Laura Chapman, retired teacher of the arts and curriculum designer, vastly enriches this blog with her research and insights. In this commentary, she reacts to a post written by Peter Greene about the corporate reformers’ efforts to colonize teacher education.
Chapman writes:
“Patrick Riccards, author of the article that Peter demolishes, is the chief communications and strategy officer for the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. The Foundation might be called an operating arm of the Gates Foundation, having received over $13 million to promote “competency based” programs for higher education. The president of the WWNFF is Arthur Levine who earns about $475, 500. The WWNFF pays the Podesta Group in DC to help it get government grants. Patrick Riccards is a new hire, but an old hand in promoting other people’s ideas.
“So, who provided the talking points for this promotional piece? My guess is that these came from any number of sources, including but not limited to Bellwether.
“Peter’s comments are fairly glib, funny, but they fail to recognize that four Gates-funded teacher preparation “transformation centers” are set to “scale-up” district-based teacher education programs, with marginal connections to higher education. One “center “is Relay Graduate School of Education, with Doug Lemov views of teaching. These transformation centers are based on the idea that master/mentor teachers are hard to find, especially in low-income urban schools. And these centers are counting on replacing a large number of teachers who are reaching the golden years and finding other reasons to leave teaching.
“The reasoning in the Gates Foundation (and other foundations) is that teacher prep programs should focus on developing a “pipeline” of teachers, especially for “high needs districts and high need subjects.”
Therefore teacher prep should begin with recruiting people only after they have a bachelor’s degree in a content area (or life experience credentials). These recruits should have at least a 3 point GPA (or comparable), then enter a two–year induction period completing courses and passing “competency” tests while teaching under the guidance of a certified master teacher. During those two years, teaching responsibilities are gradually added. Some induction programs are residency programs with stipends paid to student teachers for increased responsibilities. Program completers earn a master’s degree, some with subtitles as in Masters Degree in Urban Education. They are on their own to meet state certification requirements.
“Some of the new competency tests are being adapted from medical training where avatars are presented and the physician-in-training is expected to “perform” a series of fairly standard assessments of the patient, analyze the data, make a preliminary diagnosis, and offer a plan for treatment.
“One version in education is a virtual classroom with student-avatars. You can see one example here, https://www.mursion.com. Mursion is one of the leading companies, founded by CEO Mark Atkinson, who previously was the founding CEO of Teachscape. Teachscape markets Danielson’s (infamous) Framework for Teaching, student surveys, and more.
“In the next three years 70 teacher preparation “providers” in Massachusetts will be transformed, aided by $3,928,656 from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (not counting a separate separate grant in October 2015, for $ 300,000 “to launch, execute, and utilize implementation data collection at the state-level.”)
“Gates funds will support “data-driven analysis and continuous improvement,” provide “robust and direct support for new Candidate Assessment of Performance (CAP) process with nine reporting forms,” build “additional Edwin Analytics Reports,” develop “regulations for the Pre-Practicum experience,” embed “mixed-reality simulations in coursework” and coordinate “regional induction institutes.” That is an overview. Here are some details.
“The Elevate Preparation: Impact Children (EPIC) program will:
“1. Set rigorous expectations for pre-practicum studies.
“2. Require candidates to practice high-value skills by using a technology embedded in course work. Candidates practice these skills in a low-risk virtual environment simulating a classroom, but with programmed interactions among five or six “students” (animated avatars) and the candidates.
“3. Standardize expectations and tests for teacher performance.
“4. Certify the ability of supervisors of field-based experiences to offer high-quality feedback to student teachers.
“5. Refine data gathering for annual reports on each teacher preparation program including surveys of: candidates, program graduates one year after employment, supervisors of teachers, and hiring principals in addition to other state-managed outcome measures (e.g., educator evaluations, employment histories, student achievement).
“6. Create a coordinated system to ensure: (a) that teachers are prepared for the anticipated labor market in the district where they do student teaching and (b) that candidates in the “pipeline” meet diversity requirements “for human capital in the PK-12 sector.”
