At a meeting in Los Alamos, Bill Gates said it was easier to find cures for malaria and other diseases than to “fix” American education. Being the richest man in America, people hang on his every word.
Gates again knocks U.S. education. He said that technology should help, but it only benefits motivated students, and the U.S. has lots of unmotivated students. Usually, he blames teachers. Now he blames students.
My favorite line in the article: Gates could not land his private jet at the Los Alamos airport because his plane is too big for the runway.
What Gates needs to know:
1. The terrible effects of poverty on children’s ability to succeed in school. The fact that the U.S. has the highest child poverty rate of all advanced nations. He should read Richard Rothstein’s enlightening book, “Class and Schools,” which summarizes the social science on this issue. Or, if he doesn’t like reading books, he might read this article from the New York Times about counties in Texas where the economy is booming yet 39% of the children live in poverty. He should think about children who miss school because they are sick. Think about children who don’t get routine medical care. Think about children who are not sure there will be dinner on the table. They don’t need more tests. They don’t need schools where their teachers are evaluated by their test scores. They need economic security. If Bill thinks long enough about the lives of these children, maybe he will come up with some big ideas to do something about it.
2. His ideas about fixing education are wrong. He is surrounded by yes men and women who don’t want to break the bad news to him.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
fantastic post Diane!
Since Gates all but designed the curriculum, he needs to look in the mirror if he’s wondering why students are unmotivated. While I agree that poverty is certainly a big problem and can impact motivation in all kinds of ways, it is not just poor kids who are “unmotivated”. What we’re really seeing are the effects of curriculum being more and more top-down, one-size-fits-all, drill-and-kill, test prep and standardized testing.
You are 100% correct.
Linda Hall from CT blames Bill Gates for the failure of the Bill GatesUSDOE education policy.
Lack of motivation? How many children have been motivated by test prep, high stakes tests and the closing of their neighborhood schools?
Wait, what happened to ‘no excuses’? Any teacher who mentions student motivation as a factor in learning (as measured by achievement tests) is immediately tarred and feathered; how is this different?
By the way, many years ago, in the dark ages of education, I was taught that if too many students failed my test, I should look to the test in seeking a reason for the high failure rate. In other words, maybe my questions were harder than they should have been, or were not aligned well with what was taught. Hmmm.
I was thinking the same thing! If a teacher mentions
lack of motivation, oh, well then we are just making excuses for our failure to engage our students properly.
you aint never been in a classroom have ya ?
south side teacher: ah, the wonders of reminding the supernovas of the self-proclaimed “education reform” firmament that what they’re saying today doesn’t jibe with what they said yesterday.
For one of countless examples, let’s look at an article from January 2014 (link below). None other than the BeeEater Herself:
[start quote]
Rhee was shocked by what she found in D.C. The central office was a bureaucratic sinkhole. School facilities were in shambles. Many lacked libraries and textbooks. At one school, Rhee spotted a sign: “Teachers cannot make up for what parents and students will not do.” Rhee’s was “enraged” by this attitude. “Most people blamed poverty for the low academic achievement levels of the children in D.C.,” writes Rhee. She disagreed, noting that poor African-American kids in New York City were two grades ahead of their peers in D.C. “There is no doubt that poverty and home environment have an impact on students and schools, but clearly there was something terribly wrong with the D.C. schools.”
[end quote]
Link: http://www.governing.com/topics/education/gov-michelle-rhee-versus-diane-ravitch.html
And from the article linked in the posting:
[start quote]
New technology to engage students holds some promise, but Gates says it tends to only benefit those who are motivated.
“And the one thing we have a lot of in the United States is unmotivated students,” Gates said.”
[end quote]
Following Ionesco’s lead: “It is not the answer that enlightens but the question”—
Does Bill Gates get corrected and set straight by Michelle Rhee, or does Michelle Rhee get corrected and set straight by Bill Gates?
*For those struck dumb by the closet [close?] reading of CCSS, I offer this helpful hint: follow the money. Who’s doling out the $tudent $ucce$$ and who’s receiving it?*
If you find yourself unable to continue to a satisfactory conclusion, just remember this Marxist aphorism:
“Humor is reason gone mad.” [Groucho]
😎
P.S. To Bob Shepherd: I need advice, or at least a new battery for my flashlight. CCSS “closet reading” is difficult, indeed at times impossible, when you close the door, the light goes out, and your battery is dead. A helping hand, please…
😏
My advice, give up the closet reading, come on out. Follow Krashen’s advice, read what you like and keep writing to us. I recommend a good fantasy adventure or some science fiction. Edushyster’s box solution with the book this time of year is also a plus. I have to plan and take courses as a teacher, but I am having second thoughts about seeking certification in special education now.
Bill Gates is clearly out of touch in his big, rich world. Maybe he should get out a little and take a look at the real world. He need a dose of reality. It is a shame a very smart man makes such stupid remarks because he lives in a plastic bubble.
OK! BILL (BULLSHIT)!
LIKE!
Now you’re talkin, TAGO!
It was inevitable. They went from blaming “public schools” to “teachers” to “the entire lazy and mediocre middle class” and now we’re at students themselves.
I’m actually for this. I think students will probably fight back.
Let’s get real. Gates doesn’t know shit from shinola about education. One begins to wonder if our suffering through Bill Gates and his political-educational babble is not a case of cosmic pay back for unknown transgressions and what happens as the effects of capitalism become increasingly absurd… and dangerous..
Motivation is extraordinarily important.
Our prime directive as educators should be, I think, to have the graduates of our schools be people who are intrinsically motivated to learn.
Kids fall into the world with such motivation. It has to be killed in them. Unfortunately, many children have experiences that are very effective at doing precisely that.
This is such a profound comment that I felt compelled, motivated, to make some response. But what to say.
Bob, to your point that “it has to be killed in them,” here’s a process for doing that as W. Edwards Deming (1900-1993) told it…
I think that the standardization of traditional public schools is part of the motivation behind folks looking for alternatives that will not kill student motivation.
I agree.
This is what motivates some people. It is not, of course, the sole such motivation.
Thanks for sharing this, Bob. I’ve started to wonder if part of the reason I have so many unmotivated students is because they’ve looked around and realized how unlikely any job they get will really ask them to think for themselves or be self-directed. But maybe I can think about how I can incorporate some of this into my class.
