The Huffington Post published a post with five of Bill Gates’ most memorable sayings.
He says that he learns the most from dissatisfied customers.
That’s a gem.
But here are a few of my favorite sayings of Chairman Bill:
There was the time he spoke to the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards and told the NBCT teachers there that the reason for the Common Core was that it was like a standardized electrical current that would allow everyone to plug their appliances in, no matter where they lived. It made me wonder if children were like toasters.
Then there was the time he said that it would take a decade or so to figure out whether “this stuff” (evaluating teachers by test scores, for example) works.
Then there was the time he told the National Governors Association that teachers should not be paid more for their education and experience, but their output (test scores). He said in the same speech that a “great” teacher would be just as great with large class sizes. Message to the governors: Cut the number of teachers, increase class sizes, eliminate pay increases for advanced degrees and years in the classroom.
My all-time favorite is this one, from 2010, where he says that I (I with my computer) am his “biggest adversary.”
Here was my response.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“He says that he learns the most from dissatisfied customers.”
Just so we’re clear, everyone in business says this and has for at least a hundred years.
I cannot believe the author of that post thinks this is a Bill Gates discovery. We really need to raise the bar for what passes as “brilliant” or even “new”. Their vision must be clouded by his giant wads of cash.
Diane vs Goliath.
Truth to power.
Go Diane, go!
Zune, Windows ME, small schools, VAM, ..etc.
Billy boy is wrong a lot.
Gates is just another in the long line of people who think that their success in one area makes them the supreme authority in areas where they are embarrassingly ignorant. Essentially, Bill Gates is the Ben Carson of education
Exactly!!! Accurate assessment. :^)
If Arne Duncan goes to one of the “movement” reform foundations after he leaves government can we then conclude that the Obama Administration allowed these 5 extraordinarily wealthy people to effectively run US education policy for millions of children? Can we them admit they have WAY too much clout, and elected leaders either agreed with that idea or allowed it to happen?
Thanks for reviving this exchange from 2010.
That is the year I started looking hard at the CCSS, spreadsheet with 1,620 standards including parts a-e, no credible rationale for these, the antecedents of the CCSS going back to the American Diploma Project, Achieve’s invention of the “common” core, the spin before and after publication of the CCSS, the foundation support, the mindless classification of the arts as a “technical subject,” the violation of federal law that enabled funding of “curriculum” for the SBAC and PARCC tests, PARCCs cavalier promise to deliver to USDE nine tests a year plus model curriculum units, and the intended uses of all those scores, then the decision to have both tests invent comparable cut scores, the Gates/USDE funded data “quality” project, and so on.
It all seems to be a very long time ago. Thank goodness for the opportunity to see so many others tracking the waste, fraud, abuse, and arrogance, to read informed commentary here and elsewhere in the blogosphere.
My personal favorite is when he attacked teacher pensions less than a week after Randi Weingarten featured him as the keynote speaker at the 2010 AFT convention.
When some teachers who were conscious of what Gates is doing to public education walked out of the convention hall in protest, Randi egged on her loyalty oath-signing, brain dead apparatchiks to boo and mock them, and fawned over this billionaire know-nothing.
Class, all around…
Exactly, the ones booing the Gates protestors and shooing them from the hall at Randi’s direction were retired and long-time veterans.
Then, a few days later, Gates gave a speech condemning those very same teachers for being greedy and demanding with their pensions, and how their greed harms the education of children.
Funny way of saying thanks to those teachers who had your back at the convention a few days earlier.
I guess those teachers had Gates’ back, but there’s no doubt he and Randi inserted knives in theirs.
Here’s a devastating article that points up Bill Gates’ hypocrisy when it comes to the variation between what he demands for his own children, and what he subjects children from lower income communities:
http://seattletimes.com/html/dannywestneat/2014437975_danny09.html
THE SEATTLE TIMES’ Danny Weastneat takes Gates to task for promoting policy all over the country that jacks class size sky high, with Gates using the common-sense-defying logic that kids will fare better in larger classes.
Well, Weastneat sends his own kids to public schools, and will eventually attend Garfield High School (in the news of late). These are the schools that—once Gates has his way—will have obscenely large class sizes… A bit fed up, Weastneat did what perhaps no other writer has yet dared to do:
he investigated the two rich kids’ private school where Gates sends his own children and—doncha know it? —these schools major selling point is that they have… wait for it… EXTREMELY SMALL CLASS SIZES:
WEASTNEAT: “I bet (Gates) senses deep down as a parent that pushing more kids into classes isn’t what’s best for students. His kids’ private-sector grade school has 17 kids in each room. His daughter’s high school has 15. These intimate settings are the selling point, the chief reason tuition is $25,000 a year — more than double what Seattle schools spends per student.”
Calling out Gates’ hypocrisy, Weastneat ends the article with a knockout finish:
WEASTNEAT: “Bill, here’s an experiment. You and I both have an 8-year-old. Let’s take your school and double its class sizes, from 16 to 32. We’ll use the extra money generated by that — a whopping $400,000 more per year per classroom — to halve the class sizes, from 32 to 16, at my public high school, Garfield.
“In 2020, when our kids are graduating, we’ll compare what effect it all had. On student achievement. On teaching quality. On morale. Or that best thing of all, the “environment that promotes relationships between teachers and students.”
