Melinda Gates, like her husband Bill, believes that the Gates Foundation has the answers for the problems of American education.
She has never taught. She never attended a public school. Neither did Bill. Their children do not attend public schools.
What is the source of their certainty? They are very rich, probably the richest people in the world (Carlos Slim of Mexico might be richer). They are so rich that they think they know what is best for everyone’s children.
Here are some questions that the Gates Foundation should answer:
Does the Lakeside Academy in Seattle use the Gates-funded Common Core standards?
Does it test all students every year with standardized tests?
Does it use either PARCC or SBAC?
Does it evaluate its teachers by the test scores of their students?
Just wondering.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Excellent questions, Diane. I’m guessing the answer is no.
I have the same thoughts when everyone ran to make smaller high schools and they didn’t work.
I am thinking there’s a subcategory of the Dunning–Kruger Syndrome that should be dubbed the Bill & Melinda Effect.
How much time does Lakeside Academy spend on test prep?
How much time does Lakeside Academy spend on subjects other than Math and English?
Does Lakeside Academy teach art, music, drama, or foreign languages?
Does Lakeside Academy have a library?
No criticism will register with the perfect know-it-all people and their wish to control education, not just in the US but globally but also physiologically—literally rating levels of student engagement by medical and forensic gear.
Grant to the National Center on Time & Learning, $621,265 in 2011
To measure “engagement” physiologically with Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Galvanic Skin Response develop a scale that differentiates different degrees or levels of engagement.
That is an EDUCATION grant.
Will we soon have an affordable MRI for every classroom and education clinic?
Perhaps Galvanic Skin Response gear will be mandated for student backpacks soon. How about distributed hookups in every classroom, producing real time “engagement tracings” for every teacher and parent caregiver. Add a series of questions to rate the truthiness of every student as they take a test, and every off-task action from a teacher.
Sorry for the fantasy, but I have examine where the Gates money goes for some time and there really is no end to the arrogance and the ignorance that they parade as if great wisdom.
Not so well publicized: The many people they hire to promote their policies and to refine strategies for infecting this nation with Gates-think about education and the willingness of academics and others to be paid by Gates to advance false claims that Gates-favored policies are evidence-based, sound, and supported by a causal chain of reasoning. This is the rhetorical game evident in the brief database reports on who gets grants and for what purposes. Outcomes are assumed to be inevitable simply because, you know, Gates has invested in them.
Were Gates to ask this teacher what would improve his delivery, I would say:
1. A more humane ratio of prep time to teaching time (seven classes a day is grueling).
2. A bigger classroom with better maps and more white boards.
3. A sink and counter to facilitate food demos that link to the history curriculum.
4. A big write-on globe I could pull down from the ceiling on demand to show kids stuff.
5. Shade/rain structures outside my classroom so kids could spread out into the fresh air to do assignments and work on projects –to take advantage of California’s wonderful temperate climate –instead of being crammed into a noisy cramped classroom whose windows don’t even open.
But no one ever asks me. Instead Gates shoves his “solutions” at me and tells me I need them. They are solutions in search of a problem. If anyone ever starts asking teachers what the problem is, we’ll start getting meaningful solutions.
Those are great questions. Thank you!
Of course not. Those requirements would infringe on the school’s autonomy, the teachers’ authority, and the creative expression of the students. 😉
Lakeside sure looks nice from its online brochure, but considering that it produces people like Bill Gates and Paul Allen, I wouldn’t touch it with a 20-foot pole… even if I could afford to!
Why do people think it’s some kind of funny anecdote that Gates and Allen hacked into the programming computer at Lakeside? Their diplomas should be revoked. Poor Gates… it’s the only diploma he has. Seems to me like Lakeside doesn’t have a good disciplinary system or any disciplinary system at all.
The other aspect of this is the hypocrisy of Melinda and Bill Gates as regards smaller class size in his kids’ schools — low class size at Lakeside — vs. what he spends hundreds of millions of dollars (including founding think tanks and paying for bogus studies that “prove” the efficacy of raising class size) imposing on “other people’s kids” — the children of the middle and working classes attending traditional public schools, and Seattle’s charter schools as well — sky high class size.
SEATTLE TIMES’ Danny Weastneat’s classic column covered here on Dr. Ravitch’s blog:
https://dianeravitch.net/2013/01/12/seattle-writer-challenges-bill-gates-to-be-consistent/
———————————————–
“Seattle Writer Challenges Bill Gates to Be Consistent
“A reader sent the following observation:
“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:
“THE SEATTLE TIMES’ Danny Westneat 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, Westneat 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:
http://seattletimes.com/html/dannywestneat/2014437975_danny09.html
“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:
WESTNEAT: “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.”
——————————–
Then one “Kate SL” chimed in with this comment
—————————-
Kate SL
January 26, 2014 at 2:13 pm
THANK YOU, JACK! That’s what I’ve been saying all along. If you REALLY want to know what a man is, you walk in his shoes! If Bill Gates, et al., really believed in the happy horse manure they’re shoveling for public consumption, why, they’d use it themselves.
Since they don’t, I have to believe they’re hypocrites.
Here are a few more Questions for Bill
Did you invent the Computer.?
Did you invent the Internet ?
Did you invent the Graphical interface?
Did you actually invent DOS ?
Did you do this on your own ?
Did you go to the very first school that had a computer for you and Paul to play with?