Gates’ cronies, Jeb et al., will probably look at that article and think, “Oh no! What can we do to increase the size of the runway at Los Alamos?” (Never mind the children.)
Amazing. Future historians will see this as a very bizarre period in American history, when a handful of oligarchs essentially dictated public policy for no other reason than the massive wealth they’ve exploited to their advantage.
Hiwever, I see a glimmer of hope here; when Gates is now beating up on the students, just as Arne Duncan, in a moment of unguarded candor, last November, blamed “white suburban housewives” for opposing Common Core, they are clearly trailing off of the script and improvising out of fatigue and frustration in front of a public audience; not a smart thing to do guys. didn’t you learn this basic stuff at Harvard?
More importantly, the Gates and Duncan outbursts show us that even though we are vastly outspent, and they have the mainstream media in the palm of their hand, and their mendacious narrative of so-called “failing schools” has been repeated over and over for more than three decades, they are still not getting what they want.
and that means that our opposition, as poorly funded as it is, and as relatively small as our numbers are, is still quite formidable. Why? Because we have something they don’t have on our side; and it is called the truth.
And fortunately for us and for American public education, more and more people are beginning to get this.
When anti-education initiatives have a difficult time passing even in states like Idaho and Indiana, you know the word is getting to people and it’s beginning to create a push back that causes Gates and Duncan to say stupid and mean-spirited things in the public arena.
I hope and strongly suspect we are going to see even more of it in the days and months ahead.
Perfect post, Ms. Ravitch.
Concise and spot-on.
If Bill wants to see the truth, all he needs to do is read your brief and excellent summary.
Surely he has the time for a few paragraphs, but does he have the humility, the courage or the quest for clarity?
Sadly, the answer to your final three questions is “no, no, and no.”
Diane, your #2 echoes what I always say – Gates lives in an echo chamber. If he would get out of it and listen to others, his POV might improve.
That and he always thinks he the smartest guy in the room. Here’s a story. My husband is a professor in the Computer Science & Engineering department at the U of Washington. Every once in a while Gates comes thru to see what they are doing (he gives money to the department).
My husband works on mobile computing and several of his students work on mobile computing devices for villages in countries in Africa. So it was explained to Gates that one devise takes a measure of breast milk for the HIV virus and then it is treated to kill it.
Gates says that isn’t possible. My husband, unwilling to back down even to Gates, politely explains, yes, it is and they have been doing it. Gates pushes back again but my husband stands his ground. (Gates seemed to think my husband didn’t understand what he was talking about.) So Gates whispers to an aide to check this.
Two days later my husband hears from the aide that oh, thanks, turns out my husband was right.
Another illustration of Mr. Gates’ “I’m always right” ethos.
westello: an extremely pointed and relevant example of why the leading charterites/privatizers can’t self-correct on their own.
Thank you for your comments.
😎
He’s also not taking into account that the brains of this generation don’t work like the brains of his peers. So many kids have ADHD, ADD, autism, anxiety, depression, executive function issue, allergies (which make test-taking even more of a challenge when the pollen counts are up). And there seems to be NO way to accommodate them. It’s like we’re telling kids to take their glasses off and just try harder to see the board. It can’t possibly work.
Exactly the way Mr. BG always blamed users for the BuGs in his sophware.
CONGRESS !!!! TIME TO INVESTIGATE THIS GUY!!!!!
He’ll just buy them off the way he did last time. They’re even cheaper by the dozen these days.
Well, Gates tired of funding his smaller schools experiment…maybe he’ll tire of funding his education plans for the so called “unmotivated students”.
The sad thing is that if Bill Gates had set out to use his millions to decrease health problems, birth defects, and learning disabilities among young children — so that they would be better equipped to learn when they arrive at school — he probably could have done some good. In public health, it can be useful to approach problems in broad terms and to crunch the numbers to arrive at broad, works-for-most solutions. Motivation, by contrast, tends to be affected by individual, cultural, situational, and/or emotional factors. It is the wrong kind of problem for Bill Gates. He’s like Spock on Star Trek; good at analysis, but not good at understanding what drives other people when their desires, feelings, and motivations don’t match his.
The problem is he likes his solutions neat and tidy. He decides the solutions and only funds research, programs,… that fit his analysis. On the surface, it is not bad to focus your efforts but he dumps so much moolah into the pot, so he can control the agenda which stifles alternative viewpoints and solutions.
Microsoft introduced “stack ranking” about 10 years ago at least. This system forced employees to compete with one another for higher rankings. This was the end of collaboration that lead to a dearth of creativity in Microsoft. Microsoft abandoned this system during November 2013 after stack ranking contributed to Microsoft’s “Lost Decade”. How ironic that Bill Gates forced the same failed system onto public education, let alone how one man’s vast wealth (72 billion???) is (has) destroying (ed) democratic control of our public schools.
There are those who contend that Microsoft Corporation ( MS ) is the world’s largest mom & pop company, because NOTHING progresses without the fingerprint of Messrs. Gates & Balmer.
MS is the stereotypical massive R&D lab productivity icon. Just as in Big Pharma, the multibillion dollar budget R&D labs have an aggregate and cumulative innovation output
of nada.
Both Big Pharma and MS spear their strategic growth by acquiring tiny shops that have achieve paradigm shifts while living hand to mouth prior to selling out for multiple billions.
It is noteworthy that former MIT Alumni Association President Bob Metcalfe,inventor of the Ethern]et, and founder of 3COM, responded to Messrs. Gates and Balmer, who sought to buy innovative 3COM with the emphatic “Not no, but Hell, No!!! ”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Metcalfe
https://alum.mit.edu/news/AlumniProfiles/Archive/Robert_M._Metcalfe_-2768
http://www.networkworld.com/article/2202019/lan-wan/living-legends–ethernet-inventor-bob-metcalfe.html
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/innoeco/2010/11/bob_metcalfe_accepts_professor.html
Bob, who is a hilarious public speaker, has accepted a professorship at UT Austin. You can expect the Austin tech scene to go from dynamic to warp speed with his guidance.
During his 1998 year of service as President of the MIT Alumni Association, Bob Metcalfe tirelessly traveled the world railing against the greedy, myopic, and market controlling broadband providers for their collective stiffling of the American economy by restraining high capacity and reasonably priced broadband for residential, academic and small business applications by their strategy to harvest immediate cash as opposed to growing capacity.
