When one foundation has amassed over $30 billion, it has the financial power to shape the policies of government to its liking.
The Gates Foundation has more than $30 billion, and when Warren Buffet’s gift of another $30 billion is added to the Gates fund, the Gates Foundation will have the power to direct global policy on almost any issue of its choosing.
Anthony Cody published a guest column in Education Week (funded in part by the Gates Foundation) that describes how the Gates Foundation intervenes in agricultural and environmental issues around the world, often in ways that support corporate profits rather than the public interest.
I have never believed that the Gates Foundation or the Gates family puts profits above the public interest. I work on the assumption that anyone who has more riches than they can ever spend in their lifetime or in 100 lifetimes is not motivated by greed. It makes no sense.
I believe that Bill and Melinda Gates want to establish a legacy as people who left the world a better place.
But I think their their efforts to “reform” education are woefully mistaken.
I have tried but had no luck in my efforts to meet Bill Gates. On the two occasions when I was in Seattle in the past year, I tried to arrange a meeting with him well in advance. He was never available.
I am puzzled by what I read in the column cited here. I am also puzzled by the Gates Foundation’s persistent funding of groups that want to privatize public education. I am puzzled by their funding of “astroturf” groups of young teachers who insist that they don’t want any job protections, don’t want to be rewarded for their experience (of which they have little) or for any additional degrees, and certainly don’t want to be represented by a collective bargaining unit.
I am puzzled by their funding of groups that are promoting an anti-teacher, anti-public education agenda in state after state. And I am puzzled by the hundreds of millions they have poured into the quixotic search to guarantee that every single classroom has a teacher that knows how to raise test scores.
Sometimes I wonder if anyone at the Gates Foundation has any vision of what good education is, or whether they think that getting higher test scores is the same as getting a good education. I wonder if they ever think about their role in demoralizing and destabilizing the education profession.
When Bill or Melinda Gates is asked whether it is democratic for one foundation, their foundation, to shape a nation’s education policy, they don a mask of false modesty. Who, little old us? They disingenuously reply that the nation spends more than $600 billion on education, which makes their own contribution small by comparison. Puny, by comparison. Anyone with any sense knows that their discretionary spending has had a powerful effect on the policies of the U.S. Department of Education, on the media, on states and on districts. When Bill Gates speaks, the National Governors Association snaps to attention, awed by his wealth. They are pulling the strings, and they prefer to pretend they aren’t.
But their disclaimers do not change the fact that they have power without accountability. They want accountability for teachers, but who holds them accountable?
When I see Bill or Melinda make a pronouncement on education, I am reminded of the song in “Fiddler on the Roof”: “When you’re rich, they think you really know.”
They don’t. And no one will tell them that they are out of their depth. They may be well-meaning but they are misinformed, and they are inflicting incalculable damage on our public schools and on the education profession.
Who elected them? Why should they have the power to shape American education?.
It’s puzzling.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
A self-perpetuating charitable organization does seem to be a contradiction of terms. How is success defined withing the B&M Gates foundation on any particular project? If they truly succeed at say, eradicating malaria in Africa, how will they sell the mosquito nets they invested in (hypothetically speaking since I do not know if they actually have a mosquito net making venture)? Is the cause secondary to the profit margin? Is the B&M Gates foundation trending towards a Machiavellian-type existence?
Consider this article in Vanity Fair that describes the new working conditions at Microsoft, where creativity is stifled so that already developed products can flourish and make money for the company. The article describe the way workers are evaluated in teams that put them on sort of a Bell Curve. It reminds me a lot of the new teacher evaluations plaguing the country. http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2012/07/microsoft-downfall-emails-steve-ballmer.print
” Eichenwald’s conversations reveal that a management system known as “stack ranking”—a program that forces every unit to declare a certain percentage of employees as top performers, good performers, average, and poor—effectively crippled Microsoft’s ability to innovate. “Every current and former Microsoft employee I interviewed—every one—cited stack ranking as the most destructive process inside of Microsoft, something that drove out untold numbers of employees,” Eichenwald writes. “If you were on a team of 10 people, you walked in the first day knowing that, no matter how good everyone was, 2 people were going to get a great review, 7 were going to get mediocre reviews, and 1 was going to get a terrible review,” says a former software developer. ‘It leads to employees focusing on competing with each other rather than competing with other companies.'”
A year or so ago, I had a student return for a visit who had been working at Microsoft and quit. He told me management at Microsoft was repressive, he hated Bill Gates, and that the company wasn’t run in the way people imagine. I asked him why he quit. He said that Microsoft made him feel his skills weren’t valued.
Teacher out,
This sounds like the ole ‘rank-and-yank’ system that infamous company used. You know,…..ENRON.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=enron%20rank%20and%20yank%20video&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CE4QtwIwAQ&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DeA0Rv3JddCk&ei=ZIH1T4SKJMGC2AXPvZX4Bg&usg=AFQjCNETA5zEilbN0KRACmddBLaFfLqtuA
I’m puzzled, too. When Gates first announced the foundation, my husband was at UCD working on international health and nutrition. The exact year was 1994, I think. Anyway, I confess I actually cried for joy, and I’m not easily moved by press announcements.
My disillusionment has been gradual, and in fact continues through this week. I wonder if you opened the links in my post?
You see a picture of Gates personally putting a dose of polio vaccine into a child’s mouth, in one link, as though he had bought it with his billions. It turns out later that what he bought was the leverage to spend the money my own students raise each year for Unicef, and that he used his GAVI Alliance control to engineer a secret price gouging scheme, to overcharge Unicef and the other real charities who purchase the vaccines.
That’s a cold fact, not a “conspiracy theory”, and it’s a crime when drug companies collude to raise prices. The puzzle piece missing is, as you say, a motive for the Gates Foundation. His rationale is apparently that higher profits will incentivize big Pharma to invest in research, he explained in his Forbes interview.
That turns out not to be the case. Is he deluded?
Great column chemtchr…linked above by Diane. It is you, yes?
I am looking forward to Part II. Do you know when that is coming out?
Can you write the link for the article for Gates and this appalling bit with unicef and big pharma mark up. He aligns himself with big pharma and big agra with their bottom line in mind not really philanthropy/humanity.
I’ve always doubted the integrity of the Gates Foundation. It suddenly went from a tiny outfit run essentially by daddy to a billion dollar outfit just when the anti-trust lawsuit was at its lowest ebb for MS in a cynical attempt to garner public support for MS. I also remember how the Foundation gave $1bn to India to help things like the fight against Malaria while at the same time MS, where Mr Gates was still CEO, gave $5bn to India to prevent the spread of open source, such as Linux. Call me a cynic but surely that should have been the other way around.
Teacher Out, “stack ranking” is a new insight for me. I can use that link in my follow-up post on leveraged philanthropy in Education Reform.
Of course, that’s exactly what his VAM-powered teacher management system amounts to.
I accidentally put my reply to Diane under your comment.
And yes, that’s my blog, Linda. Everybody, please open the actual links if you can. The final links in the Global Health and Global Development sections are to real and powerful Civil Society coalitions, who are leading in the right direction, and they need our support in this breakthrough month.
Chemtchr, If you want to cite me for posting the link and commenting on it, “Teacher Out” is Candace McCall.
Bill and Melinda Gates are not out to make the world a better place. They are out to control as much of the world as they can through their “malanthropic” efforts. The veneer of working for the public good really just masks the need for control, attention and ego aggrandizement Bill and Melinda seem to so sorely need. I maintain that if the Gates Family actually cared about people and the public good, Microsoft wouldn’t use slave labor to make its products and the Gates Foundation wouldn’t use the insidious means it uses to gets its way (and only its way) in policy.
Misanthropic would be the correct term. I’ve tried to sepaparate discussion of the Foundation from the corporation, to clarify the distinction between charity and profit-seeking.
But of course both strands coexist in the misanthropes own mind, and no wonder we see such a bizarre result.
One very important thing that seems to never get mentioned when we discuss the people sometimes referred to as the 1%. They are not just some folks that got really rich and are doing well. They, along with Mr. Gates, now have an almost limitless supply of money that can allow them to do whatever they want. Money is power, and power corrupts. What will a limitless supply of money do?
The inroads that the Gates Foundations at influencing scientific endeavors is just as chilling as their impact on education. Global impact with long term repercussions- sounds just like what Bill has done with education. Bill Gates and Monsanto are plowing through Africa- ignoring on the ground experts who have no products that can get marketed. Morphing the ecology without any serious consideration of the potential downside. ‘Our solution is better than the better situation’ attitudes does not mean that their solutions are the best one for the long term.
Self perpetuating and self serving philanthropy with no oversight. I liked the writer’s comments above that if they were so humanitarian, why don’t they change the working conditions for their factories?
Walk the walk if your going to talk the talk.
Here is the link for the Unicef story, concerned parent;
http://www.ghwatch.org/node/475
Global Health Watch is a good organization, and you should look around their site while you’re there.
