Bill Gates gave a TED talk. I confess I didn’t watch. Happily, others did and produced a transcript.
Jersey Jazzman called Bill’s central assertion (that 98% of teachers get a one-word evaluation, “satisfactory”) ridiculous. If you link to JJ’s blog, you cn watch Bill explain how to fix the evaluation problem.
The one time I saw Bill Gates was at Davos in 2006. He spoke then with the same sense of absolute certainty. He knew exactly what was needed to cure all the ills of American education: small high schools with rigor and relevance. He spoke assuredly. He did not admit that the foundation’s evaluations were not so rosy as his description. Two years later, he dropped the small school as panacea.
I don’t know how he approaches software issues, but from his actions, he is the kind of guy who needs to have One Big Powerful Idea. And he won’t give up on that One Big Idea because no one around dares to tell him he is wrong.
Fixing teacher evaluation is his current idee fixe:
Everyone needs a coach. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast or a bridge player. (Laughter)
My bridge coach, Sharon Osberg, says there are more pictures of the back of her head than anyone else’s in the world. (Laughter) Sorry, Sharon. Here you go.
We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve. Unfortunately, there’s one group of people who get almost no systematic feedback to help them do their jobs better, and these people have one of the most important jobs in the world. I’m talking about teachers. When Melinda and I learned how little useful feedback most teachers get, we were blown away. Until recently, over 98 percent of teachers just got one word of feedback: Satisfactory. If all my bridge coach ever told me was that I was “satisfactory,” I would have no hope of ever getting better. How would I know who was the best? How would I know what I was doing differently? Today, districts are revamping the way they evaluate teachers, but we still give them almost no feedback that actually helps them improve their practice. Our teachers deserve better. The system we have today isn’t fair to them. It’s not fair to students, and it’s putting America’s global leadership at risk. So today I want to talk about how we can help all teachers get the tools for improvement they want and deserve.
Let’s start by asking who’s doing well. Well, unfortunately there’s no international ranking tables for teacher feedback systems. So I looked at the countries whose students perform well academically, and looked at what they’re doing to help their teachers improve. Consider the rankings for reading proficiency. The U.S. isn’t number one. We’re not even in the top 10. We’re tied for 15th with Iceland and Poland. Now, out of all the places that do better than the U.S. in reading, how many of them have a formal system for helping teachers improve? Eleven out of 14. The U.S. is tied for 15th in reading, but we’re 23rd in science and 31st in math. So there’s really only one area where we’re near the top, and that’s in failing to give our teachers the help they need to develop their skills.
Let’s look at the best academic performer: the province of Shanghai, China. Now, they rank number one across the board, in reading, math and science, and one of the keys to Shanghai’s incredible success is the way they help teachers keep improving. They made sure that younger teachers get a chance to watch master teachers at work. They have weekly study groups, where teachers get together and talk about what’s working. They even require each teacher to observe and give feedback to their colleagues.
You might ask, why is a system like this so important? It’s because there’s so much variation in the teaching profession. Some teachers are far more effective than others. In fact, there are teachers throughout the country who are helping their students make extraordinary gains. If today’s average teacher could become as good as those teachers, our students would be blowing away the rest of the world. So we need a system that helps all our teachers be as good as the best.
What would that system look like? Well, to find out, our foundation has been working with 3,000 teachers in districts across the country on a project called Measures of Effective Teaching. We had observers watch videos of teachers in the classroom and rate how they did on a range of practices. For example, did they ask their students challenging questions? Did they find multiple ways to explain an idea? We also had students fill out surveys with questions like, “Does your teacher know when the class understands a lesson?” “Do you learn to correct your mistakes?”
And what we found is very exciting. First, the teachers who did well on these observations had far better student outcomes. So it tells us we’re asking the right questions. And second, teachers in the program told us that these videos and these surveys from the students were very helpful diagnostic tools, because they pointed to specific places where they can improve. I want to show you what this video component of MET looks like in action.
(Music)
(Video) Sarah Brown Wessling: Good morning everybody. Let’s talk about what’s going on today. To get started, we’re doing a peer review day, okay? A peer review day, and our goal by the end of class is for you to be able to determine whether or not you have moves to prove in your essays.
My name is Sarah Brown Wessling. I am a high school English teacher at Johnston High School in Johnston, Iowa.
Turn to somebody next to you. Tell them what you think I mean when I talk about moves to prove. I’ve talk about —
I think that there is a difference for teachers between the abstract of how we see our practice and then the concrete reality of it.
Okay, so I would like you to please bring up your papers.
I think what video offers for us is a certain degree of reality. You can’t really dispute what you see on the video, and there is a lot to be learned from that, and there are a lot of ways that we can grow as a profession when we actually get to see this. I just have a flip camera and a little tripod and invested in this tiny little wide-angle lens. At the beginning of class, I just perch it in the back of the classroom. It’s not a perfect shot. It doesn’t catch every little thing that’s going on. But I can hear the sound. I can see a lot. And I’m able to learn a lot from it. So it really has been a simple but powerful tool in my own reflection.
All right, let’s take a look at the long one first, okay?
Once I’m finished taping, then I put it in my computer, and then I’ll scan it and take a peek at it. If I don’t write things down, I don’t remember them.
So having the notes is a part of my thinking process, and I discover what I’m seeing as I’m writing. I really have used it for my own personal growth and my own personal reflection on teaching strategy and methodology and classroom management, and just all of those different facets of the classroom.
I’m glad that we’ve actually done the process before so we can kind of compare what works, what doesn’t.
I think that video exposes so much of what’s intrinsic to us as teachers in ways that help us learn and help us understand, and then help our broader communities understand what this complex work is really all about. I think it is a way to exemplify and illustrate things that we cannot convey in a lesson plan, things you cannot convey in a standard, things that you cannot even sometimes convey in a book of pedagogy.
Alrighty, everybody, have a great weekend. I’ll see you later.