In those sixteen years since Bob campaigned for massive improvements in macro broadband capacity in the US, South Korea has achieved domination in several key global industries, riding on the wave of almost universal high speed residential broadband access, currently in some 93% of homes.
The actions of the broadband cartel in the US have hampered the capacity of US innovators just as though our guys/gals were restricted to quill pen & inkwell for communications.
If this irks you, write the POTUS at info@whitehouse.gov and your Congressional representatives and demand that broadband be as freely accessible as in world leader South Korea.
Gee Bill, if malaria is so easy to cure why does someone – most often a child – still die of it every 45 seconds? That’s more than 700,000 people a year. Maybe they just aren’t motivated enough.
My advice to Mr. Gates:
“Get thee to a public school and substitute teach.”
Ironically, without a college degree, Gates isn’t qualified to do even that in most school districts.
This is the real problem. http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014.html#.U7MzQhb-1j6
Fascinating article. Thanks for sharing.
Parents have to pick up the ball here. The children are theirs. Who’s got 18 years to wait for public school problems, regardless of fault, to get solved? Parents certainly don’t. In the meantime, there are kids to raise and develop into contributing members of society.
Did Gates, et al. cure malaria? For what they could have spent in mosquito nets and bug spray, they instead were “investing” in big pharma. They used the village people as a petri dish with an end game of creating drugs to “cure” or deal with the symptoms? Oh, I don’t know, but if you Google it, you’ll find it.
As an aside, he was also trying to eradicate polio, and instead created a form of non-polio paralysis. No good deed goes unpunished for Mr. Gates and his ilk. If these philanthropists actually were benevolent, instead of greedy with always their eyes on the end prize$, they could do some/more true good in our world.
Bill and his cronies could donate [more] computers and technological wiring to classrooms. They could fund the repair of crumbling schools, and pest control. They could conduct asbestos and mold abatements in classrooms. They could fund some sort of “reading is fundamental” or “reading rainbow” type remedial tutoring for struggling english language learners, and slow-to-grasp readers. They could fund lunch programs where kids qualify for free lunch, so the states don’t have to dole out that expense. I could go on and on. So could you.
Virtually EVERYTHING they do has an end game of profit$ for them. Also, the continue to saddle the taxpayers with more costs. Say, close down some local schools, open a few charters without fully tackling k-12, since charters love to open “x – x” grades and add a grade per year while they get their footing, and the left over kids – well, now they have to e bused across town at extra expense to the cities they live in. Look at Cami Anderson’s One Newark Plan (which isn’t her plan at all…somewhere that was probably thought up by ALEC or Common Sense Institute or some other asshole group).
Sadly, how they get to that end game is by making every little drip punitive, in order to close the public schools, make way for the thieving charters, bust the unions to get those pesky teachers who advocate for their kids out of the way, etc., ad nauseam. PUNISHMENT for the teachers. PUNISHMENT for the parents/students. Doesn’t it all come down to their punitive repercussions?
For all his smarts and money, Gates knows nothing, and goes about his “benevolence” all wrong. I wonder if/when he will really have an “a-ha” moment, and just give without wanting something in return.
He has never had to walk in those shoes, never lived in a house with no hope of food, never dodged bullets on a daily basis, never held a family member dying of a gunshot in his arms, never been abused by a drunk or drugged parent, never lost a parent to incarceration, never been abandoned….. nor has he spent enough time listening to their stories. Yes, all students can learn, but much has to be done first to help them have enough hope to want to.
Bill negelected business 101 in regards to education–Know who your costumers are. He doesn’t understand the educational needs of the teachers, students, and parents. It is easy to blame others because he is finding out with his CC implementation you can’t force a “fix” that no one asked for and expect it to be the “cure.” If CC and the test that accompany it were what our students truly needed to be college and career ready—teachers across this country would be the biggest cheerleaders. Instead, there are teachers in faculty rooms frustrated and crying because of the lack of research and best practice that was neglected in their creation especially K-3.
More great stuff on motivation:
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx My favorite line of the article: Gates’ foundation’s key areas of focus include “lobal health and education.” (sic)
He could use some of that.
Since there is the script that a good teacher is all it takes, I will take this as progress that learning is a shared responsibility. Since Gates is a fan of weighted measurement, aside from the teacher, the student, and the taxpayers, who provide a building, or help to insure students are healthy and rested, how much weight does cultural impact on education get? Where’s the research on how students spend their time across the decades, during school and during summer?
If Gates really cared about the poor, he would support jobs with livable wages, as well as labor.unions.
Wake up folks! Today, even college educated people have been condemned to lives of poverty.
As a 22 year teacher I feel Bill’s statement is cause for hope. At least now we’re moving away from blaming teachers and teacher unions and closer to the actual reasons kids aren’t learning. His statement should take a little wind out of the Koch bros. and TFA rhetoric.
Speaking of TFA, this summer I sponsored three TFA student teachers in a 5 week summer session geometry class. They were very friendly but cocky and rather condescending towards me. (I was the washed up old educator with antiquated teaching methods in the room just for comic relief). I could tell they had been indoctrinated by TFA into believing that TFA educators would easily be able to turn around our low performing school. 5 weeks later, needless to say, they finished their first teaching experience in a state of pure bewilderment. Without me intervening, few of their motivational techniques worked for long…the group work almost always devolved into kids socializing and playing on cell phones. Some activities worked temporarily but these were the same ones I was using 22 years ago, such as kids holding up white boards etc. They were shocked by the lack of motivation on the part of the students, along with the amounts of absences and tardies. Near the end they began to get frustrated, of course angry, and the students began acting up and the learning environment totally tanked. Furthermore, they only covered roughly a third of the material they were suppose to have…and very few of the students had come close to mastery. The session ended in a train wreck when the TFA office instructed them to give the wrong final exam.
There’s nothing new under the sun in education…except that the majority of students now come from home with no desire to learn or pass their classes.
It can’t be “fixed.” It’s not a static entity. The process of educating will always need attention, human interaction, debate, resources and room to evolve.
But thanks for trying, Mr. Gates. We hope you’ve learned something about life.