Doctors Without Borders is real, too. They actually negotiated and got lower prices for measles vaccine and AIDS drugs for the most desperate countries they serve.
Thank you for link and for the article. I have sent it on to others as well as your article.
solution is better than the current situation– sorry typo and no proofing.
Wouldn’t they care what their legacy will be? Is there anyone who can tell them their hubris is clouding their judgement or is that not possible?
They’ve surrounded themselves with praise singers, so they think the legacy history records will be whatever they say it is. How can they avoid being suckered themselves, though? Their underlings are hungry, even if they aren’t.
They’re building a dynasty. Microsoft is losing market share, and could actually decrease dramatically in value. The Foundation institutionalizes and guards their power, with its ability to divert public wealth streams, seemingly at will; but we’ll see about that.
“My name is Ozymandius, king of kings.
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.”
Gates has made ‘population control’ his global mission. He sees the use of vaccines as a useful tool to that end. Not a benevolent mission.
I found no evidence that Gates sees vaccinations as population control. The discussion of health inequality and environmental injustice is muddled by false assertions that Africa is overpopulated (it isn’t).
Gates commented that lowering the child mortality rate is a way to lower the birth rate, and in this we can all agree. I think this “population control by vaccination” distractor is gray propaganda, put out to discredit cogent criticism of the Gates Foundation’s actual mistakes.
Then you either didn’t look hard enough, or could possibly be in denial. Maybe because you are under the false assumption that we have an over-population problem?
NOte that he ties in “global warming” to his quest to depopulate the world: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUXNiVW3oc4
Many of the Eugenists are global warming alarmists.
Here’s some quotes from the global warming eugenist/alarmists:
John Davis Editor Earth First Journal…”I suspect that eradicating small pox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing the ecosystems.”
Sir James Lovelock Scientist Futurologist, Envrionmentalist “the big threat to the planet is people: there are too many…….”
Dave Foreman Co-Founder of Earth First! …”My three main goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness returning…” (right now we have 6 1/2 BILLION people on the planet)
Club of Rome: Goals for mankind: …”the resultant ideal sustainable population is hence nore than 500 million but less than one billion”
Christopher Manes Writer Earth First! Journal…”The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing”
You should understand the political ideology of Bill Gates !!
Agreed. Vaccines are only related to lowering the birth rate in the sense that if you know your 2-3 kids will reach adulthood you don’t need to have 10! Few humans is essential to our survival if we are to have any quality of life at all on our beleaguered planet. And it isn’t eugenics MOMwithabrain if the effect is unilateral – unlike NOW wherein western women are the ones whose genes are disappearing in a sort of self-eugenics movement because we have the power to control our fertility! Would you really deny that to other women and ultimately your own grandchildren?
NO I do not agree. Over-population is a MYTH. The MYTH began in the 1700’s in England by Vicar Thomas Vicus: http://geography.about.com/od/populationgeography/a/malthus.htm
HE thought the world would be out of food by the late 1800s and thought doctors shouldn’t treat patients. He also thought that the “have-nots should be killed off (Sound like Eugenics yet?)
Paul Ehrlich in the 1960’s picked up on the myth and claimed that reproduction had overwhelmed the earth. (note that his claims and scare tactics mirror what you are saying in 2012 and we are all still just fine) He went on to claim there would be widespread famine that would wipe out large populations.
You have to have a DISASTER for the Govt. to come in and fix things.
Here comes the UNFPA to the rescue. Scare people and amazingly donations immediately began coming to the UNFPA. Notice though that this “crisis” has been happening since the 1700’s. It just keeps resurfacing.
Every family on this earth can live together in a house within the state of TEXAS.
Check the U.N. Population Database, the world’s population in 2010 will be 6,908,688,000. The landmass of Texas is 268,820 sq mi (7,494,271,488,000 sq ft). divide 7,494,271,488,000 sq ft by 6,908,688,000 people, and you get 1084.76 sq ft/person. That’s approximately a 33′ x 33′ plot of land for every person on the planet, enough space for a town house.
The global warming movement came out of the Eugenics movement from decades ago.
Eugenics in America naturally progressed into the Global Warming movement. While I do not believe every person who subscribes to the theory of “man made global warming” is a racist or a Nazi who wants to impose a Eugenic movement on the globe, I would definitely argue that the leading voices in the “man made global warming movement” are products of the old Eugenics movement from years ago.
If you look at the leading “experts” in the world who are vocal on the man made global warming issue, and you look at what they believe and promote, you will note the common theme of population control. The people who push population control for the purpose of reducing carbon emissions have this common theme in what they believe, in what they say, and then what they promote around the world.
Bill Gates who is one of the leading voices has suggested lowering the population 10 to 15%. Al Gore has stated…”too many nations are producing too many children too fast.” He supports cutting “out of control” population growth.
Rajendra Pachauri ( who has his Phd in Economics) Top climate “expert at the United Nations” supports China’s population policies which are policies that force women to have abortions and sterilizations.
Ted Turner…predicted catastrophy in a few decades so we have to stabilize the population. He said…”Global warming is because we have too many people using too much stuff. “A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels would be ideal”.
Prince Phillip the Duke of Edinburgh “If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels
John Davis Editor Earth First Journal…”I suspect that eradicating small pox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing the ecosystems.”
Sir James Lovelock Scientist Futurologist, Envrionmentalist “the big threat to the planet is people: there are too many…….”
Dave Foreman Co-Founder of Earth First! …”My three main goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness returning…” (right now we have 6 1/2 BILLION people on the planet)
Club of Rome: Goals for mankind: …”the resultant ideal sustainable population is hence nore than 500 million but less than one billion”
Christopher Manes Writer Earth First! Journal…”The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing”
These are the leading people in the Global Warming political arena. They are well respected, published, they’ve won Nobel Prizes, and they get tax dollars to promote their political agendas.
David Brower First Exect. Director Sierra Club:”Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a govt. license.”
My point is, this is about population reduction and these are the leading voices in the movement. So why the need to reduce the population even to the point where it becomes a forcible measure the Govt is now pushing on the citizens?
Eugenics promotes reduction and cleansing of the population and the eugenics movement started in the US after abolishing slavery and the increase in immigration.
Scare tactics were employed to such a degree that pseudo science saturated popular culture with fear that the country would become a race of mongrels and non-whites.
Oliver Wendel Holmes, Jr. US Supreme Court Justice….”It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind….Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” ..in a 1927 opinion ..Buck vs. Bell
Isn’t it just ironic that some of the vaccines pushed on African Children are not even allowed in the US?
Melinda Gates has gone on record discussing her interest in population control as a means to help families. [ There is a direct correlation between female educational levels and income for families that is tied to birth rate/family in third world countries. This is also tied to significantly decreased child mortality rates.] But, there is no discussion what so ever of vaccines being part of the method toward population control only decreasing child and maternal mortality rates.
If you can control reproduction, why not control education?
This is how Progressives think. They can control everything.
Goodbye liberty, Goodbye freedom. Hello Population Control freaks!
Gates has suggested lowering the population 10 to 15%.
He’s a Eugenist.
Eugenics promotes reduction and cleansing of the population and the eugenics movement started in the US after abolishing slavery and the increase in immigration. Eugenics was, and population control is currently about producing and maintaining a superior stock of humans.
Oliver Wendel Holmes, Jr. US Supreme Court Justice….”It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind….Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” ..in a 1927 opinion ..Buck vs. Bell.
In the USA, eugenic supporters included:
Theodore Roosevelt
National Research Council
the National Academy of Sciences
Distinguished philanthropies
prestigious universities
college and high school classrooms
Eugenics was taught in many college classrooms in the 20’s
In the 20’s some states were forcing sterilization on the undesirables. The last forced sterilization performed in Oregon was in 1978. 30 states in all were forcing sterilizations.
African Americans were also targeted and were spared time in jail if they agreed to be sterilized. “The Negro Project…was funded by John D. Rockefeller”
So why is anyone listening to Gates (the Eugenist) again?
The thing about having way too much money is this. In people with a pre-existing condition to think they are gods, it merely serves to inflame the disease. Much evil flows from that.
Thanks, Chemtchr and Diane, for this informative report.
I am heartened that others more articulate than I are standing back and looking at the big picture on more than one front at a time.
See my blog post: “The Place Where Three Wars Meet”.
Bill Gates is a one-trick pony. Microsoft corporation made its billions by dominating the desktop OS market with shady business practices and scorched earth policies. It’s product wasn’t the best and it didn’t “win” through free market competition. It “won” with antitrust tactics and by swallowing its competitors whole, making it nearly impossible for anyone to compete.
From Wikipedia:
“In the 1990s, critics began to contend that Microsoft used monopolistic business practices and anti-competitive strategies including refusal to deal and tying, put unreasonable restrictions in the use of its software, and used misrepresentative marketing tactics; both the U.S. Department of Justice and European Commission found the company in violation of antitrust laws.”
