In the early years of this century, Bill Gates felt certain
that he knew how to fix the nation’s high schools. He pumped $2
billion into breaking them into smaller schools, often Nader the
same roof.
In 2008, he decided he was not pleased with the
results,and he dropped that idea.
Then, he decided that teacher evaluation was broken, and he would use his billions–plus the
billions of Race to the Top–to create a metric that would identify
the best and worst teachers.
He adamantly opposed reducing class size, even though his own children go to a school known for small classes.
His theory was that “bad” teachers identified by his
metric would be fired, while the “best” teachers would get more
money and larger classes. He gave hundreds of millions dollars to
district to develop the measuring stick, but so far there has been
no results.
The federal government, fully on board with the Gates
idea, now has almost every state following agates’ plan. As
Valerie Strauss points out on her blog, Gates now says
that it will take about a decade to determine whether his latest
hunch actually works.
So far, it has failed to produce a reliable
metric or results anywhere. So far, it has failed wherever it was tried, and billions of dollars have been wasted.
In the meanwhile, real teachers are being fired and losing their livelihood based on Gates’ latest big
idea. Strauss writes: “Hmmm. Teachers around the country are
saddled every single year with teacher evaluation systems that his
foundation has funded, based on no record of success and highly
questionable “research.”
And now Gates says he won’t know if the
reforms he is funding will work for another decade. But teachers
can lose their jobs right now because of reforms he is funding.
In the past he sounded pretty sure of what he was doing. In this 2011 oped
in The Washington Post (cited in Valerie’s post), he wrote: “What should policymakers do? One
approach is to get more students in front of top teachers by
identifying the top 25 percent of teachers and asking them to take
on four or five more students.” The problem with Gates is that he
tries out his ideas as if he were playing with toy soldiers.
Doesn’t anyone around him have the chutzpah to tell him that his
untested hunches don’t work and are ruining the lives of decent
people? Will anyone in his foundation be held accountable for his
latest foray into redesigning the nation’s public schools? I have
some really good ideas for him in my latest book. They have solid
research behind them. They work. They help people instead of
ruining the lives of others. They do no harm. I wish he would read
it. He could leave a lasting legacy of success rather than a long string of costly failures that harmed people who were doing good work.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Interesting that you use the phrase “Do no harm” in this piece. Tragically, there is no Hippocratic Oath for billionaires.
What does he care about losing money, tax write-off. I know you’ve heard of the march of folly-a perfect example here. Continuing the Same course even though you know it doesn’t work. Hey, spend enough money, wait long enough and maybe it will come around. Meanwhile,generations of students are left floundering when real success can be achieved by following a different course.
Exactly, whole generations will be ruined by this course of action. I don’t know how he can’t see how this will make the world a much more dangerous place for his own children. A whole generation education via tests, unable to get jobs but needing to feed their families, people will do what they have to do to get by. We’re seeing the results of that right now in Chicago (murder city USA). Education is the key to a better life, but real education, not test and fail.
Gates believes that small class sizes hurt
students, with the logic that the “great” teachers
should be given more students, as more students will
be exposed to, and benefit from their “greatness.”
However, did Gates ever stop to consider that one
of the variables that contributes to this hypothetical
teacher’s greatness is…. well… the size of his/her
class (the student—to—teacher ratio), and that if you
remove or alter that variable by cramming more
students in the class, this teacher won’t be able to
achieve the same “greatness” that he or she had
previously been able to with the prior smaller
class size?
Having myself taught classes as small as 12 (in
a private school), and as high as 45, I can tell
you that this variable matters, and affects any
teacher’s ability to bring on “the greatness.”
A lot of the “reformers”, Gates included, seem to think (or at least act like they think) that all that is involved in teaching is standing up in front of students and lecturing. A “great teacher” is such a fascinating lecturer that students will be hooked and will absorb the knowledge that flows from his/her mouth. In that model, it really doesn’t matter whether the teacher is lecturing to 10 students or 1,000 – in fact, 1,000 is better because that’s 990 more people exposed to that teacher’s greatness.
The real irony of that is that it’s clearly not the way even Gates himself learns, which is why he dropped out of college. He knows that’s not the way most kids learn because he sends his own kids to a school that has small class sizes and experiential learning.
Here’s a devastating article that points up Bill Gates’ hypocrisy when it comes to the variation between what he demands for his own children, and what he subjects children from lower income communities:
http://seattletimes.com/html/dannywestneat/2014437975_danny09.html
THE SEATTLE TIMES’ Danny Weastneat takes Gates to task for promoting policy all over the country that jacks class size sky high, with Gates using the common-sense-defying logic that kids will fare better in larger classes.
Well, Weastneat sends his own kids to public schools, and will eventually attend Garfield High School (in the news of late). These are the schools that—once Gates has his way—will have obscenely large class sizes… A bit fed up, Weastneat did what perhaps no other writer has yet dared to do:
he investigated the two rich kids’ private school where Gates sends his own children and—doncha know it? —these schools major selling point is that they have… wait for it… EXTREMELY SMALL CLASS SIZES:
WEASTNEAT: “I bet (Gates) senses deep down as a parent that pushing more kids into classes isn’t what’s best for students. His kids’ private-sector grade school has 17 kids in each room. His daughter’s high school has 15. These intimate settings are the selling point, the chief reason tuition is $25,000 a year — more than double what Seattle schools spends per student.”
