Pando reporters Nathaniel Mott and David Sirota write that the Gates Foundation underwrote a PBS series to promote the Common Core standards without revealing that Microsoft has financial interest in the success of the Common Core standards.
They write:
“The discovery that the Gates Foundation is funding PBS programming that supports its political agenda comes only a few months after Pando first revealed that Enron mogul John Arnold attempted to use $3.5 million of his fortune to finance an anti-pension “news” series on the PBS NewsHour. The two stories are similar, in that they involve the foundations of politically active billionaires using the public broadcasting system to promote their political agenda. In this Gates case, the agenda being promoted also happens to dovetail with Microsoft’s commercial interests in the Common Core. This has been allowed to happen despite PBS programming rules aiming to prevent those with specific political and commercial interests from financing public broadcasting content that promotes those interests.”
And they add:
“On “Teaching Channel Presents,” for example, there isn’t a problem that can’t be described and solved with a 20-minute segment, and all of the students are responding well to the shifting standards they have to meet. Teachers turn to the camera and say things like “the Common Core has become part of my teacher DNA” in testimonials that never mention the controversies surrounding the standards. This isn’t a place where educators can learn so much as it’s a series of videos that make the standards seem like the greatest thing to happen to education since the first teacher thought to use a chalkboard.
“And, at the end of every video, there’s a reminder that the programming was all made possible by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, but there’s no mention of the foundation’s role as the primary political benefactor behind the Common Core.
Millions of dollars builds a platform promoting Gates’ education ideology
“The Gates Foundation – aka the personal foundation of a current Microsoft board member – is being permitted to promote Common Core on PBS at the very moment Microsoft is building parts of its business around the Common Core.
“In February, Microsoft joined up with education publisher and technology firm Pearson on a joint Common Core venture. According to a Pearson press release, the project aims “to create new applications and advance a digital education model” – with the collaboration’s first initiative combining “Pearson’s Common Core System of Courses with the groundbreaking capabilities of the Windows 8 touchscreen environment.”
“Meanwhile, with Common Core promoting a shift to computer-based testing, Microsoft will likely benefit from school districts now being compelled to rely on those machines, many of which are Windows-based. Additionally, Microsoft stands to make money from school districts that are using Windows-based devices for Common Core test prep.”
Mott and Sirota contrast the commercial activities of Microsoft with the clear policy statement of PBS:
“According to its website, PBS has a strict “perception test” for programming that it says “will be applied most vigorously to current affairs programs and programs that address controversial issues.” The rules go on to say that “when there exists a clear and direct connection between the interests or products or services of a proposed funder and the subject matter of the program, the proposed funding will be deemed unacceptable.”
“Recent polls and growing opposition to the Common Core State Standards clearly show that the topic of education standards is, indeed, controversial. And it is similarly clear that the Gates Foundation has displayed a deep “interest” in promoting the Common Core State Standards. Yet, despite the PBS rules, the Gates Foundation has been permitted to finance programming promoting Common Core on PBS through “Teaching Channel Presents.”
“Similarly, PBS rules say that if programming has “been created to serve the business or other interests of the funder” it would be deemed “unacceptable.”
As of publication date, neither the foundation nor PBS had responded to the authors’ request for a comment.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The funding from ideological foundations is becoming a consistent source of corruption of our press.
Another example:
National Public Radio has been running a series on-air on the Common Core Standards that seems to consistently support the standards.
Yesterday, NPR included a Common Core Q and A on their web site that provides some insights into why that is the case.
From Question #4: Where did the Common Core Come From?
“The major groups involved in developing the standards include a nonprofit called Achieve, which was founded by a group of business leaders and governors in 1996 (long before Common Core). Among its contributors are many of America’s largest corporations, such as Alcoa, Exxon Mobil and Microsoft, as well as many large foundations, like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (also a funder of NPR Ed).”
This is problematic, whether you support or oppose the Common Core standards.
We need a free and fair press, not one willing to slant coverage of an issue based on funders’ demands. NPR – a nonprofit – was created to counter the profit influence on the traditional mainstream media. Sadly, the need to generate donations and sponsors seems to be biasing NPR’s coverage as well. Another sponsor for its education reporting is the Walton Family Foundation, and NPR has been increasingly uncritical of privatization issues.
Is the Matrix here already? “Welcome my son, to the machine” (P Floyd). What in a decade you will need a 666 Chip to login in to the “UM” (universal mainframe) (or is it “ohm”, universal harmony?)
It seems like the only way to keep corporate/profit interests (“little brother”?) out of education is to have all public schooling strictly publically funded via federal, state and city funds. NO private money should be allowed? For the moment it is allowed the corporation will claim the “market right” to insert their influence into the schools?
