, who taught the class how to teach our children how to solve problems and get along with each other and their families better. It was based on a book by Dr. Jane Nelson. Every Friday, I would find time to sit in a circle and have community circle, which I know other teachers do, as well. He/she would discuss problems he/she was having with another student. Other students would suggest solutions to the problems. If it involved something happening at home, he/she had the choice to discuss the problem privately with me at another time (perhaps by eating lunch with me, etc.) I taught my students to use “I” messages, ie. “I think …, I don’t like …”. These are lifelong skills they can use to assist them forever. I also made sure I was building his/her self-esteem. No one was allowed to call others names, etc. These are not skills that come from data. However, I do think these skills can help confidence, which probably increases scores in the long run. That isn’t why teachers teach these skills. We do it to help our students grow into good, caring, citizens.
The really sad thing about Bill Gates is that there really is data out there about education, but he seems unable to see it.
In Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s memoir (My Beloved World) she suggests a blueprint for what it takes to educate a child. A child must have
his basic needs met
a parent or guardian who values his education
a school where a child is safe and free to learn
teachers who are free to teach
role models
opportunities
In regard to teachers and role models, it is obvious that the best ones are the people who inspire and guide. In Sotomayor’s case some of these people were a fellow student who shared her learning strategies, a teacher who challenged her to think critically, a parent who purchased an encyclopedia for her. Of course, none of these actions can be measured but I think we’d all agree that they can make a huge difference in a child’s life. They surely did for Sonia Sotomayor.
In a few years everyone will realize that the present “reform” is just one more huge and expensive failure. Sooner or later people will have to accept the real data and do something with it.
““The lives of the poorest have improved more rapidly in the past 15 years than ever before.”
In what country? This man is so out of touch with the reality of life for the working poor in America, not to mention the fading middle class. See: A Decade With No Income Gains, “The typical American household made less money last year than the typical household made a full decade ago” from 2009: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/a-decade-with-no-income-gain/
No Child Left Behind was all about “measurement” and look where that got us. Gates is 10 years behind the times, but he didn’t have his data warehouses up and running then…
To Gates, measurement in education means testing, not instruction, and that was the primary failure of NCLB. Quantitative measurement provides a very incomplete picture of learning, so a lot of qualitative measures must be included. But I don’t think that teachers should have to upload student’s digital portfolios to Gates’ data warehouses either. Duncan really sold out students’ privacy rights when he revised FERPA to pander to his corporate sponsor.
Well, Bill Gates does know a lot about the world’s biggest problems. Causing them, anyway.
Yeah!
Like that song by Shel Silverstein
And some kind of help is the kind of help
That helping’s all about
And some kind of help is the kind of help
We all can do without
Bill Gates should check out the Florida Department of Education’s report on their new teacher evaluation system. The spokeswoman for the FLDOE is using the report to show what a resounding success the new measurement based evaluation systems implemented across Florida to comply with RTTT have been. She even uses the results of the teacher evaluations to produce another report declaring that student socio-economic factors do not influence a teacher’s evaluation. If you look at the first report, it is obvious that the implementation of the student data across districts was so inconsistent that the report is worthless and should not be used to draw any scientific conclusions. Even a fifth grader can see it. You can read more about it and see the actual reports by reading my blog post “Is the Florida Department of Education Smarter than a Fifth Grader?”
http://kafkateach.wordpress.com/2013/01/25/is-the-florida-department-of-education-smarter-than-a-fifth-grader
Even though character and conscience are not part of the Common Core Curriculum, teachers are still “teaching” these concepts, for better or for worse. If the teacher sacrifices all to the test, he/she is teaching his/her students a lesson about character and conscience, whether he/she intends to or not. Kids pick up on “the lesson behind the lesson.”
He blinded me with science, it sounds just like phrenology.
The cure has about as much heart as electroshock therapy.
As people are increasingly on edge and stressed out, lets measure them and amp up the pressure. Sounds like a great plan to me….