Calling out Gates’ hypocrisy, Weastneat ends the article with a knockout finish:
WEASTNEAT: “Bill, here’s an experiment. You and I both have an 8-year-old. Let’s take your school and double its class sizes, from 16 to 32. We’ll use the extra money generated by that — a whopping $400,000 more per year per classroom — to halve the class sizes, from 32 to 16, at my public high school, Garfield.
“In 2020, when our kids are graduating, we’ll compare what effect it all had. On student achievement. On teaching quality. On morale. Or that best thing of all, the “environment that promotes relationships between teachers and students.”
“Deal? Probably not. Nobody would take that trade. Which says more than all the studies ever will.”
LIKE!
Good morning, Diane,
Yes, we have the chutzpah to tell Bill and Melinda. Will they listen to professionals with a combined hundreds of thousands of years of experience and expertise? Or will the keep playing rigged games for their own profit while feigning philanthropy?
We told Bill and Melinda you are right. Their HOAX is up. The time is now. We feel a “fierce sense of urgency”. They need to fix their big mistake and hit “Control + Alt + Delete” on their reformy policies!
Here is our message to them in response to Bill’s glib Harvard interview where he jokes about his control over our children. We don’t think he’s funny. We are appalled!
Bill and Melinda, Time to Hit “Control + Alt + Delete” and The Fierce Urgency of Now http://wp.me/p3CDkl-ic via @TsLetters2Gates
What do your readers think?
Susan and Katie, Teachers’ Letters to Bill Gates
The dissembling and lies of the so-called reformers, if placed end to end, would reach the moon.
First, whatever happened to The Kids Can’t Wait? That was always the response when they were asked about the bogus urgency of their untested – though obviously invalid to any experienced educator – policies.
Then there’s the so-called reform canard of We Know What Works (in their minds, privatization, temporary, at-will teachers, authoritarian school environments and the profit motive). TFA scab-meister Wendy Kopp, who has never taught a day in her life, repeats this one all the time.
In fact, the so-called reformers have absolutely no idea what works – indeed, they destroy everything they touch – and are happy to sacrifice a generation or more of public school students to their venal, deceptive practices.
“the so-called reformers have absolutely no idea what works”
That is, indeed, the case. The whole enterprise rests on fallacious assumptions, especially in ELA. This is going to be a disaster.
Rob
Here in NY the disaster has manifested itself. Kids hate school. Teachers are demoralized. Administrators are frustrated. Parents are confused and angry. Heck of a job Gatsie!
The reformers don’t care about educating children. They, and their financial backers simply want a trained workforce that will follow orders at their jobs and never, ever, complain about the policies that condemn them to squalor.
That is what Bill and Melinda Gates and their ilk are funding, and what they want. After all, their children will live in safe, gated communities with private security forces to protect them from the rabble.
It’s reckless.
It’s a huge experiment on a universal public system and tens of millions of kids, and it keeps rushing along, dragging more and most states in.
It’s not like they don’t have results. They have a decade of results on cybercharters in Ohio, for example. It simply doesn’t matter. They expand every year. They have reams of information on reform in urban areas. But, again, it simply doesn’t matter. If it fails in any one place, they move to the next, or double down on the original plan.
We’re now funding charters from local property taxes in Ohio and we have state-wide vouchers. I guarantee every “reform” state will adopt these latest reforms, every state will double down, because I’m now watching every state adopt the same reforms that failed in Ohio, and have failed for 16 years.
What is infuriating abut reform if you’re a public school supporter is that the same school systems that are subjected to a reform agenda are then blamed when the reform agenda fails. They literally cannot win.
It just happened in Cleveland. They got public backing for yet another reform plan and now it isn’t “working”. No one blames Michelle Rhee or Bill Gates. They blame the public school system. Signing on to one of these reform plans if you’re a public school backer is insane. If it fails, public schools are blamed, but the reformers roll right along and parachute into another city with an identical plan. There’s no accountability for reformers. ALL the accountability stays with the public school system they just “reformed”. No one in their right mind would sign onto that deal.
reckless is precisely the word
heedless is another
Hubristic, insane, stupid, idiotic, nefarious, pernicious, obnoxious, noxious, irreal, surreal, need I go on?
Hubris, yes: a defining characteristic of these people.
And something that over time Reality treats very harshly. Their arrogance will be a big part of their undoing.
Gates is right about one thing. You can’t tell a teacher’s value for at least 10 years. No amount of testing is going to make either the teacher or the student better. That will be determined by how students apply the knowledge they have gained and retained (and who taught them) after they’ve graduated. Gates is and has been wrong about everything else.
So all the urgency with Gates and others is a crock? 10 year until we know whether these reforms will work?! He’s already had close to a decade and nothing has improved with his reforms and we’re willing to give him another 10. Here’s my advice Bill: cut your loses now. It didn’t happen then and it won’t happen now.
Mark Collins: you are soooooo right!