Now if Big Brother (fed and state) fund the schools, do they have the right to collect, store and use student data for their own interests?
Why cannot we just teach as it was in the past; educate students without the pressure and influence of “market forces” bearing down upon us? Or, has there always been “moles” in our midst, seeking to move the system so that it profits certain private interests. Is it within the national, or state, interests to exclude private money from public schools? If we do allow partnerships with the private sector (ex. as SCANS 2000 promotes), then how do we control their influence over the school? If they donate money should it come with no-strings-attached, where the corp agrees not to try and market itself within the school. Or, will they claim that schools are just a subset of the market and if they give money they have the right to promote their products (ie. lobbying and back-door coercion).
I think it is in the interests of each district to come up with policies that ensure, and promote, the least amount of private sector influence in pedagogy. In order to protect us from the coercive and monopolizing effects of people like B Gates. Yes, I have a Windows unit I’m typing on, but just because it was purchased does not give Microsoft the right to tell me what and how I should teach. Would it be any different if they donated it? Where does the influence of private vendors upon the district begin and end? For if this is not demarcated we will one day have the 666 Matrix sucking the life out of us, for their interests alone, not the good of the people.
After Common Core is dumped (yes, I am the original Eternal Optimist), I worry nevertheless that our government will declare Pearson and its co-conspirators “too big to fail”, and we’ll be on the financial hook for this national travesty for years to come — more wasted tax money that could be used for true reform measures.
Another thought: Why do schools outsource to private companies so much test development and administration? Why not have teachers in the summer months do all the test development and creation, and those that have the skill can make a minimalist-software that just does raw score, percents or any other derived measure. Why do we rely on the private sector so much? Who of them is really qualified to write a valid and reliable test, if they are not the ones in the classroom implementing the curriculum? It is the workfloor employee who can tell you how to measure and fix the assembly line, NOT the CEO who sits behind a desk and is only concerned with market-share.
The whole “federalists versus state versus private sector dilemma” is playing out before our eyes, with the themes, actors and universal tensions that go along with this drama.
Do local stakeholders have the right to take-over their district and set the policy without any interference from the private sector, or even the federal one? Of course, with federal funds comes obligations to Big Brother, and ones must in some way “rend to Caesar the things that belong to Caesar”.
The irony in much of this is that in graduate coursework we learn about constructivism and how no one is more empowered than when their input is solicited in the decision-making processes and policies that affect their job. BUT, we never, or rarely, see this practiced within our districts. It is the eternal “tail wagging the dog” of top-down dictatorships ignoring the collective wisdom of those actually doing most of the work.
I never did get the logic of “promotions into management”. It apparently goes something like this in education. 1) start out in a classroom with a passion to teach and improve the lives of students 2) get disillusioned with point 1 for various reasons 3) desire to get into leadership for various reasons, of which more pay is the greatest? 4) get promoted to a position that pays more, but has less influence over the final product, and seemingly requires less work (I know I put it in more time than many of my admins, but teaching science with a lab requires more work [and more pay….OK, I said it, forgive me]).
5) if you do point 4 well, then you get promoted to the district where you have even less influence over the product, less work, more pay, and ironically more power and authority? This flawed system seems to happen in the corporate world too.
The Bible uses the metaphor of the body-cell-organism, whenever it is talking about the importance of each part and its value (and therefore salary?). The head/brain does not tell the finger it is less important, or promote itself over the other parts and members. Each plays a critical and equally important, and equally valued, role in the funtioning of the whole. I think the world, both public and private, can learn a lot from this metaphor and reality. For to ignore it, or practice policy contrary to it, always leads to problems and parts of the body becoming disillusioned/discontent, which will destroy the body.
Wish we could clone David Sirota!
I wonder how long Gates planned to run this on PBS. The anti-pension propaganda that John Arnold funded on PBS was going to run for two years on the NewsHour (i.e., as if it was “news”) –until Sirota broke the story and blew their cover. This has already been going on for longer than that.
Gates creeping possessiveness is a cancer that has metastasized into every organ of American life. There doesn’t seem to be any stopping this beast. What will it take for people to wake up and see the darkness behind his obsessive need for control.
Jim,
You GOT IT, right.
In February, Microsoft joined up with education publisher and technology firm Pearson on a joint Common Core venture. According to a Pearson press release, the project aims “to create new applications and advance a digital education model” – with the collaboration’s first initiative combining “Pearson’s Common Core System of Courses with the groundbreaking capabilities of the Windows 8 touchscreen environment.”
Is that a private-private partnership or a public-private-private partnership?
