Peter Greene is flummoxed by the idea that Bill Gates leveraged his giving to persuade several districts and charter chains to spend a total of $575 million on a failed experiment to evaluate teachers by student test scores.
The experiment flopped.
He asks, what would you do if you had $575 Million to improve schools. Not that. He reminds readers that this is a lost opportunity cost. If you do X with that discretionary money, you are giving up the chance to do Y, which has real research behind it.
What is the Gates Foundation lacking? Common sense.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
If I could spend that money, I would spend it on gifted/talented programs. Currently, only 2c (TWO CENTS) of every $100 that the feds spend on education, goes to gifted/talented programs. And children of color, and children from lower-income families, often have no access to these programs at all. See
https://edexcellence.net/articles/access-to-gifted-education-is-a-social-justice-issue?utm_source=National+Education+Gadfly+Weekly&utm_campaign=7358bc224f-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_07_11_03_52&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_ef00e8f50e-7358bc224f-71675749&mc_cid=7358bc224f&mc_eid=33d2b26b04
This is a social-justice issue.
I am appalled, that our nation cannot provide adequate support and services to our future scientists and engineers.
A national disgrace.
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Charles, you are allowed back with this comment but you are still on my s— list for inane and repetitive and annoying comments.
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It takes courage and a commitment to free speech, to publish information which is clearly at a polar opposite, with your views. I congratulate you.
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Now there is a comment I heartily endorse!
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This is not a response to Charles but a general comment.
I hope to be writing all day today.
If you don’t see your comment, it is because WordPress put it into moderation and it is awaiting my approval. Wait.
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WHY only “future engineers and scientists,” Charles? Why not future authors, painters, historians, geographers, lawyers,public servants, and teachers?
WHAT ABOUT FUTURE VOTERS?????
WHY do the only the subjects that “matter” to you have to be STEM subjects????
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@TOW:
I never said “only”. Gifted/Talented education has been an interest of mine, for many years. I am 100% in favor of supporting the vocations that you cite.
I am an engineer, so I know that field best. I strongly support engineering/technology education.
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So assuming Bill Gates doesn’t grant you his money, where would you get the money for your gifted and talented programs, Charles? Are there less deserving students whose education could be cut to pay for G&T students? Or are you proposing raising taxes?
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The question was hypothetical. What I would with that kind of money, is not the same as what other people would do. There is no crime in having a “wish list”. In this nation, there is little support for providing additional educational resources to gifted/talented children. This is sad. I guess most people think that gifted/talented kids do not need more resources.
If our nation wishes to compete with China, India, Japan, and (fill in the blank), we are going to have to a skilled cadre of scientists and engineers. (And writers, diplomats, doctors, research technicians, etc)
All students, from the special needs/handicapped, right up to the gifted/talented, need and deserve the proper resources to assist them in meeting their fullest potential. You do not necessarily have to “cut” other programs, to assist students who are on the outer ends of the “bell curve”.
Gifted/talented education has been a pet project of mine for many years. Other people have their projects. No harm done.
I ask you, dienne, if you had an amount of this size, and you could allocate to any educational enterprise of any kind, what would you do?
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Charles said, ” I would spend it on gifted/talented programs.”
I disagree. I’d spend the $575 million on early childhood education programs starting as early as age 3, but not in the private sector.
Every penny would go to the traditional public schools where the ECE programs would be located and managed, and the teachers for those early childhood education programs must all have masters degrees in early childhood education with follow up support from their master teachers. France has a good program to study.
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You have your “pet projects”, and that is fine. Spending on early childhood education, has shown to be wise and cost-effective. I think yours is truly a laudable goal.
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Just like you have your “pet projects”
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What the Gates Foundation is NOT lacking: massive ego.
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$575 million isn’t a lot of money in the grand scheme of public K-12 education. It is only 1.8% of the 2018-2019 NYC DOE budget alone, e.g.
Still, in the spirit of playing along: if I had $575 million to spend I would use it to fund litigation and lobbying to end exclusionary zoning, which ultimately is the mechanism behind most of our educational inequities.