Data makes the commercial world go round! After all, this
is the knowledge economy… Bill Gates’ Data Quality Campaign has
effectively created CRADLE TO GRAVE BIG DATA COLLECTIONS. Oregon
Public Broadcasting’s Rob Manning reported on Oregon’s longitudinal
database on Friday. The story begins with enrollment errors in my
son’s electronic educational records stored in the longitudinal
database. But that is the least of my concerns! EDUCATION | NEWS |
OREGON Planned Oregon Education Database Raises Thorny Questions
OPB | Jan. 24, 2013 5:02 p.m. | Updated: Jan. 25, 2013 12:17 p.m.
http://www.opb.org/news/article/planned-oregon-education-database-raises-thorny-questions/
I got the following response from the Oregon Department of
Education: The data you are looking at is out of the SLDS system,
which is not the system of record—it isn’t used for state or
federal accountability. THE SLDS ISN’T USED FOR STATE OR FEDERAL
ACCOUNTABILITY??? If the states’ longitudinal data systems are not
accountable to the federal or state government, who is really
counting on the BIG DATA? The Oregonian today reports “Obama keeps
pledge to boost cyber-espionage penalties.” The Theft of Trade
Secrets Clarification Act of 2012
http://tsi.brooklaw.edu/content/theft-trade-secrets-clarification-act-2012
This law was updated to respond to an appeals court decision that
vacated a prior jury conviction against a man who copied code from
Goldman Sachs for high-frequency trading because the stolen code
wasn’t “produced for… interstate or foreign commerce.” Needless
to say, Goldman Sachs knows when their competitive advantage is
squeezed! Thus the fix! Their TRADE SECRET remains protected to
fleece the American economy! Why don’t individuals have these same
rights? ISN’T OUR IDENTITY OUR TRADE SECRET?
To the last sentence, Yes! I think of the superbowl apple commercial, or Les Mis, I am Jean Val Jean!
When you hear that the NSA is recording every phone conversation in the world, or whatever exactly the data collected is, I just wonder, how can that much data be processed, it must be complete overload. Fundamentally, it is just hoarding. I like architectural books, but now that I have a whole bookcase of them, I couldn’t process the information if I spent the rest of my life, so yes, I’m a hoarder. Data mining and hoarding humans every movement and how many times they flush the toilet is so beyond crazy. I’m not real religious, but in the end this can only lead to a tower of babel.
Bill: “In agriculture, creating a global productivity target would help countries focus on a key but neglected area: the efficiency and output of hundreds of millions of small farmers who live in poverty. It would go a long way toward reducing poverty if we had public scorecards showing how developing-country governments, donors and others are helping those farmers.”
So where is the data that tells how well your foundation is helping those millions in America who live in poverty?
Bill: “And if I could wave a wand, I’d love to have a way to measure how exposure to risks like disease, infection, malnutrition and problem pregnancies impact children’s potential—their ability to learn and contribute to society. Measuring that could help us quantify the broader impact of those risks and help us tackle them.”
Interesting that you would NOT mention poverty as a risk that impacts children’s potential. After reading Cody’s interaction with your foundation, I’m not surprised though.
Bill: “The program faces challenges from tightening budgets, but Eagle County so far has been able to keep its evaluation and support system intact—likely one reason why student test scores have improved in Eagle County over the past five years.”
The rate of poverty in Eagle County, which includes Vail, is 7.8%, and the median family income is $68,226. Baca County, CO, on the other hand, has a median income of $34,018 and the rate of poverty is 16.90%. Gosh, I wonder why he chose Vail, I mean Eagle County.
Bill: “I think the most critical change we can make in U.S. K–12 education, with America lagging countries in Asia and Northern Europe when it comes to turning out top students, is to create teacher-feedback systems that are properly funded, high quality and trusted by teachers.”
You might want to keep looking Bill, because you haven’t found it. Teachers don’t trust it. It’s not high quality. And funding it is taking funds away from the students.
Gates pushes GMOs in third world countries…
He wants “to have a way to measure how exposure to risks like disease, infection, malnutrition and problem pregnancies impact children’s potential—their ability to learn and contribute to society. Measuring that could help us quantify the broader impact of those risks and help us tackle them.”
