Anthony Cody connects the dots. Bill Gates has invested more than $2 billion in promoting Common Core because he sees the need for a standard curriculum. When speaking to the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, Gates explained that the standard electrical plug in all 50 states facilitated innovation.
Cody shows how the Common Core makes possible a standard platform for all kinds of devices. These devices essentially take over the role of the classroom teacher. Gates might at long last achieve his dream of larger class size, fewer teachers, great cost savings. Other vendors are ready with their product line, ready to plug into the standard curriculum that has long eluded suppliers of educational materials.
Cody believes that the best motivation for learning does not from a device but from human interaction.
He writes:
“It is understandable why people who have made their fortunes on the transformation of commerce and industry through the almighty combination of computers, software, data and the internet would project a similar revolution in our schools. However, there is a fundamental difference between commerce and the classroom. Our students learn in a social environment in which human relationships remain central. A model which makes a device central to the learning process is flawed.
“These devices have some value as tools. I am not suggesting they be abandoned. I am suggesting that they are being greatly oversold, and the imperative to standardize our classrooms so they become uniform “sockets” that will allow these devices to readily plug in is misguided. We stand to lose far more from this stultifying standardization than these devices can ever provide.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Very well said. Testing is fine at some point, but teaching to a test is not education. Interaction between teachers and students is critical for a good education. Children must be encouraged to think and come up with their own solutions which then can be tested, analyzed, corrected.
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Perhaps Bill Gates should make sure Microsoft is paying its fair share of Federal and Washington State taxes (to support our underfunded K-12 and higher ed system) before preaching Common Cor(porate) Standards and hanging that albatross around our necks. Next up: Microsoft complains it has to import foreign workers because it can’t find enough qualified US workers….oh wait.
Can’t have it both ways, Bill.
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Cody is right and it was obvious to me long ago that people like Gates are so disconnected from the real world by their wealth and power, they have no clue how the public schools work and the valuable services they provide to communities almost as if they are the glue that holds everything together.
In fact, for those who live in poverty, the public schools are often their only safe haven that offers the only possibility to escape what waits for them on the streets and at home.
Remove the public schools that evolved as part of those poor communities and replace them with private sector Charter schools modeled on Gates corporate, profit driven vision and communities mired in poverty and street gang violence will sink deeper into illiteracy, hunger, suffering and abuse, because the dedicated, career teachers who often stayed so long they ended up teaching the children of the children they first taught, will be gone. Those teachers who stayed for decades often become part of those communities—a familiar face, a familiar name who understands more than the likes of Gates and his corporate fake reformers will ever understand. To deal with the problems they will face, they will militarize those communities with marital law and turn them into the same type of ghettos where the Nazi’s forced the Jews to live until they were shipped off to concentration camps to be gassed.
For instance, kids I taught in the late 1970s and early 1980s, still lived in the same community decades later and sent their own kids to the same schools they went to. I had kids walking in my room in the late 1990s and early 21st century who told me that I had taught their parents in 7th and 8th grade.
In 2005, before I retired, I asked about one of the kids I had taught back in 1979 to see if he was still alive. At 12, G had been a hard core gang member and was a known shooter who’d killed several rival gang members by then. G told me he didn’t think he’d live to reach 18. In 2005, the 9th grader I asked about G belonged to the same street gang and he said he’d check for me. A few days later, that 9th grader returned and said G—now 38—was still alive and he had a wife and children.
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Interesting post. What Cody says about the flipped classroom is fascinating; unfortunately, that model only works if the students can–and are willing to–do the homework. If not, the students who use their tablets to play oh, so addictive video games and social media, or who don’t use their tablets at all, will fall farther behind. And the achievement gap will widen as many students, especially those who live in poverty, have huge barriers to an environment conducive to homework. Gates et al are basing this on a business model where employees will, for the most part, do some work to earn their paycheck. Children have other motivations for doing–or not doing–their work.
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Well there it is out in the open, a human=a industrially produced product. The fundamentally flawed metaphor, hugely attractive to people who would not conceive of themselves or their children as industrially produced products. Resisters should capitalize on this metaphor yelling it from the rooftops.
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agreed
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I am a little less apocalyptic about the end result of all this upheaval on CC. I could be wrong of course.
Let’s stick with the biz analogy for a bit. No standardization process across a zillion people or products takes place overnight in business any moreso than in education. It takes time.