“Deal? Probably not. Nobody would take that trade. Which says more than all the studies ever will.”
Great article.
Many thianks for th link!
The more things change the more they stay the same-2010/2015 the things-Billy the Gates stay the same. And so does his “adversary” Diane.
Who is right and who is wrong? Who truly cares about public education Billy or Diane? Who has the resume to prove it?
Five years and change [11-30-2010!] from the WAPO piece, how do the sage observations of Bill “Petulant”* Gates stand up? [*See the Lyndsey Layton interview.]
1), “Does she like the status quo?”—you mean, like Broadie toady John Deasy in LAUSD with his rheephorm wrecking ball wasting hundreds of millions on a proven ineffective MISIS info system and iPads? Or BBB leading the charge of the self-styled “new civil rights movement of our time” into the abyss of moral degradation? Hmmm…
2), “Is she sticking up for decline?”—you mean, like rheephormsters failing to hit their own metrics no matter how much time and money and effort they expend on their predictably failed policies and mandate? For example, John Deasy: 12% graduation rate except it’s only 2% if you leave out those annoying ‘graduation rate suppressors’? And don’t get me started about massaging definitions so you can torture stats into submission. Hmmm…
3), “Does she really like 400-page [union] contracts?”—you mean, with terrible things like job protections so teachers can advocate for their students and get pay raises, however meager and infrequent? Hmmm…
4), “Does she think all those ‘dropout factories’ are lonely?”—you mean, those putative schools [many times] of legend whose ranks have been notably swelled with all those cage busting achievement gap crushing creatively disruptive Centres of $tudent $ucce$$ aka charters that screen out/counsel out/expel [can you spell “midyear dump”?] all the expensive and harder-to-teach students that rheephormistas can’t be bothered with?
5), “If there’s some other magic way to reduce the dropout rate, we’re all ears.”—I break the pattern to simply state the obvious: he is not being sarcastic or challenging; he deeply believes in the gimmicks and secret sauces and cure-alls of corporate education reform [always on the cheap when it comes to OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN, natcherly!], so he is quite literally asking her for HER gimmick, HER secret sauce, HER cure-all. Oh my…
😱
Diane Ravitch: 5. Bill Gates: 0. Game, set, championship point for a “better education for all.”
😄
But credit where credit is due. Is Bill Gates that clueless? That foolish? That out of touch with reality?
Not really. Because when it comes to HIS OWN CHILDREN he understands that world-class “inputs” are de rigueur for world-class “outputs.” Translation from Rheephormish to standard English: when you want genuine learning and teaching, you don’t go shopping at the Rheephorm 99¢ store.
He’s just in his default rheephorm mode: Double talk. Double think. Double standards.
How do I know? Bill Gates. Speech. Alma mater. Lakeside School. 9-23-2005.
Link: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/media-center/speeches/2005/09/bill-gates-lakeside-school
Now THAT’s got some actual thought behind it! And I don’t mean that in a rheeally Johnsonally sort of way, but really.
Read it if you don’t believe me.
😎
He’s also just a private citizen, supposedly, like any other, and politicians and elected leaders don’t have to fawn all over him and give him such outsize influence. They choose to do that. Each individual elected leader makes that choice every day. He’s their creation and any one of them could stand up and say so at any time.
Ha, ha, ha. Yes, that’s a very precious gem from Gates!
One word: Vista.
So he doesn’t really need money – just a way to give it to the poor. What bunk. Why doesn’t he just give it to the poor then? He could spend his days going door to door handing out stacks of hundred dollar bills in poor neighborhoods and he’d still never come close to draining his fortune.
Oh, silly me, it’s not the money, it’s the control money buys.
Exactly, and while I’m sure the money is important to him (after all, this is a man who extolled “infinite greed”), as a genius/pathological monopolist, it’s clear that power is what really turns him on.
loved this one and read a few others by Valerie.
I get very discouraged when I realize how long so many have been reporting on the handi-work of the charlatans.
I read such lucid explanations of their chicanery and scandalous illegal behaviors, , and wonder how the war on public education could have gone on for 30 years and only now, with the schools in utter collapse, and the fecal matter hitting the fan, is the media looking up and saying ,”HUH?”
Because of my own experience which stunned me, as I was one of the most successful teachers in NYC, I have followed the voices of the early activists who have reported for over a decade this war on teachers which enables the charlatans and liars to replace real learning strategies with anti-learning nonsense,
Long before VAM, Lenny Isenberg, Karen Horwitz, Betsy Combier, Norm Scott, Lorna Stremcha, Rene Diedrich all exposed the first assault in order to remove the professional from the classroom and silence their voices, so Gates and friends could take it to the new level with CC and VAM.
This should be national news. I hear the stories on NPR, here in NYC, of the parents who have young kids, searching for housing and apartment in neighborhoods where there is access to good schools, and I hear how many, finally, chose a charter. Finding a school in neighborhoods where apartments and homes are prohibitively expensive for the middle class in NYC is driving up real estate. Imagine, once upon a time, when I was young, noon chose a place to live because of access to a good school… one assumed (correctly) that the neighborhood schools were there for the ‘common good’ that our Constitution proclaims in the preamble.
