Hillsborough County in Florida was one of the major beneficiaries of the Gates Foundation’s fetish for teacher evaluation and bonus pay. Gates pledged “up to” $100 million, but is refusing to pay the last $20 million because there has been so little evidence of the link between bonuses and test scores. Duh. If the Gates Foundation read the research on incentive pay, it would have spent the money reducing class sizes for the neediest children.
The Gates program has cost a total of $271 million, including Gates’ $80 million.
The Hillsborough plan inspired state legislation:
“Enacted a year after Hillsborough launched its project, Senate Bill 736 in the Florida Legislature phased out teacher tenure and tied pay to supervisor evaluations and student test scores.”
The program never met its goal of firing 5% of teachers every year:
“The original proposal and a 2010 timeline called for the district to fire 5 percent of its teachers each year for poor performance. That would amount to more than 700 teachers. The thinking was they would be replaced by teachers who earned entry level wages, freeing up money to pay the bonuses for those at the top.
“But the mass firings never happened. While an undetermined number of teachers resign out of dissatisfaction or fear that they will be fired, only a handful of terminations happen because of bad evaluations.”
The Gates Foundation has another flop.
MaryEllen Elia, the superintendent of the Hillsborough school district when it received the Gates grant,, was fired by the school board, then hired this year as state superintendent in Néw York.
“Late in the process, the foundation rejected several of the district’s funding requests for Empowering Effective Teachers, which involves evaluating teachers using specially trained peers and bumping their pay with the idea that it would boost student performance.
“Each of the proposals were robustly outlined and presented,” a district report said.
“But Gates officials responded by pointing to language in the original agreement saying the foundation had promised “up to” $100 million, not necessarily the whole amount, according to the report.
“The district picked up the unpaid costs.
“Much of the disagreement amounted to a change in Gates’ philosophy, Brown said. “After a few years of research,” she said, “they believed there was not enough of a connection between performance bonuses and greater student achievement.”
Now for some laughs, enjoy Peter Greene’s take on Gates’ cancellation of $20 million. He reminds us that Hillsborough was a jewel in Gates’ crown in 2012.
Peter writes:
“Well, that was 2012. A few other things have happened in the meantime. Back in 2010, Arne Duncan and Dennis Van Roekel stopped by to make a fuss, but that was about the last time that anybody wanted to throw an EET party.
“That fire 5% of the sucky teachers thing? It should have gotten rid of 700 (700!!!) teachers– you know, the expensive ones, because everyone knows that the bad teachers that need to be rooted out are, coincidentally, the older teachers who cost a bunch of money. But it never happened.
“And that $100 million grant that Kinser was so proud of? Funny thing. Gates officials would now like you to know that the grant actually said “up to” $100 million.
“I am kind of excited about that, because I know realize that I can tell, say, a used car dealer that I will pay “up to” seventy grand for a car and just pay five thousand bucks. I could promise to buy a new house with “up to” $10 million and just fork over a check for $10.75. I do regret not knowing this trick when my children were young and I could have bribed them to do chores with offers of “up to” $100 for mowing the lawn.”
Now for a deep analysis, read Mercedes Schneider’s analysis of the Hillsborough debacle. The Gates money was a Trojan horse. Not only did it fail to produce a new generation of super-teachers, it drained the district’s reserves.
The Gates money–$80 million, not the promised $100 million–was a cause of great celebration when it was announced. Hillsborough would be a “national model.” In the end, Superintendent Elia was fired in January 2015, the district lost millions, and Gates learned…what?
Mercedes writes:
“Of course, Gates had some ideas about how this “teacher effectiveness” business should work. The report linked above has as its second sentence, “A teacher’s effectiveness has more impact on student learning than any other factor under the control of school systems, including class size, school size, and the quality of after-school programs.” When pro-corporate-reform organizations toss around such statements, they never seem to follow it with the fact that factors external to the classroom hold far more sway that does the teacher. (In analyzing the proportion of teacher influence captured via value-added modeling– VAM– the American Statistical Association notes that teacher influence accounts for between 1 and 14 percent of variance in student test scores. Thus, between 86 and 99 percent of a student’s test score is out of the teacher’s control.)
“Nevertheless, ignoring that the teacher controls so little of student outcomes in the form of market-driven-reform-loving test scores, in its efforts to try to purchase higher student test scores, the Gates Foundation offered ten school districts nationwide the multi-million-dollar-funded opportunity to prove that teachers could indeed be cajoled into producing better “student achievement” (i.e., ever-higher test scores) when such teachers were measured by their students’ test scores and offered more money for “raising” said scores.