Whatever happened to that irrepressible “Impatient Optimist” we have all come to, er, know and love[?]?
Although according to the latest unconfirmed leaks, apparently many years ago in a galaxy far far away, His Most Excellent Billness was approached by an underling who pleaded with him to up his game. Seems a fruit company—Orange or Peach or Apricot, whatever—was poised to catch up with, and surpass, Microsoft.
“You would have to wait far more than ten years for that to happen, “said His Billness in his most impressive manner, “and I can assure you, to a 98% chance of ‘satisfactory,’ that it will not happen within 10 of your lifetimes.”
After which the nagging subordinate was ranked-and-yanked.
Problem solved? Yes, his—he no longer had to listen to critics of his “impatient optimism.” Microsoft would rule the galaxy—and beyond—for time without measure.
As for the rest of us, there is a 98% chance of a ‘satisfactory’ response to the question: does Bill Gates make a “better education for all” the impossible dream?
Congressman Polis?
🙂
“. . . we have all come to, er, know and love[?]?”
“WE??” You got fleas??? My dog does and he knows better than to give a moments thought to Billy the Goates.
This is a concession that what they have been doing for over ten years has not worked and patently is not working now.. Now the argument has moved to how ethical it is to spend decades harming generations of students while trying to reinvent the wheel (hint: it is not). Mr. Gates and purchased minions are you listening? Instead of relying on dogma, why not familiarize yourselves with some literature from actual scholars and educators who have made a specialized study of what works and has always worked. Hint: it is not “quantitative methods” imported from business economics, which sound as if they ought to work but in actuality have never worked even there.
“Hint: it is not “quantitative methods” imported from business economics, which sound as if they ought to work but in actuality have never worked even there.”
HERETIC! Call the GI!
Gates is quite simply, WRONG. We have an abundance of evidence right now that his ideas have failed and failed badly. This is not so much an admission of uncertainty on his part as the opening gambit of an attempt to forestall the reversal of the failed policies of deformers.
Sorry to be picky, but I wish we could edit!
Gates is quite simply, WRONG. We have an abundance of evidence right now that his ideas have failed and failed badly. This is not an admission of uncertainty on his part, it’s the opening gambit of an attempt to forestall the reversal of all the failed policies of deformers. Gates realizes that the package deal configuration of these policies is such that removing any one of them will greatly weaken and invalidate all the rest, that’s how interlocked and dependent the components are on each other.
YUP. One of the issues here is that the deform juggernaut that is rolling over kids has a great deal of momentum.
Identify the top quarter of teachers… I think this is a fool’s errand.
So let’s just assume Kahn is the best teacher ever. So Gates beams in a hologram of Kahn into every classroom for 6 hours a day. Wouldn’t that get kind of boring for anyone, including Gates himself?
C’mon, 95% of teachers are good at what they do and interesting people. Nothing wrong with rewarding excellence, but not at the expense of stability.
I weep for all the children who have been experimented on and whose lives have been irrevocably altered by those who equate the accumulation of vast amounts of money with the acquisition of wisdom and those who kowtow to them.
I weep with you – and for the lives of teachers who have left – or been forced out of! – the profession they loved because of these policies, and for the neighborhoods without community schools.
In a 13-year educational “career” in public school, 10 years is essentially a complete generation lost. *cry* We won’t get these years back. Will we be able to get even SOME of the children back?
Gates is going about the teacher quality stuff in entirely the wrong way because test scores a) are invalid in ELA and b) there are two many other variables affecting both test scores and in-class evaluations.
Here’s how to improve teacher quality:
Give teachers the time and training to do Japanese-style Lesson Study, applying DO-Plan-Check-Act. This would empower teachers, put them in charge of improving quality, and improve quality from the line level up. This is a technique borrowed from the business world (from quality control) that really works and has had enormous success in Japan. The reason WHY it works is that it give power, authority, autonomy, control, etc., to teachers. It puts them in charge of quality improvement. And when that happens, they rise to the task. However, essential, here is a) the time to do it and b) the training in how to do it. When people are empowered to undertake a task, they rise to it. This is basic human nature. The authoritarian, top-down stick doesn’t work. It just drives good people out of the profession, holds people responsible for that which is out of their control (e.g., the home lives of their students), and creates alienation and anger.
Do subject area content training and encourage advanced degrees in subject area content. Teacher trainings almost NEVER are designed to increase the teacher’s KNOWLEDGE of some part of the curriculum. They are almost always on topics related to skills, pedagogical methods, lesson formats, etc. But the most important thing one can do to improve teacher quality is to give teachers the opportunity to learn more about their subjects. The teacher who knows American history is going to be a better American history teacher. The teacher who knows elementary statistics is going to be better at teaching the “statistics and data analysis” portions of his or her curriculum. When was the last time that a district brought its high-school American lit teachers in for a “training” on the Transcendentalists? its middle-school science teachers in for a “training” on basic fluid mechanics or wave motion? KNOWLEDGE MATTERS. I run into this all the time–teachers who have absorbed an ENORMOUS amount of skills training but who lack basic background knowledge in key areas of the curriculum that they are teaching.