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is using the same tactics in their philanthropy hobby that they used to make their billions in the first place. They don’t know any other way of operating, it seems, and what was good enough to create billionaires and millionaires at Microsoft is good enough to tackle public education reform and malaria and any other cause that catches their attention.
The former employees of the Foundation dominate the US Dept. of Education, foundations and boards of directors, think tanks, governmental advisory groups, etc. It’s monopoly all over again. They’ve bought out the NEA, the AFT, the PTA, and most all the professional groups like the IRA, the NCTE and the NCTM — just like they bought out any serious competitors to Windows and Office.
I haver no window into their souls so I don’t know if they truly wish to make the world better or not and it doesn’t really matter. What matters to me is that they operate their charitable foundation the same way they operated their business — illegally, immorally, and unethically. As I said, a one-trick pony and not the brightest brains in the room at all.
While it may be true, you forget that their competitors are now far worse than Microsoft (Apple, Google, Oracle, etc.). Most of the practices used by Microsoft and punished by gobernments 15 years ago, now are used by them without nobody complaining about.
” I work on the assumption that anyone who has more riches than they can ever spend in their lifetime or in 100 lifetimes is not motivated by greed. It makes no sense.”
Then you don’t understand greed.
How true! This is the same Bill Gates that used all kinds of unfair tactics to “claw” his way to the top of the software heap, leaving his competition the crums and in tatters. This was never about kids and their education, its about POWER. Soon education will shift gears and become all digitized with lots of $ in play. Bill wants a big seat at the table with no real educators to crimp his style. He is simply setting the stage to allow himself to take part by establishing his credentials now as a reformer . Even with his billions, the billions more in education budgets at stake is certainly something that is driving him. Do we call that greed? You decide
Not greed. Not a “high” enough bar. No, it’s avarice-greed on steroids-for the love of money is the root of all evil.
Nothing is more threatening to representative democracy than “reforms” launched by the combined forces of wealth, hubris and ignorance. That is exactly why the greatest failing of our founding fathers, after their refusal to abolish slavery, was there unwillingness to impose the same constitutional checks and balances on the use of wealth they applied to governance. It’s not to late.
I disagree. It’s the moral foundation that offers those checks and balances. We had that in the beginning.
Now we remove the moral foundation. What do you expect?
And of what might that “moral foundation” consist??
For my family, our moral foundation comes from a faith based foundation.
As the culture moves more towards a secular foundation, is it any surprise that the $$ becomes almighty?
If you don’t mind me asking, which faith based foundation would that be? What is that foundation? Lay it out there for us. As it is, what I understand you saying is that without this “faith based foundation” one cannot be moral. And, quite frankly, I find that type of thinking appalling.
🙂 Why do i sense an all out assault coming?
Why don’t we keep this OUT of the realm of personal attacks and stick to the issues??
IN fact, maybe you can expand on what you said were the failures of the Founding Fathers as far as the checks and balances on wealth as they apply to governance.
The SCOTUS ruled that donations, contributions are free speech.
Maybe that is where the failure begins? Not in the founding documents but in the abuse by the courts? Just keep in mind, as the courts make policy, that is because many of them believe the Constitution is a living document. This is exactly how they abuse their own power.
The founding fathers also gave us a founding document that led to the freedom of slaves.
No, I certainly do not mean my responses to be a personal attack on you. Just the other night I had a good conversation for a couple of hours with a self-proclaimed born again, back to the earth/farmer christian. He was surprised at my questions, comments, and knowledge of his bible based beliefs and the fact that I wasn’t berating him for his beliefs. I just don’t agree with his particular beliefs.
My question to you is about your “moral foundations” have to be built on a sectarian basis statement. That is certainly not what the “founders” had in mind. Quite the opposite. I understand the confusion surrounding this misunderstanding as the christian hard core fundamentalists/dominionists/evangelicals have put out much distorted information concerning the thoughts/beliefs and intentions of those instrumental in founding this country. Some of those fundamentalist christian texts that many home schoolers use are chock full of falsehoods. See for more on the founding of this country: http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=fi&page=walters_32_4 or http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=fi&page=jacoby_32_4 .
By the way I agree with what you have to say about the SCOTUS.
As far as the accumulation of wealth, I know that many of the founders would have liked to have seen a “death” tax that would have put upwards of 95% of a person’s wealth back into the commons from which it sprang.
Your last statement is puzzling in that upfront, at least, we know that the founders did not consider women, blacks, non-property owning whites to be worth constitutional protections.
Duane,
“Moral” is when we submit to a behavior code from a higher authority and that is generally a government code. But philosophers long ago saw the error in this theory. Look at a recent example of one of the worlds most moral men named Hitler that always followed his government moral codes. If he needed to kill Jews he had a code enacted so he would be moral. During the Nazi war trials each guy would use a defense of following a government higher authority that was following government code. But the courts did not accept this argument because they instinctively understood what the philosophers of old understood, there is yet a higher moral code than what any government of men can construct. The courts basic response was that following government moral code is not defense when common sense (observing the laws of nature) are being violated by such code.
In 400 BC a bunch of pagan philosophers observed that the world has a natural order and a natural code that if followed will help the survival of man. Aristotle decided that this natural code and order was of far greater power than the arbitrary code created by a King or government and wrote a book called Ethics to persuade society to pressure government to not make laws that violate what he named, “the laws of nature” but rather support and defend them. These pagan philosophers claimed that there was some greater power at work than man and gave him/it the name Supra Numen, a divine spirit or entity that created earth’s order and moral code. They observed that if man followed these laws of nature he could better his chance of not becoming extinct. He defined the laws of nature as that behavior or action that serves the highest and best purpose of man.
The founding fathers understood this concept either from Aristotle and fellow philosophers 400 BC or Paul in the book of Romans that talks of God’s natural laws written in the hearts of all mankind, pagan included. Their conclusion was that the Federal Government must be kept from making any law relating to morals and behavior such left to the states. And yet more important to many of them was protecting their state religion from the threat of a government enforced national religion. Remember that the King of England signed a treaty with the 13 countries in the land of America and many of these 13 had a state religion and some like VA collected a state religion tax from everybody. And the founders didn’t want their country be it VA, CT etc. to be at risk of a Federal government national enforced religion.
So you are correct that the founders went overboard not to make a sectarian religious moral Constitution in an effort to protect their 13 countries’ state religions from the Federal government. By preventing a national religion as Madison pointed out, it best protected religion. He observed that government destroyed religion. It was because most of the first congress where preachers or at a minimum educated in seminary or at least religion that to protect the religious heritage they brought to this land that they deprived the Constitution to mess with religion or behavior. But their understanding of the need to keep the 13 countries Union out of religion in no way meant they would deny religion being kept out of government. And this was evident from the first day under the new Constitution when Sherman from CT suggested we celebrate a religious holiday of Thanksgiving. He mentioned to his fellow congress critters the verse 1 Kings 8: 22-29 where the Jews gathered to celebrate their new beginning after completing the temple. They all instantly understood the meaning once the verse was given and authorized Washington to proclaim thanksgiving to God to celebrate our completion resulting in a new country and Constitution. A Thanksgiving proclamation is still made by the president, even Obama.
Madison funded buying Bibles, Jefferson funded the construction of churches and paying for preachers (fulfilling the mandate of King Jame’s in the first documents of this land) and had his Jefferson Bible used in DC schools, the president being head of the DC school board. They immediately hired a chaplain to pray each day in congress. They opened up the legislative building for Sunday services for the folks of D.C. In other words these were deeply religious men by and large and they viewed only the government should be deprived of inflicting state religion on the people but that government should not be deprived of religion, as we have been indoctrinated today by our liberal courts under teaching of Cardozo.
Supreme Court Justice Joe Story, 1811-1845 wrote the most used legal commentary in the world (used by 220 countries) and the most used in the US and cited in many court cases argues that not only were we a Christian nation, but only not a Muslim nation (yes he said Muslim) and government as intended under our Constitution had an obligation to fund the growth of religion just not a national religion. Even Ruth Ginsberg, not religious fanatic with cite the words used in the first Supreme Court case on religion in her religious case decisions admitting we were set up as a Christian nation. The foundational case being Reynolds V US 1878 and almost always quoted in any religious case that argues the Christian nation thesis, quoting Madison and Jefferson on religion.
The Gates Foundation worked with schools and school districts in its earlier reform efforts (i.e. small schools). I remember an interview (but can’t offer citation) where Bill Gates talked about the foundation’s early efforts only attracting the All-Stars of teaching who were already great teachers. He wanted reform efforts that affected change in all classrooms/schools. Personally, I think the foundation got tired of having to work with school administrations, teachers, and school boards, and all the compromise that comes from collaboration and a more democratic approach.
No the Small Schools Initiative was another failed fad. I suspect he figured out that the problem wasn’t the size of schools !! He just hasn’t figured out the problems yet. I suspect he never will.
Those entrenched in political partisanship and ideology sometimes have a difficult time seeing what’s in front of their face.
small schools initiative was a trojan horse, that’s all. got a bunch of high-profile educators on board with gates philanthropy, working for what looked like a good cause, all the while laying the foundations for education deform through gates-funded experiments and rules changes.