We have to find ways to FIX THE TAX CODES & BRING BACK funding to the public domain, so we can create smaller class size AND the programs to support learning for all.
BOTH!
There must be enough TRAINED staff to deal with children with learning problems, and enough trained personal to deal with behavioral issues, too, so a kid who won’t give up a phone or follow directions won’t be thrown into a wall by a cop!
I know I will get ‘flack’ for this… but….
Guidance personnel and those whose job it is to deal with genuine discipline issues must be part of today’s schools, as they were part of every ‘good school,’ in which I worked.
What would I have done without Mr. Buetti, at Pomon Jr HS, when little Johnny was intent on disrupting my lessons??? ‘Call-a-cop!’ Take the kid, as one charter school principal did, and physically drop him on the doorstep of a different school??
Everyone of you who read this, know how ONE out of control student, can disable any lesson. All of us know how impossible it is to teach the rest of the kids, the ones dying to learn, amidst the chaos that 3 or 4 OR MORE children can cause.
Cops are not the answer… small classes with teachers and counsellors— trained in ways to REACH and HELP such kids, with the SUPPORT of the principal — will make LEARNING for ALLl possible. THAT takes $$$, and if Mr. Gates and Mr Broad and Mr Walton and…well all those pouring money into private education enterprises had built new public schools, and LET THE TEACHERS TEACH in ways that the human brian actually acquires skill and knowledge (both) then this country would lead the world in EVERYTHING, like it once did!
And yes, forgive me for having witnessed the mess that occurred when learning disabled children and kids with real behaviorlals issues, were ‘mainstreamed’– so they do might not t feel different, but were in fact even more miserable in classes where they could not participate at the accelerated levels that most kids exhibit.
The charter schools kick them out, which is a tragedy for the ones who need help the most. A school, with small classes and programs that aid special needs children, which means staffing that meets their needs, too, is the only way.
I wonder if we will ever be able to stop the advances funded and promoted by the EIC (EDUCATIONAL INDUSTRIAL COMLEX).
Keep telling it as it is, Diane. I dream that you, or Valerie or Carol or …well any of the genuine educators to be our next Secretary of Education. Maybe, if Bernie wins, and only if he KNOWS THE REALITY and hears of the destruction, can things change…
Ya know, Diane, I CAN’T get through to him, and I have tried ( contacted his brother Larry, his wife Jane, His old high school buddies, his press secretary and all his offices!
Please, won’t YOU contact his campaign and offer/suggest/demand a vis-a-vis so he can REACH OUT to teachers with a POLICY STATEMENT re: lower ed, that ACTUALLY demonstrates/ shows that he GETS IT!
It is a chance to bring him the votes of teachers and parents to secure the nomination, and a chance to have a president who genuinely cares about PEOPLE NOT POWER!
He is a good man, and after hearing him for decades I believe a great one.
Hillary is in Broad’s and Gates’ pocket. Nothing will change if she gets the office.
Here is a chance. Please think about it.
You see, I WANT TO LIVE IN A NATION WHERE a person like BERNIE SANDERS is the leader, is THE PRESIDENT
Sigh!
Dear Susan:
Have you really believed in and care for a person who completely ignores your SUPPORT?
I really respect you for your dedication to teaching career. However, you seem to be lost in judgment of the qualification of a good LEADER.
Please consider that you are the best among many best educational practitioners. I am sure that you will pay attention to IMPORTANT people who try to contact you through your loved ones.
From what I read in your post, Senator B. Sanders does not deserve your support.
I do not understand WHY those Democrat presidential candidates did not welcome 24 million viewers in Dr. Ravitch’s website (= minimum one million of voters)? It is just my concern of your disappointment in supporting B.Sanders. Please enjoy advocating and promoting the well being of Public Education. Love. May
May, I wrote something too important to have it crawl along the side… so go to the larger response to your question… which I think is a good one!
If you really want to weep, read the comments on the HuffPo article. There’s a few who get it, but most of them are ready to nominate him for sainthood.
His quotes are so Intro to Business 101. He’s not Mark Twain.
Most people love Bill Gates. The big exception is teachers.
Many people “love” Bill Gates because he has a great propaganda machine designed to create a false and popular image. In other words, if they weren’t born to worship wealth and power, then they have been fooled by the Bill Gates spin machine that churns 24-7 to paint a positive image of him as if he is Santa Claus.
For instance, when Chairman Mao ruled China, most of the people worshiped him as if he were a god thanks to the CCP’s propaganda machine, and then one day most of the Chinese woke up and didn’t love him totally anymore. Anyone who woke up early learned really fast that you didn’t complain or the teenage mob of millions that worshiped Chairman Mao would come for you. For Chairman Mao, the people either loved him or feared him and those who saw the real Mao kept their mouths shut. It was so bad that they even feared their own children.
On that note, I dared to criticize Chairman Gates soon after our daughter graduated from Stanford in June 2014 after the graduation ceremony where Gates was the keynote speaker. She was really upset that I would criticize Chairman Gates and after that if I mentioned Gates she got up and walked away refusing to listen to anytime I had to say about this man who she clearly worships.
