Now that Bill Gates and his billionaire buddies have managed to buy a law authorizing charter schools in Washington State, over the objection of virtually every education-related group in the state, almost every parent association, local school boards, superintendents, principals teachers, and the League of Women Voters, it is time for him to show his real faith in charters.
Bill, put your children in the first charter school to open in Washington State.
Show that you really believe in them.
Demonstrate your sincerity.
Not for other people’s children, but for yours too.
Bill, you know there is no evidence for the superiority of charters over public schools.
You know there is evidence that they are more racially segregated than public schools.
Why did you overwhelm parents, citizens and teachers with more than $10 million in campaign spending, outspending them 10 or 20 to 1?
Why was it so important to you to open 40 charter schools in your state?
Bill, prove your sincerity.
Make your own children the first entrants into the first charter school in Seattle.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Where do Bill Gates’ children go to school??
Both of his children are enrolled at a private school. But it also appears they’ve enrolled in Khan Academy. I have a feeling that so too will many of Seattle’s children.
theodp writes:
BusinessWeek reports that Khan Academy has a new fan in Bill Gates, who’s been singing and tweeting the praises of the free-as-in-beer website. ‘This guy is amazing,’ Gates wrote. ‘It is awesome how much he has done with very little in the way of resources.’ Gates and his 11-year-old son have been soaking up videos, from algebra to biology. And at the Aspen Ideas Festival in front of 2,000 people, Gates gave Khan a shout-out, touting the ‘unbelievable’ Khan Academy tutorials that ‘I’ve been using with my kids.'”
http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/08/29/0456229/bill-gates-enrolls-his-kids-in-khan-academy
Thanks for posting this challenge! I plan to forward it to the Gates Foundation and Washington newspapers, I hope others here will do the same.
You’ve offered a great challenge Diane. Sadly it will fall on deaf ears. Bill believes in charters, but only for other people’s children. Not his. In addition, for whatever reason- Bill never admits his mistakes, he just ramps up the spending and rhetoric.
Watch Gates contribute $50 mln annually to build the first charter in Washington state; a “loss leader” that provides the best of the best.
There is so much that we could have done with the nearly $10M that was spent on this initiative starting with seismically upgrading our school buildings to make them safe for our students as well as hiring back our librarians, counselors and teaching staff who have been let go due to budget shortfalls.
Maybe he will start a special charter for kids with Asperger’s syndrome?
Bill does not live in Seattle. He lives in Bellevue, which has some of the best performing schools in the state and nation. Yet, he sends his children to private school.
The charters in my area have access to our student records as they are “public”. the enrollment is determined by a lottery, but somehow our ASD students, ELL students, and behavior problems never get picked. Odds that they get in are worse than Powerball. Bill would not have been admitted to our charters.