In a remarkable job of reporting, Lyndsey Layton of the Washington Post describes the creation of the Common Core standards. Two men–Gene Wilhoit and David Coleman–went to see Bill Gates in 2008 to ask him to underwrite national standards. He agreed, and within two years, the standards were written and adopted by almost every state in the nation.
This is the closest thing to an educational coup in the history of the United States. Our education system is made up of about 14,000 local school districts; most education policy is set at the state level. But Bill Gates was able to underwrite a swift revolution. It happened so quickly that there was very little debate or discussion. Almost every consequential education group was funded by the Gates Foundation to study or promote the Common Core standards. Whereas most businesses would conduct pilot testing of a major new product, there was no pilot testing of the Common Core. These national standards were written with minimal public awareness or participation, and at least one state–Kentucky–adopted them before the final draft was finished.
What made the Gates’ coup possible was the close relationship between the Gates Foundation and the Obama administration. When the administration launched its Race to the Top competition, it issued a list of things that states had to do to be eligible for a share of $4.35 billion. One was to agree to adopt “college and career ready standards.” Administration officials, Layton writes, originally planned to specify that states had to adopt the Common Core, still not yet finished, but were warned to use the term “college and career ready,” to avoid the appearance of imposing the Common Core (which was their intent). Leave aside for the moment the fact that it is illegal for any federal official to attempt to direct, control, or influence curriculum or instruction.
Never before has one man had the wealth, the political connections, and the grand ambition to buy American education. But Bill Gates did it.
This is the obituary piece. Using a clever, understated style, she pulls back the curtain and show OZ. And she is not afraid to show how he profits….
@Burris.. I hope you are correct! My fear is that democracy in this nation has been so undermined that this will become just another article in WP (or any other paper) and will be besieged by a dizzying array of corporate spin and will become just another moment to be forgotten as the common core forges along. I SO HOPE YOU ARE RIGHT! I continually read one outrage after another and wonder when the people of this nation will RISE and say collectively THEY HAVE HAD ENOUGH.
Also.. do take a read of an earlier interview on this subject by Mercedes Schneider:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/05/14/bill-gates-and-the-push-to-privatize-public-education/
She makes (as always) many important points. One that strikes a chord is this one…
“… What are the national unions doing? Taking the corporate reform money and carrying out the privatization bidding. The actions of both national union presidents read more like privatizing reformer actions than union president actions…”
So, in addition to the hideousness of common core, teachers are under attack by their very own unions. And for those about to say, “then change the guard by voting corruption out”… REALLY it is a lot more complicated than that due to a lot of entrenched improprieties within unions.
I agree, Carol. I think this is the first piece of true daylight I’ve actually seen break through the national press. Clearly, the narrative has shifted from this point forward. That just means, work harder, everybody. (Except for Diane. You can rest a little.)
I’m glad to see it on WaPo, Jeff Bezos notwithstanding. Maybe it somehow redeems Katherine Graham’s paper. Five years ago I was in despair, trying to get Jay Mathews to disclose the Washington Post subsidiary Kaplan’s hidden involvement in for-profit online charters (“with the look and feel of a district charter”). They since sold that business to K12inc.
So much damage has been done in the meantime, but here we are with a movement.
It is interesting to see how, after several years of Gates and company trying to act like concerns about the CCSS were only from cranks on the right or conspiracy theorists on the left, the story that you and Mercedes Schneider and others have been telling all along has begun to make its way into the major media sources.
Regardless of their intentions, they tried to bypass every single stakeholder in implementing this and in doing so violated both standards and principles. I only hold on to the hope that as this effort gets consumed from its own hubris that we will have a national conversation on what it means that we send 20% of our children to school suffering from the deprivations of poverty and that all of our school aged children are in a generation born into a country that decided 30 years ago that investing in war was far more important than investing the them.
Diane, I want to add my voice to those who praise you, and thank you, for providing this portal to critical information. I cannot sufficiently express my admiration for your courage, and the courage of those who are employed in education and, nonetheless, post under their names.
Spent yesterday reading about the post-Sputnik national defense education act, and the millions poured by the National Science Foundation in the 1950s and ’60s into curricula developed by scholars and academics, led by Jerome Bruner, in science and the humanities, including the arts. What a difference–curricula developed by educators for educators? Embracing science, social studies and the arts instead of destroying them? Working from a deep understanding of child development, cognitive science and learning theory?
Some of the programs, e.g. MACOS (an elementary social studies curriculum, short for “Man: A Course of Study”) went down in flames . . . rich, substantive, and inquiry based, it triggered vehement opposition among right wing groups that objected to its cultural relativism, and found the survival strategies of Netsilik Eskimos to be disturbing and offensive. However, when I think back on my educational history, I know that that fourth grade year I spent studying MACOS in elementary social studies was a defining experience. I’m sure it was for other students as well.
I firmly believe that, when sufficient numbers of parents, educators, and other taxpaying citizens are roused to take our schools back from corporate interests, good sense and sound educational practices can prevail over the blatant pursuit of power and wealth.
MACOS was awesome. I, too, encountered this curriculum in school, and it led me to a lifelong passion for study of cultural variation.
Here’s a link to the original MACOS materials. Still awesome after all these years.
http://www.macosonline.org/
Despite the antiquated, sexist title of the program, Man: A Course of Study. This was the 1970s. Our language has, fortunately, progressed in this regard since then.
Sure Bill:
Gates dismissed any suggestion that he is motivated by self-interest.
“I believe in the Common Core because of its substance and what it will do to improve education,” he said. “And that’s the only reason I believe in the Common Core.”
Bill and Melinda Gates, Obama and Arne Duncan are parents of school-age children, although none of those children attend schools that use the Common Core standards. The Gates and Obama children attend private schools, while Duncan’s children go to public school in Virginia, one of four states that never adopted the Common Core.
Still, Gates said he wants his children to know a “superset” of the Common Core standards — everything in the standards and beyond.
What is really bizarre about his defense is he is so confident that these standards will improve everything…entirely absent of any actual evidence of that.
Assuming that Mr. Gates is applying some of his business insight to this matter, how can he defend releasing a new operating system without Beta testing it? He insists that the standardization, like a dominant operating system on desktops, will release “innovation” but if an OS is full of bugs and users abhor using it, that will drive away developers.
None of his defense of these standards makes sense when placed against the race to implement them while nobody was paying attention.
Daniel, it is actually akin to what Gates did at the helm of Microsoft when he rolled out Windows 98, Windows Vista, and, more recently (although Gates is not in direct day to day control anymore) Windows 8. None of these OS’es were ready for prime time and they turned off millions of users and caused the company to change course suddenly.
Same kind of hubris we see with the CCSS. Perhaps monopolizing a new market and cannibalizing the ideas of others makes one the wealthiest man in the world but doesn’t necessarily prove that he is smart or wise or able to direct change in other fields?
Good point. I forgot about the hubris of the monopolist. Reminds me of an old SNL sketch. “We’re AT&T. We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the PHONE company.”
They will improve his already bloated overflowing bank accounts, and those of his cronies. Education? Schmeducation!
Gates and Pearson needed a single national list to tag their assessments and computer-adaptive curricula to. Who knows, perhaps these people actually think that these puerile “standards” are acceptable. But certainly, they have a few billions in reasons to think that they are. Why did they rush the development, not submit them to any real critique or vetting, not create any mechanism whatsoever for ongoing change in the “standards,” and even have the copyrighted so that they could NOT be changed? Well, it served their business interests to do that.
Bill Gates has a classic “tell.” If you watch the Washington Post video, notice that every time he is lying (by leaving out a key fact; Gates lies not by telling an untruth, but by ignoring the “whole truth” to use the words of the oath), he reaches for the left side of his glasses and adjusts them. Here is one example of that kind of lie that I covered as a reporter and analyst: To claim, as Gates does that he doesn’t push a certain agenda is outrageously incomplete (at the least). Chicago has had two dramatic and destructive examples. From 1997 through 2005, Gates funded “Small Schools.” Chicago wasn’t the only town that got inundated with “Small Schools” dollars (New York even suffered more).
However, Chicago had very strong pushes, mainly because Gates money eventually pulled in behind an already silly (and racist) program: that “small schools” (with more “personal press” — one of those neologisms that academics coin to push their product) were what poor inner city black and brown kids needed. Not smaller class sizes. Not libraries for every school with librarians. Not “wraparound” services from nurses and social workers to psychologists and extra classroom aides. NONE OF THOSE THINGS WAS NECESSARY. Only SMALL.
Why was it racist? Just play suburb in the Chicago area. Large high schools were OK for the rich (and mostly white) in Chicago’s suburbs, from New Trier and Stevenson north of Chicago to Glenbard West west of Chicago (there are very few affluent suburbs to the south; and Chicago has no “east”).