[Every classroom could look like that]
(Applause)
Bill Gates: One day, we’d like every classroom in America to look something like that. But we still have more work to do. Diagnosing areas where a teacher needs to improve is only half the battle. We also have to give them the tools they need to act on the diagnosis. If you learn that you need to improve the way you teach fractions, you should be able to watch a video of the best person in the world teaching fractions.
So building this complete teacher feedback and improvement system won’t be easy. For example, I know some teachers aren’t immediately comfortable with the idea of a camera in the classroom. That’s understandable, but our experience with MET suggests that if teachers manage the process, if they collect video in their own classrooms, and they pick the lessons they want to submit, a lot of them will be eager to participate.
Building this system will also require a considerable investment. Our foundation estimates that it could cost up to five billion dollars. Now that’s a big number, but to put it in perspective, it’s less than two percent of what we spend every year on teacher salaries.
The impact for teachers would be phenomenal. We would finally have a way to give them feedback, as well as the means to act on it.
But this system would have an even more important benefit for our country. It would put us on a path to making sure all our students get a great education, find a career that’s fulfilling and rewarding, and have a chance to live out their dreams. This wouldn’t just make us a more successful country. It would also make us a more fair and just one, too.
I’m excited about the opportunity to give all our teachers the support they want and deserve. I hope you are too.
Thank you.
(Applause)
__,_._,___
The efforts of Mr. Gates has found fertile ground because there is a perceived problem in evaluating teaching and there were no alternative systems suggested.
Teachers should leverage the knowledge they have about what is going on in the building and use a peer evaluation system. As poster Ron Poirier said “…there are some teachers in my school (as there are in every school) that everyone knows to be excellent. All it will take is for one of them to get a “2″ or “progressing” rating for everyone to lose respect for the system itself, and that will be the beginning of the end.” There are also, no doubt, teachers known to be weak, and the folks that are in the best position to correctly evaluate them are their fellow teachers.
A perceived problem that has been conveniently manufactured by those who seek to destroy public education. A perception does not reality make.
But if the perception is not confronted by the reality, policy will be based on the perception.
You are correct TE! Unfortunately, it seems that in this country most have been anestisized (mainly through the FCM-fawning corporate media) into believing their perceptions are reality.
I did watch. Remarkable how little time he spent on his “other half of the battle… giv[ing teachers] the tools they need to act on the diagnosis.” One sentence: letting them watch videos of master teachers.
Maybe, Mr. Gates needs a coach in how to reform education. Is there a teacher or school administrator who could help him out?
Let’s nominate Diane Ravitch to be Bill Gates’ education reform coach!
Ol, Billy, like an old goat, is uncoachable in the realm of ed reform. He needs coaching in “reality” not ed reform.
Not all bridge players have coaches. Many can’t afford them. And there are a lot of good to very good bridge players among them. How did they learn to play bridge? How did they improve their skills? By practicing and practicing more. By actually playing bridge with other players, better and worse, and by learning from and helping each other.
Teachers learn the same way when given the opportunity, the encoragement, and the time.
Coaching is a good thing when it functions the way people really learn. Make it too prescribed, and make it high stakes, and it interferes with the learning process. Just because Bill Gates can afford a bridge coach doesn’t mean that’s best for everyone, even if they could pay for it.
Why not instead of focusing soley on student rankings as an indicator of teacher success, take into consideration other factors that can impact student achievement. Could our lower scores have anything to do with our 24% poverty rate? Most certainly, but will they (reformers) ever admit that? Of course not, their reasoning is because you can’t fix where they come from, you can only control what happens In school. I say you can’t ignore a variable that has proven to effect student achievement. To fix our educational system we need to address social issues.
BTW if teacher feedback is such a powerful tool when it comes to evaluation then why aren’t evaluation systems like PAR in Montgomery County MD backed by the stated board of education? I agree teachers need authentic feedback, but the idea that our educational woes will be cured soley by improving evaluation systems is foolish.
Everything you need to know about Bill Gates in two short sentences: “If all my bridge coach ever told me was that I was “satisfactory,” I would have no hope of ever getting better. How would I know who was the best?”
Anyone who thinks there is a “best” at everything thinks in terms of competition. Everything is a contest. Everyone is competing with everyone else to be “top dog.” And I have ZERO doubt that that is precisely how Bill Gates thinks about pretty much everything. Which is why he should be utterly ignored when it comes to education.
He also makes mention of teachers having the chance to “watch a video of the best person in the world teaching fractions.” Gates unyielding believes everything is quantifiable and measurable. Anyone with a sense of how teaching actually works–you know, actual teachers–understands there is no “best” way to teach a particular concept. What defines “best” on a given day in my class is relative to students’ prior knowledge, their mood, my mood, outside distractions, the diversity of needs and learning styles within the classroom, etc. What worked last year or even last period may not work as well in the next.
Wow if it is the most “important job in the world” why is the pay so low? And honestly Gates, we need support inside our classrooms, not “feedback.” When you have AP level kids and kids who can’t read within the same classroom, we actually need an extra pair of hands- not more suggestions.
In an interchange here:https://dianeravitch.net/2013/05/09/kevin-welner-how-charter-schools-game-their-enrollments/comment-page-1/#comment-166564 poster Irashor points to research that argues tracking of students does not benefit any of the students being tracked. It seems to me that your post suggests that a non-tracked classroom is more difficult to teach. Do you think that the students would have a better learning experience if the students who could not read and the AP level students had different classes?
Both these things could be true: non-tracked classes could be both more beneficial for students, and more challenging to teach. I personally favor eliminating tracking, but I also feel smaller class sizes or 2 teachers per class are not unreasonable things to ask for.
Both could well be true, but we need to think about the policy alternatives. Doubling the student teacher ratio would no doubt put the direct annual cost of public education well over 1 trillion dollars. Is that the wisest way to spend those resources or would we be better off with more resources devoted to pre-k and more homogeneous, but larger, classes?
Well duh yes it is ridiculous to have AP level kids and those who don’t know even basic phonics within the same classroom. We need to banish political correctness in this area.