Wow! Powerful statement-thanks for putting that on the table…lack of economic security and food security continues for students even at community colleges…This is why it is so important to push notions that deal with class in this country…As the gap between the classes continues to grow, so too do the repercussions of such things…problems learning because of lack of…certainly it isn’t a lack of testing…
Childhood stress slows the brain, malnutrition slows the learning process, and all brains are different and progress at different rates in different ways. Robotic nations that strip children of every ounce of empowerment are called success when in reality, what they do to children is more than unethical, it is immoral!
Bill Gates’ plane is too big? How about his head?!
Why do you think he needs such a big plane?
A big ego requires a big plane.
I was going to say the same thing substituting “fat head” for “big ego.”
To compensate for a small _____.
Now, now, now, Linda don’t go getting all sexist on us now!-Ha ha!!
If a student said that in my class I would ask him/her if they knew that fact from personal experience.
Hey, Duane, the ‘big plane’ is derived from good ‘ ol psychoanalytic thought; and a valid thought it is. I mean, really, how are we to understand – should anyone give a shit – Bill”s intrapsychic processes (which in any event are ever so dark).
I write this with a huge smile on my face, Duane, because once again, you have maintained a healthy sense of humor about the surreal and ever so sad situation that surrounds public school education.
I sometimes immerse myself in the fantasy that Gates and his allies read these posts and reflect in how their decisions are impacting students and teachers. Alas.
Quite a fantasy, my friend.
I mean, can you imagine, the great unwashed having a point?
Funny
😉
My favorite line in the article: Gates could not land his private jet at the Los Alamos airport because his plane is too big for the runway.
If the runway is too small, fire the pilots! Come on Gates, be consistent.
“If the runway is too small, fire the pilots! Come on Gates, be consistent.”
love it!
that is funny
Maybe they should have tried it anyway, you know, to find out if it worked. The evidence, well, what evidence? We don’t know, it might have worked. Bill could have decreed the runway large enough.
If only he had had higher expectations for those pilots: small runways are not destiny!
TitleoneTexasteacher: thanks for the belly laugh! Small runways are not destiny! Bill, take your chances.
Gates coddling the soft bigotry of low expectations for aircraft braking capability? So status quo.
Schools and students are messing up their glorious plans:
“It is incredibly easy for these new instructional approaches to look good on paper or to work well in pilot classrooms in the hands of highly skilled experts,” said Frederick M. Hess, the director of education policy studies for the American Enterprise Institute, “and then to turn into mushy, lazy confusing goop as it spreads out to classrooms and textbooks.”
Oh, if only we were all “highly skilled experts”!
I feel as if we’re all just a constant, crushing disappointment to these people 🙂
I don’t know how they soldier on, having to do the heavy lifting of providing quotes to the NY Times while surrounded by all this mediocrity.
What is Michelle Rhee’s take on Gates’ claim that it’s the students???
Well, some of it IS the students, is it not? I certainly hope so. I hope mine aren’t completely passive lumps sitting around waiting for a “great!” teacher.
There are “great!” people in every profession and job and there are many more not so great. There’s a big middle in every group of workers. I would use “great” for very few people in any workplace I’ve ever been in.
Michelle Rhee is of course extraordinary. Super great. I believe the term they use is “rock star” 🙂
She will agree with Gates.
I wish that they would stop calling him a philanthropist.
people overcome poverty all the time. Immigrants seem to do it.
You are out of touch with reality and referring to previous generations. It’s gotten even worse from when this report was published in 2003:
“Poverty Grows Among Children of Immigrants in U.S.”
http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/poverty-grows-among-children-immigrants-us/
from this article about the boy accepted to all ivy league schools:
http://news.yahoo.com/why-ivy-league-story-stirs-tensions-between-african-204556090.html
Being a first-generation American from Ghana also helps him stand out, Cohen says. “He’s not a typical African-American kid.”
interesting, that this is almost all about attitude.
It’s too bad that government doesn’t do more to incent small business. That’s the place that offers immigrants the best chance to succeed.
He’s also not a typical immigrant kid in this day and age. That’s one reason why he made national news.
If you are talking about moving between economic classes, that is very stagnant. My immigrant relatives of prior generations escaped poverty by strong union advocacy which benefitted even the non-union labor. When they stormed French beaches or jumped behind German army lines, future executives were next to them fighting. Today’s executives live in a separate, privileged America.
I also support small business, but free marketers might ask you why government needs to control them with incentives. The problem is a shrinking middle class that is hurting demand. Businesses that cater to the wealthy are thriving in a niche. Businesses that serve the middle class are fading.
I have posted this before, but anyone interested in intergenerational earnings mobility might want to read this: http://obs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/chetty/mobility_geo.pdf
Not sure what this link means. One (104 page) paper without review. Too many of these guys confusing correlation with causation and producing flawed models. Trouble is, they do not leave the comfortable ivory tower to see their models in practice. I’m finding that the researchers are in a rabbit hole so deep, they can’t refocus on reality. They put too much blind faith in the models and can’t accept that there still needs to be human thinking and judgement involved.
The paper is forthcoming in the Quarterly Journal of Economics.
Do you have some particular problem with the methodology?
TE, the paper seems to indicate that upward mobility is associated with all the factors we would associate with living in a stable middle class community. H-m-m-m. Where have I heard that before?
The role of geographic isolation in income mobility and all the ways society reinforces this isolation is, I think, the most important observation in the paper.
The key step to materially reducing the population in the lower socioeconomic tiers is to take whatever steps it takes to insure that each child receives an adequate education to move up to the middle class.
Logical steps to achieve this include having highest quality pre-K, dramatically increasing both the quantity and the quality of college/work force advisers, and emulating the proven to be highly effective in poverty areas protocols of Rafe Esquith’s Hobart Shakespeareans.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/16/AR2007011600502.html
It is absolutely essential that high stakes standardized testing be eliminated immediately!!! We need to implement musical instrument training at the very earliest age to take advantage of the math propensity shown in the Dartmouth Medical MRI studies on the impact of mastering musical instruments before age ten.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2996135/
Following the Hobart Shakespeareans success, we need to include stage productions of Shakespeare to develop confidence, verbal abilities and interpersonal abillities.
Instead of pouring billions into football, we need to insure that every child has the ability to write proficiently. With that mastered, his/her reading will flourish.
Dormand, I think that providing a job for the parents of the children would be the fastest way to move them into the middle class. Check out what the Scandinavian countries do to keep poverty low. They have a family policy and a strong safety net to prevent poverty.