Here we have various parties demanding relatively quick action on tenure retirement and accountability. The money side of it is purely politics and terrible state and local tax revenue, and has been a good vehicle to carry forward the accountability piece as a rider. That coupled with the essential end of nclb and the rttt/waiver monies has made CC an easy sell.
On the idea of standards there is a lot good and plenty of bad kinks to work out. As stated above that takes time even in business. Given that any initial action is almost be definition an overreaction to prior curriculum standards of practice I gave little doubt the end result will be less grave than the current CC as written. This will include less insistence on evidence evidence evidence and other softenings of the initial pitch.
On the CC tests, however, it may take some states quite a while to realize that any benefits they were promised are not coming while other states will catch on quicker. Eventually this will sort itself out because standardization does not confer benefits overnight and benefits are far from guaranteed to be be huge. The only problem is that this sorting out will take approximately the amount of time a student is in the system to entirely unwind.
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Another great piece from Anthony Cody. My take on the same issues:
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One question I have yet to see answered. If Gates is so knowledgeable about management of public education, how much did he contribute to the management of Microsoft? What I remember is that in the early days of Microsoft they would search for the brightest and best and that growth would happen with these folks feeding off each other. Sounds to me like a healthy classroom.
If my memory is correct, as Microsoft began to grow, Gates said something along the lines of not really liking management, that he wanted to remain in the realm of ideas. Although along the way, he may have picked up some ideas as to what makes good management, I just don’t see what in his experience gives him superior knowledge about managing the public schools, unless he wants to talk about the early days of Microsoft.
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Bill Gates uses the wrong example. He points to a presumably two-prong or maybe a three-prong electrical outlet, again presumably a 120V outlet and plug and not a 240V outlet. He is right is saying standardization allowed a great deal to happen.
But let us look closer to home, in Mr. Gates business. Look at the number of connectors in an ordinary PC. I have four different types on the front panel and another 4-5 different types, plus additional examples of the ones in front on the rear. It is amazing the computer industry progressed at all!
Then let’s look at portable electronics: Apple has its own comnectors, others have theirs, new ones are being invented (a USB connect that you can’t get upside down is on its way!). We are buried in charging cords, connecting coards, adapters, etc. maybe he should look to his own house.
Standardization does play a role in progress and in Mr. Gates business everytime a new computer standard was developed Microsoft had a seat at that table. In fact Microsoft put the kibosh on a couple standardization efforts by refusing to come to the table. How is it that Mr. Gates thinks that standardization of education should take place without parents, students, teachers, or school administrators being present? He wouldn’t put up with it for a hot minute and neither should we.
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It’s the mind set (belief) that compells the language (proclamation) to make people listen (believe). Gates has this destructive gift (lack of better word) to assert his philosophy that this is how the world should be through his eyes. It’s a one-way conversation that he sprinkles with Pixy Dust (his way of going green). He has tunnel vision and excludes the repercussions of his actions. His long-term goal excludes people who don’t fit in but who will get the short end of the stick and will suffer because of his thoughtless, ruthless scheme. He is a passive aggressive autocrat.
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But this works for robots!! gates and his big business types are intent on moving us towards a national education system that takes away all local control-unless you can afford to opt out and attend a private school. No more education for those with special needs at the local level-a far better, less expensive and more efficient system would be to warehouse all of them by type and level of disability and ship them off. No more locally elected school boards, move towards appointed superintendents and boards at the state level. No more local hiring and firing decisions, these could be state level but probably better to make them national level decisions. Moving towards a system of online delivery, higher demands and earlier presentation of skills and materials, demanding more of teachers and schools, using tests to see if we are moving ahead–all are good ideas–but only if properly implemented and in an orderly fashion. This common core system of standards, materials, teaching methods, testing and outcome based meritocracy is being rammed down our throats–no discussion, just do it cause the wealthy think it is good for you. Seems as if gates and his corporate types have decided to give up on at least two generations of students–just throw them away, cause you know, the failed system we have would end up causing more than half to fail and cost much more to operate than the new system. Save money, get to the goal faster. In 40 or 50 years, this thrown away generation will be gone and we will have a brave new world!! Just remember, do not be a redshirt, and please do not spit over the side of the citycastles floating in the skies above us common cored. Who knew the racist c. murray would have created the blueprint for gates et al?
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