Hey Look! If Bill Gates wants to contribute 5 billion for teacher coaches and to create interactive peer groups for teachers to improve teacher skills, that seems like a much better use of his money that to spend it by destroying public schools. Just need to make sure that the public school teachers are getting the benefits. I like this “big idea” a lot better that his corporate reform idea, don’t you? Now if we can just find the time in public school teachers’ schedule for them to have an opportunity for peer review, wouldn’t that be great! O yes, Bill, if you could please include the video equipment (make it portable so we can share and use it outside) with these teacher coaching grants, we could use it to video student class presentations, record student activities to show at PTSA meetings to get parents excited and encourage their help as volunteers, etc.
I agree he is not pushing a corporate style reform and I do like the emphasis mentoring and support for teachers, but he fails to address the reality of resources across the country, within inner city schools, extended days and commensurate pay.
And that’s the thing Sandy. Like Common Core, these things are not free or even inexpensive. In Michigan, our legislature just keeps slashing education. (Except for the EAA which consume money faster than a furnace but gets a seemingly endless supply of cash infusions.)
By the way, I’d kill to play Gates in bridge. He probably latches on to one strategy choice and refuses to abandon it. He’d be an easy mark.
Gate’s brain works like his software Windows 7. It is trash. It thinks it knows more than I do what I want to do and is always doing things I do not want it to do. Like spell check, remember when it told you a word was wrong and it gave you options? Not now, your problem as we cannot help you you are on your own. Or how about all the spelling errors in spell check? They cannot even make spelling correct. I find them all the time. Maybe he should learn how to use a dictionary and his people also. I know that is an effort but whatever. Windows 2000 was stable and I know a lot of people who still use it in business for that reason. When he can produce better not worse software come and talk to us. You cannot even do your job properly. Small schools was a tragedy as it produced things like 8 principals at Roosevelt High School which is a Mayor Villaraigosa, King Tony, tragedy. They have not followed one part of their legal MOU. Or how about one week after superintendent of LAUSD, John Deasy, quits his job in Prince Georges County after the stories on his phony PHD break and one week after that Gates hires him. Real good ethics Bill? Did you graduate from the “School of Sleaze and Criminality?” That is when you went to work on slamming teachers again as with small schools no reason or evidence just you and your wife felt like it and had the money to push it down everyone’s throat. Your person who ran small schools which was $1 billion over 10 years goes to N.Y. and after 3 years still cannot start his charter schools and leaves them in about $1.5 million of financial problems. Real good. Are you proud of yourself. You might have money but you are a tragedy on the American public. Go home and have a drink and leave us alone. You are a “Loser and Destroyer.”
George, I think you just may have Bill figured out! Great post. Nice quick presentation on how HE does business; AND why he has no business anywhere near this country’s economic or social policy!
His IT H-1B visa shenanigans reflect his strategy toward US workers. He fabricates problems to which he, and only he has the solutions, coincidently enriching himself. He convinces lawmakers and the public that we’re falling behind, that we have gaps in our abilities in the US; that we’re too inferior to even know what we need! Of course, this ignores completely the great, US public school-educated minds who worked to make him rich in the first place. Basically, he presents the US population as stupid and not teachable in any area where there is a pile of money to be had. He then sets about rigging the game in his favor with HIS money-making “solutions”.
Right around the time he was shouting about how the US was falling behind in tech, math and science, brilliance was being laid off and replaced by non US workers, willing to work harder at lower wages. He snowed congress, the public and blamed US workers and got away with it. He helped change the criteria for H-1B visas then for his own personal gain. He surely can’t be trusted now regarding education.
He knows nothing about public education, educators, students, parents; nothing! He knows giant piles of tax-payer money are up for grabs as he helps to systematically dismantle public schools. Good teachers will be replaced, just like the tech workers of the mid 90s through the 2000s. He’s destructive all right and he’s not alone.
Exactly, he is doing the same thing to teachers. Congress members kow tow to him because they have spine and will betray the American worker if it means they will get piles of campaign money. Gates knows nothing about education. All of his schemes should be met with a wary eye.
They always throw in that “teachers deserve better” line. Who do they think they’re fooling?
Geez, I don’t even know where to begin.
Could the reason Shanghai, China is number one in education because their society respects education? There is a great deal of societal and family pressure to do well academically (perhaps a little too much pressure if you look at suicide rates). Which proves that all educational arguments regarding student acheivement can be broken down to its lowest common denominator…and it’s not poverty…it’s parenting. Every educational argument ultimately boils down to this lowest common denominator. All of them.
Hey Bill, evaluation instruments are not the problem in education. It’s societal values and parenting. Don’t get me wrong. These instruments are “A” problem, just not “THE” problem.
Diane
What seems to ellude some is that an improvement system with getting more effective as the goal is different than a system where the goal is doing better on reward and punishment driven evaluation.
Arthur
Spot on Arthur. Our legislature wants a rank and fire system. Our school wants a teacher growth model. They are complicated when used together. And don’t jive at all.
Compared to other Gates ideas, this isn’t terrible. The problem is that Gates foisted his assumptions on education prior to any actual research. He went with his impression of what made sense. It led to reforms that were unworkable.
I laugh at the reforms (except they sometimes make me want to cry) because they are nothing new. NCLB is a decade of failure. Charter schools have been around in Michigan for over 20 years and still education is flatlined so how does this competition drive better schools?
Gates should have done groundwork first then proposed second. Instead, he created scenarios for profiteers and the fragmenting of education. Money does equal knowledge about everything. Gates could use some humility. And he should start worrying about Microsoft a bit more. Google and Amazon are set to destroy it.
As smart as Bill is, he forgot that students are people who are excellent at giving feedback. Teachers, like all professionals, get constant feedback from the people they work with.
Bill is obviously the person who is not getting feedback. Maybe he’ll read this.