Whenever one person is loved by a majority of the people, then that is one person to fear because power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Lord Acton was right about that when he said it in the 18th century. An exception would be Mother Teressa who held no power and didn’t want it, but Bill Gate loves his power, and it is obvious that he wants more because he keeps throwing his money around to buy it.
Don’t ya love when people base their beliefs on what MOST people believe?
It is always easier to float with the tide.
Just read this by Lenny Isenberg … regarding what some people think …Typical Lenny with his unique voice and brilliant mind at work: http://www.perdaily.com/2015/11/trumping-donald-chump.html
Donald Trump seems to have found a political sweet spot and early tentative lead in the Republican Party presidential primary race by melding two heretofore frustrated and rather large constituencies that never thought they would find a standard bearer who so clearly understood their incoherence.
One of these constituencies is paranoid ignorant people incapable of sequencing enough ideas together on any subject to be able to meaningfully question any part of Trump’s glib platform that seems to magically float in space without anything supporting it. The other part of his constituency is made up of people who have become justifiably frustrated by a political system where nothing seems to change no matter whether a Democrat or Republican is implementing the agenda of the corporate oligarchy that now clearly runs this country, while working and middle class people continue to have less and less.
What unites these people is the audacity- be it rational or not- of a Donald Trump whose feigned irreverence for a system his class runs seems a breath of fresh air to people who have either been losers their whole life or who think they will continue to be treated as such as long as Washington remains controlled by special interests that they are clearly not represented by.
Sensing that they will never really have the power necessary to challenge the status quo, they mistakenly believe that glitzy tabloid Trump will look after them in his roll as defector from his ruling class. Alas, nothing could be further than the truth.
What he offers them is a Latino scapegoat which Trump fantastically proposes excluding with his version of the Berlin Wall. As for the North American Free Trade Treaty (NAFTA) that put American agrabusiness in direct cut- throat competition with Mexican farmers and made the cultivation of corn in Mexico no longer profitable, while serving as a major motivation for NAFTA displaced campesinos to head North to survive, Trump never quite gets around to addressing this and other American decisions unilaterally imposed on Latin America that have lead to the greater influx of undocumented Trump thinks can only be stopped with a wall. Trump also scrupulously avoids any discussion of the undocumented migrant laborer’s willingness to do the jobs that Americans have shown they have no interest in doing and fails to mention how American borders were opened to braceros to pick our crops the last time undocumented hysteria surfaced not so many years ago.
Trump denounces the Trans-Pacific Partnership and talks about how China, Japan, and Mexico are “killing us economically,” but never gets down to describing how his class has done everything it can to emasculate government regulation, while creating the present disparity favoring foreign production motivated only by corporate America’s willingness to pledge allegiance to the country that gives it the best deal irrespective of what negative effects it continues to have on the American worker and consumer. In just one example of his magical thinking, Trump bemoans the success of Japanese imported cars, but never mentions how American car manufacturers choose in the late 1960s in lieu of meeting legal emission control standards on American manufactured vehicles, rather choose to use their political clout to get American car manufacturer waivers from these requirements rather than comply with clean air standards that the Japanese and other had no difficulty meeting.
In saying that Obamacare should be “replaced with something much better for everybody … and much less expensive,” what the Donald fails to mention is that every other industrialize country in the world has single-payer government regulated healthcare that is far less expensive than what Americans pay, while giving them people an objectively better healthcare system by any measure- America is 27th in the world in infant mortality. Instead of paying over one-third of every healthcare dollar to an insurance company as is done here, the administrative cost of running the Canadian system is about 3% of the total healthcare cost. Is single payer perfect? Hell no, but it’s head and shoulders above what we have or what Trump proposes.
Trump does a little good old fashion American saber rattling when he talks about how he would deal with the Islamic State militant group known as ISIS. He somehow never gets around to discussing Western non-stop exploitation of the Middle East for oil and other geopolitical considerations that never considered the needs of Middle Eastern peoples. And of course, blind support for whatever Israel continues to do to its Palestinian population engenders only silence from The Donald.
Trump would also like to see us invest in updating our nuclear weapons without ever taking cognizance of how difficult it has been up until now to lessen American and Russian stockpiles of these devices of mutually assured destruction, while trying to stop others from getting their hands on them witnessed by how the Republican have fought President Obama tooth and nail during the present Iranian nuclear non-proliferation talks.
And par for Trump’s narrow course, nowhere in anything he says is any historic awareness that nuclear powers have spent generations now since the the initial arms race between the Americans and Russians trying to lessen nuclear stockpiles with the clear knowledge that man has never had a weapon he didn’t ultimately use. Clearly, mutually assured destruction can only serve as an interim policy, while nuclear powers have tried to come back from the brink we almost went over during the 1962 Cuban missle crisis. Trump ignores this history.
Given the recent spate of people walking into schools and theaters to shoot their fellow human beings with guns that do horrendous, but relatively limited damage, I can’t help but wonder what might happen if someone with an enormous ego got his finger on the button with the power to literally bring human history to an end.
Talk about the ultimate ego trip.
Imagine the cooperation between Trump and both houses of Congress. If Trump were elected president, both the GOP and Democrats might unite for the first time and vote as a block to stop Trump from exercising any executive powers. With Trump in the White House, the Congress would rule the country.
agggh! Gives me nightmares…. but this nation rejected Sarah Palin… I think most folks who vote, know he is a charlatan.
