Anthony Cody points out that for the past dozen years or so, Bill Gates has had his fun experimenting with education reform. Obsessed as he is with measurement and data, he imagined that he could impose his narrow ideas on American public schools and bring about a magical transformation.
Does American education need reform and improvement? Absolutely. Stuck as it is in the paradigm of testing and punishment, it sorely needs a revival of humanism and attention to the needs of children, families, and communities. It needs teachers who are well-prepared. It needs a recommitment o the health and happiness of children and to a deeper love of learning.
Yet Gates used HS vast wealth to steer national policy to the dry and loveless task of higher scores on tests of dubious value.
He wanted charter schools, and Arne Duncan, his faithful liege, demanded more charter schools,even if it was central to the Republican agenda.
He wanted national standards and quite willingly paid out over $2 billion to prove that one man could create the nation’s academic standards by buying off almost every group that mattered.
He wanted teachers to be evaluated based on test scores, and Ducan gave that to him too.
But says Cody, everything failed.
Cody writes:
.
“Last September Bill Gates said,
“It would be great if our education stuff worked, but that we won’t know for probably a decade.”
But, says Cody,
“I think we already know enough to declare the experiment a failure.
Value Added is a disaster. Any “reformer” who continues to support giving significant weight to such unreliable indicators should lose any credibility.
“Charter schools are, as a sector, not better than public schools, and are expanding segregation, and increasing inequality.
“The Common Core and the high stakes accountability system in which it is embedded is on its way to the graveyard of grand ideas.
“The only question remaining is how long Gates and his employees and proxies will remain wedded to their ideas, and continue to push them through their sponsored advocacy, even when these policies have been proven to be ill-founded and unworkable.
“Part of the problem with market-driven reform is that when you introduce the opportunity to make money off something like education, you unleash a feedback loop. Companies like the virtual charter chain K12 Inc can make tremendous profits, which they can use to buy off politicians, given our Supreme Court’s “Corporations are people and money is speech” philosophy. There are no systemic brakes on this train. The only way turn this around is for people to organize in large enough numbers, and act together in ways that actively disrupt and derail the operation.
“Along those lines, activists in Seattle are organizing a demonstration on June 26th, protesting the Gates Foundation at their headquarters. It has been a year and a half since I engaged the Gates Foundation in dialogue. Given the rather poor aptitude for learning Gates and company have shown, I will be joining this protest, and perhaps if enough of us are there, we can take the dialogue to the next level.”
Excellent to stage a protest at Gates’s Seattle HQ. Good idea if NPE organized a national “Tell Gates to Stop Disrupting Our Schools!” protests wherever NPE folks can gather into bunches. Important to be as visible as possible, put Gates on the spot, then do same for Kochs, Waltons, Zuckerberg, Broad, etc.
“It would be great if our education stuff worked, but that we won’t know for probably a decade.” What an odd statement from Gates considering at the outset of his involvement he stated “we know what works”. Is it fair to say one of those statements was a lie!
“This statement is false.”
I’ve heard those statements MANY times either by Gates or one or more of his supporters.
Gates’ bluff is being called, and he’s got nothing.
Actually, he’s got everything. He owns Obama and Duncan, the catalysts of this monstrous disaster.
Money cant buy the love parents have for their children. Undestandable that an technocrat like Gates didnt have this on his radar screen.
When this huckster stated that all electrical plugs were “standardized,” I realized he was in deep, deep trouble. I looked at my travel pack of electrical plugs used around the world and saw five different plug designs. Maybe Gates should travel to these other countries and try to convince them that they should all follow the American model of plug design. Good luck, Bill. Time to get off your yacht and get out into the real world. You could take your educational designs with you. I’m sure Finland wants to hear your solutions to what constitutes a stellar education.
Yeah, I’m sure that they would jump at the chance to turn their schools into factories for test prep based on Lord Coleman’s unimaginative bullet list.
What do you mean, they are standardized on his private jet, no?
Oh mister William Gates the third, how could you be so mean,
I told you you’d be sorry for inventing your value added machine.
Now all the neighbors students and teachers, will never more be seen,
They’ll all be ground to bits and bites, in William Gates the third’s machine.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Love it! Haven’t heard ‘Mr Dunderbach’ since the 5thgr school bus.