No, I am not joining the teacher bashing bandwagon. I also run into a lot of highly knowledgeable teachers. And I think that given the opportunity and the TIME, teachers will jump at the chance to learn more in their subject areas.
Depth and breadth of subject-area knowledge enriches a teacher’s teaching immeasurably. It makes possible responding to those “teachable moments” appropriately.
Sorry about the typos in the post above. Rushing here.
As always, great ideas Robert.
Thanks, TC. I am always posting this stuff in a rush in moments between jobs, but I have thought about both these topics a great deal. Japanese lesson study is a tried and true, highly effective method of improving teacher quality, and it EMPOWERS teachers rather than alienating them. But teachers have to have the time to do this properly. And they have to have training. BTW, the whole secret to the Japanese miracle in business was flattening the organization and making quality the responsibility of people on the line, not something imposed from the top of the hierarchy but something that is an ongoing part of practice at the line level of the hierarchy. It is NOT the case that every idea that originates in the business world is a terrible idea. However, this KPI-based approach to education reform that we are seeing now IS an example of an inappropriate, ill-conceived borrowing.
Your point about teacher training and the importance of advanced content knowledge over pedagogy is more profound than most teachers seem to realize. Nothing stops a teacher from doing this on their own but it sure would help if PD went in this direction.
Just wait until the new PARCC and SmarterBalanced tests hit nationally. These are going to be a complete, unmitigated disaster, and that’s when this standards-and-testing mania will end. Has anyone actually studied the crap that is being developed? It’s breathtakingly badly conceived. Check out the websites of these organizations. They are models of bureaucratic wrong-headedness, of convoluted group-think based on unsound, unexamined fundamental premises.
And I think that the groups pushing this testing are beginning to see that. They are worried. They have reason to be. When what happened in New York happens in every state in the country and when people actually start examining, critically, the exams that almost every child is said to be failing, there will be hell to pay by anyone who has supported this standards-and-testing fiasco.
You are so right . Fear the parents. We love our kids too much.
I keep hearing that mentality from school leadership (curriclum coach, principal) regarding RttT too: “we just have to wait and see how it plays out.”
OK, so we have the ability to direct how things will go, but instead we’re just going to sit back and wait?
That is truly experimenting on people in a non-controlled situation.
I don’t see people waiting 10 years. A child is only in school for 12 or 13. That’s an entire generation. . .and a complete vestment period for public school teachers (in my state).
Business people will probably say “well that’s how it is in business.” Exactly. That’s why public school should not be a business.
It’s going to be a disaster. Anyone with half a brain can see that. But it may be the case that we’re just going to have to watch the damage being done and then try to sort through the post-“reform” rubble . You know, like the young Vonnegut in Dresden.
You contend that Gates’s “long string of failures” designed to improve teacher quality and inject innovation and accountability into our public school system have done more harm than good. I disagree. While they haven’t found a silver bullet, their philanthropic resources dedicated to finding what works have had a positive impact.
The “untested hunches” you describe include the Gates Foundation’s Measures of Effective Teaching Project, the most comprehensive study to identify and support great teaching. Through a collaboration of 3,000 teachers and dozens of education researchers, Gates identified that multiple measures, including data on how much students are actually learning, should be utilized in teacher evaluations. These ideas were tested through work with thousands of teachers, not the “toy soldiers” you describe.
Not only do principals enjoy more autonomy with these new evaluations, but teachers appreciate the feedback and support. A recent study by Teach Plus, a nonprofit organization that engages teachers as school and policy leaders, found that 71% of teachers with fewer than ten years experience agree that student gains should be included in teacher evaluations as compared to 41 percent of veteran teachers – suggesting a sea change in the way teachers welcome feedback and support.
As I said, I welcome the opportunity to come together to brainstorm ideas to make teacher evaluations more effective, and to ensure that teachers have the supports they need to succeed. Gates does not contend to have all the answers, but they are certainly constructive.
Mr. Polis, you are woefully mistaken. Again, these techniques will not improve teacher quality because they rest on mistaken assumptions regarding the ultimate metrics–the high-stakes tests.
Let me state this clearly, and most reformers agree:
Evaluations should NOT be based entirely on tests.
Growth in student achievement should be measured, and it should provide part of the relevant feedback to educators but not the whole story.
Jared, let me state this clearly: test-based evaluations are junk science. No other nations do it.
Evaluations should not be based on standardized tests AT ALL.
That said, I rush to add that the Danielson rubric is superb. But it should not be used as it is being used. If it were being used as part of teacher-led Lesson Study and collaborative critique, that would be another matter altogether, and we would see real results, not the fiascoes that are now occurring.
The disaster won’t be as unmitigated in math as it will be in ELA because the math standards are, at least, a curriculum outline and treat knowledge of the subject. The ELA standards [sic], in contrast, are lists of skills abstracted from any meaningful content or context, and they reflect no understanding of the sciences of language acquisition and little familiarity with best practices in the teaching of English. These tests of random skills will do nothing but create (and are currently creating) incoherent, narrowed curricula based on discredited notions about how kids learn to read, write, speak, listen, and think.