A president like Trump would go on television and tell the nation to fire both houses of Congress and make him president for life—it would be the only way he stood a chance to do even one of the things he claims he will do if he was elected.
And if Trump got what he wanted, the cities would go up in flames coast to coast and a war would probably break out with Mexico.
If Trump is elected President, this is no longer the country into which I was born,, when FDR was at the top.
Prior to setting up his Foundation, Gates was widely and accurately seen as the greedy, power-hungry monopolist he truly is. Doing so was a brilliant PR move on his part, since it successfully deflected justified criticism of his behavior and practices, and allowed him to pursue power and wealth by other means, and get uncritical praise for doing so. Even the teacher unions, which should have known better, couldn’t resist his cash, and continue to accept the false premises of politics he continues to impose on us.
Now, instead of real philanthropy, symbolized by Andrew Carnegie (by no means a nice man, but someone whose wealth and gifts did ultimately serve the public interest) and his public libraries, we have rapacious malanthropy, in which taxpayers subsidize his PR fronts and his “non-profit” efforts to expand his wealth and power.
Sorry,that should have been, “Even the teachers unions… accept the false premises of policies…”
yes, “Even the teachers unions… accept [with outstretched hands] the fal$e premi$e$ of policie$
My favorite is Bill Gates’ claim that he is “guided by the belief that every life has equal value”
Every life has equal worth
To billionaires like me:
Consumers all, to death from birth
And workers, for low fee.
Yes, every life has equal value, and he intends to extract as much of that value for himself and fellow members of the Overclass as he possibly can.
HA! Yep! That seems to be his M.O.
Your responses to Gates’ arrogant, ignorant quips were right on target. Our students cannot wait ten years for Gates’ design plan to bear fruit. We already know he is wrong, and the only fruit that can come from it will be rotten. Ten years is almost the entire public school career of child, much too long to be the guinea pig of a billionaire interloper. Gates and his “think tanks” know nothing about teaching and learning, but they assume they are all knowing. This is misguided at best, and cruel and unusual punishment at best. Nothing he has proposed is evidence based. Thousands of teachers that graduated from reputable schools of education have a far better and accurate understanding of what is needed to improve schools, and it has nothing to do with expensive, unnecessary testing or trying to use our children to sell more products or services.
Correction: cruel and unusual punishment at worst.
Bill’s fruit is our toot:
“Tooty fruity: Bill and the Beanstalk”
Deep within the garden Gates
He planted seeds, for common fates
For beanstalks that would reach the cloud
A Common Core for teaching crowd
The beanstalks grew with public money
Grew in the Land of Milken honey
Put down roots in public schools
Teaching standards, teaching rules
Beanstalks to which teachers bowed
Channels to the data cloud
Where techies harvest student fruit
The more they eat, the more we toot
He is a big bully.
Does anyone remember those wax trays we use to get (and maybe still do) for dissection in biology classes? The teacher came around with preserved frogs that we stretched out and pinned to the tray by their limbs before cutting open and pinning back the skin on the bellies to expose the internal organs. That is what Bill Gates has done to public education. He has pinned it down, slit it open and continues to poke around its guts. The only difference is he is experimenting on a living, breathing organism with no interest in the pain he is causing. Does he really believe that he can create a new and improved frog?
He obviously does
.
But then again, he also under the delusion he can create a new and improved (ie, decent) operating system.
When I took freshman biology in college, we actually used live frogs that we had “pithed” (which was supposed to prevent pain, though I have my doubts since the pithing itself must be very painful and if it is not done “properly” it will not sever the nerves and prevent pain) .
The frog analogy is actually a very good one because in the end, the frog is simply thrown in the trash and nothing has been learned that was not already known long ago and readily accessible in books.
The “human experimentation” without informed consent aspect of school “reform” is actually very disturbing — and disturbed.
Bill Gates is a very sick individual.
“Poking Frogs”
Experimentation on your kid
Is what the school “reformer” did
Sans review and sans consent
School “reform” was Devil-sent
I do remember pithing from “back in the day.” I am drawing on my experience supporting middle school science class where the frogs were delivered already euthanized. The kids were even allowed to opt out of dissection. I think my first experience with pithing my prey was in high school biology class. I wonder when Bill Gates started?
I guess we should just be thankful that Bill is not attaching lit firecrackers to kids like GW Bush did to frogs in his “formative” days.
🙂
Love your metaphor!
Parents will respond to the “10 year experiment” Gates decided to conduct on their children this spring. Buckle your seat belt Billy Boy!
“The House that Gates Built”
Billyan errs and Common Cores
Rickety stairs and creaky floors
Leaky roofs and shaky stoops
That’s the house that Gates built
Flooded basements, cracked foundations
Broken casements, termite nations
Sagging beams and cracking seams
That’s the house that Gates built
Failing kids and firing teachers
Software bids and testing leechers
Standardizing and capitalizing
That’s the house that Gates built
And for $2+billion you get the NEW SAT made in your image:
2 Sections: Math + Evidence Based Reading/Writing
“draws heavily from the Common Core”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/education/edlife/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-new-sat.html?hpw&rref=education&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well
LOL
“Chairman Bill”
Is that the same or different than Chairman Mao?