Gates was a pioneer in Information Technology by figuring out how everyone could obtain, and be obliged to use, the same product – Microsoft Windows – in order to communicate with everyone else. It was never a great product, but it was a great idea – standardize what we do on our laptops – and it made him and many others a fortune. He surely wanted to do the same thing in education, that is, modularize chunks of learning, standardize these modules, keep data on them, spread them around quickly, pare down the pedagogical materials needed to support them to a few blockbusters, and watch a huge new market take off. And ubiquitous testing, now made possible through networks of computers, would swing into high gear so we could monitor the results. The very idea of an idiosyncratic, differentiated, human and diverse set of education priorities that needed well trained and locally sensitive teachers to operate is impossible for him to understand. It is the un Windows way of the world. Gates is, or was, a great industrialist, a true American nerd, He is totally the wrong person to gain so much power in education.
Anthony Cody is correct.
One of the clearest signs is “the rather poor aptitude for learning Gates and company have shown.”
That’s why the self-styled “education reformers” go to a retreat like Camp Philos: to insulate themselves from the real world in order to bask in the [to them] soothing glow of Rheeality Distortion Fields. And to contemplate the future ROIs they will enjoy if they can find effective ways of bringing their Potemkin Village Business Plans for $tudent $ucce$$ to complete fruition.
Yes, make clear that their ideas are already proven failures. And take away their falsely inflated self-esteem bought at such a horrendous cost to so many others.
¡Palante!/Go for it!
😎
Krazy,
Absolutely brilliant!
“The only question remaining is how long Gates and his employees and proxies will remain wedded to their ideas, and continue to push them through their sponsored advocacy, even when these policies have been proven to be ill-founded and unworkable.”
I agree with basically all of the article, though I think there are many more questions. Personally, I wonder how well current teachers will be able to hang on through the storm. I also have questions over how much damage will be done to students, and what will be done to recover.
Overall, however, I’m totally with this article. I don’t think we can wait for Gates’ decade.
Top Ten Reasons Educrats and Reform will fail:
10. Reformers thought “teach” was a four letter word.
9. The PARCC online assessments reused code from healthcare.gov
8. The Tea Party thinks “radicals” and “commutative” in the math standard are a Marxist conspiracy.
7. The secret that VAM formulas are based on sunspots is finally revealed.
6. The ELA standards were mistakenly written in Comic Sans font.
5. The National Governors Association thought “common core” was a type of fracking process.
4. Pearson reps were spotted on the set of Teletubbies.
3. Too many math problems about standardized plugs.
2. The online tests crashed because grit leaked into the system.
1. No one could come up with a good hashtag and “#epicfail” was already taken
Thank you for your sober, accurate appraisal, MathVale!
Ah. Finally a valid assessment.
Teach isn’t a four letter word?????
Too bad that your list wouldn’t get the laugh it deserves if it was on Letterman. Thanks for the comedy break! 🙂
It’s long past time for a protest at the Dark Tower itself. What’s a plutocrat to do, these days, when people have finally had enough and decide to storm the gates? In the old days, he or she could simply call in the Pinkertons to break a lot of heads.
Yes, it is time to take the protests to their very doors because the deformers spend so much time in echo chambers, listening to their sycophants and toadies, that they really haven’t any clue about the extent to which people are COMPLETELY REPELLED by their terrible ideas and ANGRY as a result of witnessing, daily, the very real damage that those ideas do to children–to children who are, after all, our little ones, and a sacred trust.
Congrats, Bill and Arne, your reductive and invalid numerology has made “data” the most loathed word in the English language. Well done.
Yes, let us put aside the faith of the Rheeformation–their technocratic Philistinism. Let us end the abusive, continual testing and stack ranking, the climate of fear and disrespect. Let us return to honoring our teachers and giving them the autonomy they need in order to do their jobs.
Let us allow them, finally, to return to the humane, transactional business of instilling love of learning in differing ways with children who, after all, differ. Let us put the old goal of instilling love of literature, the arts, music, history, philosophy, science, mathematics, and the practical arts back at the center of our classrooms.
And let us return to allowing our scholars, researchers, and curriculum designers to experiment boldly–to put forward their ideas for teachers to adopt or adapt as they see fit–free of the stultifying, deadening, narrow confines Lord Coleman’s bullet list.
A lot was happening in U.S. education that was very, very exciting before the dark days of NCLB and Son of NCLB. Let us return to that time.