If someone had handed David Coleman copies of Galen and of the 1858 Gray’s Anatomy and sent him to a cabin in the woods to write new standards for the medical profession, then one would have gotten something of the same quality that one sees in these new ELA “standards.” They are astonishingly amateurish, and the only appropriate response to them is derision.
And, oddly enough, there are some good ideas buried in the materials ancillary to the new ELA “standards.” But these “standards” are essentially self contradictory. They call for extended reading in knowledge domains, for example, and yet they encourage testing and teaching of random “skills” because they are lists of random skills.
And poorly prepared lists of skills, to boot. When people actually start working with these new ELA “standards,” that will be obvious.
I always imagined that best practices are being modeled by the more elite, private schools. Are they using the constructive information discovered by Gates’ studies? Are they part of it?
I am asking this because I really want to know, not because I am being flippant: why not start with a smaller group to see what works? Is it because there has to be a different standard for public school? Why?
I went to public school K-12 and then an elite, private college. I always have figured that if more of what I got at the elite, private college were used and modeled in the public setting, that everyone would be better off. But what I gather from reading this blog and other resources (and looking at websites in considering schools for my own sons). . .do we have a lesser standard for public institutions? Or do we just approach it entirely differently because it is public?
That’s the part where I get confused.
The elite private schools are pretty much exempt from all these reforms, Joanna. People wouldn’t DARE to try this crap there.
And the kids in those schools come from very privileged backgrounds and so respond very differently to the reforms when they are applied. The Matthew Effect is very much in play in such schools.
Robert–
that’s why it makes me uneasy. I can only claim a hunch there, so my arguments probably don’t hold water. But I know that canned food is not fresh food. . .and deciding to make a bunch of canned food so the masses don’t go hungry and then saying it’s as good as fresh (and will help with national security and our place on the top of the global economy), while meanwhile those with more means at their disposal are NOT eating the canned food. . .well, it makes you wonder now doesn’t it?
Preachers’ daughters have dined with the rich and with the poor. We can smell it when things don’t add up.
I did not start my family until I was 36. That gave me 12 years of teaching in several different states (my choice to move around) with the poorest of the poor and the wealthier of the wealthy. I cannot imagine some of what is being handed to public schools right now going over very well with many wealthier families.
Most people say, as I already wrote earlier, that we just have to wait and see how it plays out. But again I say, this preacher’s daughter is not seein why public school has “common core standard” but more selective schools do not. That does not make sense to me.
Mr. Polis, you clearly have not been paying attention to what’s been going on in the schools for the past decade +, in which teachers have been forced to listen to the arrogant and ignorant claims of so-called reformers like Gates.
Then again, it’s clearly been in your interest not to.
“Growth in student achievement should be measured. . . ”
And that in essence sums up your mistaken assumption which is that a quality can be quantified. I direct you to my numerous posts about the Quixotic Quest Bandwagon on this blog. For a quick refresher:
1. A quality cannot be quantified. Quantity is a sub-category of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category by only a part (sub-category) of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as one dimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing we are lacking much information about said interactions.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
Dear Man of LaMancha:
Please remember that the theme song to your Quixotic quest was “The Impossible Dream.”
Will we just go on singing that?
I have sobbed through that musical all four times I’ve seen it live.
Thank you for posting the list again. Always a charming gesture on your part.
But what else? What else can we do besides point out that we are beholden to an erroneous metric?
Still gearing up for my leadership team meeting. Maybe I will bust out singing “The Impossible Dream.”
But I don’t want it to be impossible. That’s the thing.
None of us do.
So what next?
Teach Plus, a supposedly nonprofit organization that “engages teachers and school and policy leaders”. Forsooth! Mr. Polis, your shamelessness in pitching the press releases is astounding! Teach Plus is not a reputably objective organization. It is funded by Bill and Melinda Gates! http://www.teachplus.org/page/partners-27.html One of the countless, lucrative “research”, “data management,” and “consulting” entities that have sprung up hydra-like in the wake of the educational testing and industry.
sychophants
Could you go into detail about how this helps Special Education teachers (and others)? There are students who read at the third grade level in high school. Obviously they have not progressed at the typical rate. Could you tell me how you will use the test scores to evaluate these teachers? Many of these students make minimal gains throughout their educational careers. I don’t know what teachers were interviewed for the study but most teachers I know think the whole testing mania is a crock. It only leads teachers to teach towards the test. I overheard a student today asking, “When is our (state) test?” When he found out he said, “Shouldn’t we be practicing?” This is what it has come to.
Mr. Polis,
MET was greatly delayed in its findings and went against the initial thoughts of Gates. But at least it had some field testing. Why not do the same with Common Core.
I would also contend that the law of averages would suggest that Gates get something right. After all, he has tried a bunch of education stuff. If I hit a putt enough times,I’ll make one.
Lastly, Teach Plus is a biased source. Common Core Standards in Social Studies trains students to consider bias and point of view. You failed Mr. Polis. Teach Plus is heavily financed by,you guessed it, the Gates Foundation. Such a shock that they would agree with him! Link from the NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/education/22gates.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
One of the things that is really scary about the current “reform” movement is that it dramatically changes how schools work based on the assumption that our schools are, by and large, failures. Well, they are not. If you correct for the socioeconomic level of the students taking the international exams, our students are among the very best in the world. So, we have a system that is, by and large, working very well, and we are replacing that with one based on really dubious notions about how schools ought to work. The effects will be precisely the opposite of those that the reformers intend.
