On June 7, Lyndsey Layton of the Washington Post wrote a blockbuster article about how Bill Gates pulled off the Common Core coup, which the headline calls “the swift Common Core revolution.” In a short period of time, less time than it takes a state to write standards in one subject, the U.S. suddenly had “national standards,” written and then adopted by 46 states and the District of Columbia. The secret, revealed in Layton’s article: Gates paid for everything, and the U.S. Department of Education used Race to the Top funding as an incentive for states to adopt CCSS. Layton credits Gates with spending some $200 million for the writing, implementation, and advocacy of CCSS, but others believe that Gates’ investment was $2.3 billion. Whether $200 million or $2.3 billion, Gates bought control of standards, curriculum, and assessment in the vast majority of American public schools. Almost every major national organization and education policy group accepted Gates funding to promote CCSS. The Common Core standards were Gates-led, not state-led.
Layton interviewed many people for the article. Her interview with Gates was attached to the article as a video.
Mercedes Schneider transcribed the interview and posted it here. Schneider is writing a book about the origins of the Common Core.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on Lloyd Lofthouse and commented:
This old fashioned investigative journalism from the Washington Post reveals how Bill Gates circumvented the democratic process and spent between $200 million to $2.5 billion to bribe officials—this is when donations become bribes of epic proportions—in almost every state and school district to take over policy for public education int he United States and fund writing that policy. Gates even bribed the teacher unions to stab their members in the back.
Gates has not read or understood the CCSS. He is a mouth piece for the PR machinery he funded to promote the standards. He has no interest in the civic purposes of public education or the what a democratic process of standard-setting might entail. He has money to entice people into promoting his agenda. Too many in eduction have failed to look this gift horse in the mouth.
If there is a mystery regarding whether the figure is 200 million, or 12 times that much……that is a story in itself……regarding the convoluted secrecy which is available to those wealthy enough to make things happen.
The illusion of a state-led initiative for Common Core, follows an oligarch pattern.
Pete Peterson’s, Fix the Debt, claimed bi-partisan citizen advocacy. Read the report at the Center for Media and Democracy, for reality.
The claim of a grass roots Tea Party, without financial backing from a Koch front group, was dispelled by reporting from the Center for Media and Democracy.
When I heard Gates’ rant against public pensions, it was clear to me that he is little, if no different, from others in the 1%. He just has better PR and may deliver middle class plunder, more quickly.
That’s what happens when a gifted, entitled child who attended an exclusive private school that tolerated (if not encouraged) his geekiness; who is also a student who dropped out of Harvard to start one of the most successful businesses ever; and who is a multi-billionaire who has the best of intentions to improve public education but had to hire “experts” (including those with hidden agendas) to advise him decides to take up a “cause”.
We all know where that good intentions road goes — But Mr. Gates picked up a few shady characters along the way who assured him that using their privatization strategies would create a miracle so that all those poor kids in underperforming schools would immediately come from middle income families that spoke English and had support from parents who had at least a high school education so that they, too, could achieve the American Dream.
And don’t forget: you can save tons of money by hiring Teach For America graduates who commit to devote their superior academic backgrounds to teaching for a whole two years and get rid of those older teacher who have that “tenure” thing (that actually means more expensive). Anyone who has ever taught school knows that it takes about two years to get your “sea legs.”
This attitude that essentially denigrates experience is why I advocate putting new teachers in classrooms with experienced teachers to work for a year or two as interns — kind of like the brain surgeons have to do before they cut a hole in your skull. Instead of providing this kind of support, the new model is to create room monitors who can watch a video screen to determine if a student is guessing answers correctly.
Also, you can hire administrators who have not been in the classroom ever to use push down management strategies and order teachers to teach better. Unfortunately these administrators don’t know how to teach so they can’t model or coach — but they sure can order you to “do better”. (In the Navy I was once told: “Change your attitude, Mister — that’s an order!)