“Diagnosing areas where a teacher needs to improve. . .” Who the hell does he think he is?? Hey, Billy, are you diagnosing where your doctor, dentist, pharmacist, lawyer(s-I’m sure he can afford many), housekeepers, nannies, auto mechanics, plumber(s-I’m sure he probably needs more than one) etc. . . need to improve? Didn’t think so. Please, oh please, master tell me how I am wrong and where I can improve. Go to Hell(if there was such a place) you pompous SOB.
He is not telling you where you should improve. He is asking you to find out where to improve.
Yeah, I know, I’m a LIFO kind of guy who doesn’t give a crap about improving my teaching. He ain’t askin nuthin! He doesn’t ask he tells because he obviously is just billions of times smarter than the “average” teacher. OOPPSS, I meant billions of times richer.
I think teachers should gather together and hold large national conferences about how unsatisfactory Windows 8 is, build accountability systems for the software industry, and train new college graduates to run Miscrosoft in five weeks.
You think that there is no accountability in the IT industry? How does your Zune sound? Did your search with Bing go well?
When people can make informed choices, we can depend on the choosers to provide accountability. When people can not make choices, society needs some other mechanism to provide it.
Satire, TE, satire!
Not sure a sense of humor is possible.
Teachers have so much accountability crammed down their throats now they should be CPAs. The problem is accountability without authority and measurements of accountability that bear no relationship to the reality of the classroom.
I agree that the best way forward would be to have peer evaluation of teachers. The teachers in the building know the strengths and weaknesses of each other.
I watched the very begining of this show, and it was MC’d by John Legend. One of the first things he said was “we brought the foremost experts in education together today”. My first and only reaction was “what makes Bill Gates an expert in education, his money? I couldn’t watch it after that.
The arrogance of this guy is breathtaking. Apparently he thinks he amassed his fortune single handedly. I dare say the majority of Microsoft employees were and still are educated in public school system Gates so constantly disparages. Both he and Melinda need to quit trying to “fix” the rest of us. How about they swing all their educational money into full ride scholarships for thousands of kids that currently can’t afford college, go play bridge full time, and see their fortune actually have a positive impact on education?
He gives for the sake of power and control. If he truly wanted to just give for philanthropic purposes he would give to organizations and treat them with respect. He wants more power and control.
Two thoughts here…
Not all schools allow teachers to video tape themselves when teaching. A video tape of good teaching can be used against administration when trying to fire a teacher. Yup, Bill, happens all the time when administration is intent on firing a teacher. Only their written observation and perhaps one of THEIR peers–departmental chair or someone who spends most of their day in front of a computer (watching a Gates’ video???) are allowed to observe, comment, and then write up those comments. Teachers in the district where I taught were not allowed to video tape their lessons when being observed…
And Bill, are you aware of copyright laws?? Or laws governing permission to video tape students in a classroom setting?? Believe it or not, Bill, there are actually some parents who do not want their children to appear in videos or pictures shot in their classroom or school…you know, those families where parents are in the midst of ugly divorce and custody fights, or kids whose parents have been denied contact with them, or families whose religion prevents pictures being taken of their kids… Yes, Bill, this is the real world of classroom teaching…
And Bill, I’m going to give you a third thought–for free, seeing as you don’t talk about how to pay for all this taping of good teachers… Did it ever occur to you that some of us, maybe even many or most of us already do this?!?! Just because you have no insight on the process of learning to be a good teacher, doesn’t mean that others of us don’t. Bill, believe it or not, there are those of us who actually study, research, earn degrees in how children learn!! Like Bachelor, Masters, and PhD degrees studying how children learn… And you know what we do with these degrees, Bill? We go into the classroom, apply what we learn, and teach children. On top of this, Bill, most of us get those Masters and PhDs while teaching full-time!! We get to apply what we learn and get feedback in our classes. We even get to pick something from our real life experience in the classroom to study for our theses and dissertation. We get EVALUATED AND GRADED on our work, eventually earning our degree based on the QUALITY OF OUR WORK!
And you know what we do then, Bill?? Even then we continue to consult with our peers in weekly staff meetings, grade level and team meetings, professional development opportunities… Why we even get together on our own time and dime to meet with another colleague to see how they handle particular students or situations! We might even bring the school counselor, psychologist, social worker, school nurse, perhaps the principal to help us be better teachers for just one student… But maybe this isn’t enough expertise… Hey Bill!!! HELP!!!!!
There are many well-stated reasons for being concerned, let alone outraged, by Mr. Gates’ proposal. Here’s one more: videotaping teachers in classrooms also means videotaping the children. It is not much of a leap to think a future suggestion will be to link the videos of children to their individual “inBloom” profiles, creating an even more frightening invasion into what should be their rights to privacy.
It is more big brother. The cameras he wants people to buy are a waste of money. They do nothing to improve teaching. A colleague can observe a teacher and give feedback. A total waste.
For what it’s worth, my students give me “feedback” every day. I make, revise, improve and rethink my practice based on their responses to my lessons. These changes happen in both big and small ways: some of the changes are instantaneously applied during the lesson (experienced teachers have an impressive bag o tricks). Others are applied, upon reflection, the next day. Still others lead to programmatic changes that affect the way I teach the following year…. Sometimes I feel that there is too much feedback (it can be overwhelming how much students need), but that’s because teaching is a public profession. Oh Bill Gates, I can not think of a profession that gets more immediate and meaningful feedback that teachers!
Gates and wife are responsible for the “ranking” mania that is destroying public education. Here in NJ, with the MET study providing the support, 1/3 of students in EVERY “peer group” will be labeled as having a “low growth year”. Even students who far,far exceed the advanced proficient levels will be normalized so that 1/3 of them ,our highest achieving students, will show LOW GROWTH!
Think about that. In NJ, all students will be grouped into Academic Peer Groups based 100% on test score histories. And in each peer group 1/3 of students will be labeled as having LOW GROWTH years! For now, this insidious labeling of students will not start until the advanced age of ten years old. Soon though new tests will be purchased sp that even our preschoolers can be labeled as low achieves!
For this, we can thank hobbyists Bill and Melinda.