Dr. Ravitch – I’ve long admired your writing on education, and this “blog” on the Gates Foundation is superb. I’m sure you don’t lack for positive response, but I simply can’t resist adding my mite along with my hope that you continue to speak out in the reasonable, concise, and persuasive way that you do. Surely someone who is on “your side” can find a way to get Bill and Melinda Gates to listen to you. Surely someone who has their ear can get word to them that you areTHE PERSON whose experience and insight would be the essential help to them. All the best!
He works from a political perspective. He’s a Progressive and everything he does, he does is based on his political ideology. Good luck trying to change that.
He’s running around the globe injecting children in order to reduce the population.
He thinks he can control the world.
Do you honestly think he’s not going to try to control education too?
It’s his mission in life. It’s what he THINKS he was called to do.
Sadly public education set themselves up for Gates and the Govt. bureaucrats to come in to save the day.
Where was the precious teachers unions while this was going on?
Let me guess……holding hands with those Govt. bureaucrats and greasing their palms!!
What about Sweden? Their educational system is one of the best in the world. It’s a public/private hybrid that essentially uses a voucher system. This is something the NEA has foot tooth-and-nail for years.
To post that “fighting public education” is by itself a bad thing is simply not enough detail. I think it’s safe to say that monopolistic “public education” is a failure in the U.S. It’s verboten to try something new?
What is the evidence that U.S. public education is failing?
What is the evidence that vouchers or charters produce better results when the students are the same?
Why turn public education into a profit center?
Why monetize the children?
I live in a district with the 2nd highest ranked high school in the state. I also live in one of the highest ranking states in the U.S.
You couldn’t pay me to put my kids in the public school.
More fads, political indoctrination, social engineering and indoctrination than I could ever stomach.
Good thing I live in a rich district, parents can afford private tutors.
I have all of the evidence I need. Fortunately we avoided it because we can afford school choice.
Yes we have parents who “think” the kids are doing well here, after all our dumbed down state standardized assessment tells them so.
Privatization is not the same as “turning children into a profit center”. That is just fear-mongering, plain and simple. “What about the children???” Give me a break and sell your fear elsewhere.
It’s about competition, not profit. Business generally is successful because of competition. No such thing exists in the monopoly of a public school.
Please, read about the Swedish system. Tell me exactly what is wrong with it and why the NEA should be fighting implementation of such a system. I’ll wait.
cavalier- sounds more like it…haughty, disdainful, or supercilious: an arrogant and cavalier attitude toward others.
Schools are not businesses so there is no comparison. We are not making widgets. We deal with human beings who grow and develop. Don’t be so disrespectful. Sell YOUR propaganda somewhere else.
If you don’t believe this is about profit, you are the one not informed.
http://capitalroundtable.com/masterclass/For-Profit-Education-Private-Equity-Conference-2012.html
Maybe there’s a balance between pure privatization/profit and public monopoly. In other words (again), the Swedish system.
Both extremes are bad, public monopoly or profit-driven private. I just don’t like knee-jerk reactions that ANY privatization is bad when the Swedes have shown that is clearly not the case.
You need to go to the What about Sweeden blog posted since this and read Jersey Jazzman’s response. There is more accurate information there.
This is in response to carlivar,
You stated: “It’s about competition, not profit. Business generally is successful because of competition.” No, business isn’t generally successful because of competition. Any and all businesses tend to and would achieve market monopoly status if they could. Competition is a hindrance to a “successful” business. By definition any business other than a single person operation is successful due to cooperation.
To confuse and conflate public education which has a completely different fundamental purpose-something to the effect of “A general diffusion of knowledge and intelligence being essential to the preservation of the rights and liberties of the people” as stated in the MO constitution-with the fundamental purpose of a business which is to make a profit off of supplying goods and services for without a profit the business will soon be defunct in our semi-capitalist system is too commit a logical error. The language of public education should be steeped in terms of justice, fairness and cooperation which do not lend themselves to polarity but to broad continuums of circularity/spherality of positions whereas the language of business is that of yes/no, profitable/not profitable or efficient/not efficient polar extremes across a divide on a linear scale.
I’m not against competition per se, been an athlete all my life but I know that cooperation not competition is best for a learning environment. We, the teachers in public education generally understand the above mentioned facts of language usage and usually know when to use both.
Public eduction was developed to provide a common framework so you could have citizens who could exist together in a free and democratic society.
However today we are going in a different direction. Now we have the elites who think they know what’s best for the rest of us. We became their puppets. We are now being pushed one way or another by those social forces.
No longer are individuals responsible for anything they do, it is now the fault of “society”.
They now see “social responsibility” …and not individual responsibility.
Introduction: Political activists and Bill Gates
People who know better how to control us than we do ourselves.
WE can’t let teachers or parents decide what’s best for their children, because they might make a bad decision.
Those in the elite class with the “right” social point of view, wont “dictate” but will now be our “guide”.
NOW we can all rest easy because we will do what’s best for ourselves with their guidance.
In the 19th Century, the individual was responsible for their own learning and was given the opportunity to learn and develop.
In the 20th Century, the schools are an expression of society’s values and should be imposed upon the child. This is about changing the child’s values and beliefs to what the elites believe is best for the child. After all, what could those idiotic parents know about values, beliefs, education, etc?
IF teachers are not going to empower parents and support parents, do you honestly think the elites in education are going to empower and trust teachers??
monopolistic public education? What a ridiculous phrase. The government (us, the people of the usa) offers every child an education for free. They do not monopolize anything. You are free to send you child to any private school of your choice.
To say that public education is a “monopoly” is pure propaganda. There have always been a variety of types of non-public schools in the US.
I repeat, there is NO MONOPOLY and NEVER WAS, no matter how many times this little piece of “spin” is repeated.
Can anyone go to a private school? No, but that’s not the point.
Going to a private school is an extra. It is not an essential service and it is not government’s responsibility to support luxuries.
As it is, government does support private schooling through tax exemptions, and depending on what state the private school is located in, through direct financial support.
Here is a parallel: Government may provide PUBLIC transportation but it does not buy and maintain PRIVATE automobiles for PRIVATE citizens.
Facts: Sweden’s education system gained high quality outcomes as an almost completely public system. Sweden has steadily dropped in education output rankings since introducing the public/private hybrid.
Sometimes, asking the right questions can be more devastating than the most in depth investigative reporting.
If every politician who backed repetitive standardized testing to prove schools were failing so they could be handed over to private, for profit education management companies and charter schools with no track record of producing better results than public schools were asked some of the questions here on camera and their reactions posted online, it wouldn’t take too long for this movement to go the way of privatizing Social Security.
Very good point, but do you think they would appear where they would be questioned by those who don’t agree with them or who know more than they do? And who in the media even knows what to ask? Even Ms. Kenny who wrote the book about her charter schools in Harlem had a softball interview with Brian Williams. She loses 50% of her students and teachers and her former teachers do NOT praise her at all, quite the opposite. Nothing controversial was asked…it was a book endorsement.
My experience is the politicians memorize 5-6 talking points and they just keep repeating them over and over even if the response doesn’t
answer the question. People believe the same talking points they hear over and over again.
That is because your politicians are clueless. They know very little about what they vote on. They rely upon lobbyists to make their case during public hearings and then they vote the way the committee recommends.
It’s the blind leading the blind.
My suggestion, DO MORE RESEARCH on BILL GATES. He’s a Eugenist and everything he does focuses on his political ideology. That means that he knows better than YOU, ME and everyone else.
He uses his money to push his political ideology on the rest of us.
For the life of me, I can’t figure out why people worship this man!
I’m not puzzled, I think they’re brilliant. A computer software company starts a “non-profit” to “reform” the schools. And then the recommended “reform” turns out to be tests and cyberclasses administered on computers, with programs that will require new software. Everybody wins!
In interviews I have heard Gates state repeatedly that they have found that technology in and of itself does not increase student achievement. They have put a fair amount of effort into trying to determine what does improve student achievement. Studies suggest that the primary factor is socioeconomic (the beliefs, expectations, and practices of the parents). The second most important factor, if I remember right, is the teacher. Some teachers appear to be consistently more effective than others. “Teach like a champion” by Doug Lemov was quite an interesting book discussing teaching practices and techniques that were found to result in greater student achievement.
It is worth noting that students entering college from the US tend to not be as well prepared as students from other countries such as China and India (particularly in the sciences). This is part of the issue that the Gates foundation, as well as the NSF, and others are concerned about.
Unfortunately, the Gates Foundation confuses scores on standardized tests with achievement. This is wrong. Of course, teachers are very important, but the bulk of studies do not support the Gates Foundation’s belief that the best teachers are the ones who raise test scores the most.