So, the largest public high school in Illinois (Stevenson) could serve some of the wealthiest families in the world. When I visited that school, the advertisement on the inside cover of the school’s monthly magazine was for real estate. Your family, too, could buy a home near Stevenson High School — if you had at least $1.5 million. And by then Stevenson had more than 4,000 students — and twice as many adults per capita as we had in Chicago’s inner city.
But for poor minority kids, where I taught, it had to be “Small Schools” (which almost became a brand during the Arne Duncan years). The resources didn’t matter, because if you really believed that “all children can learn” and got down with “personal press” and all the other jargon-filled nostrums of the “Small Schools Movement” (funded in a large part by the early 2000s with Gates millions) “all children would learn”.
Then one day — BOOM! Chicago’s Mayor and schools CEO Arne Duncan and the local Gates guy held a massive media event at the so-called “Sherman School of Excellence” to announce that the new flavor-of-the-month BEST THING (again funded with Gates millions) was “turnaround.” And within six months, one Chicago high school that had been dutifully performing its “Small Schools” stuff — Orr High School — got subjected to so-called “turnaround”. The staffs of the three “smalls” inside Orr were fired (with a few well-paid exceptions, to later roll out and sing the praises of the latest new new thing) and Orr High School because “Orr School of Excellence.”
In all this remarkable post, the thing that gripped me most was the idea of a “tell” when Gates is lying. I’ve watched many interviews, and always thought his glasses must be badly in need of adjustment.
Were Small Schools another name for underattended schools, to be closed because of small numbers of students? They could not possibly operate with such small numbers of students? Great plan!?
Gates can fund and make happen ANYTHING that well-connected politicians want. Forever! None of this has to make sense to the citizens of the US, as long as Gates pays for it, IT MUST BE GOOD! He has bamboozled millions and continues to pull the wool over people’s eyes with the help of Obama & Co. His Brand is Gold!
I would love to hear secret tapes of the closed door meetings where all these destructive plans were laid and being planned. Where are the leaks when we need them?
The harm to generations of children, while most of the US snoozes, is unforgivable!
Incredible article and videotape. Thank you for this post.
Whenever the interviewer probed the corporate Common Core links, Mr. Gates shifted in his seat and arrogantly deflected away from those inquiries.
I kept wondering how many teaching careers and student learning opportunities have been negatively impacted by his well-funded educational “experiments”.
He should stop “trying things out”.
Unrelated to the topic, but I wanted to encourage everyone to watch Beyond the Wormhole about the role of poverty in brain development.
YES!!!! Very important. There is some really dramatic new research on this.
Here’s the comment I posted on WaPo:
Lindsay says Gates “finds himself in an uncomfortable position”. He is in an uncomfortable position, yes, but I question whether he’s actually found himself there.
She recounts his interview, quoting him at length. Her story points again and again to easily verifiable public knowledge that reveals what profound untruths Gates is uttering, but he has supreme confidence that nobody anywhere will dare challenge his outright lies. Please join us in Seattle on July 26 to do that, and join the twitter thunderclap to get his attention. @ThunderclapIt http://thndr.it/1wePRQe
Gates moved swiftly indeed, to construct a whole system that holds all our children directly accountable, by force of state and federal laws, to his business plans. He is blandly certain he can get away with that.
This may be the best reporting I’ve read on the Common Core in the mainstream media, but it rings utterly false in one fundamental way. In July 2008, around the time this idea was supposedly being pitched to Bill Gates, Achieve published what they already called their “common core” standards. The Gates Foundation is the only (“generous”) funder listed on the report and had been funding this line of inquiry through Achieve and its American Diploma Project (ADP) for years. The ADP was already supported by 35 states educating 85 percent of all U.S. public school students.
So if this pitch took place, what was being pitched was not what was described, unless Bill Gates had only a very vague idea of his Foundation’s current priorities. The Gates Foundation had been working on this issue for years. Perhaps Wilhoit and Coleman needed to convince Gates that the time for a big push had arrived, sure.
But what did they tell him about the “common core” standards that his foundation had funded? Did they lie to him and tell him that they would be the basis of Coleman’s Common Core? Or did they convince him that the past work was flawed and needed to be re-booted — albeit with many of the same authors and backers (e.g., Sue Pimentel, Achieve) — an argument that has never been made in public.
Who knows? That’s the thing about the Common Core: even as we inch closer to the truth, we’re being lied to in transparently obvious ways.
Exactly, Tom.
Interesting use of the word “coup;”it probably is overdue in using it in regard to some of these actions. That said, I hold to the premise of is it any wonder Gates is king? Our very interaction on this blog depends on the work he has done in his life.
Bullshit. Gates is a monopolist and a cunning strategist who demeans, exploits and hates the many tens of thousands of truly talented tech people who developed “his” products. The web is the product of generations of work and inspiration, and it belongs to the people.
Gates is the original FUDmaster.
Watch your language, chemtchr.
I find your comments to often demean, kind of like what you say Gates does.
Understanding the big picture and where we are in it is important to move forward. I don’t think my observation is that far off. It might not a be a comfortable one and it might be overly simplistic, but I think there is truth in it.
Have you read “The Bully Pulpit” by Doris Kearns Goodwin?
Bill Gates isn’t the first unelected American oligarch to partner/control an agenda for the White House/Congress.
My language is precise and technical, in this instance.
bull·shit (ˈbo͝olˌSHit ) vulgar slang
noun
1. stupid or untrue talk or writing; nonsense.
verb
1. talk nonsense to (someone), typically to be misleading or deceptive.
Gates has an army of hired praise-singers who follow him around trying to intimidate critics, but the right to call bullshit on these false claims isn’t subject to his veto, or yours.
http://techrights.org/2014/04/11/gates-and-misappropriation-of-funds/
Chemtchr, in your final reply to Joanna you imply that you were speaking about Gates and his minions, but your comment was posted as a direct response to what Joanna said. whether intentional or not you came across of dismissing her comment in insulting, dismissive terms. As your comment was posted, she was right to call you on it.
cx: Whether intentional or not, you came across as dismissing her comment…
I am not a praise-singer of Gates, but I recognize that naturally he would win them easily considering where we are in our digital age. That’s my point.
Similarly, I have gone back and read the speeches or many leaders in the 1980s and 1990s who we herald as heroes of public education and everything they won for us was done with the caveat and/or vision of working towards accountability. I think it is more productive to account for the fact that some of what we are seeing is to be expected, from old promises in exchange for public school support a few decades ago, to a frustrating influence of a digital despot. My point being only that we need to recognize why something would come about if we are going to change the course.
As I have often said on this blog, I find the “evil them, wonderful us” mentality to be pointless and counterproductive. Better to inventory where we are and how that looks in the big scheme of what has been leading up to where we are, what aspects to modern life might have naturally led to where we are and then assess the damage and future focus from there.
Whether or not Gates is a monopolist and cunning strategist is beside of the point in coming up with next steps.
Chemtechr is only frustrated with my sometimes colorful but non-curseword language.
Only she reserves the right to use objectionable language.
But her politics are so good, it makes it easy to overlook her hyprocrisy.
Yes, Chemtchr, I will not accuse you of trolling here, but your language could stand to be more descriptive. Jerry Seinfeld always had a bite to his writing but has always declared that cursing is “cheating”.
Think of all the wonderful similes and metaphors, all the literary devices you can use to put down the people you don’t like, present company excluded.
C’mon.
We’re in this together . . . . .
I didn’t “dismiss” this comment. I called bullshit on it, and gave precise reasons for that designation, and even a reference. That is an opening for an answer, the opposite of a dismissal. You are all free, though, to distract the conversation with false daintiness.
Don’t people think they need to cite evidence for stupid, untrue, and deceptive claims about Gates? Then their mealy-mouthed sanctimony is precisely the situation that the term “bullshit” describes.
“Our very interaction on this blog depends on the work he has done in his life”.
Bullshit.
I quite agree, chemtchr. Computers and the internet were developed with massive government support of the work of hundreds or thousands of scientists. Bill Gates was the crafty, lucky guy who landed a monopoly early in the process of commercializing the work of generations of researchers, but his contribution could and would have been made quickly by others had he not been there. No one owes him a debt of gratitude for making piles of money off his consistently mediocre products!
I don’t see it as gratitude, and I certainly don’t think I gave anything close to mealy-mouthed dainty sanctimony (chmtchr you are just plain mean and rude). I am saying his influence should not be a surprise.
Gracious. Defensive much? I didn’t say, “Bill Gates is awesome. . .I’ll bet he’s way more awesome than the men who frequent Ravitch’s blog!!” I just said the guy has, whether by force or luck or whatever, left a mark on the digital age and we should not be surprised at the deference people give him. That’s it. That’s all I was trying to say.
Joanna, you’re absolutely right, it is not surprising the Gates enjoys the power and deference he does, just deplorable and sad! I have heard people describe him as a “hero” for providing Windows to the world; I leave it to future historians of the digital age to work out whether a privately-owned operating system monopoly was a good thing for humanity. But it’s definitely a BAD thing that Mr. Gates has so much influence in areas he has never known anything about, and I’m glad more and more people can see through his misguided efforts to influence so many fields that are beyond his understanding.