The world is awaiting your explanation of how you would execute and fund this vision.
It is feasible to implement protocols to properly develop the human capital resources from lower socioeconomic families to insure that all who are willing to work can escape poverty.
It is more challenging by a factor of ten to subsidize their parents/grandparents to a sufficient level that the kids have a chance to reach their latent potential. I think that that was called the trickle down theory by a US President whom I voted for decades ago.
One other significant sniffling of upward mobility, if not a blatant perpetuation of the underclass, was the veto by President Richard M.Nixon of a bill passed by the Congress of the United States to approve and fund universal preschool for all children.
http://books.google.com/books?id=6MDcAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA1178&lpg=PA1178&dq=veto+by+richard+m+nixon+of+preschool+education&source=bl&ots=NO5W5ueFyr&sig=QFcK0-0f
I submit that in 2014, many of those who were denied the opportunity to achieve readiness offered by preschool education are now wards of the state and a heavy burden on you the taxpayer as they reside in the vast infrastructure of prisons that are a
millstone around the neck of the US economy. The United States has the world’s largest number of imprisoned convicts of any country in the world.
Therefore, instead of being in the workforce paying their family’s bills and being self-sufficient as contributors to society, these cast aside misanthropes are burdens on society as inmates in prisons, each of whom has any hope of gaining a decent paying job when s/he is finally released from prison.
Unless we want this massive albatross to be a continuing economic burden on our society, it is critical that we take the proper steps to elevate those born into poverty via access to a great education.
Read the post at 7 am tomorrow and learn about how the vision works.
And what is it that allows individuals to break free of their geographical isolation? I assume there is little push to escape the horrors of economic success associated with prosperous communities. The reformers’ answer has been grit and rigor, but that has proved to be an inadequate answer since we do not have effective ways of infusing those characteristics into the hearts and minds of all students. I think I can say hearts now that Bill Gates has acknowledged unmotivated students is the problem.
@ 2old2teach:
and even then, the study says the correlations are difficult to assess because “limitations make it difficult to identify which of the factors is the most important determinant of upward mobility.”
The actual world is often hard to analyze.
Ya coulda fooled me, TE! I was under the impression that certain high profile economists have it all under control. All you have to do is manipulate numbers until they look something like what could pass for reality.
Yes. I was interested in the impact such suggestions have on the no excuses mantra. Gee, maybe there is an advantage to the stability associated with middle class communities, something that many “failing” kids don’t have. I hope they don’t start trying to statistically determine how the factors should be weighted although I bet they have some of that covered with VAM. Just wondering, how can they statistically weight all these factors in VAM calculations and yet refuse to acknowledge the effect in a classroom. VAM contradicts the “no excuses” mantra.
Economic equality is extremally improbable in any complex economic system. If something like such a condition occurs from time to time it will be very unlikely to last long.
It is like a bunch of billiard balls bouncing around on a frictionless billiard table. Even if they all start with equal velocity vectors that won’t last long.
2old2teach – “Shared environment” such as stable middle class communities is not very important casually. Stable middle class communities are more effect than cause.
‘ “Shared environment” such as stable middle class communities is not very important casually. Stable middle class communities are more effect than cause.’
I truly do not understand what you are trying to say.
dormand – How did the Tang Dynasty ever manage to achieve anything without Shakespearean drama?
2old,
” I was under the impression that certain high profile economists have it all under control. All you have to do is manipulate numbers until they look something like what could pass for reality.”
That is not the way it works. There are too many eyes on the work to do a shoddy job of it by manipulating the results. You yourself can read about what the authors did, can download the data, run the SAS program to duplicate the results, and offer alternative specifications of the model if you think the results are not robust.
“Shared environment” such as stable middle class communities is not very important casually. Stable middle class communities are more effect than cause”
I think poster Jim’s point is that the relative wealth and stability of middle class communities is caused, to some degree, by efforts of the individuals that find themselves able to afford to live in those communities. He would argue that stable communities don’t create stable individuals as much as stable individuals create the stable communities they live in.
Yes, that was a low blow. Let’s just say that numbers can be interpreted in such a way to support an opinion. A very human tendency that is not necessarily controlled by study design and standards, which is why critique is so important.
I’ll wait for Jim’s interpretation. I don’t disagree with what you said although healthy, stable communities seem to be able to carry with them a number of people who are not middle class. Just look at schools with 10-25% poverty. The culture of the school does not appear to be controlled by diminished expectations. Exposure to a potential future beyond “section 8” housing in a culture that reasonably expects more seems to have an impact. That belief in a better future seems to be more easily sustained in communities that have experienced some success.
Have you never heard of the gross income disparity in that exists in this country? Just since the crash in 2008, 95% of the wealth has gone to the top 1%. “Wealth Inequality in America”
time for government to incent small business.
Here is an interesting short piece on how marriage impacts income inequality in the US: http://www.voxeu.org/article/us-income-inequality-and-assortative-marriages
There is no more compelling story of overcoming poverty than the story of how a childrens librarian with her reading lists served as the catalyst that transformed the two boys of an illiterate and unwed mother of two into exceptionally well qualified contributors to society.
Benjamin Carson, Director of the Pediatric Neurosurgery Department of The Johns Hopkins Hospital is a testament to the upward mobility empowerment ability of childrens librarians.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4950531
cool – thanks! Inspirational stories encourage others to dream and succeed. Some are pathfinders for sure.
By golly, let’s all go find us a poor kid with a receptive mother and raise them up out of the sewer of poverty. I don’t mean to be condescending. I love these stories and have used them with my students on occasion. We know there are plenty of kids out there who could have a better life, but there is truth in the adage “It takes a village…” Our village has not been caring for the least of its children and the inspirational stories of the children who have the right combination of luck and love do not translate into workable national policy.
The system is not “skewed unfairly.” The fact is, the more people are educated, the higher the incomes. That would be the perfect system. There’s nothing the wealthy would like better than to have other people move up so they are wealthy, also. It’s the American dream. Unfortunately, spreading the wealth is not the answer. The answer is for ALL American families to encourage education. Until education is put as the number one priority, things will stay the same and eventually get much worse. It’s all about prioritizing education in the American family. It comes above everything else besides God and family.