Maybe Chairman Bill should publish a Little Book of his Quotations and distribute it free in all of the U.S. public schools starting in preschool—maybe even in the UK since Pearson is doing the same thing there. He will call it “Chairman Bill’s Little Green Book of Quotations”. Green representing $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.
Reblogged this on Politicians Are Poody Heads and commented:
Gates thinks that large classes are just great. And yet he sends his own kids to an elite private school with………small classes.
I believe China proves Democracy is not necessary for success. I suppose Gates agrees.
When every Charter looks like the school Gates sends his kids to, then I will grant him some leeway. In the meantime, judge a man by his actions, not his words.
Common Core/Pearson (and most charters) are nothing more than a guise for the privatization of education for profits over quality. I’ve written this before, but my youngest granddaughter is in a Common Core school, now in its second year, and there’s literally no education going on. They teach to the test, she gets one page of math and one page of sorting words for homework every day–the exact same thing she did in third grade–and she’s doing little or no social studies, science, the arts, history, critical thinking, high level reading–and she’s hypothetically in the gifted program. What does the gifted program do–they take them on occasional outings to discuss their emotions–what does that have to do with gifted education. The whole thing is a scam by Pearson/Gates and many others. It’s very sad. I think in Gates case, like many billionaires, they think they just know what’s best for the rest of us.
It’s a love fest for Billy the Goates over at the huffpot comments.
“Chairman Gates Debunked”
A leader inspires
While the Chairman just fires
Our children are people
Not toasters or sheeple
A humanist cares
About people, not wares
The Core is a hoax
That was hatched by jamokes
The use of a VAM
Is a crock and a sham
A good teacher knows
That the King has no clothes
“Breech and Teach”
David Coleman was the mother
Of the Common Core
Billy Gates was midwife brother
Really nothing more
Birth was breech and babe was ill
But Coleman sent it school-ward
Under care of Midwife Bill
As only crazy fool would
It is funny to hear over and over that the “”BRAIN”” wishes to change the world [as in the animated show, “”Pinky and the BRAIN””]
The truth is that smart and NOBLE people always think clearly, critically analyze both pros and cons of every aspect that will affect humanity, and transparently apply with profound consideration of its consequences before they publicly carry out actions.
However, the wily and snobbish people abuse their privilege, power of money, and position in authority to manipulate subordinates’ gullibility, trust, and fear of the corrupted legal system, in order to CONTROL and SECURE their ego, greed and lust for luxury living lifestyle at the expense of millions of innocent lives.
I hope that Bill Gates will have time to reflect on what he truly and heartily believes in his Lakeside’s speech, as in:
[start quote]
There are numerous approaches to charitable giving.
One is to try to give others the same opportunities you had.
Another is to help the institutions that helped you.
A third approach is to identify needs and help address them.
[end quote]
America is the country (institution) where you, Mr. Gates, are nurtured to be billionaire. Please try to give PUBLIC EDUCATION for the””white middle class”” the same opportunities you had in Lakeside.
Your third approach has been researched by Dr. Ravitch, as in:
[start quote]
Every school should have a rich and balanced curriculum; many don’t.
Every child should look forward to coming to school, for his or her favorite studies and activities, but those are the very studies and activities likely to lose out to endless test preparation.
Schools need many things: Some need more resources and better conditions for teaching and learning; all need a stable, experienced staff.
Teachers need opportunities for intellectual growth and colleagueship. Tests should be used diagnostically, to help students and teachers, not to allocate bonuses and punishments.
Teachers, principals, administrators, parents, and local communities should collaborate to create caring communities, and that’s happening in many places.
I know that none of this is the “magic way” that you are looking for, Mr. Gates, but any educator will tell you that education is a slow, laborious process that requires good teachers, able leadership, willing students, a strong curriculum, and willing students. None of that happens magically.
[end quote]
Lip service and PR machine will not fulfill your true belief in helping others as you say that you wish to do. Back2basic.
Diane, those are some great lines. And pretty much all true.
Virginia, that’s the definition of a platitude. Look it up.
Diane, I must admit that I do love the sass. You’re pretty good at it.
But I am surprised you don’t find Gates’ statements profound. Look at the one on the utility of money. Many claim Gates is out to control the educational software market. But if you acknowledge that Gates is being truthful in stating he wants to spend his fortune to improve teh world, by definition, those critics must be wrong.
Also, you claim that our schools were a resounding success for years and years. Great teachers in great public schools who had to suffer with kids in poverty with horrible parents. Those were the excuses for why our kids didn’t excel at everything. So his remark about success being a lousy teacher is rather applicable even to your view of K-12.
On a separate note, I had a court hearing today regarding Dennis Bakke of Imagine Schools’ right-hand man, Chairman Hornberger. The judge tossed my conflict of interest case (got some great lines for the appeal to the Supreme Court though) and is even considering sanctioning me for just bringing the case to court. The funny part was the Asst Commonwealth Attorney who sat in the court because she is currently working with the state police to investigate the counsel for Mr. Hornberger on perjury charges.