Your sentiments are correct and overlap perfectly with mine. I too am furious.
“False daintiness” however shows your acute hyprocrisy. .. . you’ve gone after me saying my comments on “stinky” Michelle Obama were misogynistic, when in fact, I had been criticizing her and others in D.C., others who were not women.
You can curse as much as you want. I am not here to stop you, but I and perhaps others, would like you to refrain from hypocrisy.
I still love your politics and your articulation on issues. You are a treasure to the cause, and I state that with no sarcasm . . . .
Overall, the net gain from your advocacy is always welcome.
It’s sugarcoating pure evil. Gates is pure evil, but it took his education debacle to show to the world what he is.
There are others just as bad who have the same goals.
I think that “coup” is well chosen, here. What we have seen is the imposition by one man and his allies of a single, invariant, monolithic rule over all of K-12 education in the United States. Overnight, what Bill Gates and David Coleman think we should be measuring, what they think our learning progressions should be, has become mandatory in most of the country, and what millions of teachers, curriculum developers, curriculum coordinators, scholars, and researchers might think about these matters has become ENTIRELY MOOT.
David and Bill know best.
And in many places, now, what they say has been MANDATED. It has the force of law, and no dissent is allowed.
An unelected junta has taken over K-12 education in the United States, and that is not acceptable.
but is it surprising? I don’t think it is.
No, Joanna. It’s not surprising. The guy is going to make many billions on the various CCSS-related companies and products that he has taken stakes in. Again, I think that he thinks this is win-win. But he is wrong. These invariant national “standards” are a puerile disgrace. They are dramatically distorting curricula and pedagogy in the English language arts in ways that are hurting a lot of children and stopping real innovation in curricula and pedagogy cold.
And Joanna, David Coleman was not appointed, by divine right, absolute monarch of education in the English language arts in the United States.
Bill appointed him.
He does not have the right to do that.
Yikes, that comment was garbled. Here it is corrected:
And Joanna, David Coleman is not, by divine right, absolute monarch of education in the English language arts in the United States.
Bill appointed him.
And Bill Gates does not have the right to do that.
It’s time he stopped playing God.
I long admired much of what Bill Gates had accomplished. Here was a guy who said no to the invariant, uniform education thrust upon him, who struck out on his own path, and was a real pioneer. Yes, yes, he licensed someone else’s operating system. Yes, he made some lucky deals early on. But he showed a lot of vision and foresight and independence of thought.
And now, all these years later, this same man wants to impose regimentation and standardization–a puerile, mediocre, unimaginative bullet list for U.S. education–on everyone else–on every child, on every teacher.
I am horrified and saddened by this. He is doing so much damage, and he doesn’t seem to have a clue about why and how his actions are so damaging. I have spent my lifetime studying curricula and pedagogy in the English language arts. Much, much of what is instantiated in the CCSS for ELA is extraordinarily backward and unimaginative and puerile, and following this prescription for ELA instruction has enormous opportunity costs, for it stifles real innovation in thinking about the teaching of reading, writing, speaking, listening, vocabulary, grammar, research skills, and heursitics for thinking. And Gates, of all people, given his own early history, should know the importance of having alternative tracks, and given his later history, he of all people should understand the dangers of writing conventional thinking in stone.
And, of course, he doesn’t understand, at all, that extrinsic punishment and reward systems are inherently demotivating for cognitive tasks.
““Microsoft’s greatest strength has always been its monopoly position in the PC chain. Its exclusionary licensing agreement with PC manufacturers mandated a payment for an MS-DOS license whether or not a Microsoft operating system was used. … By the time the company settled with the Justice Department in 1994 over this illegal arrangement, Microsoft had garnered a dominant market share of all operating systems sold.”
So, deal with it.
The entire pseudo-religious cult of reverence for corrupt and criminal entrepreneurs is bullshit. There is no reason whatsoever to treat it with deference, and many reasons to deny its authority over public discourse.
I don’t revere billionaires. I believe they have way too much money, and when a few have way too much–and at the expense of the rest of us–they cause a lot of problems.
Bring the tax rates back to 1950s levels.
From the article:
“The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation didn’t just bankroll the development of what became known as the Common Core State Standards…The Gates Foundation spread money across the political spectrum, to entities including the big teachers unions, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, and business organizations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce…the Common Core was instituted in many states without a single vote taken by an elected lawmaker. Kentucky adopted the standards before the final draft had been made public.”
“The Gates Foundation spread money across the political spectrum, to entities including the big teachers unions, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, and business organizations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce…Money flowed to policy groups on the right and left, funding research by scholars of varying political persuasions who promoted the idea of common standards…he chamber also recruited a prominent Louisville stockbroker to head a coalition of 75 company executives across the state who lent their names to ads placed in business publications that supported the Common Core..”
” the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce’s foundation produced a seven-minute video about the value and impact of the Common Core, a tool kit to guide employers in how to talk about its benefits with their employees, a list of key facts that could be stuffed into paycheck envelopes, and other promotional materials written by consultants.”
“Tom Loveless, a former Harvard professor who is an education policy expert at the Brookings Institution, said the Common Core was ‘built on a shaky theory.’ He said he has found no correlation between quality standards and higher student achievement.”
“In February, Microsoft announced that it was joining Pearson, the world’s largest educational publisher, to load Pearson’s Common Core classroom materials on Microsoft’s tablet, the Surface. That product allows Microsoft to compete for school district spending with Apple, whose iPad is the dominant tablet in classrooms.”
“Bill and Melinda Gates, Obama and Arne Duncan are parents of school-age children, although none of those children attend schools that use the Common Core standards.”
The article, by Lyndsey Layton, is better than most that are written about school “reform” and the Common Core. But Layton leaves out a lot, like the fact that American public schools do not need this kind of “reform,” and the argument made for “reform” – that it’s necessary ti improve ‘economic competitiveness’ is completely bogus. Also omitted is the intimate involvement of the ACT and the College Board in developing the Common Core, how both of those organizations stand to profit handsomely from it, and how the products of those testing behemoths are helping to undermine public education, not improve it.
By the way, this piece by Lindsey Layton is hardly an “obituary” of the Common Core. It simply details how pervasive the Common Core is, and how easy it was for Bill Gates and his cronies to pay out cash to convince politicians, businesses, and – sadly – even education “leaders” to fall in line for Common Core.
Because her article leaves out a lot, especially in terms of the opposition to the Common Core, many people unfamiliar with education will see Gates as a philanthropist attempting to save our lost education system. I think that in the eyes of the average reader he comes off looking okay.
I agree.
Exactly. The reporter has not looked deeply enough. This rabbit hole goes very deep indeed.
The CCSS was the first step in a business plan.
“And that is a huge challenge. . . . Education can get better. Some people may not believe that. Education can change. We can do better.”
False choice and dishonest argument.
Opposition to the Obama/Gates ed reform model does not mean one believes “education cannot get better”
Besides buying up every politician, research group and lobbying group in the country, THIS is how they stifle debate:
“You have low expectations, you don’t believe education can get better, you avoid accountability, you defend the status quo” – these are attacks meant to shut down dissenters pure and simple, and a 5th grader would recognize the tactic.
I’m surprised Gates is going there. I’ve read quite a few of his public statements and interviews and speeches and he was one ed reformer who DIDN’T use this tactic.
“Gates has said that one of the benefits of common standards would be to open the classroom to digital learning, making it easier for software developers — including Microsoft — to develop new products for the country’s 15,000 school districts.
In February, Microsoft announced that it was joining Pearson, the world’s largest educational publisher, to load Pearson’s Common Core classroom materials on Microsoft’s tablet, the Surface. That product allows Microsoft to compete for school district spending with Apple, whose iPad is the dominant tablet in classrooms.”
This is a legitimate question and Gates can be offended all he wants, but the question will continue to be asked: how many of the people in this public/private Common Core partnership stand to make a lot of money off national standards as far as product development and marketing? We’ve already seen a flock of ed reformers at both the state and federal government go from selling ed reform in their state job to selling ed reform product in their private sector job.
We’re allowed to ask that question. Obviously, a lot of people are going to make a lot of money off this, so why don’t they admit that and defend their “market” theory of education, instead of denying what’s obvious to anyone who isn’t an ed reformer?
A lot of people are going to make a lot of money. True. Now they can tell us how that new market they created benefits public schools and public school students.
I honestly think it was a bit of a sucker move for public school leaders to adopt Common Core without ironclad guarantees on funding and support.
Watching ed reform over the last decade, do they really believe that ed reformers will stick around and support the CC in public schools once the tests go in? I think they’ll be left with this huge challenge and no support, and the entire focus will become how they’re doing poorly on these tests. They should have demanded dedicated funding for continued support before they put the tests in. I don’t see any particular commitment or valuing of public schools now, at either the state or federal level. They think ed reformers will come along once they put in the CC? Why? Where’s the track record that would indicate that level of trust?