“As a 2009 winner of an Empowering Effective Teachers grant, Hillsborough was thrilled (“We’ll be a national model!”). A December 21, 2015 archive of Hillsborough schools’ “Empowering Teachers” webpage includes a number of enthusiastic responses regarding the newly-acquired, $100 million Gates grant. Front and center in these celebratory public statements is then-Hillsborough superintendent, MaryEllen Elia (Then-Governor Charlie Crist: “I commend Superintendent MaryEllen Elia and the Hillsborough County School District for their enthusiasm and commitment to working with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation during the next seven years to improve student academic performance through rewarding high quality teachers both professionally and monetarily. The foundation’s generous grant award of $100 million will greatly enhance the work the district has already done in this area.”)
“However, part of the Hillsborough-Gates agreement involved Hillsborough’s ponying up money of its own– which ended up eating into the Hillsborough schools’ reserves and threatening its bond rating. As reported in the August 04, 2015, Tampa Bay Tribune, the Empowering Effective Teachers initiative is not the only financial stressor affecting the Hillsborough bond rating, but it is nevertheless noteworthy.”
How many more such defeats can the reformers take before they figure out that their ideas are failures?
This is what happens when you make a deal with a devil.
Why doesn’t Bill fly a helicopter over some of these districts and just rake money out of the doors? That would do more to help people than his meddling in the schools.
But… Think of the children! What if a greedy teacher were to scoop up some of those Gates dollars!
Wait a second. Pay for performance (i.e. raising test scores) doesn’t move the needle? Huh, I would think that research had already demonstrated that. I’m actually kind of disappointed. I was holding back my best lesson plans until my district noted that bonus pay was available.
You know how you could raise test scores. Spend almost all day on English and math only. You know, like many charter schools. Just narrow the curriculum to the tested subjects and it’ll work out just fine.
But not just any old English or math. For instance, we wouldn’t want to bother reading whole novels or anything. Just short, obscure excerpts where we forget that we know anything outside “the four walls of the text”.
Also, kick out the students with the highest needs.
Public elementary schools in my area in Utah, now threatened with charter take-over, have been told to ONLY teach math and reading. Nothing else. I teach history, and the first history some of my students have ever had comes in 8th grade.
Not surprising.
When public school staff ask for pittances to make up, in part, what they have lost to inflation, there are howls and screams of derision from the enforcers and enablers of the self-proclaimed “education reform” movement.
Casually waste tens of millions of precious dollars, then refuse to honor one’s commitment—I recall an old saying that the owner of this blog reminded us of some time ago—
“A promise made is a debt unpaid.”
When you’re a rheephormster, your word is not your bond. Except, of course, when bond money pays for even more wasteful programs like the LAUSD iPad fiasco. Then the bond with those in pursuit of $tudent $ucce$$ is all-important.
But surely, the shills and trolls that frequent this blog will write, our “thought” leaders and patrons will learn from their mistakes! We’re capable of self-correction! We’ll get ourselves straight! Honest!
😏
I’m not holding my breath. After all, we’re talking about the same crowd that employs CC ‘closet reading’ on this Henny Youngman bit and think it’s a serious piece of informational text that needs to be followed to the letter:
“When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.”
😎
Oooh, and quoting “The Cremation of Sam McGee” in the bargain. Excellent!
Now, didn’t most of this happen under then governor’s leadership, and current Presidential candidate Jeb Bush? And isn’t one of his ‘claims to fame’ that he improved education and became a model for other states? Plus, he claims there was firing of the bad teachers and blaming Associations (union) for being part of the failing system.
With this information – which will spread to more people – I wonder how much Bush will continue to brag about his improved education system?
No, it didn’t happen under the Jebster. He was governor from 99-07. Quote from M. Schneider above: (Then-Governor Charlie Crist: “I commend Superintendent MaryEllen Elia and the Hillsborough County School District for their enthusiasm and commitment to working with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation during the next seven years to improve student academic performance through rewarding high quality teachers both professionally and monetarily. The foundation’s generous grant award of $100 million will greatly enhance the work the district has already done in this area.”)
Okay, but why do public schools keep making such bad deals? I recognize that there’s huge political pressure to follow Gates and I also recognize that a lot of time the ed reform billionaire is a much more sophisticated party in any negotiation, but can we ask them to start questioning “gifts”? This money isn’t free. With the donation comes adherence to Gates’ agenda and continuing costs.
