Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post has published an overview of the munificent support provided by the Gates Foundation to promote the Common Core standards.
The foundation expended $150 million to a wide variety of state education departments, think tanks, universities, unions, associations.
Gates really really really wants the Common Core standards.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Gates needs to spend his time curing diseases around the world and stay out of educational reform.
At this point you have to wonder if he really wants them, or if he just doesn’t want to admit they were a bad idea. I think CC might be like the XFL. It just isn’t going to take off. ?
You win some you lose some?
Easy come easy go? (veteran educators know that tune in regards to the latest trend in education)
Yes, Gates really wants Common Core because he wants to collect private data on every student in America and sell it on the open market via InBloom. He thinks he has a right to take what does not belong to him. He’s trying to market his scheme as an improvement in “standards,” but the truth is that CC lowers academic standards. He wants a dumbed down America that won’t question anything.
http://hoosiersagainstcommoncore.com/james-milgram-testimony-to-the-indiana-senate-committee/
Written Testimony for Indiana Senate Education Panel for Hearing on Senate Bill 373
R. James Milgram, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor
Department of Mathematics
Stanford University
January 23, 2012
“The Common Core standards claim to be “benchmarked against to international standards” but this phrase is meaningless. They are actually two or more years behind international expectations by eighth grade, and only fall further behind as they talk about grades 8 – 12. Indeed, they don’t even fully cover the material in an solid geometry course, or in the second year algebra course…”
In North Carolina teachers are now using software from Pearson to enter all grades and other student data. This is scary….I guess Gates is in bed with Pearson testing?
Gates is working, hand in glove, with the corporate agenda to privatize everything in sight! He is not a victim of misplaced humanitarianism, or he wouldn’t also be advocating, and I’m sure shelling out the millions to Monsanto and genetically modified
plants. His money goes to any group that is under the umbrella of corporate take overs, and especially the destruction of public education that could produce critical thinkers of the future that would throw a monkey wrench in his and his billionaire buddies dark plans!
Why are the AFT and the NEA accepting money from Gates?
I can’t speak about the NEA, but the AFT accepts his money, as well as money from Broad, because Randi Weingarten is one of Them.
Is there some way to replace her?
How does he stand to gain financially from his investment?
By getting access to private data on every student that can be sold on the open market. Common Core requires every state to create a longitudinal database that tracks every student from kindergarten to age 20. He’s storing the data via a company called InBloom and schools (taxpayers) have to pay him for the privilege of turning over their student data to him!
All of this is being implemented behind our backs without legislative approval or a popular vote.
Short of leaving education, perhaps of Bill’s greatest contributions could be to fund a pilot ‘perfect’ school. One where parents, teachers, students, and the community get together and design a school that students and teachers would want to come to and be engaged with. If successful, it cool be replicated. But to spend $150M on something unproven and potentially disastrous, well I don’t know, except that a fool and his money are soon parted.
cool should be could
not parted…deducted as a business loss on taxes.
YOU HAVE DESCRIBED VALHALLA WHERE EVERYONE RIDES A UNICORN TO SCHOOL..
how about if Bill
Gates goes home, minds his own business and leaves the world alone. Enjoy hisfamily, buy some more stuff, a bigger yacht with 3 helicopters instead of the 2 he has on the yacht now. life was better and happier without his and his cronies 2 cents in everything. Read the bio’s of his colleague collaborators at the UN Unesco and the politicians he buys regularly. His interests are sinister. read his bio, listen to his TED talks. take his invisible cape off. He is no Hero he is a basement gamer who got lucky with morally relative behavior and now seeks to acheive the goals of his eugenics loving parents with his self bestowed crown as feudal emperor. wake up. utopia is local
control not wishes and unicorn dreams from megalomaniacal
benefactors. GATES IS NOT ELECTED, HE IS A TYRANT.
It would have been really nice if they tested these out first. I hate subjecting my kids to the tedious, obtuse methods for math, the agenda-driven-fact-limiting social-justice infused science and social studies, the insertion of subliminal messages in vocabulary, the over-reflection on the “power of me” in children, etc. etc. etc!