You are sleepwalking in a bygone era. Wake up! Millions of workers are exploited every day by the owners of America, including people who have college degrees but no union protections.
“It’s called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.” George Carlin
What is critical is to look at the bigger picture.
Our status as a global leader is at risk, as the US has done a mediocre job of developing its human capital resources outside of its affluent families. Other countries have done a superior job compared to us in developing their human capital resources throughout their socioeconomic tiers.
Thus global trade leadership in vital industries is migrating from the US to foreign countries. Steel, autos, consumer electronics, appliances, cameras, and pharaceuticals are industries once lead by US companies, now lead by foreign companies.
Forbes Magazine one carried a piece that demonstrated that the key factor in a nation’s wealth is innovation. It carried this theme over the past thousand years and showed how
nation’s wealth ebbed and flowed depending upon their innovations, such a longitude, which allowed Britain to dominate the seas for quite some time, as its captains were the only ones who were able to pin point where their ships were at any given point in time at sea,
If you look at Consumers Report to find the most reliable and most highly related products, you will find that most are made by foreign producers. Many are made in South Korea, and many by Samsung which has mastered Six Sigma manufacturing and marketing research to produce what customers want and in flawless, reliable products.
We have two key structural defects that put US companies at a competitive disadvantage to foreign based companies:
a ) our insane penchant for a never-ending stream of ever increasing earnings per share, or a company’s stock gets dumped by institutional investors, and
b ) our equally insane penchant for ever escalating CEO compensation, regardless of organizational results, bolstered by “compensation consultants” and by Boards packed with compadre CEOs, in which compensation setting becomes an exercise in
“You scratch my back, then I will scratch yours.”
If the US continues this trend from the innovative developer of new and exciting products to simply being the retail distribution arm through our mall big boxes, the wealth of our country will be greatly diminished.
If a country has human capital resources that were training in a robotic rote memorization format, which is what our teach to the test NCLB high stakes standardized testing mandates degraded to, they are incapable of working in other than a hierarchical environment, where they are told what to do, when to do it, and how to do it.
That is mutually exclusive with innovation, where the creative class continually develops goods and services that are better, cheaper, quicker and smaller.
To better comprehend the public policy box that those who feud instead of collaborate in tthe DC Beltway, read Jarad Diamond’s “Collapse-How Societies Chose to Fail or Succeed,” as well as Lawrence Kotlikoff and Scott Burns “Coming Generational Storm.”
What is really scary is that the US foreign debt is so massive that we are at risk of losing flexibility in federal operations just to service our debt. Why we let former Vice President
Dick Cheney ( and i voted for him as well as worked very hard to get him elected )
sell us the bill of goods that debt does not matter I do not understand.
When China’s domestic economy starts to fall apart from its tsunami of uncollectible bank loans to dysfunctional companies and for real estate speculation and it refuses to let the US roll over its loans, you will see a push comes to shove scenario unprecedented in world history.
I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but it is what it is.
You need to face up to the fact that, if we do not have immediate and extensive restructuring of public policy, your grandchildren and their grandchildren are destined for a much more dismal life than you have enjoyed.
Dormand, Your article was so beautifully stated. My husband and I cannot believe the leaders of our country allow that huge debt. We will wake up one morning, and the U.S. currency will no longer be in use. Teachers have suffered so badly with silly Obama’s “Race to the Bottom” and what a joke, it is not even paid for. We all know that we could not run our house finances that way.
I worry about the welfare of my two children all the time. They are 19 and 14. I told them both that the world in 1994 and 2000 was a much better world. I honestly could not deal with the stress of this world without my love of God and my religion. My husband and I are very giving, and we don’t worry about what we personally have. Our financial decisions are always based on what we can do to help our two children survive in this unrecognizable world. Thank you for your article. I could not agree with you more. So well said!
I suggest that if Mr. Gates wants to see motivated, even driven, students who are superb
at team work, he should visit Room 56 at enormous Hobart Elementary School in the most poverty stricken area of Los Angeles.
There Rafe Esquith’s Hobart Shakespeareans put in their routine twelve hour days, working hard, being nice and succeeding.
The Washington Post calls Rafe Esquith “America’s Best Classroom Teacher”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/16/AR2007011600502.html
These kids thrive, and they succeed when they enter the nation’s best colleges,
because they learned that to succeed, it is essential to “work hard and to be nice”.
THIS IS AWESOME.
http://www.hobartshakespeareans.org/ourclass_welcome.php
Gee, how on earth can Mr. Esquith find time to do enough online test prep exercises what with all this TEACHING he is doing?
Reblogged this on ohyesjulesdid and commented:
Thanks to Ms. Ravitch for yet again bringing research into the dialogue. While I agree with many of the replies that it’s not only poverty plagued students that are unmotivated. We have a generation of students who think showing up and filling in the dots is what education is all about. Even the best efforts of educators to provide creative, critical thinking, synthesizing , practical assignments, the push toward scripted curricula and high stakes testing has damaged students’ motivations in the classroom over the past decade. Ravitch is correct though that we must address the issues of poverty and income inequality if we are to make any attempts at putting a dent in the problems that persist in U.S. classrooms.
RIGHT ON!!
Mr. Gates,
Please come to our library with Ms. Ravitch – you both have an open invitation for a web event with studio audience – http://www.librarymedia.net.
David Di Gregorio
For quite some time now, Bill Gates has been barking up the wrong tree to “fix” public education.
Meanwhile, he sends his own kids to a $30,000-a-year private school.
Gates has spread his money out, buying endorsements for the Common Core from businesses, the National Governors Association , the Council of Chief State School Officers, the National PTA, the AFT, the NEA, and the top education “professional” organizations.
Gates also partnered with the top testing behemoths, the ACT and the College Board, who not only helped to develop Common Core but also have tied their products to it. So, Common Core is already with us, albeit not in its final form, which will include a whole series of grade-level assessments.
Gates’ plane may be too big for some runways, but his ego remains largely unrestrained.
And the cognitive abilities of those who have aided Mr. Gates remain in question.
And he said “that technology should help… ” His investments are not to fix education…they’re to grow his empire and create a new emerging market. Our school is testing Google Chrome computers to administer the PAARC…since every student will need one to take the test. $$$$$$$
MDG, Common Core testing is a cornucopia for tech companies.