Bill and Melinda can spend the rest of their fortune trying to reinvent their legacies but the truth will be known.
The students seeing their schools destroyed, their teachers demoralized, will be adults and voters one day. Then, the educational legacy of Bill and Melinda will be undeniable.
This is what happens when we let dehumanists and vandals run roughshod over our civilization, destroying institutions, professions, and resources they neither understand nor know how to build.
It is well past time to take them off their pedestals and put them back in the high-chairs where they belong.
Bill Gates clearly knows nothing about research. Has he even heard of a Human Subjects Committee? He needs to go back to college and try to get a clue about the professions he is so fond of telling others how to do.
Am I the only one totaly sick of Bil Gates? Sure glad I switched to Apple products.
To be fair, Gates said nothing of teacher evaluation, but rather feedback. He was speaking of a very common practice that is used in college teaching (classroom observation, reviewing one’s own class by video taping it). It is isn’t that hard or expensive to do. This is the point he was trying to make, and I honestly agree with him.
Jersey Jazzman made some excellent points about Gates’ mistakes, like the “98%” and how it isn’t reasonable to compare with Shanghai. But isn’t it too quick to dismiss the idea Gates is proposing because of this?
(I should like to point out another error Gates made: teachers CONSTANTLY receive feedback, of course. From their students! But class time passes quickly, video taping a class really gives a teacher the chance to reflect and improve.)
Whatever he said in this TED talk had nothing to do with high-stake tests and teacher evaluation. Surely, there will be people who would turn this around and use the video to hurt teachers, but it is not what Gates is saying here. The class video is also not to be used to monitor teachers, but rather for the teacher to self-evaluate and improve. Ideally, teachers can also exchange videos with each other.
By analogy, shouldn’t we be using tests for the same purpose for the students? I remember there was a time when taking a test is for me as a student to figure out how much I have learned.
Another thing I don’t understand is how quickly many people like to jump to negative conclusions about Gates. With all the money and influence he has, great thing can be done if he becomes better-informed.
> With all the money and influence he has, great thing can be done if he becomes better-informed.
But that’s a huge IF dizcology. He has such a huge ego that I personally don’t see him informing himself. Nor do I see him going to someone like Diane and trying to see public aschool education from a different perspective. In his mind, there are no other persepectives.
He is so similar to other executives that made their millions and billions in the software industry, people like Larry Ellison (“I’ll fly my plane any time I want.”), Bill Joy (Sun), and Michael Saylor (MicroStrategy, comapred himself to Mother Teresa and Caesar).
From http://www.nbcnews.com/id/14695612/ns/business-cnbc_tv/t/do-ceos-big-egos-boost-performance/
“The ego of the CEO could very well determine how the company fares, according to a new psychological study that gets to the root of success. According to the author, when CEOs look in the mirror, they’re good enough, smart enough and people like them.
“To narcissistic CEOs, like their companies, their world revolves around them. Corporate chiefs who love themselves can usually be counted on to love making money for the company.
“These are the people who are not satisfied just to make things better, or just to win at the game,” said Michael Maccoby, author of The Productive Narcissist. “They want to create a new game. They want to make the world different.”
Narcissistic:
Dave Thomas says narcissists display these traits (among others):
1. Detesting those who do not admire them (narcissistic abuse)
2. Using other people without considering the cost of doing so
3. Petending to be more important than they really are
4. Bragging (subtly but persistently) and exaggerating their achievements
5. Claiming to be an “expert” at many things
6. Inability to view the world from the perspective of other people
Hotchkiss says narcissists have these deadly sins:
1. Arrogance: A narcissist who is feeling deflated may reinflate by diminishing, debasing, or degrading somebody else.
2. Envy: A narcissist may secure a sense of superiority in the face of another person’s ability by using contempt to minimize the other person.
3. Entitlement: Narcissists hold unreasonable expectations of particularly favorable treatment and automatic compliance because they consider themselves special. Failure to comply is considered an attack on their superiority, and the perpetrator is considered an “awkward” or “difficult” person. Defiance of their will is a narcissistic injury that can trigger narcissistic rage.
4. Exploitation: Can take many forms but always involves the exploitation of others without regard for their feelings or interests. Often the other is in a subservient position where resistance would be difficult or even impossible. Sometimes the subservience is not so much real as assumed.
“But that’s a huge IF”
Thank you for pointing out how difficult this would be. Nevertheless, it should not stop anyone from trying.
“But isn’t it too quick to dismiss the idea Gates is proposing because of this?”
Hell NO!
This supports the idea of teaching as an art. Art cannot be analyzed with a metric, but there are holistic ways to evaluate it. Same with teachers- there are many different ways to be a good teacher, not just one!
All this from the man who brought us the classics like Zune, Kin, Windows Millennium, Vista, etc…. Lets not forget that those technological mega-failures were in his area of expertise. Need I say more?
A bridge coach? Seriously? This dude is messed up. Do his kids have checkers coaches?
It is not just the ignorance, but the astounding, even dangerous ignorance of everything Bill Gates says here.
Perhaps we are all too accustomed to the idea that “business ethics” is an oxymoron or a joke, at least as judged by prevailing practice in the real world, but research ethics is not yet the joke that Bill Gates is all gung-ho to make of it.
Here we have yet another idea that Bill Gates has snatched out of the air — probably thinks he invented it, probably has lawyers already working on ways to proprietize it. It never occurs to him that decades of research have already been done on similar ideas, methods, and technologies. He is as usual utterly clueless about all the considerations that attach to ethical research on human subjects, much less the idea that experiments are things you do in small, safe-guarded, voluntary, and well-controlled conditions before you can even think to “evaluate&rdquo: their worth.
These are standard considerations that will be familiar to anyone who actually got schooled in a research discipline. Bill Gates, as usual, is either ignorant of dismissive of them.
Gate’s Windows 8 has crashed and burned in less than a year-a COMPLETE failure.
He’s a white collar thug/wiseguy-nothing more.
