Martin Levine keeps an eye on education philanthropy on behalf of the online journal Nonprofit Quarterly.
In this post, he recapitulates the speculation about the latest Gates’ initiative.
At least one observer thinks that Gates has learned his lesson and is now avoiding a “top down” approach.
Megan Tompkins-Stange, a public policy professor at the University of Michigan, told Education Week “she was somewhat surprised that Gates said the foundation should serve more as a “catalyst of good ideas than an inventor of ideas.”
This would be a remarkable change for the man with $80 billion.
Is he capable of listening?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Over time,” Gates says, “we realized that what made the most successful schools successful—large or small—was their teachers, their relationships with students, and their high expectations of student achievement.”
If you think about it, this is a pretty stunning thing for Gates to say. It’s all about teacher relationships with students. So, what, therefore, we’re going to get rid of teachers and plug students into technology most of the day? The discord there is so appallingly blatant that either Gates is utterly clueless or he’s thoroughly evil. I find it hard to believe the richest man on the planet is clueless.
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I used to think it was Gates who was driving the Reformers, but could it now be the other way around?
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Interesting thought and I’ve been kicking it around before giving a knee-jerk response. Honestly, I don’t think so. I think Gates is the one with the money, the “vision” and the control. I think he’s too self-absorbed and self-satisfied to let others lead him, and I certainly don’t see him as a dupe. But I would be curious as to what has led you to start thinking that way?
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I’m not sure I think that way. I was just throwing that out there.
There’s no question that his money has allowed him to thwart our democracy.
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Over time we realized?
That’s just BS.
I wish I had the quote, but KrazyTA posted a Gates quote more than a few times where Gates talked about how great Lakeside school (that both he attended and his kids now attend) was precisely because of the relationships between student and teacher.
Over time I have come to realize that Gates is just a pathological liar.
Not even a very good one.
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Another one of Gates’ many lies:
The Common Core was a state initiative.
That’s a lie he has been telling for years — and still loves to tell– but he knows darned well who was actually behind it because it was he and David Coleman ( with a lotta collusion from the Duncster and Test to the Top)
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
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I don’t see any failures — they have advanced their agenda at every step.
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Well, he did fail to hold Common Core together.
His purpose was to get all states on the same page and all students in lock step — like standardized electrical outlets so it would be easy to simply plug in standard versions of hardware, software and tests to all schools nationally.
But unfortunately for Gates, many states dumped Common Core and some are now changing parts they don’t like. Gates “electrical outlets” have lost their mandate for standardization.
That’s undoubtedly an unmitigated disaster in Gates’ eyes because it violates the whole idea that there would be a single standard that would not be changed (of at the very least, would be changed the same for all states)
If not all states are following the very same standard, companies can no longer create standard versions of software for example. They are effectively back to creating customized versions, which is precisely what Gates plan was meant to “remedy”.
In Gates view, Common Core failed not because it sucked, but because it failed to hold all schools to precisely the same standard.
As Yeats so presciently foresaw in “In the Second Coming”
” Things fall apart; the Core cannot hold”
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The ceremony of innocence is downloaded …
— Coming 2.0
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It wasn’t only Gates that wanted standardization in order to create a national market for products and services. Joanne Weiss, who managed Race to the Top at the US Department of Education, wrote an essay about the virtues of standardization and the marketplace for a Harvard Business School blog.
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That Joanne Weiss shared Gates vision was no mere coincidence
From “New Book: Obama’s Education Department and Gates Foundation were closer than you thought”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/08/25/new-book-obamas-education-department-and-gates-foundation-were-closer-than-you-thought/?utm_term=.c4772b0f413e
“Once Obama was elected, I mean, Gates literally had people sitting at the Department of Education both formally and informally.” These officials included Jim Shelton, Assistant Deputy Secretary for Innovation and Improvement and former Program Director for the Education program at Gates, and Joanne Weiss, director of the Race to the Top competition and a former partner at the NewSchools Venture Fund, a major Gates grantee that served as an intermediary funder for charter school management organizations. ”
// End quote
Does anyone really believe that Gates was not behind Race to the Top’s requirement for states to adopt standards and testing?
How else would he ever have gotten Common Core accepted so quickly?