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No, it is not a lot of money to Bill Gates, but remember he dropped $2 billion into breaking up large schools into small schools, then declared it a failure.
And he dropped another $2 billion, more or less, into Common Core, the name that one dare mention
And he dropped billions more on other failures in reforming schools.
A billion here, a billion there, soon it adds up to real money, as the late Senator Everett Dirksen once said.
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An indirect cost of that is that it’s now practically very difficult to get those schools back together because of all the freaking administrators they hired to staff them. If you close down 6 schools in 1 building, where do the 5 other Principals go? Or their 10 APs?
Small schools is a failure that will keep costing schools yearly for decades.
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YES. The number $575 million written into this argument is strategically underwhelming and strategically misleading. (I’d also love to see an actual benefits number: how much money has Gates made over the years by selling hardware/software attached to his personal call for school invasions…)
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From what I have read, Gates sold most if not all of his Microsoft shares and moved that money into the Gates Foundation (a tax shelter) that allows him to invest the money while only using 5% of the total for non-profit ventures.
https://globalfreedommovement.org/bill-gates-pledges-billions-to-earths-most-evil-companies/
“Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is reducing his stake in the company to just 1.3 percent, after holding 24 percent of the software maker back in 1996. In a filing to the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday, Gates revealed he’s donating 64 million shares of Microsoft worth a total of $4.6 billion. Aug 15, 2017”
“DONATING”, it says, but I’ll bet he donated that money to the Gates Foundation and used that tax shelter to allow him to invest in other ventures to increase his fortune through the world’s “most evil compaines”.
What else explains the fact that the Foundation has gone through billions at the same time that Bill Gates doubled his net worth since starting the Foundation. There is no way he can give away his fortune and double it at the same time.
“At his current pace, Bill Gates won’t own any Microsoft shares in a couple of years”
https://qz.com/1054323/bill-gates-will-have-no-microsoft-msft-shares-by-mid-2019-at-his-current-rate/
I think Bill Gates knows that in the near future Microsoft is going to lose most if not all of its value so he is getting out of Microsoft and moving his money into the tax shelter called the Gates Foundation.
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I share Peter’s frustration with the opportunity the Gates Foundation squandered. And perhaps I might be allowed to point out “I told them so.” In 2012, after Gates himself had written on the subject, I wrote critically of his approach. This led to an invitation to visit Gates Foundation headquarters in Seattle to meet with leaders of their education team, and a subsequent dialogue exchange on our blogs. Here is a post I wrote that shares some of the reasons their use of test scores in evaluating teachers is so counterproductive:
https://www.impatientoptimists.org/Posts/2012/08/Responding-to-the-Gates-Foundation-How-do-we-Consider-Evidence-of-Learning-in-Teacher-Evaluations#.W0dxuS3MzqU
And another which offers a contrasting vision for improving the teaching profession:
https://www.impatientoptimists.org/Posts/2012/07/A-Dialogue-How-Do-We-Build-the-Teaching-Profession#.W0dv7i3MzqU
Unfortunately they were unconvinced.
Far worse than the money wasted was the monumental waste of scarce time and energy of teachers and administrators — and students compelled to prepare for worthless tests, a legacy that continues into the present.
Gates and his foundation bought into wild ideas of improved economic outcomes that were projected by economists like Eric Hanushek, who said that improved test scores would translate into TRILLIONS of more dollars in GDP. Will they ever attempt to calculate the time and lives their interventions have wasted?
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You’re assuming that $575 was meant to improve education….
My guess is that Gates thinks that money was well spent.
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dienne77,
I doubt that Gates thinks the money was well spent. It is embarrassing to have so many eggs on your face. He soldiers on. I think he is capable of shame in a way that Trump is not.
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I dunno, Diane. Bill Gates’ record of shameful act is shorter than Trump’s only because he’s younger. They both have a lifetime record of atrocity. The difference is that Trump doesn’t pretend he was ever doing anything for the public good, so he doesn’t have to dance and spin when his actions turn out not to be, in fact, in the public good.