I read the Lemov book and it had some good tips for management for beginning teachers..good ways to control the crowd, keep kids focused, but it was pretty basic. From my memory (read it last summer) it was pretty regimented….the way they try to provide discipline and structure for students who do not have order in their lives. It matched the charter test prep. factory model, but there were few examples of brandishing out into creativity, higher order thinking, small group work, independent projects, self-paced research, etc.
Not bad for a starting teacher or someone working in a school very no concerned with test scores…not for my children, the ones I gave birth to and not for the children I teach.
Sorry typos…should be branching out..there shouldn’t be a no after very….iPad predicts words sometimes when you make a typo..wish this had an edit feature. Sorry.
AND–THE TESTS & SCORING OF THE TESTS ARE FLAWED!!
“Pineapple” question, Math questions with several or no right answers, & goodness knows how many more. For test scoring, read Todd Farley on the Huffington Post, & read his book, “Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized Testing Industry.”
(Sorry if this comment came in out of sequence.)
There’s a problem in your assumption. If the schools are buying lousy text books/programs (think fuzzy math and no grammar) then what makes you think they will buy GOOD software?
I guess the tech industry WINS but i’m not sure how the students win.
The thing that’s always missing from conversations started by the likes of Gates and others is an appalling lack of input from real educators. I think your reference to Fiddler on the Roof is quite apt. Gates is successful and rich, so he must know everything about everything. Schools are not businesses and our students are not widgets. In order to understand “value” of an education, you have to understand the inherent worth of an individual without being shown statistics to prove it. I think Gates mistakes the “value” of an education to be the value for corporations to enjoy regarding a workforce made to their order, rather than the value of an education to a person receiving the education.
I don’t think Gates’ operates from a “wealthy” perspective as much as a “political” perspective. Listen to him when he talks. It’s about his political ideology.
He, like many liberals feel guilty about their wealth and think they can impose their beliefs on everyone else.
Talk to teachers?? I don’t think so. Clearly he sees them as the enemy.
To me, the biggest players in education are the teachers and the parents.
Did he talk to them? Did he consult with them?
Of course not.
This is about what he thinks is best for YOUR classroom and YOUR kids.
It’s how liberals think.
IT’s not up to us to determine what works best.
If that were the case, he’d give block grants to schools to use as THEY see fit.
AND/OR he’d give money to parents so they could put their kids where they see fit.
That’s how freedom and liberty works.
The individual gets to make those choices. That may not always be perfect, but instead of a tyrannical approach, we would maintain freedom to “choose” what works best for our schools/children.
I appreciate your stance against Bill Gates but I am finding it hard to actually follow your contributions as it kitchen sinks all liberals and all progressives as being one and the same as his foundation. I am both a progressive and a liberal and am no fan of W. Gates or his foundation. Calling someone a eugenicist is pretty inciteful. The previous post did call up a wikipedia list of past historical figures of influence who were also from a different era. ( Not apologizing for their beliefs). Is there some substantiation that the Gates Foundation ‘s involvement with population growth and education of women in third world controls is from a eugenics perspective?
Please evaluate the effectiveness at reducing child mortality in Bangladesh through girls and young women being given access to a rounded education. (Not Gates foundation based initiatives but use as an example). Educated females have choices that uneducated females do not, more income, fewer children who have higher survival rates. Not all population control comes from a eugenics perspective.
I posted on another reply his eugenics mantra. It’s easily found on the Internet.
I do speak in general terms and I’d even go so far as to use neo-cons as another example of trying to impose their political ideals on the world.
If you do not fall in line with this ideology as a liberal, so be it. I do not always fall in line with a political party too. However if one is speaking in general terms and I do not fit the mold, I do not take it personally. I figure I just do not align.
I have worked with organizations that seek to eradicate hunger and poverty in 3rd world countries. Here is the difference between what Gates seeks to do, and other liberals who think they know what’s best for those people.
The organization I work with and offer financial aide to is Catholic Relief Services. This is an organization that does not go into communities to push any kind of belief system on the local residents. Instead, they go into the community to bring the members of the community to the table and ask them what THEY NEED.
They work together to figure out how to spend the money while helping those who are truly in need.
I will give you an example of how some of these organizations (like the UN for instance) works.
The UN in their quest to stop the spread of AIDS will distribute condoms to Africans. They “THINK” by doing this, it will help curb the AIDS epidemic.
What CRS does is, they go directly to the women. They find ways to empower women by offering them ways to earn a living so they don’t have to sell their bodies. You see, many of them are widows because of the AIDS epidemic. CRS will help them purchase a sewing machine for example so they can support their family and no longer have to sell their bodies to feed their children.
They will help them plant crops to feed their families. They will do things that actually help women and uplift them so they do not have to prostitute themselves.
That’s the difference between an organization that throws money at a problem, does nothing to stop the exploitation of women and pretends they actually did something. AND….an organization that empowers women, stops the sex slavery of women and gives them back their dignity.
Amazing what one can do when you include the community in the decision making process.
But Bill Gates knows so much better than the community?? 🙂
I would also ask you to think about population control and what that does in other countries.
For instance in many African countries there is no Social Security. Parents rely upon their children to take care of them in their old age. When organizations like the UN impose population control methods through limiting reproduction, many of the residents resent this approach.
They resent it because there is $$$$ involved.
The UN and the US will often times PAY countries to promote family planning methods.
Corrupt govts. will take that money and begin pressuring residents to stop having children. They will take away their land and impose other harsh measures on these people.
They end up resenting the US and end up losing property. They are pressured into having less children which can be a real problem for them as they age.
Who wins? The corrupted govts. who took YOUR tax dollars in order to essentially force women to comply.
The ERIN Project site will give insight a to just how controlling Gates money is. No matter what catagory you choose , click on the ‘Top Ten Funders’ choice and Gates takes first place in almost every one.
I read this in an article today….
One of Thomas Jefferson’s more famous remarks was,
I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.
Yes, it is through education that we create citizens to whom we can entrust “the ultimate powers of the society,” but it is also an informed public that is necessary to the governance of that education system.
http://educationnext.org/five-lessons-from-five-years-on-the-school-board/
Gates believes software must be proprietary or it won’t get written and sees the GNU GPL as a “virus” that harms business. He believes seeds must be patented in order to feed the world. So it’s of no surprise to me that he would think privatized education is being held back by publicly funded efforts. Saying he’s “misinformed” is quite kind. I think his view on education is systemic to his overall mindset of how the world should work.
Diane, go back and look how JD Rockefeller (Sr) took control of University of Chicago and then through his “philanthropic” efforts, affected the nature of schools in the reconstructing and racially struggling south. Rockefeller’s notions/biases backed by his funding allowed him to influence the character of the black schools to produce a working class for what he saw was the superior white population.
He, with his son (JD Jr), did this to ensure labor for the economic engine of the maturing industrial age: “We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning, or men of science .. The task we set before ourselves is very simple, as well as a very beautiful one, to train these people as we find them to a perfectly ideal life just where they are. So we will organize our children and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way, in the homes, in the shops and on the farm.” (Kevin Hayden, “Education vs. Conditioning: Wundt, Rockefeller & the Teachers College”, http://www.truthistreason.net/education-vs-conditioning-wundt-rockefeller-the-teachers-college )
His grandson Nelson then exported this idea of guaranteeing an economy by affecting labor via education to South America, Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, to all the then “developing” nations.
See my blog about it here: http://shawnbeightol.com/blog/?p=266 or read “Thy Will Be Done: the Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil” – a summary of this book can be found at http://www.whale.to/b/ruiz.html
History is the repeating cycle of the conflict for and grabbing/siezing of power over others. Financial power, military power, economic power, resource power.
Nature teaches us that living things move to fill niches.
Bill Gates is simply this generation’s power-monger to use the facade of charity to hide his social control and engineering.
shawn Beightol
Miami
http://www.shawnbeightol.com
Oh it’s all about those worker-bees!! Now we have Gates and people like Marc Tucker figuring out what those worker bees can do for the rest of us.
Click to access Hyde_Cuddy_testimony.pdf
I guess my point was/is…
management has always sought to gain the most from its “worker bees.”
Extremely wealthy management/corporations have the capital to not only exploit the worker bees by interfering and controlling their own workers, but they manipulate society and the structures within society to maximize their gain, create markets, eliminate competition…
Rockefeller interfered with the character of American Education by buying a large chunk of the teacher training (University of Chicago, Teachers College), he affected the character of American education and thus society, particularly in the south which had been devastated by the civil war and was still rebuilding, still finding a place/role for blacks. Rockefeller and his dynasty saw blacks as the perfect “worker bees”/labor force for not only his HUGE empire, but for other empires, while at the same time using such diabolical social engineering under the guise of charity work to rehabilitate his dynasty’s public image.