A final point: Vergara did not address the most important issue, Incompetent administrators:
Who evaluated the teachers during the first two years? Administrators.
Who approved tenure for incompetent teachers at the end of two years? Administrators.
And who is now fabricating charges against some of the best teachers not because they are lousy teachers but because they make too much money, complain about lack of support under IDEA, request disability accommodation, blow the whistle on school waste and social promotion, or assert teacher rights? Administrators.
” …who has the best of intentions to improve public education”
Of course intentions cannot really be known and in some ways they do not matter, however, I am not at all sure Gates has any such “good intentions” for us little people.
Recall that he has been repeatedly told to stop hitting us on the head with the hammer. Yet he continues.
Education reform rock star Jeb Bush was out promoting for-profit colleges again.
This is interesting:
“Bush’s appearance at the APSCU convention was “presented” by USAFunds, a federal student loan guarantee company that has had a questionably cozy relationship with giant student lender Sallie Mae.”
That a member of the Bush family is out promoting loading people up with debt that can’t be discharged in bankruptcy and will follow them the rest of their lives is just appalling. There is just NO shame. None.
– See more at: http://www.republicreport.org/2014/jeb-bush-denounces-obama-rule-for-profit-colleges/#sthash.YHGqpAKH.dpuf
APSCU lists a Corinthian Colleges’ representative on its Board.
If Corinthian College’s website is accurate, the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio, owned 400,400 shares of Corinthian Colleges on 3/31/2014. Faculty at public colleges in Ohio were mandated to be in STRS, in the 80’s, and currently can choose to enroll. The reasons the investment is flawed for Ohio’s STRS, should be obvious to management. Their response to my question about it should be interesting.
Calf. teachers only owned 142,535 and Calf. PERS and TIAA-CREF sold off part of their positions, according to the document dated 3/31/2014.
It has been known for many years now that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provided the funds for the drafting of the Common Core State Standards; that the CCSSO and the NGA received support from the Gates Foundation and from Pearson, LTD; and that the USDE offered NCLB waivers to states adopting these standards–waivers that were needed by most states because they were not going to meet their AYP targets. If either is news to people, then they have paid no attention whatsoever.
Correction: If these facts are news to people, then they have paid no attention whatsoever.
I urge all viewers of this blog that are for a “better education for all” to read the transcript prepared by Dr. Mercedes Schneider.
After reading her revealing transcript of the mental state of Bill Gates’ mind, I was left with the same feeling I had after transcribing the bulk of Dr. Raj Chetty’s testimony at the Vergara trial [1/30/2014, AM session] and pondering the state of his thinking:
“There is no there there.” [Gertrude Stein]
Yes, I am poking fun at the fantastical workings of the intellects of the leading charterites/privatizers and their principal spokespeople—
But I am not laughing. If it’s a joke, the joke is on us, and there’s nothing funny about the damage that is being done to the vast majority of public school staff, students, and parents.
Just my dos centavitos worth…
😎
You bet they are out to get the older teachers. School districts just received their scores for their high stakes testing. My test scores were high, and I am so thankful for that. The minute I got them, I praised my Lord, because he knew that I had one of my most stressful years of teaching ever. I had a wonderful class this past year. It was a small class, and they were a joy to teach. I did not teach one class over 19 students. It was a dream year. Why then did I have the most stressful year of teaching of my career?
With new administration in my building this past year, I was harassed, bullied, made fun of, and severely marked down on my teacher’s evaluation for directly instructing my students at times. My good test scores mean nothing anymore. It was the first time I ever worked under administration who disliked me. The only thing saving me until I can retire in two years is my continuing contract. I am a well respected, popular, highly requested and honored teacher. I am just getting older. I spend hours in my classroom, and I dote on my students. I watch most of the teachers in my school building walk out of the school by 3:30 PM, and I am still at my desk at 5:30 PM. The sad thing is that many of those teachers had higher evaluations than I had this past year and many are not even state tested, but SLO tested. 100% of those teachers are younger than me.