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I know most don’t agree with me and you have been following this much longer so you may be right, but Gates really is different than the rest of the ed reform funders. Gates has never been solely focused on charters and vouchers- that’s one of the reasons there is much broader pushback to what Gates does. Gates is IN public schools in a way the Waltons aren’t. Public school families can safely ignore whatever the Waltons are up to because it (supposedly) doesn’t impact them.
In that sense Gates is more transparent. They want to change existing public schools. They don’t hide that. In my opinion that’s a much more straightforward approach than that of Walton and DeVos, who insist they can privatize public schools and everyone wins and it’s all hearts and flowers and everyone chooses an individual program that works for their child. That’s deceptive because it’s a fantasy. That is NOT how this will work and in fact it is NOT how this is working.
They’re wrong. Schools aren’t food trucks and they aren’t colleges. Schools are systems in a given geographical area. Gates at least admits that obvious fact.
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That will not stop Gates from trying to mold teachers (and students) in ways he thinks are appropriate. Now he can focus on how to standardize that role teachers play, hence the push for social emotional education. Let’s take those very personal interactions and standardize our understanding of them. In some ways, I don’t question that he thinks he has good intentions; he just is incapable of understanding that there are some things that cannot be “canned.” There is no script for reaching every child; each interaction is dependent on the parties involved. That is not to say that there are not things we can learn about social-emotional behavior; just that there is not a “one size fits all” process for successful interactions. He can put teachers through hours of interactions with avatar students. Will that ever be the same as actual interactions?
I am thinking of recent reports on multiple collisions involving naval vessels. One possible conclusion that resonated with me was that training at the helm had been made more “efficient” by having the personnel train on computer simulations. Those officers with extensive virtual training did not perform as well as those who had actual experience. Imagine that!
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I know you’ve been jerked around by this so it’s much more personal and present to you, but if he’s IN public schools then public schools have some say in what they adopt.
That’s quite different than “flooding” Toledo with charters and insisting nothing changed for public school families. Of course it did. They overlaid a new system on top of an existing system. The public schools were entirely passive in those decisions. They were treated as the “default” system- the assumption was they would adapt and further the assumption was all the changes would benefit the whole, which was just fantasy.
Maybe public schools (the leadership) have to get better at critical analysis of ed reform programs. Use the power they have. If they are the experts then act like experts, and stop believing every word these people say.
These are OUR schools. If we don’t want this stuff we don’t have to take it. We’re allowed to say “that’s a dumb idea and we’re not doing it” – that’s WHY we have elected boards, right?
No one HAS to adopt the Summit/Facebook model. Allowing themselves to be bullied into it with accusations of being old fashioned or self-interested is weak. Say “no”. Say these are our schools and we don’t want our kids on screens 6 hours a day.
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Part of the problem as I see it is that we talk about public schools like this monolith that has fallen prey to the monsters of reform, but when our opponents talk about public schools as a monopoly, I laugh. The school district next door would no more follow our lead than we would theirs. We are all focused on our own quite provincial needs. That is a strength when we think about meeting local needs, but it sure does not set us up to fight state battles much less a national war. We mostly love our local schools but think public schools in general are not up to the challenge. I hope Gates actually has something positive to offer but, as far as I can see, he has shown a stunning lack of respect for the “common man.” He has no difficulty in walking away from his experimental failures without cleaning up his mess. I don’t think I have ever heard an apology out of him; we are his experimental subjects. He appears to be pleased if his initiatives meet with success but not because he has improved people’s lives but only because he won. Look at it this way. If he was not a ridiculously wealthy man, would people find his arguments so compelling that they would follow his lead like lemmings? His wealth has let him do things to people rather than with them. He has shown some glimmerings of recognizing this failing. He certainly has enough power to prove me wrong. I hope he does.
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I know this only a partial “fix” and you don’t control a lot of this stuff, but I’ll give you an example. My son has an english teacher who has them stow phones and Chromebooks when they enter.
The official policy of the school is Chromebooks. She’s defying that.
My son and his friends complained to me but I can tell they’re interested in this- that she’s running her own classroom and the heck with what anyone thinks. She’s behaving like she’s in charge of how their english class will work- she thinks she KNOWS they need to focus on the text and one another- and they see and respect that.