He was so successful that his family exported his social engineering (that created markets for his products – or raw materials for his industries) around the world to the so called “developing nations.” Rockefeller’s dynasty manipulated the film industry, commercials, the modern evangelical missionary movement, etc to engineer favorable “developed nations” as markets and resources for his industries (primarily oil – his corporation, Standard Oil, was so large that when it was broken up
Now consider the parallels with Bill Gates. I wrote about this in my blog October 5th and November 14th when the newspaper the MIami Herald published a glowing report about Miami-Dade’s rushed implementation of the newly announced Race to the Top “Performance Pay.” Florida Courts eventually supported my lawsuit that the ratification had been illegal. I charged that the ratification by our local union (which I alleged has been co-opted by MDCPS administration via financial subsidies) was improperly noticed, that the outcome was already a “done deal” (training and materials had already been conducted/produced as though the ratification had occurred when it hadn’t), and that the online system used was insecure and prone to fraud.
The Miami Herald glossed over my charges calling them “the complaint of one teacher.”
At the end of the article, the author, Laura Isensee, described herself as being attached to the Hechinger Institute. Turns out this is a Gates Foundation established and funded journalism engineering program – they are based on Columbia’s land but are NOT Columbia. Their purpose is to recreate and manage the way the media reports on Education. Here’s what I wrote:
On investigation, I find that the Hechinger institute participates in “studies” and series around the country (see USF’s Sherman Dorn’s documentation of their manipulation of the media here: http://shermandorn.com/wordpress/?p=2445 and http://shermandorn.com/wordpress/?p=1682 ) I found that they were started up and are annually sustained by millions from the Gates foundation and the Lumina Foundation (which has donated over $350000 to the ALEC initiatives). http://www.luminafoundation.org/newsroom/news_releases/2010-11-30.html , see also http://hechinger.tc.columbia.edu/how-we-work/our-supporters/
I found out that the Gates Foundation has donated $500000 to Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Educational Excellence, which participated in the crafting of the 2010 Senate Bill 6 vetoed by quickly extinguished Charlie Crist and Senate Bill 736. see http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/education/22gates.html
I found out that Jeb Bush is traveling around the country, exporting SB 736 type “reform” (which most professional educators refer to as “deform”): http://perdidostreetschool.blogspot.com/2011/04/jeb-bush-bill-gates-eli-broad-barack.html
And I find out that the Gates Foundation is actively replicating what appears to be going on with the Hechinger Institute: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/gates-spends-millions-to-sway.html where the Post provides a copy of a Foundation business plan that states their goal is to co-opt media channels, establish strong ties to journalists (why would they want “strong ties to journalists?”).
Finally, today I read about Parent Activists groups pushing “parent trigger” legislation…only to find out that they too have been bought and manipulated by the Bill Gates Foundation: http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2011/10/09/general-us-parent-unions_8725489.html
Folks, this isn’t the democratic, check and balance approach to finding “the truth”. This isn’t government “of the people, for the people”
this is the wealthiest people in America forming one non-profit after another through which they are funneling their money and spinning their “news,” their “truth.”
History is full of examples of people in needy situations being vulnerable and impressionable to constant propagandizing…what the Gates Foundation would call “Advocacy.”
But the Gates Foundation and other similar multi-billion dollar resources have a message to hypnotize the masses with and they are doing it by buying out every channel of information…controlling the message and the choices “you can have any flavor ice cream you want: vanilla or vanilla.”
The approach is incredibly risky.
And wrong.
We know what is wrong with education: yes, unions have protected members to maintain dues revenue (including bad teachers) and have promoted issues that are more related to their economics than Johnny’s education. But the same administrative/managerial bloat that is observed in private sector is making educational systems top heavy and reliant on data acquisition and analysis to support their burgeoning numbers.
The problem is these to some extent, but it is far greater due to the changes in culture and values – the stellar rise of the importance of amusement, entertainment, and sports. The stellar rise and increase in the availability of tech toys, virtual reality, games, and social communication channels. The continued increase in single parent homes, the cost of living and the increasing unacceptable view of “living without” gadgets, conveniences, and perqs that drive a parent to work more, borrow more, and become financially depressed.
You know poverty has been shown to be so important to the ability of a student to come to school prepared to learn. And its not just a function of having money, but having the familial infrastructure that correlates with increased income.
Please help us investigate the extent of the Gate’s Foundation and its allies’ influence and efforts to undermine the democratic approach to troubleshooting our culture and jointly, cooperatively finding the solutions.
Regards,
Shawn Beightol
19th year Chemistry Teacher,
Miami-Dade County Public Schools
Beights@yahoo.com
Shawn
Have you asked yourself, WHY?
http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/
The amount of opinion-not-backed-by-fact and outright falsehood on this blog is stunning. Gates is trying to fix the broken education system. Maybe it’s not perfect and there could be rational arguments for or against his strategies. Read any OECD ranking of the pitiful US system vs the other modern countries in the world and then continue to defend the system from change.
Sorry, but this is nonsense. I have the PISA scores in front of me. American students in low-poverty schools outperform all the highest nations–Finland, Japan, Korea, etc. I have scoured the OECD data. The US leads the advanced nations in CHILD POVERTY.
HOW? I agree it’s broken, but how is he fixing it?
Mark,
He is not trying to fix it. He wants to devour, destroy and control it. He is not motivated by good deeds and helping other people’s children..he is motivated by $$$$$$$. You are misinformed or reading the Gates funded research that always agrees with Gates.
I just disagree that he is motivated by $$. Everything he says and does is rooted in his political ideology.
The Gates foundation has always seemed to have issues with how they distribute their funds, like there is some type of social justice disconnect. When they started High Tech High in New Orleans, the year before Katrina, they did not make sure the infrastructure was in place to handle the electronics in that elderly building and my friend’s classroom did not get wired. She was supposed to teach project based education in a setting with no technology! And she was new to the system although highly experiened. Then Katrina came so it was all moot. High Tech High was washed away.
One thing about Bill Gates is that you need to remember that he was not always a philanthropist. He became one under pressure from Ted Turner who discussed the need for him to share his wealth. Ted is a character and owns the Atlanta Braves and a few TV networks. I think he may have gotten some of his philanthropy from his ex-wife, Jane Fonda.
It has gone around in special education circles for years that Bill Gates has Asperger’s Syndrome. People on the autism scale have major difficulties relating to others and empathizing. This would explain why he would focus on the technology and monetary aspects of philanthropy rather than the social justice aspects and might not see where some of the causes he supports and the way he supports them might not be in the best interest of the beneficiaries.
I am tired of the constant comparison of the achievement levels of American students with those of children from other developed countries. The fact is that Americans are productive workers and creative thinkers and we have a whole lot of successful American professionals who work competitively with other professionals from other countries. We have to import skilled laborers, but it is rare to have to import doctors, lawyers or engineers to fill the employment needs of our nation. And they don’t have to go to school until 10 PM to do it like kids in South Korea and our kids are not prohibited from following their dreams because of test scores. They also don’t commit suicide because they cannot get into the “right” high school. They may not get get a scholarship, but if they can flll out a FAFSA American kids can find a college that will accept them if that is what they want to do even if they have to start at a two year school.
Just like being a math major does not make you a math teacher, being a rich millionare or influential politician does not mean you know what the schools need.
Currently, the Gates Foundation is one of three funders for Michigan’s new “state-wide” school district for “failing” schools — the EAA (Educational Achievement Authority). I attended a presentation of their fiscal year 2012-13 proposed budget and learned that the Gates Foundation has given $150,000 for start up costs and to date; has applied $32,175 for Curriculum and Instruction Salaries. When I asked where a parent could view how the remainder of the Gates grant funds were being spent, the presenter said that information would be available “later.” I am concerned that this information was not available up front, even in draft form, for a document entitled “fiscal year” budget. My takeaway from their presentation of the “learning model” for this district is that students will sit at computers most of the day with very little teacher interaction.
The buzz word will be self-directed learning which is just code for getting rid of teachers, lower the labor costs, promote test prep and funnel the savings to pay for more consultants/profits.
This method creates more jobs for those at the top; those who would prefer never to deal with the lowly task of teaching, learning and developing relationships and trust with real live children.
Yes self-directed = Constructivism. It’s a great way to put teachers in the firing line. Students get angry at the teachers for not teaching. Parents get angry at the teachers for not teaching their kids and then they are willing to compromise and accept the computer teaching their children.
Studies show that students are at a disadvantage in a “discovery” or Constructivist classroom. IT’s the perfect StoRM.
The govt. must break your leg, before they can hand you a crutch and say…see we fixed it.
He funds Nellie Mae too. Nellie Mae then funds local grant foundations. Follow the money and look at what the schools have to do for that funding.
Nellie Mae promotes community organizing. That’s their focus.
Not academic excellence.
This is a political agenda and you can read it here: http://annenberginstitute.org/PDF/NMEF_Report.pdf
You will note that they reference Saul Alinsky and Arne Duncan on page 1.
This is a political movement. You should know all of the players.
I do know that this is a political movement with a specific agenda.
I also disagree with the idea that the Gates Foundation are more concerned with corporate interests rather than the pubic interests. I think the Gates family are genuinely giving and just “helpful” people.