We just had a situation like this in Cleveland, except it was the ENRON ed reformer. He “donated” start-up funds for a universal enrollment scheme to promote charters and once that money is gone Cleveland Public Schools will be picking up the tab to promote charter schools.
All they’re doing is getting around public debate and discussion by “donating” start-up funding. They then push the continuing costs onto the public.
If this couldn’t have passed without Bill Gates money it shouldn’t be adopted, because there’s not enough support for it.
The market for reformy products is artificially propped up, by villainthropic spending on the promotion of weak prototypes.
I get it, I really do, but there’s something called “opportunity cost” and schools have to start considering it.
Duncan and Gates are full of it. It isn’t “plus/and”- there’s limited time and limited funds and limited energy. When they opt to follow Gates they are NOT doing something else.
When Los Angeles decided to follow the ed reform herd and plow tens of millions of dollars into Ipads that was a decision NOT to do something else that might have returned some value. I feel like they’re bowled over by how slick this is and they use poor judgment. They don’t have to follow. They don’t have to offer their kids up as the latest ed reform experimental population. If they hear “national model” they should run screaming in the other direction. If this stuff has value it will come clear because there will be an actual, organic, small-scale process instead of this manipulated marketing of anything and everything. They have to trust their own judgment.
Agree, Chiara.
I live in Hillsborough County. This grant came at a time when the legislature was making drastic cuts to education. The Gates money saved a lot of teachers’ jobs, but as many of us knew then, they were making a deal with the devil (h/t Lloyd). Now the chickens are coming home to roost.
Yup. And they use that leverage to push the agenda:
“Requirements tied to federal Race to the Top education grants have become more work than the money is worth, some Ohio school districts say.
But some districts that have received money for years are reconsidering now, partly in response to costs but also because of new teacher evaluations tied to the grant money.
“We were spending a disproportionate amount of time following all the requirements,” said Mike Johnson, the superintendent of Bexley schools, which turned down the last half of a $100,000, four-year grant this school year. “It was costing us far more than that to implement all of the mandates.”
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2013/03/10/race-to-top-grants-not-worth-costs-officials-say.html
Greene’s assessment should be mandatory reading in every educational situation today.
Greene can’t state strongly or, loudly enough, how unreasonable Gates’ view of himself is. Gates wife told Vanity Fair that her life is worthwhile because she has made “one person breathe more easily.” Do those “breathing more easily” include, the families in Uganda and Kenya, paying 30% of their incomes for Bridge International Academies? Gates is reminiscent of drug seller, Shkreli.
Gates and his purse strings have jumped on various bandwagons based on assumptions and prejudice. I know he is a smart fellow so he should do his homework before trying to ram his version of “reform” down everyone’s throat. A real unbiased study or even reading the existing studies would help to curb his tendency to throw more gold on a sinking ship.
The continuing saga of the Whateverly Hills Billy’s
With Jeb, Eli(a) may, and the rest of the gang.
In today’s episode, Mr. Drysdale (played by Bill Gates, of course) is refusing to pay the water bill for filling the concrete pond, which seems to have a large crack in the bottom.
Meanwhile Eli(a) may, who has moved to NY to strike out on her own (again), is working with Granny (played by Meryl Tisch) and Jethro (played by Andrew Cuomo) to put in their own concrete pond for teachers.
It’s a real hootenanny
Kind of like money for nuthin beverly hillbillies:
Nice!
Denver Public Schools also got millions for pay for performance from Gates and it was used to hire a LOT of people (lots of great teachers left the classroom) to observe and evaluate teachers using a 20+ page checklist. UGH!
God save us from these evaluation rubrics. Just put smart, knowledgeable teachers in the classroom and trust. If parents or kids squawk, go check it out. That’s probably the best we humans can do. These faux scientific evaluation systems only give the illusion of control and efficacy. A giant waste of time, money and effort.
This is EXACTLY what is happening in Denver right now – the only difference would be the name of the district, the name of the program (we have LEAP) and the name of the superintendent (who has not, as yet, been fired, and who just signed a new contract). I found out yesterday that teachers are required to have all of their students reading a year ABOVE grade level by the end of the year. I guess that’s one way to generate a list of teachers you can fire. The district must be running behind on their quota.
That’s why I retired after 38 years of teaching-I always had an excellent evaluation but I became disgusted with everything! Poor teacher moral , they always tried to catch you but I was always working dilligently with my students.
I just wonder how much info had been released is actually true. It must be considered that immediately after Hillsborough was shorted $20million by the Gates foundation, the county invested millions in Microsoft Office Mix. Seems very odd to make a large investment into a company who’s owner just shorted you $20million.