In any case, once the judge decides on whether I get sanctioned or not, can you do a story (or at least let me post links) to the conflict of interest case? Based on the judge’s ruling, all any charter school company (or any company for that matter) has to do to avoid disclosure is have the owner setup a “private foundation” in a deceptive name and then they can hire lobbyists/activists to lobby/get elected to public bodies/you name it and advocate for that owner’s company. We are in lockstep on this one.
Virginia, other than posting the views of individual teachers, I don’t use this post to settle scores about anyone’s personal beefs. So, no, I will not allow you to post here about your court case.
As to Gates, profundity is not his strong suit. His goal is to open up schools to the free market. The free market is not known for creating or promoting equality of anything. It produces profit for its owner or goes out of business.
So would you say that more or less people would have access to low-cost phones and computers if it had been a government regulated industry? What about medical breakthroughs? I submit that the poor are provided with cheap advancements because of capitalism, not in spite of it. It’s true that the poor may get access a few years after the rich, but had it not been for the free market, flights and phones and computers might never been within reach of the poor.
My child’s school uses a product called iReady which gives customized lessons. A teacher still conducts the overwhelming majority of the instruction and assigns some nightly homework and in-class lessons on the computerized software. Grand cost for those thousands of lessons available on the computer? $35 per year per child. And the kids can practice on their own volition at home. How is that not bringing more equality to education?
As to the court case, this is not about a personal beef or about any individual teacher. This is about the conflict of interest laws in Virginia and specifically relating to charter schools. One of your favorites that is mentioned here often, Imagine Schools, had a key associate get elected to the school board in the third largest county of Virginia without ever having to disclose the ties to the charter school org. Now, he is setting to bring charters throughout the district without any disclosure or recusal. If this is allowed to stand, other firms will simply set up innocuous-sounding private foundations and shift their lobbyists to the foundation where no disclosure would be required. Is that not an issue worthy of your blog?
Virginia,
You really don’t get it. We are supposed to have a strong private sector to provide goods and services, and a strong public sector to provide the public services that all should have: police, fire, education, libraries, beaches, parks, the air quality, water quality. Surely you don’t suggest we should turn fire and police over to private entrepreneurs?
Hey M4potW
“YOUr question was: “Have you really believed in and care for a person who completely ignores your SUPPORT?”
Yes, I know dear spirit-sister that you respect me. That is a valid question and you make a good point. it is not a simple answer, so bear with me, because this is IMPORTANT!
I trust him because I know he is the real thing, and great man!
I DO NOT GIVE UP ON PEOPLE WHOM I TRUST AND RESPECT.
I believe that:
This cannot be easy of him. If I am going to be 74, so is he — as we graduated the same year…classmates, although I did not know HIM; I knew of him.
I imagine what a campaign must be like when you are the ‘dark horse’….exhausting to go everywhere just to get known!
And, the most important issues must come first…like raising money!!!
For months, earlier this year, when I mentioned the name, Bernie Sanders — the typical response everywhere I went was “Bernie WHO.”
”You see, here in the states, those men at the top, are the 1/10th of 1% who also own all major television and print media and who run the show here in the good ole USA. I get the NY Times and a plethora of feeds from across the nation, and I was hard pressed to see Bernie’s name in print, let alone an actual article on him.
I think he is exhausted, and that he has to choose what he will do, and who he will hear.
I think his campaign manager is missing people like me and Dan Geery, http://www.opednews.com/author/author1198.html who writes at OEN, too.
Dan is a brilliant man, and inventor and author and former teacher who experienced the first assault, as I did. He ran for the Utah Senate and HE TOO cannot get through to Bernie. Neither can Rob Kall, who had a planned an interview with him at his radio show.
So, May, I think that he does not know what is afoot… the legislative take-overs, or the conspiracy. If he did, he would recognize in an instant, that income equality is doomed if out INSTITUTION of public education, is being dismantled. There can be NO TRANSFORMATION if public schools disappear, and with it the road to opportunity and the American Dream… and he can quote me… HE SHOULD QUOTE ME!
He is too smart NOT to know that local control is essential, and that the schools must return the task of ENABLING LEARNING to the autonomy of a fine professional teacher -practitioner! Schools must be funded so that small classes can facilitate all kinds of children, all levels of learners.
Bernie is brilliant! He must not be aware of the hidden 30 YEAR WAR ON PUBLIC EDUCATION
He just doesn’t know, and the people who run his campaign, are going to kick themselves, when they realize how many teachers and parents do not LIKE HILLARY CLINTON, and would support him. These are the GRASSROOTS that he is looking for!!!!!
I won’t stop, unless I DISCOVER that the REAL reason that HE IS NOT TOUCHING THE PUBLIC SCHOOL DISASTER is because HIS CAMPAIGN MANAGERS are AFRAID OF THE EIC or are bowing to the wishes of people who would hurt his campaign if he went after charter school corruption, or the lies of PARCC and VAM!
.
Let’s not forget who Eli Broad or David and Charles Koch are.
Let’s not forget that the oligarchs NEED an ignorant electorate, and thus, getting the kids young, ensures the future of the cabal, and their role in The New World Order.
I think his campaign manager ( who is amazing putting together the campaign teams) is steering him in the wrong direction on this one IF this is what they think!