He’s making money off all of his education meanderings-nothing more or less.
He’s just another one of the pinstriped pirates who are looting our nation.
I read the transcript and thought: ‘Oh, Puhleaze.’
We are living in an age of greed. Everything is being privatized. His “TED Talk” is no more than a sales presentation and a very weak one at that. The market for teacher assessments is huge. Pearson’s got a lock on it already, with the collusion of the DoE and Race to the Top.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-singer/pearson-education-new-york-testing-_b_1850169.html
Excerpt: “Starting in May 2014, Pearson Education will take over teacher certification in New York State as a way of fulfilling the state’s promised “reforms” in its application for federal Race to the Top money. The evaluation system known as the Teacher Performance assessment or TPA was developed at Stanford University with support from Pearson, but it will be solely administered and prospective teachers will be entirely evaluated by Pearson and its agents. Pearson is adverting for current or retired licensed teachers or administrators willing to evaluate applicants for teacher certification. It is prepared to pay $75 per assessment.”
The business plan is to upload 2-minute snippets of video of teachers to Pearson’s evaluators.
What bonafide geniuses Bill Gates / Arne Duncan/ Dame Marjoprie Scardino are!
The kink in the plan — the school districts must bear the huge expense of placing cameras in each classroom in the US. Otherwise Pearson’s cost of entry into the teacher assessment market will be too high, and Pearson won’t hit its target ROI.
A pity, that. It’s very expensive and federal and state budget are being slashed. Maybe we should spend money directly on the children instead?
Well, no, according to Bill Gates and his TED Talk, where he acts as the salesman who plays bridge and so completely understands teaching.
Should anyone listen to what Bill Gates has to say about education?
Consider Microsoft’s track record on technology.
Microsoft’s tablet is very unpopular. It is hard to believe but his hugely profitable company still hasn’t been able to figure out how to provide a good user experience for tablet users. Now MS is throwing $1 billion at Barnes & Noble’s for its Nook — all in order to not be left out of the ed market that Gates on which has presciently spent BILLIONS of dollars for wide-ranging propaganda efforts, think tanks, lobbyists, etc.
Bill’s made a great investment, but MS still doesn’t have a tablet ready to go! How ironic.
Seriously, should districts allow Pearson to evaluate teachers?
Excerpt: “The question that must addressed is whether the British publishing giant Pearson and its Pearson Education subsidy should determine who is qualified to teach and what should be taught in New York State and the United States? I don’t think so! Not only did no one elect them, but when people learn who they are, they might not want them anywhere near a school — or a government official.”
What do you think of the Obama’ administration’s efforts to hollow out the middle class by going after a once noble profession like teaching?
To try and be fair, Gates said nothing of “assessment” or “evaluation.” Surely, the word “feedback” can and will be twisted and turned into something else. But should we dismiss the whole idea just because of that?
On the other hand, I understand the complications pointed out by other commenters, but there will be ways to get around it. e.g. privacy issues of students also in the video, well with the currently existing face recognition technology, students’ faces can easily be blurred out automatically.
Maybe I am just being very naive here, but Gates’ is suggesting a tool for teachers to look at themselves.
Dizcology,
You keep returning to this sound byte:
To try and be fair, Gates said nothing of “assessment” or “evaluation.”
True, but that doesn’t mean that Gates couldn’t see a future for that or begin to understand the potential misuse of it. What would stop administrators from using such videos for evaluation purposes or being Big Brother-ish? Gates never understands the unintended consequences of his fanciful ideas.
Like the MET, which Gates refuses to say that he took forever to get his results and they really provided nothing new. Gates doesn’t get how his ideas are manipulated into for-profit schemes or teacher-attacking policies.
Let’s not forget that every other speech or op-ed by Gates does talk about measurement and evaluation. It’s not unreasonable for those of us already affected by Gates’ ideas to see the possible connections. Besides, I’m tired of Gates and his prescriptions. He always has another ed idea to replace the one that didn’t work (but was used by politicians and reformers to transform education into more money for themselves and their allies).
He should work more on bridge since he apparently is only satisfactory.
Steve: Thank you for your comments. Indeed he could well have a hidden agenda all along, and I am being gullible. However if other people turn this nice idea (which isn’t his invention, obviously) into something terrible, then should this really be his fault? Or more importantly, should we dismiss a nice idea because it was advocated by a person who fails to see possible ramifications?
Any idea can be twisted when necessary. Video taping classes for the teachers to improve themselves is a fine idea. A teacher should be allowed to choose not sharing the video with anyone.
Really?! Pearson to evaluate teachers? The same Pearson responsible for this epic CF http://www.ny1.com/content/education/181907/testing-company-admits-further-mistakes-with-city-gifted-and-talented-exams
Can’t wait to see that play out in the courts.
And to be absolutely fair, you might try to find a little time to check out these links on how Bill Gates’ billions of non-profit dollars have served the interests of for-profit corporations. And how they have been especially effective during the economic crisis.
Re-posted from Lance Fialkoff — TEST Troublemakers’s photo.
The Privatization of Public Education
The Gates Foundation: Monopoly Non-Profit Serving for Profits
Near total control of grant giving puppet strings in an austerity society does not combine well with a hobby of social engineering. Trust antitrust.
Re: Gates and educational reform:
http://www.dailycensored.com/woo-hoo/
http://nocommonsenseeducation.blogspot.com/2013/04/connecting-links-between-bill-gates-and.html
susanohanian.org/outrage_fetch.php?id=1594
http://www.networkforpubliceducation.com/news/weingarten-wants-me-to-want-the-common-core-state-standards-susan-ohanian-org/
http://musicalmediaforeducation.tumblr.com/post/47181583591/bill-gates-brave-new-vision-personalized-computer
http://news.yahoo.com/bill-gates-5-billion-plan-let-put-camera-201014925.html
http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2013/05/bill-gatess-ridiculous-ted-talk-part-i.html
http://atthechalkface.com/2013/04/27/more-on-the-respect-blueprint-attracting-the-desperate-and-the-naive/
http://news.yahoo.com/bill-gates-5-billion-plan-let-put-camera-201014925.html
Thank you for compiling this list of links! I have looked at only a couple of them, and they are useful.