The testing should have been conditioned on support of public schools by lawmakers and the various ed reform lobby and industry groups. I’m afraid they were set up to fail by giving ed reformers the testing portion without any responsibility for success of the CC after the testing piece goes in.
I wish public schools had better advocates at the table when these deals are made. I think they always get screwed.
Chiarra, I so appreciate your take on ed reform. I think you have mentioned before that you are not a teacher (which, by the way, is fine with me), but i find that your analysis of different posts is fresh and insightful. You are able to think beyond the boxes that we sometimes get stuck in. Thank you.
Dear Diane,
I hope she does a follow up on all the reasons progressives–as well as conservatives– object to the ccss-test and punish, data collection loop.
I attended a school function at my child’s elementary school last week. A teacher I was talking with was sharing how difficult it has been for children to adjust to the grade level jumps imposed by
ccss on them without foundation. You know, 4th grade is now the old 6th etc. The district superiors basically say, tough luck for the current kids, it will get better in a few yrs with the crop coming up all through the ccss system!
I marvel at this throw away of the kids like my child and the haphazard imposition of this leveled up, who -even- knows- if -its- a -good idea burden.
I guess this is also why many teachers unionsraised no questions–they swallowed the few tough yrs line then sll will be better.
This is what I mean by strong advocates:
“We are not the research and development arm of Pearson,” said Rye Neck Superintendent Peter Mustich, referring to the testing giant that has a $32 million, five-year contract with New York to develop the Common Core-based, 3-to-8 tests.
Imagine what public schools could have gotten had they had people like this advocating on their behalf when these deals are made?
Why is Los Angeles paying for devices AT ALL? The promoters stand to make millions on content used on the devices, not to mention constant replacements, and Los Angeles will now never go to another device. That’s a huge benefit to Apple.
Public schools should start negotiations at “free”. We want free devices or we’re not giving you access to this huge market.
Why do we get such bad deals? Who decided Pearson gets free access to kid’s work to test their products?
http://www.lohud.com/story/news/2014/06/02/school-districts-nix-field-tests/9895867/
We are also all learning that those “coming up in the system” -our youngest learners- are not faring well. Eg, Cancel the play to get career and college ready, etc.
The saddest part will be that families entering the system will have no way to know how inappropriate content may be because they won’t have the prior school experience for comparison. I think this is another reason for the steam rolling.
I am thankful for groups like Defending the Early Years.
One last comment: The creation of the standards and testing and data collection system OFF the books, has left us with education created outside of all normal avenues of accountability. Accountability is such a favorite term of the corporate education takeover movement. Yet they have created ccss etc with absolutely no accountability to the public, shielded from public scrutiny, like a shadow government. The fault of our DOE and Obama has been to allow this, happily serving as a pass through for this private effort. We talk about dark money in electoral politics, this private funding of non -democratically vetted positions of such import in education feels like shadow government and subverts democracy.
Student, teacher and school accountability is absurd if the testing corporations are not held accountable.
This is the actual CCSS disclaimer:
“THE COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS ARE PROVIDED AS-IS AND WITH ALL FAULTS, AND NGA CENTER/CCSSO MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS, IMPLIED, STATUTORY OR OTHERWISE, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, WARRANTIES OF TITLE, MERCHANTIBILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NONINFRINGEMENT, ACCURACY, OR THE PRESENCE OR ABSENCE OF ERRORS, WHETHER OR NOT DISCOVERABLE.”
Linda: thank you.
Sterling, ringing endorsement. We should feel tingly all over that the NGA and CCSSO show such confidence in CCSS.
Rheeally!
Not really.
😎
Why do the common core creators not answer the common core critics, who have very serious concerns, including these:
On math—we have Jason Zimba, “architect” of the math standards on record as stating that these standards will prepare K-12 student only for community college.
Neither of the two “architects” of the English Language Arts, David Coleman and Sue Pimental, have ever taught, which leads to these serious errors:
–of 171 recommended texts in the common core on the elementary level, there are only 18 authors of color (40% of the nation’s children are of color). The proficient reader research has shown very clearly that children must make text to self connections. Besides proficient reading, having access to texts that represent them is also essential to identity development. Common Core Appendix B recommendations are flying off the shelves in part, possibly, because teachers think their jobs depend on those books.
–of 171 recommended texts in the common core on the elementary level, less that 7% represent working class or poor children, when 21+ million children in the nation are poor.
–of all the texts recommended in the common core the average age of the texts were published in 1897, with one published in the 21st century (when the common core is supposedly preparing children for the 21st century).
–of multiple ways to interpret text, children are confined to only “close reading,” which is one of many ways to read text. Missing are transactional reading, critical literacy, and other approaches.
–of a variety of genres, children must read 50% informational text on the elementary level and 70% informational text on the secondary level. 90% of writers read literary text in their younger days, 75% of genocide and human rights activists read literary text and viewed the arts when they were young (which evoked them to their life’s work), and Silicon Valley geniuses read science fiction when they were young (thus America’s ingenuity in creating ideas). At the very moment the US disdains fiction, which has been a key to its success, China now emphasizes science fiction–because China learned science fiction is the key to US creativity. China knows it can make things but also knows that it does not have ideas like we do, which we learned from fiction.
–that there were no early childhood educators, no special education teachers, and no English learner teachers who helped develop the common core. Thus a huge segment of our population is doomed to fail, wrongly so.
–that the common core is in no way internationally benchmarked. Finland does not begin to teach reading until children are 7; the common core has turned kindergarten into what used to be second grade. Shenzen, China, has the highest university pass rate in China: They allow free reading and choice and no tests. China is encouraging the rest of the country to follow Shenzen’s lead at the very moment we do not.
Thank you, Jane! Outstanding post!
There never was any professional vetting or critique of these putative “standards.” I posted a number of pieces to indicate what such a critique might look like here:
Thanks, Jane! You are the first person I’ve heard or read to point this out in this way. Truly valuable. A colleague of mine spoke with a state ed rep this week about the word “claim” that Sir David infused into the Core writing standards. Two takeaways on this: 1. State ed spokesperson consulted with Achieve (think about that for a moment) for the definition of “claim” (versus thesis statement). “Claim,” according to said expert is more expansive than thesis statement. College students are taught to write “claims” not thesis statements–not true for many private colleges and universities. Two, there seems to be a new talking point for those imposing the standards on high performing schools: “the CCSS are not the ceiling.” Why state this in the negative and not the positive-“CCSS are the basement of standards”? “And be these juggling fiends be no more believed who plater with us in a double sense…”
Hubris, Bill is full of it. He’s right about everything, because he is. And let’s not talk about the “politics” of CCSS, because he’s above that petty squabbling of the hoi polloi. Just let’s talk about the substance, which he has defined.
Kudos to Lyndsey Layton for trying to hold the über alles accountable to the rest of us.
I woudn’t mind Gates’ back-room scheming if the result were a genuinely good set of national standards. The real problem, as I see it, is that these standards stink. He doesn’t see that, and sadly, few educators see that.
I would still object. Gates is elected by no one and accountable to no one. But, most importantly, he and those he has funded are not professional K-12 classroom teachers, those troops on the front line in underfunded public schools which have been decimated by his schemes.
The new “standards” in ELA were never submitted to critique by professionals. They were hacked together overnight by amateurs. They are hackneyed, unimaginative, often prescientific, and misconceived at their most fundamental level–at that of their categorical conceptualization of what “standards” should look like in the various domains covered. I posted, here, a number of examples of what specific critiques of these “standards” might have looked like, had any vetting ever been done:
There’s a point in the video where he says that those schools lagging behind on achievement (as he defines it – test scores) need more resources. Most of us would think he means $$ to underfunded schools. But Gates wants to be able to move “excellent teachers” (those who produce high scores) into schools with low scores.
Where is the sense of agency, of self-determination for teachers? No matter, we are just serfs to do the king’s bidding. I have heard many rheeformists pontificate about what the rest of us need to do in similar fashion. I was once told that teachers shouldn’t be allowed to choose where to teach because we are “just” public servants. Looks like the upper classes – our betters – would like to revive the servant class.
And could you imagine how much we could have helped children in poverty, English Language Learners, students with disabilities, etc. if all of the money that Gates, et al have shoveled into CC propaganda had actually gone into the schools themselves? That’s why I disagree with the “Bill Gates is a philanthropist” stuff–if he was REALLY a philanthropist, he would have put money into actual SCHOOLS.
The very notion of a single set of mandated, invariant standards for all students and all teachers is a violation of freedom of thought and a chilling prior restraint on competition among ideas of the kind that leads to real innovation. We need VOLUNTARY and COMPETING guidelines, frameworks, and learning progressions, not one ring to rule them all. That way lies mediocrity and thought control, regimentation and uniformity.