Or ,perhaps. they are also CLUELESS,ABOUT THE MILLIONS OF TEACHERS AND PARENTS WHO WOULD VOTE FOR HIS NOMINATION! Or they are clueless about the enormous conspiracy of the EIC (Educational Industrial Complex) and th role of ALEC!
I get it that the first objective is to get $$$.
So, Bernie’s managers put together an astonishing bunch of very very young people, maybe 50 of them, because he does NOT take cent from PACs (or businessmen who equate socialism with loss of profits!)
These millennials are savvy about cyberspace. They created a network in cyberspace, and I actually co-hosted ( at a friend’s house) an evening with Bernie… the FIRST ONE.. where, across America, 3500 hosts asked people to come and hear Bernie., and over eleven thousand did! I set up my big IMac computer screen, so that the 12 people (whom I had invited to my event) could listen to him in a private conference, — as they ate lasagna ( LOL which my friend Jane cooked). When I hosted my own meeting in my home, (to plan a “flyering” even), I served popcorn and iced tea!
YOU see, I am a founding member of Campaign 2016, “FEEL THE BERN!”
AT THIS JUNCTURE IN TIME — -because his grassroots campaign brought hundreds and thousands to hear him speak, and now — AFTER the first debate— the newspapers DO feature articles and editorials about him;(albeit, too many are ‘slanted’ to characterize his call for social changes as “socialism,” — propaganda, aimed at the ignorant folks out there, who associate the ECONOMIC system of socialism, which can operate with in a democratic nation ( as Britain shows) with the POLITICAL DICTATORSHIP system that was communism.
HEY, May, even Canada provides for the common good with social programs, even as our legislature makes health care and education too expensive for the MIDDLE CLASS, and is (this week) trying to undo social security. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/05/opinion/democrats-undermine-efforts-to-protect-retirement-savers.html?emc=edit_th_20151105&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=50637717&_r=0
Bernie says this about that!: https://berniesanders.com/issues/strengthen-and-expand-social-security!
So you see , my spirit-sister, May, I AM the GRASSROOTS!
Je suis TEACHER!
Bernie needs me and the teachers, and time is running out.
I HOPE SOMEONE SENDS THIS COMMENT TO HIM, OR PUTS IT UP ON FACEBOOK, OR STARTS A TWITTER CAMPAIGN TO #CALL SUSAN, so Ic an send him to DIANE!
He told us back in 2009 what his true intentions were!
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/media-center/speeches/2009/07/bill-gates-national-conference-of-state-legislatures-ncsl
“We’ll know we’ve succeeded when the curriculum and the tests are aligned to these standards. Arne Duncan recently announced that $350 million of the stimulus package will be used to create just these kinds of tests–next generation assessments aligned to the common core. When the tests are aligned to common standards, the curriculum will line up as well–and that will unleash powerful market forces in the service of better teaching. For the first time, there will be a large base of customers eager to buy products that can help every kid learn and every teacher get better…”
What the foolish, ignorant Bill Gates doesn’t seem to understand—and the other so-called greedy, drooling, power hungry reformer demolish derby fools—is that there are children, in fact, too many, with other things on their minds that are more important to them then his common core crap, its high stakes tests designed to punish teachers and close public schools, and the curriculum all those greedy fools will line up to provide and no matter how powerful this all might have been if it had been developed properly by real education experts and professionals, if a child doesn’t want to learn and isn’t ready to learn, that child will not learn.
To change that, the focus must first be on the child and the environment the child comes from and not standards, tests and curriculum.
There is an old saying that fits this issue — You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.
“The Fog Lifter”
The billionaire was beaten
By lady with a blog
Who managed to defeat him
By dissipating fog
Inexplicably, nobody had asked me, what *I* wish for Hill Billy’s 60th birthday. But then, last night, Generous Billy Genie appeared out of nowhere in my bedroom and said,
“Sad little Máté, don’t be afraid, I am just here to cheer you up. I want to grant you three wishes for my 60th birthday since nothing pleases me more than seeing poor little people like you happy.”
“Thank you, Billy Genie, but, as you know, I am not a greedy person, so I just want you to grant me one wish instead of three.”
“I expected nothing less from you, little Máté. What would be that one wish, then?”
“I want you to give me all your money.”
“Now that sounds a bit on the greedy side, doesn’t it?”
“Not at all, Billy Genie. I’d spend all the money on projects that would make the world a better place.”
“But isn’t that what I am already doing?”
“Yes, but *I* want to do it from now on.”
“But—are you qualified?”
“Not yet, but once I got the money, I am qualified to do anything since I’d be rich.”
“Well argued, little Máté! Before I grant you the wish, though, I need you to consider and accept officially three consequences.
1) In order to give you the money, my Billy Genie Foundation would have to be dismantled, so all the good deed projects, including my world-wide child experiments in education, would need to be stopped.
2) Since nobody can pay for Microsoft, I’d have to break it up into a 1000 small companies. This would mean, Microsoft would lose its world-dominance, so I wouldn’t be able to bribe schools, universities and poor countries into making Windows their official computing platform.
3) Worst of all, I wouldn’t be able to pay lawyers anymore, so the millions of people who claim I screwed up their lives would succeed in making me spend the rest of my life in a bottle.
If you are willing to accept these consequences, sign here at the bottom.”
“Sure, Billy Genie. Here’s my signature: Máté”