Let there be creative joy in teaching and learning again.
“…deformers spend so much time in echo chambers, listening to their sycophants and toadies, that they really haven’t any clue about the extent to which people are COMPLETELY REPELLED by their terrible ideas…”
This echo chamber seems to be a problem common to people wielding immense power. They really do lose touch with the reality of every day existence. They begin to develop a Marie Antoinette complex forgetting that we are feeling like we are lucky to get crumbs.
Wishful thinking. If you separate what is happening to public education from the rest of the movement to loot public assets for private gain, you will lose.
These people like Gates are playing for keeps. They have the money to buy the politicians to continue on their destructive path.
I couldn’t agree more.
I am so tired of all this testing and craziness. If you don’t mind, I want to share with you the letter I received in response to my letter, stating my child will “opt out” of testing, or simply REFUSE the NJ ASK, which began today April 28, 2014. This letter is from the Superintendent of schools in Bloomfield, NJ.
…and I quote, ” Parent / Guardian: I have received multiple phone calls / email messages regarding upcoming State testing and specific parent/guardian’s desire to “opt out.” I would like you to know that my office has been in contact with other districts and the State Department of Education for additional guidance and I have been informed that New Jersey does not currently have an “opt out policy.” Specifically, State administrative code provides that:
District boards of education shall, according to a schedule prescribed by the Commissioner, administer the applicable Statewide assessments, including the six major components: the elementary assessment component for grades three through five; the middle school assessment component for grades six through eight, the HSP, the AHSA and the APA for students with sever cognitive disabilities. N.J.A.C. 6A:8-4.1 (c) As recent as April 2, 2014, the Executive County Superintendent of Schools has alerted us that “opting-out” of NJASK or any other state mandated test is NOT an option. It is a Federal requirement that ALL students participate and since PARCC assessment will be operational for 2014-2015, “opting out” will not be allowed. Accordingly, I would advise all parents/guardians that your child is expected to be in attendance for upcoming NJASK and HSPA testing this spring. I would ask that you direct all additional questions to Assistant Superintendent Jenkins. Thank you for your attention to this letter.
Sincerely,
Salvatore Goncalves Superintendent of Schools
e mail: sgoncalves@bloomfield.k12.nj.us
In the end, today, I kept my daughter home. When the school called to inquire about her whereabouts, I told them “She will not be taking the test.”
thank you Diane for all the insight and inspiration you have given me. I only wish more parents in my neighborhood would stick to their guns and refuse testing also.
Sincerely, Karen Carinha
This took courage, Ms. Carinha, and shows that you put the welfare of your child first. Much honor to you.
Karen, it’s courageous parents like you who will drive a stake through the heart of this insidious fraud.
This is outrageous. I commend you for your bravery neighbor!
I am seriously thinking about joining this June 26 protest.
me, too!
I’m thinking about it too as my daughter moved to Seattle in the last year and I was thinking of visiting her this summer. The time frame looks viable for me.
Why does everybody give Obama a pass on Common Core? Duncan is clearly doing the President’s bidding, as do all political appointees.
There will be a rally in front of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on June 26th, and Anthony Cody will be in attendance.
While in town, I hope Cody considers extending protests in front of League of Education Voters and Stand for Children buildings. Both of these organizations carry water for Gates.
LEV is currently salivating over charters schools coming to WA State. Neither they nor Stand On Children support public schools beyond the insincere lip service they sometimes offer.
Diane, Please consider covering the June 26th protest. Your blog spreads news that the mainstream media does not cover. Thanks.
Take your camera and a pad and paper. Find Duane and Bob and sic them on the crowd. You know Diane would post it.
I read this article on fertility clinics, and how success rates are misleading and force clinics to not want to take the hard cases. There are quite a few parallels to the problems in education. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2014/03/fertility_clinic_success_rates_are_misleading_possibly_dishonest_and_promote.html
It is a funny thing. Finland didn’t need to wait “a decade” to see good results. Finland’s education reforms worked almost from the get-go and they were deliberately implemented slowly and in consultation with those most affected by the changes.
Good piece on how Ohio public schools get the short end of the stick in funding, compared to charter schools:
“A new report adds to the ongoing tension between publically funded, but privately operated charter schools and traditional public schools.
Innovation Ohio’s recent analysis shows that half of the money transferred from school districts to charter schools in the 2012-2013 school year went to charters with lower performance ratings on the state report card.