“There’s no bullet list like Stalin’s bullet list.” –Edward Tufte, “The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint”
The GOP has worked hard to find a scandal to bring Obama down and they keep failing, but what Obama has done to public education is the issue they have been scrounging around to find, and they have ignored it.
Because this one issue is something the oligarchs who control the GOP want too, but for different reasons.
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé.
Diane,
You are truly brave to keep exposing the charlatans behind CCSS. I hope you have good security when you travel. Not to accuse Gates personally of any nefarious plots, but the emotional contagion he has stirred up among the money hungry power players can cause people to become twisted in ways that are difficult to imagine. People who resist their possessiveness and can’t be bought or discredited will become a threat to them, and what comes next? They are often disposed of.
Diane’s courageousness is a model to us all. She stood up to many, many former colleagues and friends; she angered and alienated many very, very powerful people. And she did this for a simple reason: she had to say what she thought was right for kids.
And for this reason, and I do not use this word lightly, I consider Diane Ravitch a great hero. She’s on my short list, now, of the greatest men and women our country as produced–people like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Harriet Tubman and Cesar Chavez and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Here’s one of my favorite money quotes from the article:
[start quote]
The decision by the Gates Foundation to simultaneously pay for the standards and their promotion is a departure from the way philanthropies typically operate, said Sarah Reckhow, an expert in philanthropy and education at Michigan State University.
“Usually, there’s a pilot test — something is tried on a small scale, outside researchers see if it works, and then it’s promoted on a broader scale,” Reckhow said. “That didn’t happen with the Common Core. Instead, they aligned the research with the advocacy. … At the end of the day, it’s going to be the states and local districts that pay for this.”
[end quote]
So for the charterites/privatizers and their edufraud enablers and edubully enforcers that advocate/promote/mandate a business plan that masquerades as an education model—
How do you defend aligning “the research with the advocacy”?
Not holding my breath waiting for your reply…
😎
The same scenario applies to the attack on public pensions.
Pew aligned, behind the scenes, with the Arnold Foundation. Then, their “research” was actively promoted by the media. Out of the wings, a private financial firm offered a solution.
Finally, the truth starts to be told about this “state-led” program.
Where have the “education journalists” been? It’s not exactly as though the truth were not known. Diane Ravitch, Mercedes Schneider, Valerie Strauss, Peter Greene, I, and many others outside the journalism mainstream have been writing on this blog and elsewhere about the true origins of the CCSS for a couple years now. I have written on this blog, for example, HUNDREDS of posts about the true origins of the CCSS, about the lack of vetting of these putative “higher standards,” and about the many, many problems with them.
And yet most of the “journalism” about the CCSS has simply restated the outright lies promulgated by the CCSSO, Achieve, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, the two major teachers’ unions, and other organizations funded by Gates to promote the Common Core. The CCSSO has even gone so far as to publish it lies about the origins of the CCSS under a “Facts versus Myths” tab on its website, and many of our “education journalists” simply repeat those lies almost verbatim.
Our “education reporters” should be ashamed of themselves. It would have taken very little work to find out the truth, but those of us who have been telling the truth about the origins of the CCSS have been ignored and called, at a distance, radicals and kooks by those who have never engaged the substance of our reporting and critiques.
BTW, when people argue for or against the CCSS, they almost always do so at a level of blithering generality. I tried to correct this with some examples of what specific critiques of the CCSS for ELA might look like in a number of posts on this thread:
Some of the best posts about the real history of the CCSS that have appeared on this blog are from Laura Chapman, BTW. Search her posts. Many are profound. She knows her education history, and like Mercedes, is a sleuth.
But there have been many, many other incisive critics of the CCSS here as well. The point is: this material has always been available to any education reporter who bothered to look. However, our media are largely controlled by Gates and other deformers. NPR is currently running, for example, a lot of love letters to the Common [sic] Core [sic] on its website. And, of course, it gets a lot of funding from–guess who?
Bill and Melinda Gates are monsters, pure monsters.
They will stop at nothing to malanthropize and villainthropize (thank you, Mike Fiorillo, for coining those terms) their narcissism and paternalism into the lives of ordinary people without any of those people’s views or democratic voices.
But BM (that’s “Bill/Melinda”, not “bowel movement”) are not the worst beast here, in the sense that OUR elected officials whose slaaries, benefits and pensions WE pay with our tax dollars did not at all involve our collective voices.
Instead, they just went ahead and indulged, like a crappy parent with no parenting skills, these two little spoiled enfants terribles and their ravenous appetites for the prescribed lives of other people’s children.
Therefore, our main recourse is to keep on top of our elected officials and watch them like a lioness peers into a herd of gazelle . . . . . when the time comes, pounce on them with your faxes, your e-mails, your advocacy organizations, and your vote . . . . .
One would have to be completely crazy to think that Lord Coleman’s List is the best we could come up with or that this person with almost no experience has the right to overrule every teacher, curriculum coordinator, curriculum developer, scholar, and researcher in the country with regard to what outcomes we should measure, how those outcomes should be formulated, and what learning progressions we should follow.
Who appointed David Coleman absolute monarch of education in the English language arts in the United States?
Bill Gates did.
But who are we mere mortals to argue? After all, Gates appointed David Coleman (by divine right?) absolute monarch of English language arts instruction in the United States, and surely, as Hobbes argued in the Leviathan, monarchy is best. Surely, in Hobbes’s words, we all need to live under “a common power to keep [us] all in awe,” for as Queen Elizabeth I wrote in 1601, “The Royal Prerogative [is] not to be canvassed, nor disputed, nor examined, and [does] not even admit of any limitation.”
The alternative, of course, to a national Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth is voluntary, competing standards, frameworks, learning progressions, lesson plan templates, etc., put forward by the entire community of teachers, curriculum coordinators, curriculum developers, scholars, and researchers–continually debated and refined, on which autonomous teachers and schools can draw–adopting and adapting these as they see fit to meet the needs of their students who, after all, differ and are not widgets to be identically milled under specs promulgated by the CCSSO educational Thought Police.
There have been 578 comments posted on the story, since I posted the first one at 8:12 PM last night. Here’s my take on the argument we MUST dare to make, in defense of humanity, against his cynical, dynastic, profit-driven faux-philanthropy:
In his view, it’s “almost outrageous” to disagree with his profit-centered philanthropy. And yet, I dare to think we’re dealing with a self-glorifying sociopath, who has done great damage to our children and to our democracy.
The simple, everyday truth-with-a-little-t has been driven from our public discourse by an unrepentant monopolist. No, gerrymandered data doesn’t drive better education, and opportunities for low-income children are shrinking further under his blind, arrogant domination.
I find it ironic that the CCSS touts that it will improve critical thinking, yet none was employed as they moved from an idea to all out implementation. Questioning the standards was not allowed. Hmmmm…I teach the Cultural Revolution to 6th graders. Even my 12 year olds ask why no one could question Mao, how society could allow the attacks on teachers, writers, & anyone who was seen as threatening the social order. I try to help them understand that questioning is imperative in a democratic society.
Exactly, Lark!!!
Yes, great point. Reading Orwell, Kundera, Arthur Koestler, Plato (Socrates was executed for heretical talk) and lots of history (including that of theocratic medieval Europe and the McCarthy era) makes me think that humans are very prone to developing dogmas and enforcing them ruthlessly. To defend against this, we must teach Orwell, Kundera, et. al. Unfortunately, we’ve collectively decided to teach “critical thinking skills” instead (oh, Orwell might be taught, but any “complex text” will do according to CCSS). That won’t cut it. Humans need the substance, not just the “skill” (which we’re born with anyways and don’t need to teach).
I agree. Emphatically.
“I teach the Cultural Revolution to 6th graders. Even my 12 year olds ask why no one could question Mao, how society could allow the attacks on teachers, writers, & anyone who was seen as threatening the social order. I try to help them understand that questioning is imperative in a democratic society.”
This is where I fear we are moving towards. Every time I hear a reference to our not measuring up to Shanghai, I get the shivers.
Every American concerned about education should read Yong Zhao on the subject of catching up to China. And 12 is not too young to teach kids they must never stop questioning if they want to be free. The only way for teachers and parents to impart that lesson is to practice it, as you clearly do!
Lark, come to think of it, the current controversies over CCSS and HST would make an ideal comparative study of authoritarianism and anti-intellectualism in the U.S. and China. Let students decide just what civil and constitutional rights of citizens have been violated by the federal incursion into education for the past decade, and how complicit we have been in losing control over our own children’s educations.
And yet, a climate of fear–a reign of terror as well as of error–has been created all across this country with regard to criticism of these “standards.” Teachers and curriculum developers are afraid that if they dare speak one word of critique, they will lose jobs or contracts. All that Gates money has bought a lot of official support, and that support has made our K-12 educational system look a lot like China during the Cultural Revolution. Many year post about the current deforms anonymously for fear of the repercussions.