We already know this. We have long known this. Time to move on to tackling the problem, Bill. Stop measuring everything to death. Have you learned nothing from 10 years of NCLB, which only resulted in stressing out kids, berating teachers and telling us what we already knew, that poor children here don’t do as well in school as advantaged kids –as in ALL other countries?
All that venture philanthropy and measurement are to the benefit of Gates, his data warehouses and his corporate buddies like Monsanto, not the people he purports to want to help.
I read the Wall Street Journal piece by Bill Gates. Mr. G seems to forget that he misread some data in a report a while back, launched the Small Schools project based on his misreading of the data, spent a lot of money chasing a folly. Nothing learned. Garbage in garbage out. In Ohio teachers of students in so-called non tested subjects are being forced to project growth targets for the end of year/course tests, record pre and post-tests results, enter the “growth” scores in an Excel spreadsheet, which automatically calculates whether the teacher has met, exceeded, or not met the growth target. These three judgments are made by an undisclosed algorithm and count for 50% of the evaluation of the teacher.
This corporate report process has been legitimated by the hand in glove relationship between Arne Duncan and Bill Gates and the eagerness of all too many educational organizations and pundits on education to say “yes” to the dollars that Gates spreads around.
I can attest to this. My friend’s mom is an art teacher and they want her to show how each student has improved in art throughout the year. They want hard concrete numbers to put into excel sheets and make pretty graphs from. She already implements rubrics and clear guidelines…how do you make something so abstract so concrete? She said the administration just threw this on her in January.
The Spanish teacher is also stressing out about the push for data. They want her to do a similar approach where she shows how every student has improved throughout the year through data. She logistically just doesn’t know how to make this possible.
I am a student teacher, and even though I love teaching, this ‘data
reform’ scares the bejesus out of me. BTW, is the push for “growth” scores just an Ohio thing or is it common in other states as well?
This will be impossible for the art teacher but a piece of cake for the Spanish teacher.
There is an old texas saying “you can’t fatten a pig by weighing it all the time” and the same is true for acquiring knowledge. Our children cannot learn if we are testing them (or preparing them for test) all the time. Data and measurement can be tools that help inform us but the system should not become a slave to them.
Bill Gates has enriched Denver Public Schools with multimillion dollar gifts because of their assumed academic gains. The reality is a far different picture! WHY do wealthy
corporatist leaders feel that because of their lofty financial position they are the gurus of what ails all areas of our country? Rather like the line from Fiddler on the Roof”…
“If you are a rich man, they think you REALLY know…” Why, too, is public education a rich man’s toy to tinker with regardless of the damage his ignorance wrecks? The public assumption that anyone could teach school, regardless if his/her degree is in horticulture, has been and is being proved fallacious by the dismal disasters that Teach For America candidates have shown. The starry-eyed innocents, with degrees of every hue, join the ranks of seasoned educators, deluded into thinking that their passion will compensate for a lack of educational practice and theory. The wash out rate among these disillusioned folk are truly pitiful, and even more, their students that suffer from their ignorance.
To rate a teacher by a test score, with no credit to the academic growth of the students is a lazy, inaccurate depiction of all the factors that go into a successful or unsuccessful teacher. I have taught in inner city schools. I will never forget a little fourth grade
Afro-American student who was deemed a hopeless failure by other teachers. I felt differently and told this little learner that he DID possess a fine mind. Long story short, he believed in this hopeful statement and worked arduously during that year, strictly due to his own changed self-image. He raised his test score from a 20 to one point short of passing, a tremendous growth spurt, but due to the label of “unsatisfactory” he was thrown into a tragic disillusionment with himself and I fear, never tried again. What a victim of test score triviality! How many other students are shipwrecks produced by the Bush originators of testing that only make grand profits for the test makers/graders and wreck havoc on teachers and students alike! One might ponder “W”s intellect and with that thought, reassess his educational wisdom!
Really? It’s not all about the numbers, and as a teacher I know this.