The report also finds that all of the money transferred to charters results in six percent less money for kids in traditional districts.
Stephen Dyer, a fellow with the left leaning think tank, says the report points to what he thinks is a fundamental flaw in the way that charter schools are funded.”
I’m so pleased someone is finally looking at the effect on public schools. I think it’s nuts how this whole “debate” revolves around how charter schools are doing under ed reform, and no one ever looks at how public schools are doing under ed reform leadership at the federal and state level.
How did that happen? I’m amazed that the schools most kids attend are never even considered or discussed, except to use them as political punching bags.
http://stateimpact.npr.org/ohio/2014/04/24/report-fuels-debate-about-ohios-method-for-funding-charter-schools/
Too bad you don’t have as much to offer as Gates; then you could do so and not see all the good that has come as a result of what he is doing and learning.
You probably didn’t hear about this because it isn’t an Accepted Reform in our incredibly narrow “debate”, so I thought I’d plug it again 🙂
“Across the nation, advocates are beginning to use the idea of a “community school” as a model for improving their local education systems. At the Community Schools National Forum in Cincinnati last week, top educators from the US and abroad learned about this powerful new model and how it could be scaled up nationally. ”
http://www.otlcampaign.org/blog/2014/04/14/what-are-community-schools
Why no love for Cincinnati among ed reformers? Why is this “model” shunned, and all we ever hear about is NOLA and DC? I thought we were having a… debate? 🙂
Keep posting on it, Chiarra. I think these schools may provide a model for what we want to see happen. I was especially interested to be reminded that Bill deBlasio wants to use the model in NYC.
Chiara. Sorry. My fingers stutter.
I saw the OTL reference last week…
I checked out the OTL website and spent some time investigating the Partnerships Not PushOuts campaign.
“Partnerships, Not Pushouts: A Guide for School Board Members on Community Partnerships for Student Success” was developed by the Alliance for Excellent Education, American Federation of Teachers, CASEL, Coalition for Community Schools, National Education Association, National School Boards Association, Opportunity Action, Opportunity to Learn Campaign, and the Rural School and Community Trust.
I did some digging and there are several red flags…. http://www.otlcampaign.org/blog/2014/04/22/partnerships-not-pushouts –
One of it’s partners in the campaign is Alliance for Excellent Education which is heavily funded by the Gates’ Foundation, pushes Common Core and digital learning…
highlight on Alliance For Excellent Education, right click and search via google or your favourite search engine;
A4EE governing board chairman Leeds and his wife have far reaching connections; Leed founded the Education Funder Strategy Group – search it…
And there’s some funny business going on with connections across a couple of the partners; also with claims that this is a grass roots organisation/campaign, but its funded by, and led by an employee of Schott Foundation… AND LEEDS and his family started the Schott Foundation… and María Jobin-Leeds (Jobin-Leeds Partnership for Democracy & Education LLC) sits on the board of Opportunity Action … it’s like a Russian nesting doll shell created to make an impression that there are lots of people involved…
There are a lot of big names on the OTL Advisory Board including Anthony’s, Randi Weingarten, Linda Darling Hammond, Julian Vasquez Heilig, John Kuhn, Yong Zhao – it’s like they went shopping for all the names anti-ed reformers would trust (almost – not many anti-ed reformers trust Randi now!)
PLEASE SHARE
Hearing on Charter School Management and Accountability
and Int 12-2014
The City Council’s Education Committee, chaired by Council Member Daniel Dromm, will hold an oversight hearing, “Charter School Management and Accountability.” Below is information regarding the upcoming hearing:
Hearing on: Oversight: “Charter School Management and Accountability”
Date: Tuesday, May 6, 2014
Time: 10:00 am (*public testimony is estimated to begin sometime after 12:00pm)
Place: Council Chambers – City Hall
Charter schools are publicly funded, privately run schools operating according to the terms of a 5-year performance contract or “charter” issued by the New York State Regents. There are currently 183 charter schools operating in New York City, serving 70,000 students which represent approximately 6% of the City’s 1.1 million public school enrollment. Rapid expansion of charter schools in NYC since 2002 has led to a number of concerns, the most prominent of which are related to siting and co-location inside district public school buildings. However, a number of other issues relating to charter schools have surfaced, including transparency and accountability in the use of public funds, enrollment policies, teacher attrition rates and discipline practices, among others. This hearing will explore these and other charter school management and accountability issues and will examine DOE’s monitoring and oversight role regarding charter schools.