“We are working toward an ambitious goal that by 2022, candidates prepared in Massachusetts will enter classrooms and demonstrate results on par with peers in their third year of teaching.” http://www.doe.mass.edu/edprep/
“I would not want to be a “provider” of teacher preparation in Massachusetts. Student teachers who are on the threshold of taking a job will be evaluated for “fitness to teach” using the same criteria that Massachusetts uses for experienced teachers.
“The new phrase for talking about the education of teachers is make them “classroom ready.” Everything else is superfluous and can be dropped. Scholarly knowledge and critical thinking about the work of teachers is unnecessary. This is also called “elevating” the profession.
“Here is my take: The new view is that every teacher is a technician dealing with conventional content and conventional problems. The “new teacher education” is being tailored for robots and for avatar teachers, cheap after initial funding from USDE and philanthropies.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
IMO, the hundreds of ed schools, including UMASS, accredited by NCATE, like Relay, should expect to be “blown up” as “…reformers ….declare” (Philanthropy Roundtable, “Don’t Surrender the Academy”, tab K-12, written by an employee of a Gates-funded organization). It’s what happens when people don’t fight for democracy.
I agree: cheap.
One more tidbit. Patrick Riccards used to be the head of ConnCAN, the charter lobby
I remember him. His articles contained arguments that were of rather low rhetorical quality, and he was absolutely incapable of engaging in any sort of debate. He had to disable the comments feature on their Facebook page and blog.
This plan is another example of Gates’ overreach and arrogance. It is irresponsible of states to allow Gates to have his way “reinventing” education and teacher training. This is all human experimentation without evidence, and the states are being bought off by Gates. Massachusetts has always produced the highest scores on standardized tests. Why should they accept this bold overhaul of education, particularly when participants don’t meet state certification requirements? It is because, as Diane states, he wants to create schools where teachers work as low level technicians serving up computer software in the CBE world.
No worry. As an educator in Massachusetts, universities and colleges that train teachers are not going to change their program to accommodate Gates (except maybe Harvard which does not have a teacher education program but produces teachers/educators each year)). I can not imagine Boston University, Northeastern University, Lesley College to name a few falling for this scam or giving up their autonomy.
Why aren’t the NCATE accredited schools demanding standards that limit plutocratic influence in universities?
The depth and breadth of Laura’s research never ceases to amaze me.
I bet she knows more about how Gates has invested his money than he does.
And she certainly understands the impacts much better than Gates.
Maybe Gates should hire Laura to keep track of all his billions. 🙂
Agree about Laura’s research.
This is almost the equivalent of saying, “students from our medical program will graduate with the skills, knowledge, and performance of a third year resident”.
PLEASE! Have these folks ever been in the classroom…or lived?
And how does one “measure” the skills and performance of a third year teacher anyway? Or maybe I shouldn’t even ask.
Fifth year teachers will tell you that they were pretty insecure and minimally efficient in their third year. If we get rid of our third year teachers based on this minimally efficient inexperience, we’ll NEVER HAVE FIFTH YEAR TEACHERS…(or, imagine, teachers in their twentieth or thirtieth year!)
About the only meritorious aspect to Gates’ plan is the apprenticeship type practicum. However, practice without understanding has its limits. As pointed out in the post, the goal is to teach people to be good robots, not creative, authentic teachers.
The root cause of the corporate assault on public education is something called “The Billionaires’ Disease.” Most billionaires — with the notable exception of Warren Buffett — are delusional. They have accumulated not only great wealth, but all the things that go with it, such as being surrounded by sycophants who tell them they are geniuses. In fact, most billionaires believe themselves not only to be geniuses, but that they alone are responsible for the wealth they have accumulated; they rationalize away the key and essential roles played by others in the success of their businesses. So, in their delusion they view their self-identified genius as being applicable to other areas, such as government and public education, notwithstanding the fact that they have no experience or expertise in these areas. So what we have today are billionaires with no governmental experience who think they know best who our elected officials should be, and billionaires who never taught a classroom full of children but who think they know exactly what “reforms” are needed in public education. And, of course, what’s needed in public schools is the charter school business model because the business model is the only thing the billionaires know even a bit about. And of course there are plenty of simpering sycophants to tell the billionaires how insightful they are because these sycophants see an opportunity to cash in on unregulated charter schools to bleed tax money away from children and into their own pockets. If only there was a cure for The Billionaires’ Disease perhaps the billionaires could turn their resources to combating the true root causes of problems not only in schools but throughout our nation: Poverty and racial discrimination.