That is the funniest , most ridiculous thing I have heard in a long time. I simply cannot wipe the smirk off of my face. It seems we are having a lot of issues with air crafts. The NY State Commissioner of Education touts that in regards to the COMMON CORE , we are literally building the plane in the air. Gates’ private jet can’t land in Los Alamos airport because it is too large. Perhaps he employed a pilot who wasn’t COLLEGE & CAREER READY.
Compare and contrast Gates’ pilot with the Commussioner of Education in NEW YORK . Ha! No high flyers there!! So would you REALLY trust your child’s education in the hands of either King or Gates?? Perhaps they should WALK a mile in the shoes of the impoverished. Make those shoes TOMS please — one for one.
Marge
Another example of Bill Gates classic Narcissistic PD behavior: Blame the victims!
How difficult can it be for our “responsible” president to recognize this as mental illness?
It will be impossible for him to do so, he shares in this malady. He actually agrees with the deform movement.
Diane’s article hit everything perfectly. Poverty is now moving into the middle class families. Poverty is hitting those families that no one would even suspect. There are middle class moms looking in their fridges right now, and they are seeing that they need more milk and more food to get through the rest of this week. And, Dad does not get paid until one week from Friday. Poverty is hitting more and more families at a record number. There are kids sitting in our classrooms right now from good families that could have eaten a little more for supper last night. It’s true.
One of my students this year had a horrible year due to his mom and dad separating. He missed his dad so terribly, sometimes crying for the first 30 minutes of the day. I would comfort him, and I told him that things would definitely get better – just to hang in there. My parents have been married almost 50 years, and my husband and I just celebrated our 29th year of marriage together. I can’t imagine the pain he felt that his dad no longer lived under the same roof with him. On the last day of school, I told him that I recommended him for the advanced Math class next year. He was shocked, and he told me that he did not feel smart anymore. I told him that I knew he was smart, and his life will be better next year. Thankfully, his Dad was visiting him a lot and taking him out to sporting events. When I got his scores back in June, his score had dropped from a 453 to a 425. His score will count against me in my teachers’ evaluation process next year, but I do not care. My student went through “you know what” last year, and I am very thankful that I was there for him. He hugged me the last day of school and thanked me for never giving up on him.
It is so sad that those in power do not care about the well being of our kids. Our kids only have us…..and those in power want all of us gone.
Sad Teacher-
It is great that you responded to your calling to teach. Your students will always remember that you are the one who cared. When all else went wrong in their lives, they could count on you to care about them and guide them into the right direction.
Your thoughts about the importance of a dad’s involvement are absolutely correct. The June 3024 Atlantic had a great piece that found correlation between kids performance in school with the level of involvement that their dads had with them. Enjoy this piece:
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-dedicated-dads/372516/
Dormand, Thank you so much for the beautiful article on fathers. I just read it aloud to my husband. I am so grateful that my student got through this very difficult year and that he was able to spend more time with his dad. Sadly, the rich politicians do not understand that we are teaching little human beings who need time to develop and learn, run, climb trees, and play tag and dodge ball! They are not robots. They are children. They deserve to have a childhood. Thanks again, Dormand. I loved that article! (:
So it’s the poverty what ails ya, but not a lack of motivation? Generally the American kid has become ever more unmotivated as the distance from WWII increased. It started in the 1970s and has moved apace since, now exacerbated by creeping-into-the-middle class reduced circumstances.
America’s Century is over. Get over it.
Poverty and a lack of opportunity are very demoralizing. Why do you think many of our street gangs form? They provide social support and structure as well as money and a viable, even if illegal, economy for the youth. Violence becomes their currency. Dickens could have written in an epilogue to “A Christmas Carol” showing the situation. If you want proof, see the interviews with current and former gang members in the Gangland series, they are quite blunt about why they joined gangs. They are definitely an American societal innovation.
Jeff Bryant, Salon.com, mentions Diane Ravitch: Worse than Michelle Rhee: Teachers and public schools have a shocking new enemy
I haven’t read all of the comments so I may not be the first to say this, but one factor in the mix of what make today’s kids unmotivated is all the time spent on the internet doing nothing but wasting time! Bill, did you know that technology has a down side?
Reblogged this on Exceptional Delaware and commented:
Diane always hits the bulls eye with her first throw!
Why is it so difficult for us to stop this conversation of “failing schools”, “failing teachers, “failing students”? We need to rebuild our middle class and give the majority of people a way out of poverty with jobs and training.
The privatizers keep up the failing schools talk to boost market share
As I stated on a later post, “Microsoft Cashes in…” here is a must-read Bloomberg News article–January 21, 2014–by Simeon Bennett & Laura Narcinek, “Bill Gates Sees Almost No Poor Countries Left by 2035.” And, by virtue of his status as “the world’s richest man,” he must be right, of course. But it behooves you all to read this!
I have declared war on the rich who prosper on our poverty, the politicians who lie to us with smiling faces, and all the mindless, heartless, robots who protect them and their property.”
― Assata Shakur
Well, at least now they can acknowledge that it’s not a technology problem. Or at least, technology won’t solve the problem (Give ’em all XBoxes!).
Check that one off the list.
This guy just has a wrong idea and nobody to tell him that he needs to actually go into a school, before he assesses, diagnoses and prescribes a solution to the entire situation, sight unseen.
He really just probably needs a hug.
Hug? I think you meant punch!
No, I meant hug.
I think punching would only confirm some elitist point of view that he has about the ‘peasants’. I think a hug would be much more effective than a punch.
Let’s face it, he’s a computer programmer from the 70’s. I’m sure he’s probably immune to being punched and getting wedgies and knuggies. However, before he became a billionaire, his mom probably didn’t even hug him.
There was definitely at least some societal logic behind my reasoning and ideas.
Gates claims to have had a great education and teachers for his education. Therefore I am much less forgiving that you are considering his assault on teachers, some of whom lost their jobs and/or publicly vilified as “worst teacher” based on the educationally bankrupt testing he supports.
Let me state from the outset, by no means am I ‘forgiving’ Bill Gates, for his misguided opinions and initiatives. As a public school teacher from a district like those that Gates has never visited but wields a remarkably (and disturbingly) large amount of influence over, I honestly don’t think that his motives are malicious.