The Committee will also hear testimony on the following bill:
Int 12-2014 – A Local Law to amend the administrative code of the city of New York, in relation to requiring the department of education to report academic and demographic information on co-located schools.
The full text of Int 12-2014 can be found at the following link on the Council’s website: http://legistar.council.nyc.gov/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=1655632&GUID=080D2221-5462-4D1E-BFBD-D27D4A4D6E69&Options=Advanced&Search
We invite members of Community Education Councils, parents, students, educators, advocates, and all other stakeholders and interested members of the public to testify at this hearing. Testimony will be limited to 2-3 minutes per person to allow as many as possible to testify. Although the hearing starts at 10:00 am, the Administration (Department of Education), as well as other witnesses (such as elected officials) have been invited to testify and answer questions from Council Members at the outset, so we do not expect to hear from others until sometime after 12:00 pm. Please make sure you fill out a witness slip on the desk of the Sergeant-at-arms if you wish to testify. If you plan to bring written testimony, please bring at least 20 copies. If you are unable to attend the hearing and wish to submit written testimony, please email your testimony to jatwell@council.nyc.gov.
Please share this information with any interested groups or individuals. Thank you for your assistance and we look forward to seeing you on May 6th! Please note – hearing dates and times are subject to change. For information about hearings and other events, check the Council’s website at http://council.nyc.gov/html/action/calendar.shtml or, if you’d like to receive email notices of upcoming hearings, you can sign up at the following link http://council.nyc.gov/html/action/signup.shtml. All hearings are open to members of the public.
“Part of the problem with market-driven reform is that when you introduce the opportunity to make money off something like education, you unleash a feedback loop.”
You know what they say about criminals. They always leave something behind to get caught sooner or later. Bill outsmarted himself. He needs to find himself another project.
I read Cody’s engagement w/Gates Foundation on his blog a while ago and their responses were lame. They had no solid research to base their claims and avoided the truth. Cody did a fantastic job calling them out.
Great idea to protest in Gates’ territory. Hope the reporters are there to put it in the paper.
The headlines: “Run Billy! Run!”
Bill Gates/The Gates Foundation have investments in private prisons and this: http://tinyurl.com/qhpb9mk
I dont know what more it would take to push people to the place where they simply refuse to let this ‘man’ buy public education and remake it in his own image…. he’s playing with our kids and is making profit off human misery and terror…
No disrespect intended, but I think Anthony Cody is missing an awful lot.
The vast majority of states have signed on to the Common Core (a couple of states have “opted” out, but they’re still developing their own “state” standards that are eerily like the Common Core). Even worse, the two major teacher unions – the AFT and NEA – have signed on too. Heartily.
All kinds of education organizations, from ASCD to the national superintendents association, from the national organization of PTAs to the National Association of Secondary School Principals and the National Association of Elementary School Principals, have also endorsed the Common Core.
Don’t forget the two major testing organizations, the ACT and the College Board. Both were instrumental in developing the Common Core and both tout the fact that they’ve “aligned” their products with it. Does Cody think that the ACT test and the SAT test are going away anytime soon? Does he think that Advanced Placement courses and tests are on the “way to the graveyard?”
And what about STEM, which has been tied to the Common Core? The notion of a STEM “crisis” is a hoax as big as the goofy rationale behind the Common Core, that more “rigor” and more “accountability” are needed to ensure American “economic competitiveness.” And yet STEM has been endorsed on this blog.
A agree with Cody that the Common Core is unnecessary.
But given the huge sellout by the current crop of education “leaders,” I’d say it’s far from dead.
oops…. I agree……not A agree.
These criminals aren’t going to back down until they have looted every last dime from the masses.
This isn’t a “fad” where the pendulum will “swing” in the area of common sense; these people are here for the long haul.
There has been a huge sellout, certainly
I agree with you completely. Cody can keep pointing the finger, but now everyone’s in bed with everyone else. Buy Pearson stock.
All the human characteristics it take to be successful are normally distributed.
Education can’t change that. In our “Flat World” “Average is Over” and education must redirect itself toward helping people lead a more fulfilling life! We need to be more elitist
treating the all academic stars as we treat sports stars or Asia will take over!