Here-here!
“except Buffett”. No, he talks a good game but, gives Gates his “philanthropic” money to spend. Also read about the allegations against Buffett’s mobile home business re: discriminatory loan practices against Blacks.
The difference between the Koch’s and the “philanthropic” partners, Gates and Buffett is that the later, have better PR, courtesy of the Democratic Party.
What an absolute tragedy that MA would succumb to this nonsense. Another thing to “thank” Gates for…ughh! MA always had such a progressive and strong public school system and NOW… I shudder to think what will happen with robotic drivel substituting for education programs.
I could not help but do a double take on this comment:
““One version in education is a virtual classroom with student-avatars. You can see one example here, https://www.mursion.com. Mursion is one of the leading companies, founded by CEO Mark Atkinson, who previously was the founding CEO of Teachscape. Teachscape markets Danielson’s (infamous) Framework for Teaching, student surveys, and more…”
Teachscape does more than market Danielson’s Framework. It keeps controlled data on teachers that teachers are required to enter into their individual yet Teachscape controlled account ( if a district buys into its program). And… to make matters worse… I hear that it is bowing out of this data collection so I wonder what happens to all the personal information kept on teachers!
Massachusetts ranks at the very top of the 50 states for the statistical indicators that “prove” the success of a state’s public education system. Why then is the Gates Foundation sticking its nose and cash into Massachusetts teacher preparation programs. It appears that Massachusetts has done all things necessary to cement its perch as a pre-eminent public education system. I’m pretty sure that Mississippi, Georgia, New Mexico, and Oklahoma, to name a few, would be pleased to receive some Gates Foundation attention and largesse. Additionally, where there is much room to grow, demonstrating improvement is much more dramatic and compelling. Is this just an example of the Gates Foundation looking for opportunities to burnish its image? It’s pretty hard to fail when you are working with a program that is already successful. Our children in less successful programs deserve our efforts no less.
Possibly because Massachusetts has a public records law from the dark ages.
Executive, legislative and judicial documents that are public records in most
other states are not subject to disclosure here in MA. Bacon Hill claims to be
fixing the problem, but in MA the fix is always in.
Richard, I think the Gates intrusions into teacher education programs are aimed at eliminating academic freedom for teacher education faculty as well as students who are being prepared to teach. Conform or else has taken root in was that should not be happening in public education, including higher education. The Massachusetts grant was one of four others three-year grants from Gates.
Gates seems to be determined to prove that there is one best way to produce “effective teachers” meaning those that can produce: increases in test scores year-to-year, pass muster on observation rubrics, and please their employers, students, and parents where the teachers are hired (surveys in the works).
Gates does not often solicit proposals. The request for proposals that came from the foundation had absolute priorities,among them a commitment to the Common Core State Standards.
Grants have also gone to Texas Tech, Relay “Graduate” School of Education, a program at Michigan State University called TeacherWorks, and a Florida-based Teacher Prep Inspectorate called TPI-US. TPI-US will use an on-site evaluation process similar to one used in the United Kingdom, but with criteria from National Center for Teacher Quality — criteria that are so prescriptive they recommend specific texts for courses, two from Pearson, where Pearson’s own Sir Michael Barber and Doug Lemov ( among others) serve as “technical advisors.” The Inspectorate will pass judgment on teacher ed programs, including those Gates has funded. Gates is among others who fund the National Center for Teacher Quality.
Actually the $6.8 million Gates grant is going to University of Michigan’s TeachingWorks. Here are more details: http://ns.umich.edu/new/releases/23306-teachingworks-receives-6-8m-grant-to-establish-teacher-preparation-transformation-center
Michigan, home to Gates ideological ally, Betsy DeVos.
Alexandra, you are correct. And Teaching Works is sharply focused on what they regard as “high leveragel skills” that are required for “classroom-ready” teachers.