But, I see what you are seeing. It could be possible that they are taking the wrong steps with education reform. I, however, want to say that the Gates Foundation is NOT greedy. Yes, Gates is a ruthless businessman, but he keeps his operations and philanthropy separate. I like to think of him as a modern “Robin Hood”.
I can personally testify the genuine consideration of the foundation. I have received the Gates Millennium Foundation Scholarship, which will pay for my undergrad to Ph.D degrees. I come from a very low-income family, so education would have been impossible for me had it not been for the Gates Foundation.
It’s nothing personal. I really do think the Gates Foundation works for the interests of the public.
http://www.rifatmursalin.com
It seems to me, you are basing your opinion on emotions and leaving out a number of facts. I actually have NO problem with Gates paying for your education and applaud him for finally funding something worthwhile.
I do have a problem with him funding education reform in a way that limits and erodes local control of our schools.
Public schools were founded upon local communities which were supposed to direct the education their children received. Read many of the State Constitutions. I would suspect you’d see this clearly spelled out.
It’s a joke to even think there is any local control left in a school district and instead of seeking ways to support the local community in their efforts to improve the quality of education, he simply uses the top-down approach as most liberal-minded people do.
This approach is far different from the liberty-minded people who believe the decisions are best made at the lowest level.
I completely disagree that Gates is concerned with Corporate interests. Although the tech industry is going to benefit immensely from his reform efforts. I still tend to believe he is driven by his political motives if you listen to him speak and look at what he’s actually done.
No Gates is not working for the public good. If he were, he’d be doing things that would involve the community. He would allow the community to direct how to fix their own problems. When you cut the community out of the picture, how do you expect them to respond?
Look at the teachers on this blog and how angry they are that they are removed from this reform effort. These are the people on the front line and they are cast aside as if they have no idea how to educate children.
I can’t imagine any great company operating in a way that ignores the opinions and thoughts of those on the front lines of the operation.
The parents. Where are they in all of this? NO where to be found.
No, he took Marc Tucker’s vision and decided to fund it. A vision that has complete disregard for everyone else because HE knows best.
He may THINK he’s doing good, but there is a cliche that says: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Bill Gates had learning disabilities. I assume that like many people he is blaming his struggles on teachers who failed him. I am sure there are teachers who failed him. When he and I were kids there was not much known about the areas in which he had an issue. So now he is taking it out on the whole educational system. He has no idea what is wrong with his methods.
The more politicians mess around in education the worse off American children are.
Let’s face it, the corporations and their foundations using NGOs like UNESCO are trying to take control over everything. If you read about the UN’s educational progams, it’s all about global government. Gates is no different than the Rockefellers and Soroses of the world who want one world and to control everything. It’s a sickness. We must gut our current government and get them out of our children’s classrooms!
An earlier comment was made about looking to Sweden as an example to follow with their blended local school/voucher structure. I think a better model to look at is actually Finland. There was an article in NEA Today by Linda Darling-Hammond (from Stanford University) about the reforms Finland made that brought their ranking on international tests up from being near the bottom to being in the top 10 in all subjects tested by the PISA. I highly recommend everyone read this article:
http://www.nea.org/home/40991.htm
Finland has made more stringent requirements for entering the teaching profession and put it on par in prestige and respect with that of doctors and lawyers. Their teacher prep program is a 3 year-long graduate degree in which teachers leave with a Master’s degree (which by the way is also free with living expenses so teachers don’t go into debt to become a teacher. How nice would that be?!) They have national guidelines that are not prohibitively long (Common Core State Standards is the US’s attempt at that), no standardized testing until the end of high school, more equitable funding for schools that gives more money to the neediest schools, and give teachers plenty of time for collaboration and professional development. Because of the training and respect teachers have, they are trusted to make sound educational decisions in their students’ best interestsThe reforms Finland put into place were over the course of 40 years – they were systematic and given time to develop, not scrapped because immediate results weren’t produced. Privatization of schools wasn’t one of their reforms.
There are definitely reforms that can be made to improve education here in the US. Privatizing education isn’t one of them. I distrust a lot of these philanthropic organizations trying to “reform” education because the money they donate comes with so many strings attached that serve to further their own agenda and don’t necessarily benefit education and improve student achievement. Our students aren’t just their test score, so I really appreciate the comments made in the articles about Finnish education in which their teachers state that they know so much more about their students than test scores can show.
Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland by Pasi Sahlberg
A review by Sandra Stotsky
Journal of School ChoiceVolume 6, Issue 2, April 2012, pages 295-300
http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/wjsc20/current
You can also google: The Serpent in Finland’s Garden of Equity
Essay Review of Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland by Pasi Sahlberg (NY: Teachers College Press, 2011)
Finland is great, but Diane is right that the PISA scores of low-poverty schools in the US are truly excellent. Poorer kids do badly on tests, and the US has more poor kids than most countries. It’s pretty simple.
I agree. I also like some of the things Finland implemented as part of their reforms. I think teachers like being able to collaborate with one another, and to actually be given time to do so would be wonderful! Currently, our district is implementing Professional Learning Communities (PLC’s) but it’s very micromanaged and we have little time to actually collaborate. I did go back and get a Master’s degree in education myself, but I always feel there is something more I can do to improve as a teacher, and I know there are areas I still would like to improve upon. The idea of having more time in the teacher preparation programs is appealing to me for that reason – I imagine how much more effective we could be as a beginning teacher with that much training beforehand.
I do agree with both you and Diane though, poverty plays a huge role in test performance and is a huge problem for our country. I just read an article by Stephen Krashen about the effect of poverty on student test scores:
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fsdkrashen.com%2Findex.php%3Fcat%3D4&h=-AQF531eSAQGJY3QTe8NqBBpWyN63Z8V5T8rRsi-2GX1o5Q
He makes some interesting points about taking the large amounts of money being spent on assessment systems for these high stakes tests and for the Common Core and instead directing those funds toward ameliorating the issue of poverty in the US. What a positive effect this could have on people’s lives, let alone these test scores, if that were done. It’s like treating the cause rather than just the symptoms.
I love the reference of new teachers without roots as “astroturf.” I guess this is why the anti-public education crowd trying to eradicate in WI don’t like us season teachers..we are like old weeds with deep roots and are hard to pull out.
Like Obama and Duncan, Gates is a hypocrite. All three of them went to elite private prep schools that offered a meaningful curriculum, small class sizes and little to no standardized testing, and they send their kids to that kind of school, but they want to impose larger classes and more testing on the rest of us.
Good observation Ed.
“They may be well-meaning but they are misinformed.” There it is. So I ask: why aren’t organizations opposed to the standardization of education and the deprofessionalization of teaching applying for Gates Foundation money? I’d have to imagine that the mid-level managers who make decisions about doling out a few hundred thousand here or there are not ideologues bent on destroying what most of us in the teaching profession know to be sound philosophy and practice.
Seriously, their coffers are virtually unlimited. And we all know that public money (if it exists at all) is difficult to obtain while our economy continues to sputter along and political decision-makers bludgeon us with talk of austerity. If the purpose is sound, it seems to me that getting money from the Gates Foundation (and others like it) is simply a matter of going through the bureaucratic motions of applying for the money. For example, would the Gates Foundation really deny a grant to, let’s say, an organization that works to promote inquiry-based learning in secondary history classrooms – a venture that is the antithesis to standardization? My instincts say no, they wouldn’t.
The problem is that folks (like me) who stand against privatization and standardization – while they are (mostly) correct – are either too proud or too blind to admit they’re shouting into the wilderness. Furthermore, they, unlike their opponents, are not properly organized. And let’s face it, Teachers Unions (god bless them) are not the vehicle through which we must effectively react to the corporate takeover of our public education system. The other side has effectively tarred and feathered them for the time being. Teachers would be better served by allocating some of their dues to non-profits that work to destandardize education and professionalize teaching.
Those of us allied with Ms. Ravitch, we educators who are against over-reliance on high-stakes testing, standardization of curriculum, and the deprofessionalization of teaching, need an attitude adjustment when it comes to the Gates Foundation and other sources of private money. While we loathe the weakening of public education, we must come to terms with the fact that power (money) has firmly shifted into private hands. Federal discretionary spending on education is a mere drop in the bucket. Many states (like mine) are broke. We need to stop complaining about reality and stop demonizing folks like Bill Gates. Rather, we must persuade private interests to help us compete with our opponents who receive the lion’s share of their money. And unless we’re prepared to start a revolution and think we can change the “system” in the short run (ha), we better start playing the game for the long run.
Let’s convince the Gates Foundation that we are right. Let’s put their money to good use. For if we don’t, our voices will be reduced to mere rhetoric while education becomes just another commodity to be bought and sold in the “market”.
your instincts are dead wrong;
all of this has been planned out step by step, state by state; Gates’ money has gone to every single possible ‘interest’ group well in advance of the roll out of Common Core – PTAs, unions, legislators, DOE, think tanks, astro-turf organisations to make it seem like there are multiple voices calling for his reforms, staff planted in strategic positions, media campaigns;
he has a business plan and its functioning perfectly, on time, on budget and to the letter of the agenda…. The push back on Common Core, however, is something he didnt count on and is causing him to have to scramble with an intensive PR response…
If you are an anti-edreformer and you want a grant for something educational that DOESNT fit his agenda, you will not get it….