I can’t keep up 🙂
I notice the documentaries that were funded on ed reform efforts were in DC and New Orleans. Next it will be “Tennessee”. There are two cities and one state in this country, apparently.
Tell me, why don’t I ever see any Gates-funded documentaries on ed reform or charter schools in Florida, Ohio, Michigan or Pennsylvania?
Where’s the Philadelphia ed reform documentary, or the Cleveland ed reform documentary or a documentary about Detroit’s EAA?
They don’t have to influence content WITHIN projects to control the dialogue.
WHAT projects they fund can accomplish the same objective. We simply never hear about anything outside of the particular cities, schools, methods and “tight knit” group of people ed reformers are promoting.
Malanthropy – the use of a tax-free “non-profit” foundation to further one’s economic and/or financial interests – at work.
They just pay certain sum and go on their merry way:
“Around 2010, Pearson began financing an effort through its foundation to develop courses based on the Common Core. The attorney general’s report said Pearson had hoped to use its charity to win endorsements and donations from a “prominent foundation.” That group appears to be the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
“Pearson Inc. executives believed that branding their courses by association with the prominent foundation would enhance Pearson’s reputation with policy makers and the education community,” a release accompanying the attorney general’s report said.
Indeed, in April 2011, the Pearson Foundation and the Gates Foundation announced they would work together to create 24 new online reading and math courses aligned with the Common Core.
Pearson executives believed the courses could later be sold commercially, the report said, and predicted potential profits of tens of millions of dollars. After Mr. Schneiderman’s office began its investigation, the Pearson Foundation sold the courses to Pearson for $15.1 million.
The attorney general portrayed a culture at Pearson in which the lines between business and charity were often blurred. Pearson remains the largest donor to the Pearson Foundation, and the staff of the foundation included several Pearson employees. The board was made up entirely of Pearson executives until 2012.”
They paid 7.7 million in fines to make “tens of millions” and we’re all supposed to be grateful for their generosity.
Lucky, lucky kids. They get a cheap, profitable online course to replace math and reading instructors. Where do you think they’ll be selling those? Suburban school districts? Fat chance. Those kids will have teachers.
Michael: That is the best new buzzword this year. We need to start calling our Ed deformers malanthropists.
Read in article in Bloomberg that said Silicon Valley libertarian billionaires are running for office, starting educational charters and foundations with libertarian viewpoints because they think they know what’s best for the rest of us–in fact former Mayor Bloomberg is doing the same thing. Meanwhile, most of them also believe that even though they generally hide their business and probably personal revenue from taxes, tthey think our government should fund their business ventures because they are the foundation of our economy. Narcissism permeates their thoughts. I think David Sirota keeps hitting it on the head with his articles.
The irony and stupidity, and economically unsustainable suicide, of Silicon Valley’s belief that “they are the foundation of our economy” is so self-evident.
Life will go on if Facebook, Twitter, Instagram go extinct; all they do is provide “social connectivity”, as if that were an essential good or service that meets a real human need or demand (or is it a frivolous lust and vain type of entertainment, that really does not meet an essential human need?).
Economies (just like biology foodchains, food-webs and trophic-energy level pyramids) are foundational built upon industries that meet and supply fundamental human needs (like agriculture, housing, clothing and medicine). As economies grow and thrive and create more capital, then they “evolve” into meeting other “needs” like entertainment, vacations, amusements (non-essentials). So, the farmer comes before Disneyland; the doctor comes before American Idol or Facebook.
But we have it upside-down, inverted and it always “corrects the over-inflated bubble” every 1-2 decades. How in God’s name, or common human-sense, can a pro-athlete make more in one year than a farmer makes in a lifetime (and we wonder why farming is collapsing and having to be propped up by subsidies)???? How is an optional good or service like entertainment or social connnectivity (Twitter) making more than food production; how is a less vital/important sector of our economy generating so much “wealth” (is it based on real, speculative or perceived value), while agriculture is going through turmoil and crisis.
The world will still go on if Silicon Valley dies, and we will all find out the food production and meeting basic human needs is more important than checking up on my FB page every hour. I want my farmers to be the millionaires and the athletes making something above minimum wage (for that is the real value of their “goods and services”)!
NPR captions an image of Louis C. K. on an FAQ about the common core with: “Louis C. K. isn’t the only parent confused by the common core.” –which dismisses his position without the need to actually report what it is! See
http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2014/05/27/307755798/the-common-core-faq
Pure propaganda not reporting!!
This post from npr shows that the organization has remade itself into a propaganda ministry for the Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth. Its “reporting” on this reads like the PR on the CCSSO website.
On the Common Core, npr is like Pravda in the Stalin era.