There is a LOT of room for improvement in U.S. education, but the reformers are going about this in the wrong ways. What we are seeing is destruction, certainly, though I wouldn’t call it “creative destruction.”
Quality flows from the bottom up. You know what flows from the top down.
I’m beginning to think that I have no choice. I am going to have to write a book about what’s wrong with the new ELA “standards.” Clearly, those who support them don’t understand them and don’t understand the consequences of their implementation, including the consequences for bringing to a halt scientifically based innovation in English language arts curricula and pedagogy.
I’ll be happy to read, critique and index if needed. I think you should go for it.
Would love to read such an article or book!
I’m waiting for it to hit the shelves!
Please excuse the impertinence, Dr. Mercedes Schneider, but I was wondering if you might comment on the following [see above for original]:
“The “untested hunches” you describe include the Gates Foundation’s Measures of Effective Teaching Project, the most comprehensive study to identify and support great teaching. Through a collaboration of 3,000 teachers and dozens of education researchers, Gates identified that multiple measures, including data on how much students are actually learning, should be utilized in teacher evaluations. These ideas were tested through work with thousands of teachers, not the “toy soldiers” you describe.”
Just a small bit: apart from gathering data on thousands of teachers, I do not recall reading about thousands of teachers collaborating on—and by implication, having decisive input on the formulation of—the abovementioned metrics.
I know you have a very full plate. I just hope you can clarify.
Thank you in advance.
🙂
The mega question here:
Who elected Gates to make these decisions?
Answer: Not one person!
YUP. No one died and made any of these deformers king or queen. But they certainly act like it. Like the Red Queen in Through the Looking Glass. Gates on three quarters of the teachers in the United States; “Off with their heads.”
Not unlike what Grover Norquist has done with Congress. Not elected – yet pushing the buttons that impact every American.
Apparently God did.
My view: This is the main problem now. Big money, corporate CEOs are running the government. Too often those who have made huge amounts of money “by their own bootstraps”, not using schools, roads, infrastructure of all kinds [LOL] to build their fiscal wealth, believe that they alone have THE answers to all our problems. Because they have made big money they MUST be smarter than others so will use their wealth to buy influence. They could use a bit more humility and let those who have been there done that and who have studied in depth the problems and solutions alone to do their work. THEN they, as well as the rest of society would work better.
“Big money, corporate CEOs are running the government.”
And that is called. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . FASCISM.
Dear Diane-
Here’s a suggestion offered only partly tongue-in-cheek.. The Gates Foundation should be joined as a repondent in every suit filed for wrongful termination as a consequence of any Gates sponsored or designed teacher evaluation system. What could be more quintessentially American than that? Moreover, when suing, it’s always better to go after the party with deep pockets. After all, should cash-strapped urban districts that have had these evaluation systems forced upon them be held solely liable?
PB
What the post fails to mention is that Gates’ small schools project was later shown to be quite a success, according to the randomized evaluations. Ironically, Gates’ only failure there was abandoning the project in 2008 before waiting to see the evidence that it worked.
WT: how did one man, who attended an elite private school and dropped out of Harvard, become the determiner of what’s best for public education in America?
How indeed!
Through that great American God-Mammon!
Mr. Gates is a True believer in the Golden Rule: those with the gold make the rules.
WT,
Please direct us to the study (“randomized evaluations”)to which you refer.
Thanks,
Duane
http://mdrc.org/project/new-york-city-small-schools-choice-evaluation#featured_content
WT,
Thanks for the link. Will read at another time as it’s such a wonderful evening here in the beautiful Missouri River Hill Country of Southern Warren County, MO. Time to have a brewski or two to wash the incipient crud off my brain from being “professionally developed” today, although, thank god, it was light on the Common Coring or else I’d have to break out the hard stuff.
I’ll leave it to better minds than mine to evaluate the study (calling all Mercedes Schneiders, Bruce Bakers, Jersey Jazzmans and others to report for duty!!) other than to note “MDRC’s study is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.”
WT,
In your link, did you look at the list of the funders of the MDRC.
Yep. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is among them. Again, hardly unbiased. Any mathematical study can shade statistics. Education reform is filled with people on all sides who have some way to prove their point.
Yes, Gates Foundation paid MDRC to evaluate it. But if anything, Gates wanted MDRC to find negative results. By the time the MDRC work was done, Gates had long since abandoned his small school strategy, and it was quite embarrassing for him when the MDRC findings came out.
On what evidence do you support the idea that “Gates wanted the MDRC to find negative results.” Seems a convenient dodge.
Also, if it proved so successful, why hasn’t Gates invested foundation money to re-start it instead of spending it in myriad other ways? It’s been six years. His inaction actually seems to demonstrate that the results in this “study” were indeed inaccurate. Gates clearly has the money, why abandon it if it was so awesome?
The study by MDRC is very good and well-founded. But you disagree, not because you know anything about the issue, but because you are so convinced in the goodness of Gates that you think he and his foundation would automatically follow the evidence wherever it leads?