I don’t know if she’s right but I bet she doesn’t feel jerked around by some distant billionaire.
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If Gates is so transparent, why does he feel the need to launder his money through think tanks and slew of other organizations that Laura Chapman has so meticulously documented?
People and Foundations which are transparent don’t do this.
Gates hires think tanks, which write bogus research papers to support his policies. That’s not at all transparent. Just the opposite. Unless people follow the money trail as Laura has done, they have no idea that these studies are the furthest thing from unbiased research.
The only thing that Gates was transparent about was his desire to use national standards to standardize schools so that companies could simply plug in their software and hardware. He laid all that out in his 2009 speech to the National Conference of State Legislators
But even about Common Core Gates was only partially transparent because he claimed states were behind the initiative — when in fact, he and Coleman were behind it — and even worked with Arne Duncan, who got states to adopt it through the mechanism of Race To The Top.
I can think of a lot of words to describe gates. Transparent is not one of them.
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Gates always has hidden motives. He probably wants to try to get teachers on his side as he works to make teaching as a career obsolete through depersonalized learning. It is easier to invade a country when the enemy is sleeping.
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I have to smile at the fact that genius Bill Gates just realized relationships are central to people’s lives.
That human beings “add value” 🙂
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Gates will move ed reform in his direction just because of the size of his grants and his reach.
Remember- these folks are paid- they apply for grants. There’s nothing wrong with getting paid but the donor can absolutely shift the “movement” because they have to follow the money, and he’s got a lot of money.
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Gates could have gone the Walton way- he could have pushed “choice” and thereby changed public schools by default and without consent – the current ed reform strategy of replacing every public school with a charter or voucher and insisting “no one cares” if they do that. Instead he goes right into public schools. I respect that more because he’s engaging with public school families- people who value these schools. They’ll at least have an opportunity to oppose his attempt to create these giant school systems- it’s right out in the open.
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I agree with you that he’s more transparent, but I disagree that he’s worthy of any more respect. His vast sums that he holds out gives him nearly infinite control. He can afford to be transparent because his targets can’t afford to turn him down. He’s not “engaging public school families”, he’s buying off their schools and districts. If anything, he’s working in tandem with the less transparent reformers. They starve the schools, he swoops in with his “generous donations” in exchange for control of the schools.
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Gates is trans-parent: beyond the reach of parents (and everyone else, for that matter)
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An elegant piece of applied linguistics, SomeDAM. You’ve done it again!
Kudos!
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Thanks
I think trans was one of the prefixes I learned for the SAT.
Glad to know after all these years that it was good for something: to stick it to the man — who loves the SAT so much that he includes his score on his Wikipedia page (I kid you not)
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I don’t know if you-all saw it but Zuckerberg is joining with Ford in what sounds like a public school initiative too. It sounds like “wraparound” schools, which in Ohio anyway are a model that is public.
It would be funny if ed reform moved back into public schools. Maybe a response to Trump and how unpopular DeVos is? Maybe a recognition that most schools are public schools and one can’t “reinvent” education while excluding or denigrating public schools?
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SomeDAMPoet:
Thank you for reminding me above of a golden oldie!
😁
When it comes to saying the “right” things, it’s another [and I must admit] boring example of “déjà vu all over again.”
Bill Gates. Foundation. Website. Below is the link to a speech he gave in 2005 at his alma mater, Lakeside School.
I cannot urge people enough to read the words of The Chairman for themselves so they can realize he knows what worked for him and works for HIS OWN CHILDREN but like the other heavyweights & enforcers & enablers of corporate eduction reform very decidedly prescribes & mandates something very different for OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN.
For example, his thinking about high schools:
[start]
What does this have to do with Lakeside? Our foundation’s work in high schools is based on principles that happen to be deeply ingrained in Lakeside’s culture. We call them the new three R’s—the basic building blocks of better high schools.
• The first R is Rigor – making sure all students are given a challenging curriculum that prepares them for college or work;
• The second R is Relevance – making sure kids have courses and projects that clearly relate to their lives and their goals;
• The third R is Relationships – making sure kids have a number of adults who know them, look out for them, and push them to achieve.
[end]
Of course, Lakeside gets to stay on the right path while he and his rheephormster buddies put almost everyone else on just about anything BUT the right path.