The untested, unvetted CCSS has become a set of articles of faith from which dissent, of any kind, is not allowed, under threat of severe punishment. This is Lysenkoism. It’s not acceptable in the Land of the Free.
And the Thomas B. Fordham Institute just let slip, the other day, the information that “a group of foundations” has put up money to create a national organization to examine textbooks and online materials for compliance with the Common [sic] Core [sic]. So, we are now to have a curricula and pedagogy Censor Librorum issuing its imprimatur: Nihil obstat.
This is not acceptable in a free country.
cx: Many post about the current deforms anonymously for fear of the repercussions.
The untested, unvetted CCSS have become articles of faith from which dissent, of any kind, is not allowed, under threat of severe punishment.
Here’s the thing about creating a centralized curriculum censorship office to review educational materials for compliance:
Textbooks and other educational materials are complex products. They contain many, many parts. Hand me ANY product from any textbook company, and I can find errors on ANY page. This is in the nature of the beast. A recent study published in Nature found an average of 2.9 errors per article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica and 3.9 errors per article in Wikipedia. If you made a list of all those errors and published that list separately, either one would look like complete garbage, but of course, it isn’t.
People make mistakes.
I am a professional editor. I never read a novel or other trade book without finding in it many, many errors in grammar, usage, mechanics, spelling, and format. I have edited materials by some of the foremost public intellectuals in the United States, and I can tell you from experience that THEY ALL make mistakes OFTEN.
So, if you create a central committee, it will be very, very easy for that committee to find mistakes in programs that the committee doesn’t happen to like and to overlook those in the programs from their pals.
If you want true innovation, you encourage competition, and you allow free, independent, autonomous schools to vet and choose their materials. If you want corruption, you create a national curriculum censorship office.
I would support on open wiki to publish critiques of educational materials, including critiques of assessments, but empowering a censorship office to give materials its imprimatur is a recipe for further monopolization of the educational materials industry.
It’s not even losing jobs. In my state, our teaching licenses, and therefore our entire profession, are being threatened if we speak out. It’s horrifying.
These days, if someone loses a teaching job, all other applications for teaching positions ask whether one has ever been dismissed from a job, and applicants are automatically disqualified for consideration thereafter. Another way in which dissent is quelled.
They also ask if you have been given the choice to resign rather than “not be rehired.” So now, you can’t even just agree it’s a bad fit. You might as well be fired and get unemployment insurance unless you are ready to lie.
And…In the state of NC, they are buying the tenure…thus they can fire you more quickly and rehire a puppet.
If you lie on the job application, you can have sanctions on your license, which THEN you have to reveal on applications.
In Oregon, many districts have dropped that have you ever been dismissed, non-renewed, forced to resign, resigned in lieu of dimissal questions and instead align their questions with those on the TSPC questions for licensure. Apparently, many officials realized that teachers were being fired for all kinds of stupid reasons having nothing to do with issues of student safety or committing criminal acts.
Of course even if they don’t have those kinds of questions, districts can merely ask previous districts if the applicant is eligible for rehire. If not, well, the applicant is immediately screened out. THAT question should be made illegal because it is blackballing.
As important as this story is, it just begins to scratch the service of the self-serving venality of the push to force this single, invariant, mandatory, uncritiqued, unvetted, inalterable set of standards on the country.
Gates and Pearson are engineering a digital revolution in delivery of educational materials. They wanted a single national set of standards to tag their assessments and computer-adaptive educational software to. That’s why they paid to have this puerile crap foisted on the country. They stand to make many billions as a result.
You are so correct Bob.
@bob
Totally agree
Reblogged this on Schools of Thought Hudson Valley, NY and commented:
A must read.
In a day when the Internet has made the knowledge of the world potentially universally available, in a day when the Internet has made possible open sourced and crowd sourced educational materials and the widest possible debate and sharing of innovations, the Education Deformers want to create a centralized Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth.
This serves only the interests of educational materials monopolists and would-be monopolists.
Gates and his partner, Pearson, know this. They know that if materials are all keyed to a national list, then that creates economies of scale that will enable them to crush potential competitors.
That’s the true story of the Common [sic] Core [sic].
It leads, inevitably, to the further Walmartization, to the Microsofting, of the market for educational materials, and that’s not in the interests of kids, teachers, parents, or anyone else except the monopolists.
Brilliant description…and you know that the Parents believed and still do believe that these Gaterists and Pearsonists are working only for the good of their children….and people who oppose the CR*P are a no good “bunch of low performing teacherists”….as they say here in the south!
Yes Neanderthal you are correct – sadly people think Gates is an amazing and giving philanthropist “giving back” via his foundation and helping people. Read the comments sometime under an article about Gates – it’s really discouraging. People don’t even see him as a true 1%er becuase he “gives back” and cares so much.
Gates gives back and cares so much!
You have been so totally fooled by the Gates PR engine designed to sanctify him and his wife as saints. The Gates foundation is a shelter for his fortune—no different than any other foundation created by the super wealthy—and he invests that fortune under the tax shelter that the foundation provides. All he has to do is give away enough to qualify and keep the nonprofit status and even then his overall wealth grows faster than the foundation spends it, because the money is invested so it grows.
When Bill and Melinda Gates are gone, who do you think will run their foundation? Here’s the answer: Jennifer, Rory and Phoebe Gates. And I’m sure their pay will be six figures and the power they hold from the wealth of the foundation will make them as formidable as the Koch brothers and the Walton family.
When the supper wealth set up a foundation, the kids never get the money. What they get is an allowance or a pay check to run the foundation. By creating the non profit foundation, Bill and his wife have sheltered that money from the government when they die and as long as there’s an America, there will be the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
You may want to read about the exploding trains in a company where Gates is the major controlling stock holder. I’m sure the shares are held in trust by his foundation.
Gates is lying.
He may be lying to himself, as well, but he is definitely lying to us.
The entire model of “venture philanthropy” is based on quantifiable returns from the strategic deployment of capital; the language and dogma of measurable returns on investment is ever present, embedded in everything the so-called reforrmers do and say. It far outweighs their duplicitous, pro forma talk about “putting children first.”
Gates is a businessman, and he knows that in order to make money, he must spend money; his malanthropic foundation is the vehicle for that, and CCSS is the latest product roll-out from our re-branded monopolist.
I think that he has convinced himself that the CCSS is a great thing. So, this is a classic example of lying to oneself as well as to others. I think he sees the CCSS as a win-win: the country gets “higher standards,” and he makes billions. But those “standards” are just dreadful and were never vetted. Again, here, in various posts, I give examples of what specific critiques of the CCSS for ELA would look like:
I encourage readers to go back and look at my posts on that thread. Rarely do people on either side of the CCSS debate talk AT ALL about specifics. And therein lies the problem. The CCSS for ELA do not hold up to close reading.
Bob, I appreciate the specifics you point out. Keep pointing them out, please! I would love to join that conversation.
It’s completely outrageous for anyone to presume to dictate these matters to everyone else in the profession. And for Gates and the CCSSO to choose a complete amateur to do this is just unconscionable. It’s obscene. These people really should have known better. What is absolutely shocking is how many of our “Leaders” have considered this acceptable. It is not.
And by that I mean “Leaders” in our profession–union leaders, well-known education consultants.
I have a heuristic for determining whether anyone knows the first thing about best practices in the teaching of English: I ask, does he or she support implementation of Lord Coleman’s puerile list?
I wonder if NCTE supports Common Core ELA standards. I tend to think the leaders of NCTE are filled with wrong-headed notions about English.
There are some idiot skillheads in NCTE–people who think we should be in the business of full-time explicit instruction in blitheringly vaguely formulated skills (e.g., “inferencing”), but there are many wise NCTE members as well. The CCSSO sent a draft of the CCSS to NCTE. NCTE made many sound though superficial recommendations that the CCSSO then ignored entirely, for the CCSSO was in a hurry. Gates wanted a document NOW, and no real vetting or critique was done of Lord Coleman’s puerile list. Certainly, no real scholars or researchers examined it in any detail, for the list would not survive such an examination, clearly.
His foundation and those of the others is not legitimate. It’s clearly a political organization with “non-profit” trappings. It should be subject to taxation.
We knew the general idea, but to have a report on the mechanics of that early contact w/ Gates is amazing – & chilling. Simple as that, is it? I continue to muse about Gates’s motives: I assume that money is rather a game for him, but power not? And prestige? (Sorry: I’m aware that I’ve got a blind spot about the forms of greed that exist.)
