Leonie Haimson has written a stunning article about stories in the New York Times that promote investments of Bill Gates without acknowledging that the writer’s outside organization is funded by the Gates Foundation.
She refers in amazing detail to two laudatory articles about Bridge International Academies, the corporation that is providing for-profit schools in poor countries in Africa and elsewhere. Gates is an investor in BIA. The Gates Foundation supports the organization that supports the journalist. BIA is encouraging countries like Kenya and Liberia to outsource their responsibility for primary school education to the corporation, which charges the families about $6 a month. Haimson points out that when the cost of uniforms and supplies and food are included, the total is far higher, and represents about a quarter of the family income. If there is more than one child, the cost may be 2/3 of the family income. You can be sure that the business is highly profitable, and it relieves the country of the necessity of building universal free public education.
The article goes into detail about the research on both sides of the issue, which is not reflected in the Times’ coverage.
Other articles in the New York Times have praised the “flipped classroom,” a favorite of Bill Gates, and edTech schools that Gates endorses.
I hope the Public Editor of the New York Times reads this timely and important critique of their coverage.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It is good work.
This is interesting to me:
“The problem with private education is that it creates inequity, one tier of education for rich and another for poor. In a sense, Liberia is creating a solution: All the Partnership schools will be free. As it does for all schools, the government will provide schools in the pilot with teachers, administrative staff and school buildings, all paid for from the education budget….”
They’re abandoning the whole idea of public education. I think that’s a shift in ed reform. There used to be at least a token nod to preserving “public education” as a goal.
I personally think it was inevitable that “public” would be dropped. It doesn’t make sense to oppose any aspect of privatization under the ed reform philosophy. If you’re willing to fund contractors to provide schools, why would you exclude any type of school from government funding? It’s inconsistent. They’ll all end up here eventually.
A co-founder of BIA, was quoted as saying the business model’s 20% return would be attractive to investors.
I published Leonie’s piece here
and added this with a link to this post:
Diane Ravitch says: “I hope the Public Editor of the New York Times reads this timely and important critique of their coverage.”
I say: WRITE THE NY TIMES PUBLIC EDITOR and demand that the paper of real journalism to expose the global attack on education.
Queries can continue to be submitted to public@nytimes.com.
Please include the following: To the Public Editor, Article Headline: Date Published: Web or Print: Your Concern (please limit to 300 words): — Your Name: Location: Your E-mail: Phone Number:
It can take us two to four weeks to respond to hand-written letters, but they can be mailed to:
Elizabeth Spayd, Public Editor
620 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10018
Sorry , I forgot the link when I said that I I published Leonie’s piece here:
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/NYC-Public-School-Parents-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Conflict_Conflict-Of-Interest_Education_International-160831-669.html#comment615737
Excellent report.
There are several stories here.
One story is about the commercialization of schooling being propagated by billionaires. with the stench of colonialism in Africa and elsewhere.
The second is the about the failure of journalistic integrity and the erosion of a “free” and independent press by corporate interests, with the NY Times only one example.
The third is the growing importance of the independent researchers as whistle blowers and with the blogosphere vital for distribution of their reports.
That relative freedom of communication via the internet is, of course, at risk. In addition to the monopolistic drive of Google, Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, this system is a target of hackers with and beyond the USA. In addition to system saboteurs the internet is occupied by owners of media empires, paid shills, and some people who thrive on creating and publishing inflammatory “news.”
Gates is among the most eager billionaires launching and participating in media campaigns, working both from the tax haven of the Gates foundation, and in his role of not fully retired CEO of Microsoft. In a recent job posting, the Gates foundation sought a senior staff person who could work on improving its networks and platforms for communicating about education.
Not long ago, a union staff writer for TIME magazine, disclosed that TIME had a policy of pushing news that would appeal to the TIME’s major advertisers.
EdWeek, the paper “of record” for education, has donor-supported editorial content from at least 13 foundations. The editors claim that the content is not influenced by support for the topical coverage paid for by foundations. That is untrue. There is a constant promotion of data-driven decisions supported by Gates and others, and the Walton Foundation’s support for charter school initiatives. Lynn Olsen, a senior editor for EdWeek is now at the Gates Foundation.
The erosion of “freedom of the press” has been slow and steady. That makes the circulation of news, informed opinion, and work of whistleblowers more important than ever, along with the role of blogs in distributing news.
Thanks, Laura. I respect the journalists that I know at EdWeek, but I have been very disturbed by the way that it has become a platform for selling technology products.
I video a lesson for every class, so that kids who don’t understand or want to review the lesson can do so. A flipped classroom is where they ask kids to do this before the class. Kids stop watching the video lessons. A video lesson is not compelling; kids fall asleep or just stop watching the lesson. None of my students watch any of my video lessons. I continue to do so to make the tech crazy admins happy. It is just another unfunded mandate foisted on us by people who have no idea how to teach.
They’ve been using video teaching for at least 15 years for lower level employee training. I first saw it a steel plant.
My daughter works at a huge health care facility and the “direct care aides” (the lowest level workers) receive all training online. They used to be trained in small groups with actual tasks but that’s too expensive.
That’s why it bothers me that it’s sold as something desirable or in short supply. It’s used because it’s cheaper and there’s a record that the employees were “trained”- they hit all the boxes in the questions after the lesson and that’s the record. It was never considered “superior” until it was sold to schools. It was re-marketed.
One doesn’t have to be an investigative reporter to know that The Los Angeles Times pro-charter school reporting is paid for by billionaire who backs charter schools because The LA Times has acknowledged that in print and promised to publish a disclaimer with each such “news” story, which it did…for a while. It no longer does, thereby leaving new readers in the dark that its charter school “reporting” is bought-and-paid-for.
LIKE! Thank you, Diane.
I have a daughter who had a teacher using a flipped classroom. She would watch the lecture on line and come prepared to do the activities in class. This lasted about two weeks because so few of the students watched the videos. My daughter became extremely frustrated when the teacher resorted to showing the videos in class. I think you can deduce how this ended.
BIA’s co-founder said that classes of 50-60 students were necessary to reach “scale”.
Those are typical class sizes in Liberian public secondary schools. Primary classes with 100+ students are not uncommon.
In addition to being an investment – not even a pretense that it’s a “philanthropic” contribution – by Bill Gates, this McSchool For Those People (revealingly called a “school in a box”) is also a favorite of the Clinton Foundation/Clinton Global Initiative. Google the two and see what you get.
Time to start rehearsing the appropriate tone for saying how “disappointed” we are – a la Barack Obama – that public education has been betrayed by Hillary, when she does what she does best: throw her nominal constituencies under the bus…
By all means, vote to keep Donnie out of the White House, but please don’t delude yourself into thinking that anyone other than the usual ReformBots will still be in control of education policy.