Repeat after me:
People who went to school think they can run schools.
People with lots of money think they know everything.
Delusional, aspberger-like folks treating children like pieces on a game board are clueless and just plain wrong.
Reading the “reformers” and listening to them talk, I have often thought of Asperger’s Syndrome. They often seem completely inept at understanding the human consequences of their proposals. I have hesitated to make the comparison, however, for this reason: I have known a number of sufferers from Aspergers who were NOT emotionally clueless, NOT emotionally graceless because they had developed sophisticated coping mechanisms. I know one fellow, for example, a brilliant mathematician, who keeps lists of facial expressions and their meanings and who makes a habit of “checking in” with the people he’s talking to by asking direct questions about their emotional states. But certainly, there is a technocratic heedlessness and a great deal of cluelessness about human nature on the part of those pushing these deforms.
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2013/09/previewing_duncans_speech_cong.html
Ugh. Duncan is still pushing online learning. I’m embarrassed that the Sec of Ed is so clearly captured by business interests. A day doesn’t go by that he isn’t selling one or another edu-business.
He may as well wear a corporate logo. As a matter of fact, let’s just skip the middleman and they can pay him. I don’t want to. Put him on the for-profit payroll, and get him off of mine. Whoever writes his stuff should tone down the product endorsements. He sounds like a crooked county commissioner, not the Sec of Ed.
That’s Duncan in a nutshell. He’s an advance man for some business interests. As his Chief of Staff recently said, to the Secretary, the Common Core is about “creating national markets for products that can be brought to scale.” Translation: big-box education. The Walmartization of U.S. education. As if we weren’t already VERY far along that path.
And yes, he does sound just like some two-bit crooked local county commissioner doing fixes for his cronies.
It’s really insulting to be presented with these bogus studies.
And what is really creepy and disgusting is that they can get big tax breaks (avoid paying taxes they really owe — thus hollowing out the our economy) in order finance “studies” (i.e., press releases) whose real objective is union busting. Nice work if you can get it. No wonder they don’t care if it goes on for decade after decade. They ought to be investigated by the IRS and attorney general.
They are all delusional fools, especially Arne…he’s preaching about existing in a bubble?
Sent: 9/30/2013 2:08:09 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time
Subj: Duncan chastises the Washington ‘alternate universe’
9/30/13 2:07 PM EDT
Education Secretary Arne Duncan railed against Congress and Washington today, labeling some of the thinking inside the beltway an “alternate universe,” a “bubble” and a place where too many vapid arguments happen in “140 characters or less” on Twitter.
In the “real world” outside Washington, educators aren’t questioning the need for meaningful testing or tying student growth to teacher evaluations, he said during a speech at the National Press Club. The notion that the Common Core standards amount to a federal takeover is the “height of silliness,” and educators across the country are moving forward with reform without waiting for congressional action on a reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, he said.
“Right now, our country faces stark choices,” he said. Congress can continue to play politics with the budget and the debt ceiling or figure out a way to fund the government and education. He stressed that he literally can’t do anything to mitigate the effects of the sequester and that the Education Department will work to assuage student fears over the effects of a government shutdown, but Congress must act to move away from recurring budget crises.
Duncan indicated confidence that Congress would work it out soon, possibly before the government is set to shut down at midnight.
“We have until midnight to solve this, and one thing I’ve learned in Washington is when there’s a will, there’s a way.”
Another big grant from the DOE to charter schools:
http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/us-department-education-awards-28-million-charter-school-grants-planning-program
But don’t worry! The nations under-funded public schools are ordered to take direction from the new federally-funded charters. Maybe we can send the public school over to see the new charter facilities.
Duncan has abandoned local public schools. It’s really that simple.
Even simpler….he never supported them unless you consider supporting the destruction of public schools support.
He follows the his two rulers: Eli and Bill OR Belie
Linda: you’ve got it all wrong; he is a man of deep beliefs.
He is simply following the Golden Rule: He who has the gold, rules.
As for principles, he simply leans on that old Marxist adage:
“Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.” [Groucho]
🙂
What is this? Who would name a charter “Our Piece of the Pie Inc.”?
Our Piece of the Pie Inc. CT $200,000
http://www.opp.org
http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/us-department-education-awards-28-million-charter-school-grants-planning-program
Ugh. We aren’t questioning student growth being tied to evaluations? If he says it enough times it will be true.
By the way, has anyone figured out how to measure student growth? I have never seen a uniform model to do this. If it could be done, wouldn’t everyone do it the same way?
No, wait, how silly of me. Pre-test and post-test and measure how many more questions a student answered correctly. Because that rules out gaming the system entirely! Students wouldn’t intentionally tank on the pre-test. (I’ve heard countless stories of this.) Teachers wouldn’t teach directly to tests! Nope. It’s all objective.
Well, you know how it is “the more you measure it the more it will grow”.
Personally, that’s why I measured my kids height so often so that they would grow taller. It worked! Oldest 6’4, daughter 6’2″ and youngest 6’3′.
What? Wait! What? That’s how it worked in my world so why can’t it work in the Blarney’s world with education.