The ultimate irony is that had a set of national standards been constructed properly, the way any set of standards for anything should be built, and if it had been done according to true free market principals, in this case making the standards voluntary since they ostensibly originated from the government, we would be having a very different discussion at this point. A voluntary set of standards that is open to continuous improvement by those making use of them would have been a serious competitor. Local governing bodies would have been pressured by parents to adopt, meet, or exceed the standards. The buy in from the education community would have been a walk in the park since they would have had meaningful and significant input in writing the standards. Those within the education community who rightly point out that standards do not in and of themselves raise educational achievement would have been free to exceed and modify the standards at the local and individual school levels or ignore them and find their own path. None of this is possible with the Common Core as it is a copyrighted product whose use is coerced/mandated by government edict. Curiously, the Common Core also contains an indemnification clause that applies to any who use it such that the owners are not liable for any harm that may come from it’s use. Why would a set of standards require such a clause unless it’s owners were unsure of the quality of their own product while being desirous of protecting the profits of others that leverage it? The current debacle of broad based pushback against the botched CCSS is exactly what happens when a profit driven product is rushed to market with insufficient development by it’s owners who have failed to take into account the needs of those who are to implement and use it and the purpose it actually should serve. Did Mr. Gates learn nothing from Vista? It’s obvious that Coleman and Wilhoit were oblivious to the actual issues with one size fits all standards and with previous attempts to impose them.
CitizensArrest: Agreed. In it’s pure and fair form, a well thought out, tested, and transparent CCSS would be a welcome addition to the educational community.
For me, the obvious is the profit motive.
Betcha knew that…
One set of standards which can’t be changed makes for a very smooth curriculum and testing terrain on which to develop and sell products. Computers, laptops, curricula, and tests (and more tests). A very, very large and lucrative market, at that.
Harlan: yes…I would support that.
Robert: yes…I would support that, too.
SO, are you all ready, yet, to call for the impeachment of President Obama?
I certainly am. His Secretary of the Department for the Standardization, Regimentation, Dehumanization, and Privatization of U.S. Education, formerly the USDE, went way beyond his legal authority.
As soon as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are indicted for war crimes and are sent to the Hague.
Funny how Obama’s deals with Gates are impeachable to you Harlan yet Bush and Cheney selling the country to Blackwater and ignoring Osama Bin Laden over oil relations with Saudi Arabia was no big deal.
I do not support Barack Obama’s neoliberal agenda and I loathe the fascist programs started by Bush and supported/increased by Obama but you and your kind have got to get over the fact that a black man who is nowhere anywhere near liberal was elected by an overwhelming margin TWICE by the electorate of this country. The black Kenyan muslim usurper trope is moldy at this point.
Your side is now accusing a prisoner of war who was tortured of being a traitor and making death threats to his family. Have you at long last no decency sir?
We will have a new president to hate in another couple of years and if he is a white Christian Republican (and you can bet the rent that he won’t be anything else) you can also rely on the fact that everything that Obama has done that the Tea Party republicans screamed “IMPEACH!” over will suddenly be within the president’s rights as Commander In Chief again and we will all be told we are unAmerican and traitorous if we question anything. Rinse and repeat, hypocrisy cycle on overdrive.
Good point. Obama should be impeached and the others should be jailed.
Agreed. If there were any justice, Cheney, Dubya, Rummy, and Condi would all be before an international tribunal for war crimes. I would support forgiveness, but first, a trial, and condemnation of this evil.
About a year ago, Army Times, the official publication of the U.S. Army, ran a cover article that asked, “Ten years on, why are we over here?” The article spoke of how the mission over there was never articulated and kept changing and how there never WAS a rational mission. And this was the Army speaking. Privately, many are sick, sick, sick of the stupidity of our leaders.
I certainly am ready to move for Obama’s impeachment, Harlan.
Not too long after I voted for him the first time, I started to dislike him more and more as I paid more attention to what he was really about.
But I will never vote for a Paul Ryan type either.
Yes. Third party all the way.
Ralph Nader-third party
Unless, your state is like Vermont, electing Sen. Sanders, weigh the consequences.
I have for years. Both political parties are hopelessly corrupt.
Yes, there is corruption in both parties.
Recent conservative appointees to the Supreme Court have destroyed the hope of the 99%.
ALEC and Republicans are bedfellows.
Democratic politicians who have betrayed their base, Cuomo, Obama,… are wrong.
But, Republicans (all?) consistently undermine the lives of the middle class and poor.
Well, of course, I think there is a good deal more to it. You seem to identify Republicans with “evil,” yet I assume you want for the poor and middle class the same thing Republicans do, namely prosperity for everyone.
This article should be followed up with all of Mercedes Schneider’s findings.
Much honor to Lyndsey Layton for doing real reporting in a time when many “journalists” simply rewrite press releases from the powerful and foist those off as news.
I loved the look on Gates’ face when she lobbed the first actual question at him. It wasn’t a shocked and clueless deer. There was a long pause and a visible double-take, like a a vulture in headlights kind of thing.
Lyndsey Layton and Mercedes Schenider might as well be interchangeable at this point with regard to Bill Gates.
Thank you to both intellects for their work!
Bill Gates, Harvard drop-out = The Ultimate Revenge of the Nerd?
If you had told me, 20 years ago, that one day Bill Gates would use his billions to create a national Curriculum Commissariat to push an invariant, mandatory learning progression on the country in order to position himself and his partners for monopolistic control of a new computer-adaptive learning market and that all our leaders–INCLUDING THE LEADERS OF THE TEACHERS UNIONS AND MANY LEADING EDUCATION CONSULTANTS–would go along with this, I would have thought you absolutely, stark-raving mad.
This would have seemed unimaginable.
When George Bush, Sr., floated the idea of a single set of invariant, mandatory national standards and tests, he was universally shouted down by people left, right, and center.
The idea is so clearly unAmerican, undemocratic, and innovation-destroying that it seems completely crazy that ANYONE except those who stand to benefit from this financially would find it acceptable.
But here we are.
There’s a boiled frog phenomenon going on here. People have gotten used to the slow creep of centralized command and control.
It’s time to so no to this.
No.
cx: It’s time to say no.
No to the CCSS and all such invariant, mandated prior restraints on innovation in curricula and pedagogy and constraints on the autonomy and judgment of teachers. No to this reign of terror and error.
No to VAM.
No to ending due process for school employees.
No to letter-grading of schools.
No to the invalid summative standardized tests.
No to the privatization of our schools.
No to deform.
There are no standardized children, and our job is not to standardize them.
We share in common the right to an unCommon education.
Persons, not Pearson. Gateways, not Gates.
Bravo!
Bob, there is a new principle of governance underpinning this, which we need to study, expose, and defeat.
“The idea that all these people are going to vote and have an opinion about subjects that are increasingly complex – where what seems, you might think … the easy answer [is] not the real answer.”
Bill Gates
http://www.globalresearch.ca/philantrocapitalism-gates-the-worlds-largest-and-most-powerful-foundation/5383461
“Their philanthropy is “strategic,” “market conscious,” “impact oriented,” “knowledge based,” often “high engagement,” and always driven by the goal of maximizing the “leverage” of the donor’s money. … [P]hilanthrocapitalists are increasingly trying to find ways of harnessing the profit motive to achieve social good.”
“Microsoft’s greatest strength has always been its monopoly position in the PC chain. Its exclusionary licensing agreement with PC manufacturers mandated a payment for an MS-DOS license whether or not a Microsoft operating system was used. … By the time the company settled with the Justice Department in 1994 over this illegal arrangement, Microsoft had garnered a dominant market share of all operating systems sold.”
“The Gates charitable empire is vast and growing. Within the US, BMGF focuses primarily on “education reform,” providing support for efforts to privatize public schools and subordinate teachers’ unions. Its much larger international divisions target the developing world and are geared toward infectious diseases, agricultural policy, reproductive health, and population control.”
“It orchestrates vast elaborate public-private partnerships – charitable salmagundis that tend to blur distinctions between states, which are at least theoretically accountable to citizens, and profit-seeking businesses that are accountable only to their shareholders.”
Bill Gates might be a “big guy” on earth, but he does not believe in God – and is headed for a very hot place. In our end times, I guess it is appropriate that Bill Gates is responsible for the death of public education. Bill Gates will someday “reap everything he has sewn.” His wealth at that time will do nothing for him. He makes me sick.
RE Bill Gates final statement in the article: IF it was about making sure that “students have the kind of opportunity I had” THEN he would be spending money making sure that ALL schools have the values and resources that his precious LAKESIDE private school had and gave him access to, that SIDWELL FRIENDS has and gives Obama’s girls … he’s caught out in his own lies….
Mercedes Schneider asks:
“Why did Layton wait three months until releasing the Gates interview video and her article?
The 28-minute video that is part of Layton’s June 7, 2014, article includes the following descriptor:
Bill Gates sat down with The Post’s Lyndsey Layton in March to defend the Gates Foundation’s pervasive presence in education and its support of the Common Core. Here is the full, sometimes tense, interview. [Emphasis added.]
The video specifies the interview date as March 14, 2014.
Maybe Gates was tense because in March 2014, he was clearly trying to “protect his investment,” so to speak, and save the standards, which Gates told the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards needed protecting– otherwise America would be “back to what we had before.”