You write: “our voices will be reduced to mere rhetoric while education becomes just another commodity to be bought and sold in the “market”.”….. as far as Gates’, Obama, Duncan et al are concerned, we are that already….
It’s time for militant fightback….
“don’t want to be rewarded for their experience (of which they have little) or for any additional degrees”
Younger workers are being systematically excluded from the economy by the boomer generation. Boomers, who entered the workforce with little student loan debt at a time when our public universities were publicly funded demand solidarity in defence of seniority rules but are strangely silent when younger generations jobs are on the line. We need those jobs to pay the tuition debt brought on by the tax cuts boomers gave themselves after receiving low cost higher education. Then, while young teachers face layoffs, they expect raises for completing online coursework from some barely accredited “university.” Give me a break. I’m not one to side with corporate education reform. I’m really not. But taking a parenthetical dig (“(of which they have little”)” at younger workers who are really, really frustrated at a system that systematically discriminates against those entering the workforce is just really deeply divisive. If boomers want us to stand up for their seniority rules and their raises then they need to start standing up for our jobs. Teachers need to stop playing defence on education reform and stop letting corporate ed reform set the agenda. Solidarity needs to extend to everyone, not just the established insiders. How do we get more and more truly talented and inspired teachers into the class, including younger teachers who can relate to students and integrate technology? How about student loan debt forgiveness and on-the-job certification for those with degrees in needed disciplines or regions? How about tapping into the many PhD with subject matter expertise who are struggling in the swamped academic job market. These are people with years of classroom experience as TAs and who can inject cutting edge knowledge and ideas into our classrooms. How about lowering barriers to entering the profession for such individuals? I am a very liberal/progressive person and I do not agree with the governor of my state on very much at all, but hen NPR interviewed a teacher’s union rep on education reform it sounded like her only agenda was to protect the jobs and raises of older teachers. Quite insultingly to those of us who might want to transition from higher ed to high school teaching, she said it is impossible to do that without going back to school for two more years to get certification. There was nothing about identifying effective younger teachers so that their jobs can be protected from layoffs. I’m not saying that corporate assessment schemes aren’t flawed, but where is the counter-proposal so that when jobs are on the line we can say “this person is a demonstrably effective teacher” and have some solidarity in protecting that job?
Eh, sorry about the ramble but I really think that many boomers are completely tone-deaf in understanding how hard it is to break through in this economy and the talking points I hear on ed reform really reflect that tone deafness. Is it really that hard to understand how I can’t get that worked up about seniority rules and raises for boomers when I can hardly feed my family on the $15,000 I make as an adjunct? When I hear that they’ve got people with no degree in math teaching high school math, but I have to go back to school (in my 30s, after completing a PhD) to get certified if I want to do the same? Give me a break. If you don’t want me to grow increasingly sympathetic to corporate education reform then start extending solidarity beyond the interests of the financially established boomer generation.
Yes Diane, if you believe that earnest disagreement is impossible, that other people disagree with you can be puzzling. I can’t imagine why Gates hasn’t spoken with you.
It is amazing that nearly all I see in some of these comments is self-concern. Imagine how some of you look from the outside: Choice advocates want a larger group of families (i.e. those not wealthy enough to buy out) to be able to choose where and with whom to send their children, and you become indignantly political to stop them? If ever there was a reliable indicator that you are pedagogically impotent, it is this.
Wow. I never knew I was pedagogically impotent. Thanks for that. I should warn you that my blog site is open to honest and frank discussion. It is open to dissenting views. It is not open to insults, especially when they are directed at me. It’s my blog. So watch out, buddy.
Self-concern…really? How many of these posts and comments have you read? People are clearly concerened about children, teaching, learning and the future of our country and you are concerend with defending billionaires who claim to be philanthropic.
You’re so tough insulting an educational historian and an educated woman that you won’t even post your name JD…..Man up tough guy.
Diane,
Maybe you could post a white paper with a detailed guide for turning around failing schools. You are obviously an educated woman and an educational historian and I am sure that many would appreciate your insight into what an optimal school should look like. Many of the posts rehash known problems but few solutions are offered.
The Education field doesn’t really promote the findings of controlled studies like medicine. If we find that giving estrogen to prevent hot flashes increases deaths we announce the findings and stop giving women estrogens.
When Head start is shown not to improve children’s outcomes. The findings are buried and the program continues to be funded.
Why is no one finding a program that counter acts the effects of poverty? A good education helped me rise from poverty. We need to replicate my success, but the data for urban schools looks hopeless. I was fortunate to be educated in a rural environment with fewer potential distractions. The data on urban students living in poverty makes me want to get a bus and ship them all to my little school on the prairie.
Forgive me if you have already posted something similar to what I have described. I just found your site yesterday and started poking around.
Core Knowledge Schools
“Who elected them? Why should they have the power to shape American education?.”
Good point – who elected the NEA? Why should they have the power to shape American education?
Unlike the big foundations, the NEA represents teachers who work in schools every day. They are not shaping American education. They work hard every day to take care of our children and teach them, often under trying circumstances. The NEA was elected by its members: the teachers of America.
They have a P.R. problem. They are far too political. Obama stabs the teachers in the back and they come out and support him. They could have at least taken a neutral position in this next election to maintain SOME credibility.
They are record for saying it’s all about their “power”. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkLGvDQsvmY
Parents would like to see the NEA show genuine concern for their children. Admit what is NOT working and work towards improving the quality of education.
If that was their commitment, it would go along way.
I understand they are a union and their concern is for their own power and representing teachers. However if they would at least shift focus from political extremism to quality education, the P.R. would improve.
I have to fight everyone on the issue of teachers because they’ve lost SO much credibility because of the union membership. They come across as political extremists.
Gates is a dangerous man who has joined the cabal of dangerous corporations and foundations who have hooked up with the UN, a dangerous NGO, and now partnering with gov’t to control our kids, the population and everything else not just education. Everyone should be upset about this.
Perhaps your sense of surprise will fade when you consider that Bill and Melinda Gates aren’t really that well educated and don’t really care about education in the traditional sense of the word. Bill Gates may have attended fancy prep schools and Harvard, but he dropped out from that school to pursue his business career. And his wife’s degrees in computer science and management don’t suggest a deep education either.
Instead, I suggest both Gateses reflect the dominant intellectual philosophy of the computer geek and hacker, and business, cultures–a rejection for any formal process of intellectual development and a disdain for any culture in which intellectual development takes place by masters tutoring and coaching students. The culture of the hacker-geek and MBA places a heavy emphasis on technical knowledge and conspicuous achievement, such as getting rich in business ventures or demonstrating dominance of a technical subject. In this world, there is a clear pecking order that is determined by each person’s abilities; thus only those abilities that can be quantitatively measured count. This world does not value ideas such as wisdom, on which the humanities and liberal arts are founded.
In short, these people are far closer to Meno than to Socrates. Their efforts clearly refect a desire to re-cast education in the image of materialistic competition, in which the virtuous are those who gain the greatest material wealth. Not surprisingly, they want to destroy any system that is based on communal and altruistic values, like public education and the liberal arts, and replace them with systems that relect their materialistic values and thus provide them great material rewards.
It isn’t about how much you have; it’s about how much more you get.
It seems obvious to me at this point that whatever Gates wants to happen in education – no matter how misguided – is going to happen. Done deal.
“I have never believed that the Gates Foundation or the Gates family puts profits above the public interest. I work on the assumption that anyone who has more riches than they can ever spend in their lifetime or in 100 lifetimes is not motivated by greed. It makes no sense.”
One of the ongoing struggles of humans is fighting and protecting themselves against those whose greed knows no bounds. Making sense has nothing to do with it. This is the human condition. Frankly, the previous comment sounded shockingly naive.
Also, people are not all evil v all good. Nazi officials only killed some children, but had fondness for others. Gates may have some good intentions, and didn’t the Nazis want to make Germany a stronger place?
If we are headed toward fascism, as I believe we are, then Gates would be my number one choice for The Leader. Americans confuse wealth with intelligence, and business acumen with wisdom. Many Americans would fall all over themselves to support him blindly.
This discussion about Gates is very important. Please keep it going. Keep watching. Eventually our Internet comments may be censored, so get the info out while you can.
You obviously don’t get it.
You’re puzzled?
Allow me to solve the puzzle.
This exchange from the film “Chinatown” explains it all:
Jake Gittes: How much are you worth?
Noah Cross: I have no idea. How much do you want?
Jake Gittes: I just wanna know what you’re worth. More than 10 million?
Noah Cross: Oh my, yes!
Jake Gittes: Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What could you buy that you can’t already afford?
Noah Cross: The future, Mr. Gittes! The future.
Everything clear now?