Did you benefit by having Family connections specifically with IBM?
Did your father a successful Corporate lawyer in Seattle’s growing Tech sector write the licensing arrangement with IBM?
Did IBM engineers take that Dirty Operating System and work out many difficulties?
Did investment in research by the Defense department, NASA and other federal agencies actually move all of the above along?
Did you pay for the education of all those who worked for you or was that for a myriad of reasons also mostly enabled by government?
Here is a big one, Where would you be without Patent protection the most anti free market concept we have ?
Would others have been able to enter that market with a superior product minus the Blue Screen of Death, without that monopoly protected by the US government?
Were you found to be violating European Union restraint of trade clauses?
Did you drop out of Harvard in your sophomore year?
You are an Education expert why?
Oh yes, Joel Herman! THOSE are the very questions that need to be presented to Mr. (& Mrs.) Gates. Right on!
Nicely done, Joel. Seriously, Bill is no genius, let alone do-hoofer. But you ask why The Gates is an education expert. I thought he was a chicken expert.
OK, I swear that’s my last chicken crack, everyone. It just never seems to get old to me. It was the height of arrogance and condescension.
Do-gooder, not hoofer. Autocorrect shtunks.
Give the Devil his due: the man is a genius monopolist.
That, and nothing else.
We live in the Age of the New Know-It-Alls. And judging by Mrs. Gates … they’re here to stay
They’re all over the place. They tell doctors how to doctor, police how to police, and teachers how to teach. They’ve fouled up everything they’ve touched from healthcare to the military to universities to school lunches.
They all share the crazy commonality of telling people what to do … while never following their own advice … never content to do what they know best … only what they imagine best.
Some are wealthy … like the Gates … and have this sudden need to drive over to the next lane and think that what they’ve learned … about microchips or copying machines or oil rigs … constitutes suitable qualifications to screw around with schools … and the small humans who live there.
Others have flapped their lips and somehow cajoled a whole lot of important people that they themselves are pretty important people. They are adamant that they know more about schools and faculties and learning and leadership than most seasoned educators who were grown into those positions. They had epiphanies … and others did not.
Their philosophy presupposes that actual educational experience really isn’t necessary. It’s always amazing that these instant experts would never make similar suppositions about running an oil company or managing a baseball team or operating a farm or flying a plane. But schools? Why not! What’s so special? There are thousands of them all across the country. How difficult can it be?
So, they set out to blaze new trails and actually set fire to a whole lot of good stuff. And they think nothing of the fallout that is strewn in their rearview mirror because there is almost always another newly-inspired expert on the backstretch waiting for his turn at this educational wheel of misfortune.
I’m not aware of another time during the last few decades when we had more self-anointed geniuses on display. Why is our generation so special?
Education seems to attract special flies like Michelle Rhee and David Coleman … each of whom owns and extensive supply of egoism and unfounded conceit. One has been run out of education all together … and the other is running education into the ground. Each had a post-it note resume in education.
And then there are politicians turned Socrates like Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and John Kasich … and most especially Andrew Cuomo who has done the unimaginable by botching a botched reform even more. They share a loathing for teachers … and insist that teaching is on par with minding the neighbor’s children … except, of course, when it comes to their own youngsters … who are almost invariably educated behind expensive ivy walls. It seems they have this knack for over-paying babysitters. Go figure.
Fold in some fat-wallet types like Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Netflix Reed Hastings … and that gooey oil titan of Exxon Mobil, Rex Tillison … and you’ve got a revolting pu pu plater of current Know-It-Alls … each suffering from a mysterious messiah-complex. They think that computers and robots and ouija boards are the educational tools of the 21st century. They all need yo-yos.
That’s where we are folks … deep into the Age of the Know-It-Alls … and everyone of them is determined to do their very best for mankind … including ruining it all in spectacular fashion.
I don’t quite know if we’re worthy, but I suspect we’re in for it.
Denis Ian
Well done. Especially like this line
…. each suffering from a mysterious messiah-complex. They think that computers and robots and ouija boards are the educational tools of the 21st century. They all need yo-yos.
A rationale based on “what’s best for everyone’s children”? Is there any reason to think Melinda’s opinion is any different than two- two-tier Roland Fryer’s? The Deutsch 29 blog has a list of his “philanthropic” grants, including a very large Gates’ check. The blog quotes Fryer’s view, which contrasts his own children’s academic needs, in the Boston suburbs, with, the needs of other kids, for “testing everyday”.
If other people’s kids can be dehumanized, through language, as in Bellwether’s “human capital pipeline”, it allows any manner of acts against them.
Microsoft has a deal to create Common Core products, with Pearson. Bill Gates is an investor in the largest retailer of schools-in-a-box. The founder of the product said a 20% return would attract investors. My assumption, it did., Bill Gates and Pearson, among others, are investors.
The Gates Foundation gave $22 mil. to New Schools Venture Fund, whose “marching orders (are)…. to develop diverse charter school management organizations that produce different brands on a large scale.”
I don’t see altrui$m. Rhetoric to the contrary, isn’t that putting lipstick on a pig?
I agree, Denis Ian. The “Know-It-Alls” make the laws. How do we then live, with the “Know-It-Alls” at the helm? Well, we comment on blogs, and other things…
Until…all h_ll breaks loose.
I would ask, how much time do their kids spend on computers doing “personalized learning” during school, and how big are the classrooms?