My 2.5 hour test is being replaced by a 10 hour online PARCC test for only one subject! My students will be faced with three 2 hour “performance tasks” in February (for only one subject) and again in May with two 2 hour tasks in May (for only one subject.) My school does not have enough computers to accomplish these silly tasks. In my training for Common core, they have already told us that our passage rate will drop to a 34% passage rate. My current passage rate for a good class is usually 92%. With lower scores, the rich politicians can further destroy the public schools, further claiming we are ineffective. It is all a part of the big plan.
Without continuing contracts, older teachers, like me, will never be able to get to their retirement age. I am presently so thankful that I have my continuing contract. I am a teacher with high test scores and works hours and hours in her classroom. In the present sad state of our educational reform, that is not enough anymore. They are definitely out to get the older teachers.
I am in a non-tested subject, 41 years old, with 13 years’ experience. I’m not sure if I’ll end up making it to retirement age in this profession, BECAUSE of all of the attacks and the cutting of curricula to just math and reading and science. I have tons of experience in at-risk environments and I’ve won several awards, but with the attacks on teachers of a certain age, which I’m nearing, I don’t know if I’ll make it to 65 or 70 as a teacher.
Cross posted the Post article, with a link to this Blog in my comment which follows. I have said it before on this site, and I feel it is appropriate here:
Powerful forces are in motion to disrupt the 15,880 school systems. They are working in the legislatures of 52 states to end NOT just tenure, BUT public education! They NEED TO END PUBLIC EDUCATION FOR THE MASSES OF THIS COUNTRY because education is CRUCIAL to OPPORTUNITY! I hope the readers here are not waiting for a Snowden to explain that there is an insidious threat to the future of America, in this effort by Gates, the Kochs and Eli Broad (to name only a few in the Billionaire’s club) to end the INSTITUTION of public eduction.
INSTITUTION! Not “schools” ! Word choice makes all the difference” the ‘madmen’ who work for the billionaires club, know this for a FACT, An institution is at the root of a society and this one is responsible for the education which the masses must have in order to survive in the 21st century
“School” is Duncan jargon, just as ‘teaching’ is the word he uses to replace the crucial ingredient” LEARNING! We cannot let our Secretary of Education twist the language and substitute “slogans” that sell magic elixirs created by wealthy barons who push CHARTER SCHOOLS disguised as CHOICE. Orwell’s double-speak!
The art of subtle manipulation has been mastered by the madmen, and moved into the political arena.The legislature is packed with liars, beholden to the kings and barons who own EVERYTHING, and are making their global move AT THIS MOMENT IN HISTORY. They are selling us their version of THE INSTITUTION which is CRUCIAL to our democracy.
Duncan (their shill) sweet-talked this nation about ‘reform’ when nothing was broken. The system needed an upgrade not a reformation; it needed an infusion of money for smaller classes and more schools, for example — because ‘class size matters’ — as Leonie Haimison made it crystal clear- and it was PROVEN! REAL EVIDENCE.
Two things which make it possible for Duncan and others, to sell to the public this fabricated narrative about education so charlatans can sell their “magic elixirs where NO EVIDENCE IS REQUIRED
The first is the manipulation of the mainstream media by the six major corporations that own it ALL! This article shows how Gates subsidizes this assault on the American Institution of Education, how he subsidizes the public media, so that there is no place the public can actually find out the truth!