For those out there that think he really doesn’t get it—no, he just rheeally tries hard to foist onto others what he doesn’t want for his peers and their children
Take a gander at this remark about relationships:
[start]
Classes were small. You got to know the teachers. They got to know you. And the relationships that come from that really make a difference. If you like and respect your teacher, you”re going to work harder.
[end]
Link: https://www.gatesfoundation.org/media-center/speeches/2005/09/bill-gates-lakeside-school
I rest my case.
😎
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No,
Thank you!
I think Diane needs a ,link to “The Quotable Gates” (and “The Quotable KrazyTA”!!) on the side bar, so people can compare what Gates says now to what he said several years ago.
Maybe the guy has Billsheimers or Gatesheimers and has just forgotten that he has known about the value of relationships for a long time, but I somehow doubt it.
It’s all just too convenient.
When do people stop giving him the benefit of the doubt?
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As soon as he turns off the spigot.
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“A detailed look at the first six months of Ms. DeVos’s tenure as the secretary of education — based on a 326-page calendar tracking her daily meetings — demonstrates that she continues to focus on those programs as well as on charter schools.
Her calendar is sprinkled with meetings with religious leaders, leading national advocates of vouchers and charter schools, and players involved in challenging state laws that limit the distribution of government funds to support religious or alternative schools.”
Ed reform has become ludicrous. They managed to so capture the federal government that the US Department of Education ignores NINETY PER CENT of schools in the country.
It’s ridiculous. Next up! The Social Security Administration meets exclusively with 401k managers! Go back and read your job description. I’m pretty sure you are all being paid to work on public schools. Either that or give back 90% of your salary.
They’re meeting with Frank Luntz to find better ways to attack the schools 90% of the people in the country attend. This is what we’re paying for.
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According to Bill Gates, Gates Foundation should be a “cattle list of good ideas”
Like VAM, for example, which was based on William Sanders attempt to model the effects of feed and other inputs on cattle growth.
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“Gates Foundation is a catalyst of great ideas”
The GF is a cattle list
Of really great ideas
Like teacher VAM, whose very gist
Was based on cattle rears
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Love your ability to take apart words and apply them so aptly.
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I don’t believe in fate, but if I did, I would think that people like Gates set themselves up for this stuff.
Some of it is just too perfect.
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Anyone who thinks that Gates has given up on the Common Core is wrong.
He is still pouring money into districts that will push it. His idea of “collaboration and listening” is pay others to come into a district and offer trainings to teachers and principals whom he regards as hapless, or lazy, or incompetent, or insufficiently dedicated to the Gates agenda, including Gates-Funded the Common Core.
I just checked the database for the Gates foundation. In just 2016 and 2017 he has poured $32,175, 526 million into pushing the Common Core.
Grants for this purpose were sent to the twelve groups who are willing to do for-hire work defined by the Gates Foundation.
The following received grants the largest of these grants:
Center for American Progress, $1,000,000;
EdSource Inc., $1,362,606;
New Teacher Center $2,000,000;
Loyola Marymount University, $2,000,000;
CSU Fullerton Auxiliary Services Corporation, $2,000,000;
WestEd, $4,350,875;
University of Kentucky Research Foundation, $5,000,000;
CORE Districts $6,350,000; New Venture Fund, $7,900,010.
Gates has sent another $7,614,758 to those CORE Districts in California in the last three years, in addition to the grant for $6,350,000 ear-marked to push the Common Core (above).
CORE stands for the California Office to Reform Education. CORE has no formal connection to the California State Board of Education, CORE and the districts it has signed up is called a “collaborative.” I think not.
CORE is a privately funded organization that engineered a contractual takeover of some of the largest districts in California. The contract takes the form of a Memorandum of Understanding between the superintendent of each district and CORE. That MOU allows CORE to determine almost everything that happens in some of California’s largest districts: Garden Grove, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, San Francisco and Santa Ana.
CORE is funded by the Stuart Foundation, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation. The student, teachers, school, and parent data from the CORE “School Quality Improvement Index” flows directly to GreatSchools.org where school “quality” ratings are used to help market products and services to parents and other users. Zillow and Scholastic are among the companies that pay fees in order to market products and services.
Don’t believe what Gates says. Follow the money.
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