I can’t believe David Sirota is so ungrateful that he would question the Gates Foundation. They’re pure as the driven snow and completely without self-interest, unlike that noisy rabble in the cheap seats who are all “protecting the status quo”- the “self-interested” parents, teachers and elected school leaders.
“groundbreaking capabilities of the Windows 8 touchscreen environment.”
It’s all about the interaction with a screen, never a pottery wheel, or a musical instrument.
Students can still locate research quicker,and easier in print sources.
My students prefer to print out their e-books –which can be a huge undertaking.
Thanks for this.
The Gates Foundation always has been elbow-deep in all levels of development of the CC$$ and several tools that advance the use of these “standards” in the classroom, namely the Literacy Design Collaborative and the Math Design Collaborative. I’m not surprised they would team with Pearson to develop the “technological resources” to whack teachers and students over the head with it even more.
I’ve been through several training sessions for LDC and it really is a confusing mess. It is supposed to be aligned to the CC$$ and easy to implement. I have found it is overly scripted and is not intuitive at all, despite what the trainers say. No teacher I know thinks the way these things are put together. And I’m expected to train my colleagues in this stuff beginning in the fall. Not bloody likely.
Oh, and Louie C.K. doesn’t sound all that confused about the CC$$ to me. It’s interesting how critics of CC$$ are categorized as either 1) crazy, 2) Tea Partiers, therefore crazy, 3) status quo protectors, or 4) just confused. Ignore the first two, demonize the third, and patronize the fourth, that’s the solution.
Regina: three paragraphs. Each better than the last.
Most insanely krazy props [that’s the good kind of, er, “crazy”].
😎
Thank you, David Sirotta. I’m tempted to pull my monthly donation to KQED, but that would only drive them further into the arms of the billionaires.
Disgusting. I sure hope PBS was so handsomely paid OFF that they will go against their own rules.
a opps! should read “I sure hope PBS wasn’t so handsomely paid OFF….”
Teachers should form a foundation for the purpose of reforming, and ensuring the accountability of, computer operating systems. The foundation can provide grant funding to (a) create metrics to measure computer operating system effectiveness, (b) educate policymakers about the importance of promoting a “common core operating system,” (c) establish “charter” computer operating systems to maximize computer user choice, and (d) construct a computer operating system performance-based funding model to reward effective computer operating systems.
Congress cut funding for NPR. It had to look elsewhere.
Well, has obviously found its sugar daddies.
That didn’t take long.
Who would have thought that NPR would become just another propaganda ministry for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation?
“Surrender, Earthlings. Resistance is futile. All your base are belong to us.”
–The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
I have about a half dozen PBS channels in English and that’s what I watch almost exclusively, so I become alarmed when I see programs there sponsored by the foundations of people like the Waltons and Koch Brothers. David Sirota should definitely look into them as well, as I believe we probably have even more wolves of sesame street..
Mitt Romney wanted to cut funding to PBS even further. Hey, when billionaire elites have found an ideological voice deceptively cloaked in news and education programs, on what now amount to their own TV channels, and they plan to remain the ruling class, why I bet they’d even pay politicians to pull ALL public funding.
And there wouldn’t even have to be a change in acronyms when they are actually the Private Broadcasting System (PBS) and National Private Radio (NPR).
Reteach 4 America Perhaps “Plutocrat” instead of Private?
Yes indeed, Mike, “Plutocrat” would be spot on.
And they could eliminate all the pledge drives and switch to saying, “Brought to you by viewers unlike you”
convenient!
http://ht.ly/xzvT0
Politicians push online ed to replace teachers:
“Rep. Todd Rokita (R-Ind.), who serves on the House Education and Workforce Committee, said 28 states have approved the use of virtual schools, with more than 500,000 elementary and secondary students enrolled either part time or full time in online classes in 2012.
“For children in rural areas, or whose schools otherwise aren’t able to fully support their education needs, virtual schools provide a critical opportunity to keep learning and stay on track for graduating fully prepared for college or the workforce,” Rokita said.”
I think this piece was actually written by lobbyists. I can no longer discern any difference between “news” and “marketing” 🙂
No one could have predicted this would be used to provide a cheap replacement for actual teachers in low income schools, right? Nah. Never happen.
They’re pushing for less regulation on behalf of their donors. Just appalling.
To see the origin of the push for virtual charters, read Jeb Bush’s “Digital Learning NOW”
Financed by the tech industry.
Here is an interesting piece from the Washington Post, including 2 video clips of Gates speaking about the originsvof the Common Core. It is rather lengthy but very informative.
http://m.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-bill-gates-pulled-off-the-swift-common-core-revolution/2014/06/07/a830e32e-ec34-11e3-9f5c-9075d5508f0a_story.html