Angie Sullivan teaches first grade students in a low income school in Clark County, Nevada. She circulated this letter about the serial failures of the Gates Foundation and the damage done to her students:
“http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/teacherbeat/2018/02/teacher_evaluation_efforts_haven%27t_shown_results_bill_melinda_gates.html?cmp=soc-edit-tw&override=web
Millions of students harmed.
The damage done to public schools most likely unable to be repaired in my career.
Learn a lesson: Billionaires do not teach kids. Money does not teach kids. Businesspersons do not teach kids. Politicians are dumb as dirt on education issues.
Teachers teach kids. Teachers survived this assault. Experience Skilled Teachers grabbed on to all within our reached to save as many as we could. While the community demanded destructive disruption which traumatized Kids. Everyone owes us for not running away while you abused us.
18,000+ CCSD Teachers did not deserve the disrespect and hate heaped on us for two decades. It has to stop.
Teachersare key to education reform, education innovation, and education progressive ideas.
All politicians, union officials, and operatives who took money from “Reformers” should be ashamed. Those folks were selling tricks, gimmicks, and fads. There is no short-cut. Educating children is work and requires resources.
Unfunded mandates do not work. Whipping teachers to improve student scores left scars but did not produce impressive results. We have nothing to teach with. No one has a box of paper. The fads gave us whiplash. It is abusive.
“Good ideas” not based in authentic research and best practice do not work.
Squawking advocates for “choice” squandered more resources than we have in my state to create a worse system in Nevada than we had before. Those “choicers” better get that sinking ship called Nevada Charters under control before they bankrupt the state. The market has spoken – Nevada Charters cannot educate or graduate students as well as the neighborhood schools. Nevada Charters do segregate by race, religion, and money.
Huge huge failures all of the above.
Billions and billions wasted on these scams:
– common core
– abusive teacher evaluation systems
– abusive students evaluation systems
– standardized testing run amuck
– excessive and intrusive data collection on children
– business practice disguised as “education reform”
– segregating and failing charters
The mission of public schools is to create an educated participating citizenship. Hard to measure with a finite test all the different intelligences Teachers are charged with instilling, amplifying, and creating within their students. Citizens should be well-rounded and problem-solving. Nothing a test can measure.
Educating young people is an expense. All parents are well aware that children are an expense. It is an necessary investment in Nevada’s Future.
My students are now and always will be more than a score.
Why don’t you come “interview” me at my school about my “data” again? I dare you.
Find anyone who knows or loves my students more than me.
I weep for the waste. My impoverished language learning kids really needed real resources and they got sand.
Just sand.
Disrespectful blood soaked sand.
Angie.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Damn, everyone should stand up and cheer this teacher for speaking truth to power. If there is a bandwagon, consider me on it!
Amen.
Amazing that this was on an EdWeek blog. Wonder if Gates, who helps to fund EdWeek ever reads that blog.
I doubt Gates reads anything that is not written by the group of highly paid yes men and yes women that he has surrounded himself with.
He lives in a bubble of his own making.
Thank you, Angie. Angie sure shows the FRAUDS and their FRAUDULENT practices and they LIE when they say, “This is for kids.” We know what they do is not for our young, but for their own perks, power, and KA-CHING. Sickening. Go Public School Teachers.
I “heart” Public School Teachers.
Perhaps if teachers started a multibillion dollar class action suit against Gates for his collusion with Arne Duncan to circumvent the democratic process and shove testing, CC and VAM down teacher’s throats, he would sit up and take note.
Even if he did nothing illegal, the emails and other evidence that would come out during a trial would expose Gates to considerable embarrassment and tarnish the philanthropic image that he has created for himself.
SDP, love the idea of a class action lawsuit vs Gates to reclaim hundreds of millions OR BILLIONS wasted because of CCSS
How many thousands of teachers lost their livelihoods because of Gates’ bogus VAM scheme which he KNEW ahead of time was unsound because he had tried it previously at his own company with disastrous results.
How many of those teachers could not get another job teaching after they were fired?
If it were even just 1000 and each one lost $50k for each of 20 years, that would amount to a billion dollars.
You can be sure that Gates would pay attention to a billion dollar law suit.
You can also be sure that he would throw Arne Duncan to the wolves in a heartbeat if it looked like he (Gates) were being singled out. Such a suit could potentially expose all the backroom dealmaking between Duncan and Gates that got Common Core piggybacked onto Race to the Top.
The class action suit that needs to be filed: One based on state discrimination of students via standardized testing. Why should it be legal for the state discriminate against students via inherent and uncontrolled by the student characteristics and capabilities of the mind? Especially when the device used, standardized testing is so error filled and invalid.
That discrimination is THE CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUE, far more entrenched and widespread than any of the other major civil rights issues of our times.
Only when we have seen fit to rid America of this life-altering discrimination will we be able to have a more just and ethical society.
Exactly.. but too late.
No surprise to the tens of thousands of teachers who were thrown out of the schools to be replaces with novices who would tow the corporate line.
The schools are gone, and the teachers are gone… they win.
Posted at https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Angie-Sullivan-to-Bill-Gat-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Bill-And-Melinda-Gates_Diane-Ravitch_Education_Educational-Crisis-180307-57.html#comment692270
my comment
Education is the only profession which is constantly being ‘reinvented’ by anyone with the $$$ to push their ‘products.’
I wrote “Magic Elixir,”2 decades ago. (posted at OEN https://www.opednews.com/articles/Magic-Elixir-No-Evidence-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-130312-433.html)
I have said for years, that the only profession that keeps re-inventing itself, is EDUCATION, or Schools, where any cockamamie idea to ‘improve’ or reform’ is printed in the media as fact.
All it does is BAMBOOZLE people, http://www.opednews.com/articles/BAMBOOZLE-THEM-where-tea-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-110524-511.html
I also wrote this, decades ago when they began to blame the teacher with the ‘evaluation ‘ BS that Bush gave us; it subverted the national conversation from LEARNING (and what it takes for kids to learn skills) to TEACHING, and how ‘to test for effective teaching of facts.” http://www.perdaily.com/2011/08/subverting-the-national-conversation-a.html
I witness constantly—journalists, who have training in journalism not how the human brain learns (pedagogy)– are expected to navigate topics and fields simply by seeking out both sides of the issue, despite having no expertise for determining the credibility of any claims about the topic.
The result is that most media coverage of education is at best misleading, and often in ways that contribute to flawed public perceptions and decades of misguided policy.”
see my series THE WAR ON TEACHERS: https://www.opednews.com/Series/War-on-teachers-and-the-pr-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-150217-827.html
My profession (software development) reinvents itself all the time. The difference is that there are no politicians involved! Education has a target on its back for every glory seeking pol and self-enriching edupreneur.
Any thoughts of turning to a career in teaching have been thoroughly squelched for me. I just don’t have the strength these teachers have
Businesses reinvent themselves all the time. Families don’t. Schools don’t. Churches don’t. They need stability.
Gates is just one person. The question is why did our elected officials and union leaders give him so much power over us???
I haven’t the $lighte$t idea.
I have $um idea$ which I would be glad to $hare with you.
I think $um of them make a lot of $en$e. (Dollar$ too)
There is a widespread belief, to quote from Tevya in Fiddler on the Roof, “when you’re rich, they think you really know.”
+2 for using a musical reference! 🙂
She’s absolutely right. Gates money is not always in the best interest of students, teachers or education in general.
+1
Let’s all send this letter to Gates! Can someone tell me how to send it?
Amen!