“Education Secretary Arne Duncan railed against Congress and Washington today, labeling some of the thinking inside the beltway an “alternate universe,” a “bubble” and a place where too many vapid arguments happen in “140 characters or less” on Twitter.
In the “real world” outside Washington, educators aren’t questioning the need for meaningful testing or tying student growth to teacher evaluations, he said during a speech at the National Press Club.”
The ol Blarney the Dunk Funcan must have “done acid when he younger so as to be prepared for times like these” (apologies to L. Black).
The problem is that his was a “bad trip” and he never came quite out of it. He’s still stuck inside the irreality that is the surrealness of his thought process-kinda of an anti-Groundhog Day movie.
Reblogged this on Transparent Christina.
The thing that strikes me about Gates is how incredibly naive he is! I don’t buy the argument that he is trying to “privatize our schools for corporate profit”, or anything like that. There certainly are those who profit from the so-called “reform” movement (and please, let’s always preface “reform” with so-called or something like that, as reform is a good word, let’s not let them take it over), but Gates seems to me totally sincere. He is already the richest man in the world (or close to it), I don’t think his goal is to get richer. And besides education, he is trying to solve problems like malaria and poverty. I don’t think his intentions are bad. (Of course, we know what the road to hell is paved with.)
But he has a very naive view that everything can be solved with some kind of technological solution. That may be true with some sorts of things. I hope, for instance, that he is able to help solve the world’s malaria problem. Scientific research can help that problem. He doesn’t realize how different education is though, which is about interactions between human beings, not something to be “solved” with technology and data.
I wish someone could get across to him, how wrong he is about education, and how much damage he has been causing, despite the good intentions.
All right, then. Enough whining & moaning about the likes of Bill Gates, et.al.
People–yes, this experiment on our children, destruction of the schools and demoralization of educators has been going on FAR too long. This MUST be the year–STOP the testing–teachers & administrators–town by town, city by city, state by state–ALL over the country–REFUSE to give the tests–NOT just the MATS & others, but those MOST damaging and MOST ineffective & faulty–REFUSE to administer those state tests–& parents–back up your educators, just as parents did in Seattle–OPT your kids OUT, keep them at home, do whatever you have to do, but do NOT make them take those tests, tests & test preps which are destroying YOUR kids’ educational opportunities–even the littlest and most innocent children. It is child abuse in its highest form, and it MUST STOP. No more talk, pontificating,writing–DO IT THIS YEAR.
You’ve got that right RBMTK!
I think class actions are in order.
Just asking. Were all his roll outs at Microsoft successful? 🙂
As far as his god-Mammon was concerned, YES!
We are talking about human beings not software programs. Big difference!
At the classroom level, every day matters, as experienced teachers reach out and teach not only academic content, but also social skills, problem-solving skills, coping skills…the list is endless, the individual needs are varied, and yes, we differentiate all of the time. However, now we need to document everything, keep the data charts and strategies current and ongoing, always targeting, assessing, testing, testing, and yet more testing, and this is all added to our jobs of planning engaging lessons, reaching every student, revising instruction, classroom management…what is my point? I want to be able to just do my job please. I don’t need mandates after mandates crammed down my throat. I don’t want a “one curriculum fits all” that stifles creativity. I loathe the micromanagement tactics in our schools, where students are forced to travel in the halls in quiet lines, where structure is essential to optimize productivity…are these schools or prisons? It’s obvious that corporate agenda is behind the scenes, forcing mind and behavioral control to prepare obedient workers who will never question their role in society. The Nazi mantra “work makes you free,” is frightening and should raise an immediate, collective alarm across the land of the free and home of the brave. It’s time to raise our voices and REFUSE to be threatened, and cowed into obedience for fear of losing our jobs. As an educator, I cannot keep going into a classroom filled with young impressionable minds and crush their spirits and creativity with the uniformity of a rote curriculum and brain-washing mantras being dictated by government and corporate entities that preach their lofty intentions but are evil and rotten to the core. Their God is money, and the human experience is crushed to produce a work population to work hard and contribute generously to keep the money wheel spinning so the 1% will never have to be held accountable for the harm they do. Did Bill Gates really make a joke about how he controls education? If this arrogance is not enough to ARM educators, then I’m afraid it is too far gone to fix. I do agree that every parent, every teacher, every administrator refuse to be part of this testing and evaluation regime. On a personal note, I feel like a total failure because as an educator, I am lost. I can no longer teach pablum and lies to my students, and it breaks my heart to slowly watch them steadily switching off their minds in the classroom. If you think they aren’t aware, think again. The stress is overwhelming, and it isn’t healthy to punish those who truly want to “teach.” I do have a choice: I can leave the profession I’ve been doing for 16 years. I just might end up doing this because if I don’t, it might kill me. Yes…it is that stressful. Thanks for reading.
Yes!! Diane you are right on target! We are close to kicking Common Core & it’s components out of Oklahoma Schools. Thank you for your great work in documenting the truth about education. –Linda Murphy, Oklahoma Educator
Thanks Diane! This is so true. We are close to kicking part of Gate’s agenda out of Oklahoma –Common Core! –Linda Murphy, Oklahoma Educator