I can google almost any new .org or activity or event taking place in my school…and it is about 1 or 2 degrees ’til GATES!!
If CCSS/PARCC is instituted in our state it will require a $600M revamp of technology. Microsoft is integrated in almost all of the software that is being pushed on the school districts in AZ.
Indiana halts Common Core implementation
By Valerie Strauss
Indiana, one of the most education reform-minded states in recent years, is postponing implementation of the Common Core initiative so that there can be more discussion on the quality and impact of the standards.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/05/13/indiana-halts-common-core-implementation/
Indiana Department of Ed received 1,800,000 under Bennett’s leadership. Maybe that’s what made him their lap dog? Could you email me a way to send you something privately?
Erin, look on my website.
Gates has “gifted” the Denver Public Schools with millions, too. Bennett was a total disaster while he was Superintendent…just his “investing” in “exotic, risky” derivatives after the initial financial institutions imploded in ‘078/8, has cost DPS millions upon millions with no end in sight! It could well be the financial destruction of the school district. That’s not to mention his “business plan” that wrecked havoc, too! His BP had as a main drive, exiting “Older, more expensive faculty” for baby teachers and TFA innocents who have a 5 week “prep course” and are then thrown into a classroom that ends in academic demise and TFA’ers who leave the system as soon as they possibly can. Gotta love those “business men” who tinker with education, and have a dismal record while they tinkered with the district’s public monies!
Having read here and there about Bill Gates’ biography, his own educational experiences and his consistent inclination to rebel against required predetermined coursework in order to advance his own beating drummer and follow his own individual pursuits…I do not understand how or why he would stand so staunchly for ‘standardization’ and ‘regimentation’ for millions of American students. . It clearly is not the path he chose for himself, in fact he rejected it for himself on many occasions. Does he not see the contradiction? I surely do!
Hypocrisy has never been a problem for all the billionaire boys club members! They send their offspring to luxury prep schools while telling the rest of us to be appreciative of what havoc they are wrecking in our public schools. To say they have a Great Gatsby, elitist attitude would be a gross understatement.
Your Gatsby reference will soon fall on deaf ears, since the CC will probably eliminate it from the curricula.
on the contrary, The Great Gatsby is a showcase piece in common core. google great gatsby common core. you can find the precise teaching module. it is sold as ” look we love the classics!” by coleman and pimental. however when you read the common core directions for ” deep engagement with the text”, it leads us to the only message for our children is wealth redistribution and social justice. period. thats all. same with any classics. i am living it in real time. guided reading. the guide is to point out the issues for the kids and keep them from meandering into independant thought. my 8th grader in private Catholic school is being read to by the teacher. she is reading for a whole period. this is common core. dumbing down. this is THE GREAT GATESBY.
Where’s the cost analysis? I’ll guess at an investment of 10K per student, maybe 300 billion nationally, or about a third of a trillion dollars. Maybe it’s worth it in the long run. I don’t see kids putting down the entertainment tech which is distracting them and getting smarter anytime soon. Probably just throwing a large chunk of change down a hole.
Reblogged this on Transparent Christina.
This doesn’t even count the $100 million minimum Gates has spent on inBloom.
Why didn’t 60 Minutes mention
education when they talked to
Gates on Sunday, 5/13?
In civil society one should not question their social betters or is that bettors.
Does ANY part of the media, EVER expose one of the billionaire elite? Simple, sad reason: they are all bought and paid for to carry water for anything their “betters” want. Whether that be a war, turning a blind eye to the loss of freedoms for “security,” or
nefarious programs like the attack on public schools! If you expect them to do anything else, you’ll be old and gray before that vain hope is even lightly fulfilled.
the main stream media will not touch the common core, will not utter the words. 60 minutes is softball. all the media outlets are ownd by GE and Murdoch et al, who are set to profit big time from CCSS. they are in bed with microsoft, pearson, in bloom, DOE, UNESCO, follow the money, it is not hard and it has been done on several blogs with documents to support. monopoly, tyrrany.
“If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.”
Dorothy Parker
Reblogged this on 70jamsession and commented:
American Federation Of Teachers Educational Foundation 2012 College-Ready US Program $4,400,000