I attended a Gates presentation at a PDC (software developers conference). His slides were mistakenly meant for another audience as one of his PPT bullets stressed “eliminating the high priesthood of programming”. He coyly smiled and ignored that point that insulted and threatened the livelyhoods of the very audience he was speaking to. The idea was to spin his Visual Basic and related products as a way to reduce the skilled profession of software engineering into a more mechanical and automated process. By approaching programmers as merely interchangeable parts, business can replace skill with low wage workers.
I believe he approaches teaching the same way. Replace teachers with technology. Measure learning in a mechanistic way. Focus not on education as an investment, but rather a business process as a line item cost.
Kudos. Excellent observation and thanks for sharing it.
For Gates, and for others , who share his stilted, isolated, myopic world view, all human beings are utilitarian widgets who only have “value” insofar as they increase the “efficiency” of the production process. Teachers, software engineers, customer service representatives—it really does not matter.
Look, Bill Gates is not all bad. But neither is he all good. When it comes to education he could not be more off base. When will our idol eorshopping
…woops (Continued with corrections, from above)
“When will our idol worshipping society begin to see Bill Gates as just a man—with all the foibles, contradictions and flawed judgments of any man—and not as some Demigod of Wisdom.
Having billions doesn’t necessarily mean that all of your ideas are good. There’s also family connections, timing and good luck.
Bill Gates is clearly richer than almost all of us. He isn’t necessarily smarter.
Sorry, Bill, but I have never gotten only “one word of feedback” in my 40+ years of teaching experience and I don’t know any teacher who has, in the many schools and school systems where I’ve worked, except as a final SUMMATION of a detailed employee evaluation. Your Bridge coach may differ, but I don’t think your paid lackeys who inform you on Education matters are telling you what you don’t want to hear, because they want to appease you and continue to be paid the big bucks. (How detailed are your evaluations of THEM?)
Here is my free one word SUMMATION of the performance of an out-of-field know-it-all who continues to prescribe his own versions of Education “reform” to people across the country who actually have training and experience in Education: Unsatisfactory, i.e., if this was a competition, you would not be considered, “the best.”
If you would like the details of the evaluation upon which this SUMMATION is based and are willing to hear the TRUTH, you may pay for it at PayPal: other_spaces@yahoo.com
“Until recently, over 98 percent of teachers just got one word of feedback: Satisfactory.”
You know I recently read that 87% of statistics are made up on the spot.
🙂
I did take a poll today.
Unscientific, I know.
N of only 26, but all teachers with over 20 years of experience.
No one had ever gotten a one word evaluation. Not even a one sentence evaluation. I pulled the file and looked at mine from over 20 years ago. Old fashioned, typed carbon copy, with several categories, some checked boxes, plenty of comments and summary paragraphs for each category. Plenty of feedback.
Ang: there is absolutely nothing wrong with personally gathering information from your immediate surroundings as long as you exercise the cautions ignored too often by the unethical numbers/stats folks. In this particular case, I think your data makes for sounder inferences than Bill’s.
In addition, I refer you to this post on the ShankerBlog, 4/11/2013, by Esther Quintero, “The Plural Of Anecdote Is Data.” You may find it helpful and encouraging.
Link: http://shankerblog.org/?p=8146
On the same topic let me refer to a blog not unfamiliar to the owner and some of the readers of this one—BRIDGING DIFFERENCES. Under the title “Evaluations Are Better Than No Evaluations,” Eric Hanushek [a luminary of the high-stakes testing status quo] began a 3/19/2013 discussion with Deborah Meier by confidently asserting:
“In our conversations about accountability, we have skirted around the issue that I think drives the most heated debate—namely, that accountability involves evaluation of teachers and administrators. And teachers and administrators are “agin it,” period.
Can’t we pare through some of the smoke and move the discussion forward to a better place?”
Link: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences/2013/03/dear_deborah_in_our_conversati.html
A number of the 54 responses that followed so completely demolished his deeply felt but injudicious comments that I actually felt a bit sorry for this intellectual pillar of the charterite/privatizer movement.
But this sort of discussion underscores yet again that the heavyweights in the charterite/privatizer movement and their scholarly & accountabully underlings live in an alternate Rheeality, very different from the reality where the vast majority of us live, work and strive for a “better education for all.”
Again, game, set, and match for Ang.
Congratulations! You are on a winning streak.
🙂
Where is Gates getting his data from? What are his sources when he makes claims about US “rankings” in certain areas, worldwide? When he says. “Shanghai is #1” and this “1 Word Evaluation” claim?
And, how good is that data? Is Shanghai including ALL of its students or just some, for instance?
Is everyone too afraid of “The King” and his ability to give and take away money that they won’t ever look closely at the veracity of what he’s claiming?
Hi PSP,
An article you might enjoy.
Brief, but debunks the “we’re number whatever” internationally thing.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/05/03/were-number-umpteenth-the-myth-of-lagging-u-s-schools/
Thanks! I’ll take a look at it and hopefully it will allow all of us who engage in these debates to effectively question, 1) The source of the data, 2) The people included in the data sample and the logic behind including them and excluding others, 3) The data collection instrument and data collection process and (most importantly) 4) The interpretation of the data and its comparison to other data sets.
And who, exactly, determined that being able to blow those other countries out of the water test-score wise was the goal of US public education? I’ll revert to the old standby argument that American has the largest number of billionaires, is granted the largest number of patents, wind the largest numbers of Nobel prizes, produces the largest number of technological and scientific innovations and inventions, etc., etc.
So where’s the crisis? I can see it coming eventually if we continue down this crazy path of public school destruction and institution of supposed “free” market capitalism as the state religion but otherwise, no. No crisis. Never has been.