The media today is a propaganda tool predicted by Marshall McLuhan and Vance Packard, way back when tv was new, and I was studying communication at Brooklyn College.”In The Hidden Persuaders, http://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc1004/article_903.shtml
Packard documents the introduction of professional psychologists’ motivational research into the advertising industry in the 1950s and its powerful effects. As a public we began to be sold products, not because of their intrinsic qualities, but because of their symbolic significance to our wishes, our fears and hopes – our subconscious. The depth probers searched for these symbols with word-association-polling to find which slogans worked effectively and which failed. These were the forerunners of the modern ‘focus groups’ which are used to develop campaign issues and productive slogans.” Gates used all this knowledge to end the institutions of education, and because there are 52 states
The second thing, is the very nature of the local control of education . No need to divide and conquer when there are15,580 school systems who reinvent the wheel where education is concerned, and LA does not know that they ended public schools in NYC the very same way they did it in LA” and thus the two largest schools systems in the country were monetarized for profit by removing the professionals” those bad teachers and dead wood, who were the EXPERIENCED PRACTITIONERS who actually knew what LEARNING LOOKED LIKE.
Mercedes Schneider transcribed the interview.Schneider is writing a book about the origins of the Common Core.
and by the way” if you want to read a real conversation about this subject , go to the Ravich Blog, where teachers, academics and parents reveal NOT JUST OPINION,”but the actual events and behaviors that are on-stage in our schools right now.
and if my quick link to the Layton piece brought some clarity” please pass it on to your contacts and friends, before it is to late to stop the rich oligarchs from owning our “schools.”
In the end, Bill Gates will be remembered more for the his work in education than for his work with Microsoft.
In the end, Bill Gates will be viewed as a comical excentric who caused great harm to the idea of public education. “Gates” may one day even become a verb: Gates, v, to cause great harm to that which one intends to aid. See Munchhuasen by proxy
Hee, Hee. Love it
Gates: “There are amazing, amazing teachers, and, the, they’re willing, if you ask them. They’re not, ‘No, I would never tell. That’s my secret. I couldn’t possibly have anyone else know what I do to teach these kids. In fact, stay out of my classroom. It’s proprietary, uh, for me.’”
Silly Billy! It won’t be long before teachers are saying those things thanks to your evaluation system. Stack ranking employees at Microsoft contributed heavily to its decline and most companies have abandoned it because it is a proven failure and detrimental to business. But surely you are aware of this, so is this a deliberate attempt to destroy the institution of public education?
http://www.businessinsider.com/stack-ranking-employees-is-a-bad-idea-2013-11
Here are two critical excerpts from the Layton-Gates discussion.
In the first, Lyndsey Layton is asking Gates about AFT involvement with the Common Core:
“Randi Weingarten said, even though she’s a big supporter of the Common Core, she doesn’t want to take this Gates money any more for the Common Core, you know, for the Innovation work they’ve been doing around the Common Core because her members have been complaining. They say, ‘It’s tainted, or it, uh, it, it shifts the conversation, or it, it, it somehow, um, uh, tainted, uh, tainted the picture or tainted the discussion’.”
In other words, the only reason that Randi Weingarten stopped taking the Gates cash was because it was becoming a perceptual issue for her; it was making her look bad.
To say this another way, Weingarten is still all-in on the Common Core. Her unwillingness to take any more Gates money is purely because teachers were pushing back. It DID look bad’ in fact it stank to high heaven.
The second excerpt illustrates (1) just how clueless Gates really is, and (2) how tightly tied the College Board is to the Common Core:
“…states would have been better off having standards with the, with the right progression or the right expectation so that you’re not fooling a kid so that when they sit, when they take the SAT and there’s a trigonometry question, you’ve never seen it ‘cause it’s not on your, your state’s standards.”
Gates is basically saying that the Common Core standards are linked to the SAT, and that this is the “right progression” to prepare kids for college.
I’ve said this numerous times: the SAT is a very poor predictor of performance in college, and the Common Core is intertwined with the SAT (and ACT). The SAT will now become even more important even though it’s a mostly worthless test.
Democracy, of course the SAT is closely aligned with the Common Core. David Coleman is president of the College Board. Convenient timing. First he is architect of CC, then president of College Board.
“architect ….then president”- Not unlike the recent Pres. Obama appointment of the former Director of the Walton and Gates Foundations, to a government position.
No shame.