As I stated in my original post, I think he is just a rich guy with bad ideas, surrounded by ‘yes men’. Several billion dollars will buy that for you. Though his initiatives may be extremely damaging (I have seen first hand, the results of these ‘educational initiatives’ that do nothing to advance the process in the areas, like the one where I work), they are not at this stage at least, irreversible.
Punching him, rather than enlightening him would only serve the purpose of having him ‘dig in’ with his horrible ideas. Making him resolute, should not be one of our goals.
Remember, he has billions of dollars and nothing but time on his hands.
I still have the hope that he is a relatively bright man, and at some point, compassion for those lives that he is greatly assisting in the destruction of, will cause him to actually evaluate the problem and propose real assistance.
Let’s face it, he’s got the money to do some real good, if he could only get his head on straight.
I am a public school teacher in an impoverished area.
Consequently (and fortunately), I’m an optimist.
Sue me.
GATES WAS RIGHT
While I follow your wonderful blog daily and am completely on-board with about 95% of it, the July 1 post “Bill Gates blames students” missed the mark. While Mr. Gates isn’t right about much in education, he was spot on this time.
In all of the debates about education, we tend to lose sight of the important difference between “teaching” and “learning”. We forget that teaching is really learning facilitation – if there is no learning, nothing has been taught. The entire process is completely dependent upon a student ready and willing to learn.
Gates is entirely correct when he states that new technologies tend to only benefit those who are motivated to learn (at least until we have the tech to do a direct dump into the brain!). I’m sure that most teachers have witnessed students in front of a computer just pressing any old button just to get through with the activity. Every teacher has had students utterly unengaged with learning – you could shoot off fireworks or have a circus parade in the classroom and not be able to reach some of them.
He is also quite correct in stating that we have a lot of unmotivated students. I would wager that on any given day, virtually every teacher has at least several (and maybe more than several) students show up for school unprepared and unwilling to learn. Just as a thought experiment, look at your student list and consider how many would be there if school attendance wasn’t mandatory and if there were no social services provided (free meals, free day care, etc.). Consider further how much better the class would function if the only students that were there were the ones that actually wanted to learn. How many of your students are behind more because they “won’t” rather than “can’t”?
In the ABC report you referenced, Gates doesn’t discuss his thoughts on the sources of lack of motivation, but as you correctly point out, poverty is clearly a huge factor. Some of these students come from such chaotic family situations that the need for day to day survival simply drives out the ability to do anything else.
It is not just the disadvantaged student either. There are plenty of “silver spoon” students, knowing they have a trust fund in their future, who will do just barely enough to keep daddy off their back, but not learn much of anything. Remember “W”?
At the same time, there are kids in Africa, Latin America and Asia living in circumstances even worse than many of our more disadvantaged students, that, when given the opportunity to learn, embrace and take full advantage of it. They seem to find motivation. Here in Florida we often have children from migrant farm worker families move from school to school, following the crops. Despite being in poverty and often having language disadvantages as well, they are frequently some of the better behaved students and anxious to learn what they can. They seem to find motivation.
I have often argued that the superiority (if any) private schools have over public ones is due mainly to motivation. The student (and parents) have to put forth the effort to apply to get in, have to be willing to put up the cash, and have to meet criteria to stay in. There aren’t any magic teaching methods – the student just has to put in the work. If a student will show up and be ready to do the work it takes to learn, any public school teacher should be able to get similar results.
Educators rightly recognize the importance of student motivation in learning success, but somehow have fallen into the trap of accepting sole responsibility for being the source of that motivation. Parents and students have been allowed to abdicate their personal responsibility and demand that the teacher do the motivation. School is now expected to be fun, entertaining, and engaging, but what happened to the notion of effort and hard work?
So, just to clarify, Gates does absolutely no research whatsoever in the public school systems, themselves. No semblance of any kind of study to find out what is needed. He then designs a complete electronic educational system, and shock to us all, it fails miserably. Then, true to form for him, he needs a scapegoat. “Why, it must be the children”, he says. “Surely, it can not possibly be the disconnected, disaffected, obtuse programming that I have designed for instruction. I mean, I’m Bill Gates, for heaven’s sake.”
Based on that set of circumstances, you say that, “Gates is right.”? It is amazing the things that people can do, under the guise of ‘assisting’ poor and minority students.
It’s just another in a long line of people who are totally isolated from a situation, ‘giving thirsty people a sandwich’.
I don’t think Gates has been right, since he stopped designing software that had the name MicroSoft on it. And, let’s be frank, some of that was even grossly wrong.
This guy needs to either defer to the people who are actually IN education, or just take his billions and stay out of the way. Because, that’s all he is doing, getting in the way.
He is ‘billion speaking’ over any possible solutions that might be introduced into the situation. The public officials and sycophants are positioning for jobs after their service is over.
Additionally, did you actually reference private schools in this conversation with their ‘worse than charter school cherry-picking of students and cost prohibitive admissions’. Will you please be serious.
The alleged ‘superiority’ that private schools have over public schools has nothing to do with motivation. The difference is that if a student is not ‘cutting the mustard’ at a private school, they send them to, you guessed it, public school. That is, if the parents don’t enroll the student in a different private school.
Suburban schools used to do the same thing. They only worked with the athletes from public schools. Any other students were usually jettisoned from the school ‘fortuitously’, just prior to standardized testing.
I will concede to one element of your ‘argument’.
There is definitely a noticeable lack of motivation, but it does not come solely from students. The lack of motivation and general energy is from school personnel and stakeholders.
The fact that the public school system has been inundated with duties that have nothing to do with actual education has literally altered the very focus of what schools were designed and are supposed to do.
The obstacles have also greatly hindered the teaching process that teachers must navigate. These ever present factors, coupled with the absolutely counterproductive ‘classroom management plan’ that has no sanctions, make the goal of public education virtually impossible.
Schools were designed (very well, I might add) to educate large numbers of students. The system was built and organized to serve the majority of students with ‘first line’ methods and deal with problem students and special needs cases with interventions and provisions designed for those purposes.
The system will still work with a very high degree of efficiency.
However, for that to occur, the mechanisms that are in place in every school district across the country must be utilized as designed.
How can that ‘gargantuan deed’ be accomplished?
Simply.
Communication between the stakeholders of the school districts and system. It is simply time that all of the entities that are encompassed under the banner, ‘the public school system’ consolidate their resources and work in a concerted to achieve a common goal: to educate the students that the system was designed to serve.