Lies, Damned Lies, and MicroSoftisms …
I don’t care what this man says anymore. I can’t even read the full transcript without getting aggravated. If it weren’t for his money, who would be listening to this dweeb? He is lacking basic human character traits: empathy, respect, compassion.
He has issues to work on himself. He would fit right in as a guest appearance on The Big
Bang Theory and he could learn much about how to develop human relationships from Sheldon.
The problem Linda is millions of parents out there do have to continue to worry about this because he is a lunatic directing our childrens education at his whimsy. Like mao, stalin and hitler. And boots on the ground are telling us that the gates crazy has infected the curriculum. Ill written, garbage with revised history, vagueness, and idiocy. I am saving every example.
For my lawyer. This is malpractice. Oh but common core has a disclaimer, so who’s responsible?? Teachers, no, admin, no everybody’s just following the state. Those guys who jovially sat around a table together crafting common core, the anonymous state led group, good luck finding those ghosts. The lie upon which this house of cards is built. So when gou find some horrendously unfactual illwritten superfluous assignment and you want to complain, who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters!
Gee, Bill, more feedback would be great. Please donate money, not for cameras, but for extra teachers to visit classrooms in person to assist and provide feedback.
Thank you for your generosity.
Care to weigh in for Bill, folks? Have teachers here typically gotten just “one word of feedback,” such as “Satisfactory,” and that was it –i.e., no other feedback was provided to you in your evaluations?
Never in 27 years ever. He is making it up. Who believes, like the rest of them, he is not lying. He is seriously delusional and extremely narcissistic. He is wealthy and clueless.
“Have teachers here typically gotten just “one word of feedback,”
See my my response above.
In a word.
NO!
Never. I’ve always been given a lot of detailed feedback.
Isn’t it interesting that folks with lots of money think that they have the answers to everything. Bill gates wouldn’t last a week in my Jr high school.
Here’s my story. I taught in a city school whose population had children of university instructors. One of those instructors was an employee of the Chinese government. His job was to travel to a different country each year and evaluate that country’s educational system. They could then pick and choose which qualities of each systerm would work for them. Great idea.
He told me that in Shangai ( I think) they have a school for the arts. Music Dance etc. Children are brought from all over to compete to get in and they do all 12 grades there with an emphasis on their craft. This mimics the old Soviet style schools that took promising children, taught them and prepared them for a career in dance. They were the best in the world.
It’s been a while and I don’t know if this program exists now, but it is an interesting approach to education. While this may not work for us, my point is we do not have to reinvent the wheel. Especially from folks who never made a wheel in their life. There are tons of good research out there that tells us what works and what doesn’t. The cure is not sexy, it is long it is expensive and worth every penny. People in other countries believe that their educational system is their future. This new trend is not about education. It is about money, pure and simple. Until we all realize this, we will forever be fighting the little fights.
By the way, I don’t mind paying my fair share of taxes, but I sure do mind it going into the pockets of book companies, testing companies and schools for profit.
I’m glad Gates mentioned China in his talk. On a recent travel, I was reading a book on Mao’s Great Leap Forward, and suddenly I began to see connections. The reformers want a Great Leap Forward (our Broad superintendent calls it Great Expectations, with no apologies to Charles Dickens). They want it, and they want it now, so everyone has to hop to it immediately. It doesn’t matter how we get it, but it has to be done. So, often times the district leaders (both in education and in China) rely on lies and doctored numbers. The workers are abused and suffer, and God help them if they don’t meet their target numbers. There were even slogans that everyone must parrot -global economy, 21st century learning. Often times, then and now, the dictator will impulsively change directions with new targets and new goals, and those have to be done NOW. So the workers have to drop whatever they are doing and move on to something else. So, when Mao decided steel was more important than wheat, or roads were more important than steel, the crops rotted in the field, or the steel produced was more like tin foil. In education we decide – it’s phonics; no, it’s integrated thematic instruction; no, it’s whole language; no, it’s scripted. Teachers are blown from pillar to post, and like the Chinese workers have no training in what is the latest imperative cure all. Now, it’s Common Core, and who cares what it takes to implement it, or whether it is any good or whether there really is a problem that needs solutions anyhow, it’s got to be done and it’s got to be done NOW. How much longer until Mao, I mean Duncan, Gates, Broad, Walton and Pearson, get another brain fart and we all have to jump. My guess is whenever Pearson has gotten all the profits it can from Common Core test prep, tests and text books, and then they will move on to the next, new, best thing. Meanwhile, back in the village the workers are starved and demoralized. And, funny, I don’t think Mao ever got his Great Leap Forward –
I love the global comparisons. This is an effort to drag the US into a viewpoint of global competition with false and misleading statistics. They love the finland comparison. They never mention the population of this socialist tinderbox of a country has the population of north jersey and the fact that they included all special ed students in the IS but not Finland. Really.
Gates and UNESCO want domination. They are idiotic when they speak. They spread propaganda to scare us, why should we care about Finland winning some fictitious competition over us anyway. Red herring.
Read some Hegel. Create the problem: US schools cannot compete globally: thesis. create solution: turn education upside down, antithesis, massive education deform a la finland, cradle to grave central planning with a few educrat profiteers./ kids critically thinking about nothing, so they will obediant workers.
Read some history.
A Common Clown with a lot of money!
Money Talks….but that is all this is..a bunch of nonsense.
“Unfortunately, there’s one group of people who get almost no systematic feedback to help them do their jobs better, and these people have one of the most important jobs in the world.”
1. What is a classroom if not a room full of feedback (what a terrible, mechanical word, by the way)?
2. What more feedback do you need than the instant and ongoing feedback you get from your students?
How many nations test and report on 100% of their student population like the U.S. does? I’m guessing many countries “sample” their population- a nice way to say cherry pick. If I could choose the top 20% of my class to represent my classroom in international competition, I’m thinking we’ll jump right up there in the rankings.
Bill’s tagline “[Every classroom could look like that]” is kind of ironic in that this classroom in an upscale white flight suburb of Des Moines appears to be all white.