What, to state standards not bankrolled by one billionaire?
Why wait three months?
I do believe I know exactly why.
As of March 14, 2014, 39 states and DC were in legislative session– a session that was particularly stormy for “state led” CCSS.
By Saturday, June 7, that number dropped to 11 and DC, with 6 and DC having no session end to anticipate.
GRAPHIC OF STATE LEGISLATURE SESSIONS INSERTED HERE IN HER ARTICLE
with caption underneath: “State legislative session graphic for Friday, June 6, 2014 Note: Map has two errors: South Carolina and Vermont sessions had ended (June 5 and May 10, respectively). Also, Virginia’s special session was on budget and Medicaid.”
Hold the story until the first Saturday in June, when most legislatures are no longer in session.
Quite the standards-rescuing coincidence, n’est-ce pas?”
This is a fascinating question. I’m guessing Lindsay had to wait for editorial permission to run it, yes? Jeff Bezos has owned the Post since October of 2013. As many have pointed out, the back story Lindsay weaves into the interview is old knowledge, but the mainstream press held off using it in discussions of the CCSS.
Yes, legislative sessions are ending. On the other hand, the story has been published during primary season, leading up to the fall elections when people will make decisions about who will sit in their legislatures next year. Bezos might have his own ideas about that.
Step carefully. There are no pro-democracy billionaires.
“The process of spreading a philosophy by means of free discussion among thinking adults is long and complex. From Plato to the present, is has been the dream of social planners to circumvent this process and, instead, to inject a controversial ideology directly into the plastic, unformed minds of children – by means of seizing a country’s educational system and turning it into a vehicle for indoctrination. In this way one may capture an entire generation without intellectual resistance, in a single coup d’école.”
Leonard Peikoff, Ominous Parallels: The End of Freedom in America 1982
Is the stuff in the Layton story about the meeting and discussion among Wilhoit, Coleman, and Gates based on new reporting by Layton? If so, what’s the source for it? I see nothing in the article that indicates where Layton got this information.
I’m no fan of big business or big government. We’re literally skewering someone who’s trying to improve the country and world I’m raising my kids in. Why not hunt down a real villain?
If you think this man has the best of intentions, you need to do some research.
Gates and his billionaire bunch are pure evil.
They are why we need to restore tax rates back to 1950s levels.
When a few people have way too much money, they become dangerous.
The reporter should be nominated for a Pulitzer for this piece.
It’s an old story. And the full truth of it did not get told here.
The Washington Post report underscores a point Bill Gates has made many times, and a point he again reiterates in the report: “Gates said his role is to fund the research and development of new tools, such as the Common Core, and offer them to decision-makers who are trying to improve education for millions of Americans. It’s up to the government to decide which tools to use, but someone has to invest in their creation, he said.” Common Core State Standards were voluntarily adopted by over 40 states – all of which were involved in the creation of the Standards from the beginning.
Jennifer,
Gates did not fund R&D. He funded the writing of the standards. R&D would have been a good idea but the standards would not have been written so quickly.
Did states adopt them voluntarily? No. Adopting them was a criteria for eligibility to win part of a $4.35 billion prize from the federal government. Did any state discuss or debate the CCSS? No. Why did Massachusetts drop its own very successful standards for untried CCSS? Money.
Would the nation’s children be better
served by investing $20-30 billion in Common Core testing and PD or in making sure that every school has nurses, counselors, librarians, the arts, and extra help for students who need it?
I know my answer.
I always thought it was Gates who had the original idea and that he sought out and found Coleman.
The fact that it was the other way around makes it even worse, in my mind. Here’s a professional test developer with minimal teaching experience who approaches the richest man in the world with an idea that will completely turn the world of public education upside down and inside out.
Oh…and he’s profited immensely from this collaboration, as well. (Though I’m sure that wasn’t part of his original intent).
It’s like arming someone with severe temper control issues with a hydrogen bomb.
This is backward. This is not how it happened.
Unless I’m missing something, Bob, this is what the article claims: Coleman and Wilhoit approached Gates, asked for the backing, waited on the edge of their seats, and were very happy when Bill signed on.
Do you have a link that would state otherwise? That would be interesting: Gates trying to distance himself from the conception of the idea. Coleman and Wilhoit play the fall guys.
According to the Heartland Institute, at the June 2009 NBA-Hunt education forum, Arne Duncan told the assembled folks that “the states had initiated the Common Core because a Bill and Melinda Gates-funded 2007 commission of 15 people had recommended national standards.” So, it seems that Gates was funding the push for national standards before this 2008 meeting. It’s my understanding that Achieve was tasked by Gates to find the guy to hack the standards together, and they chose Coleman. That’s the story as I have heard it, and it would be very interesting to learn the details. I suspect that this 2008 meeting was simply the one at which the guy chosen by Achieve to carry out the work, previously decided upon, was presented to the ring master. Again, it would be interesting to know the truth of this. The people who know would be the folks at Achieve, and I suppose that they are not going to be talking any time soon.
At any rate, it’s insane that we should all be guessing about this–that a group of people would meet in backrooms and cook up new “standards” for the entire country and that it would all be a done deal before anyone in the rest of the country knew anything about it. These were the “deciders” for the rest of us.
Gates says that his foundation just “funds stuff.” Well, one of the things they “just” funded was the 2007 report calling for a new set of national standards. This Washington Post report makes it appear that the idea was new to Gates when Coleman and Wilhoit presented it to him. THAT IS COMPLETELY FALSE.
It’s a very important point. One that deserves to be clarified. Why would Gates say it was the brainchild of someone other than himself?
That’s an interesting question.
I really do not know. I have no idea. Gates says that he and his foundation simply “fund stuff.” I suspect that he truly believes that David Coleman’s puerile list is a good idea (and, incidentally, that he and his partners will make a great deal of money from a digital revolution in curricula enabled by having a single national standards list to tag computer-adaptive software to). But this idea of creating a top-down set of national standards had been around for some time, and certainly Gates was, before 2008, quite aware of what was brewing there. Was he the brewmaster way back then? Who knows. It would be interesting to find out.
I’m wondering if it’s a legal issue. He really did overstep his bounds, imo. There are still rules we’re supposed to play by, even if you’re filthy rich. Yes, money can buy lots of promises and gateways, but when you step on millions of toes…
Conjecture…but I’d like a clarification on the part of the author, in case she’s reading this.
I thought that Achieve identified Coleman and chose him to be the lead “author.” I have no idea what Gates’s relationship with Achieve was before this. I do know that the Gates foundation funded the 2007 report calling for new national standards.
I’ve always been reluctant to accept the claim that Coleman had a singular role in this process, given no real evidence, because the document just doesn’t read like the vision of a single person, and Coleman does not appear to have any interest in the standards themselves.
That is, he almost never talks about individual standards, and when he does, they’re the ones that fit in least well with the overall structure (you must read foundational documents, but not as part of the range of reading standard?), as if those were the ones he slipped in there, not like he designed the whole thing.
Another example is how poorly the introduction aligns with the actual standards, e.g., “They come to understand other perspectives and cultures.” Bits like that are more like things someone is trying to stuff in post-hoc, not a singular design.
BUT, I’m going to have to give in to the preponderance of anecdotes and reporting and accept that Coleman really drove this thing. You’re right though, Bob, that the relationship between Coleman and Achieve is one of the great mysteries here — to me the biggest one — because Achieve had been systematically building up to this point for years. Heck, *Wilhoit* had been working with Achieve on the American Diploma Project for years, and Gates had been funding it for a couple.
Did one guy really just convince them to walk away from all that work? How and WHY? It seems to me another iteration of ADP would have been an easier sell and a higher quality result. I just don’t get it.
I have noticed, Tom, that NONE of the defenders of these standards ever talk about the actual standards–the items on the enumerated list. That’s interesting, of course, because the enumerated list is indefensible and, as you say, not compatible with the general guidelines–the so-called “instructional shifts.”
Very well said! It is so unbelievable. Bill Gates has used his blessed wealth for evil. He will answer for that someday. His wealth will not be able to help him at that point. I know how all of this story ends. Hope he likes very, very hot places….
David Spring and Elizabeth Hanson, in their “Weapons of Mass Deception – How Billionaires Plan to Destroy Our Public Schools…”, released in 2015, might have elucidated the puzzle: “The story [Wilhoit-Gates meeting, described by Lynsey Layton, reporter for the Washington Post] sounds good… It is such a wonderful story about how two people can make a difference in the world if only they can get a two hour meeting with the richest man in the world to pitch their idea. The story was so good that it fooled the Washington Post reporter. But it is actually not true. The fix was in on the Common Core long before 2008.” The book reports, with rich details, how Gates has been working in and funding the Common Core since 1999, through scores of fake “grassroots” organizations and bribing everyone from the corporate media to the Congress to State legislators. It´s worth reading it.