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This is the same man who wanted to bioengineer special mosquitoes to stop malaria, rather than investing in much more practical solutions–safer pesticides and bed nets.
I don’t think Gates GETS embarrassed.
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This.
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Ego driven Gates, arises like the Phoenix from the ashes, with another barrel of money to inflict more bad, horrible no good ideas on public education. He uses his wealth like a weapon. He is buying compliance from states and school districts to inflict his “personalized learning” on our young people. Once again Gates will use our young people as guinea pigs. Today Peter Greene’s post describes the many virtual programs that are invading schools and doomed for failure. In addition to being tedious and dull, they are claiming to monitor social-emotional behavior and attitudes. Aside from being creepy, such invasions of privacy should be illegal. Parents should resist allowing their students to be data mined in such an exploitative manner. There is no evidence to support any of this, only marketing claims. It is irresponsible for districts to subject students to such erroneous personal scrutiny.http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2018/07/too-personalized.html
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The 575 million was just the Gates investment in teacher rankings.
The federal government and states spent billions on it, because they slavishly followed Gates’ lead.
If Bill Gates told them to light public schools on fire they’d immediately put it into law because they worship his wealth and his clout. He can (and does) spout the most banal BS and all of ed reform genuflects before his genius. That’s what money buys you in the US- it buys you 50 million public school students.
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Chiara, Gates put up about $215 million. To get his money, the districts had to put up the rest of the $575 million.
Hillsborough County in Florida exhausted its reserve fund on the Gates project. The board sued its superintendent, MaryEllen Elia, who loved the teacher evaluation by test scores stuff. She landed a cushy job as state commissioner in New York.
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Thank you, but that’s not nearly the reach of his influence. Ed reform slavishly follow Gates and ed reformers run our government and policy.
The United States spent billions on teacher rankings. They did it because influential and powerful people told them it was a good idea and they didn’t question it at all. It was what they wanted to hear.
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agreed! Gates is the conductor on the train to nowhere. He pays for the train and everyone buys a ticket.
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I’d restore field trips. Lower income kids in rural areas ESPECIALLY need field trips because they never go anywhere.
My older children had field trips before ed reformers utterly captured my state government. Now children don’t get them. But we plow tens of millions into gimmicky, dumb teacher ranking schemes that benefit only the consultants who design and sell them.
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I agree. Poor students in particular benefit tremendously from the experience. Many grants I wrote often included students visiting an NYC as there are so many museums and culture that can link to curricula so near, yet so far away. My school was about twenty-five miles up the Hudson, and with good planning, we could manage a field trip in a single day. Many young people from cities or near cities never get to enjoy the benefits of living close to a cultural hub. I once took a group of high school students on a long day trip to Philadelphia. With the passing years, opportunities such as these diminished with the emphasis on standardized tests.
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The United States has missed A LOT of opportunities since the start of the new century. A lot. Gates, George Bush Jr. after 2001. I’d even say President Donald Trump after his unprecedented victory. During those months in late 2016. Trump could have tacked to the center, made some brave choices. Of course, we all know what has happened . Despicable. Disgraceful. Tragic. (The words just tumble out now.) It’s simply just not in Trump’s character to be a great leader of any sort. How can so many people still be so fooled?
Well, it’s up to the citizens at this point to sort this mess out. And, hopefully, new leaders who will emerge from among us all, ready to bring the nation back together again.
I see this current era as being similar to the run up to the U.S Civil War in a some ways… LOTS of weak leadership got us here. They could see the shoals ahead looming yet the ship of state plowed on, full speed.
So, yeah, Gates has blown it repeatedly. And, we are all paying the price. And what really hurts is the gut feeling that the worst might still be yet to come…
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CBS is currently seeking “people to speak to” for a new series on education- “People working to reform the education system”. The CBS news site, under the heading, “Education in America: Call for submissions”, provides a contact form. An email address, education@CBSNews.com is also provided.
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they could just call Bill Gates, Mark Z, and Laurene Powell Jobs.
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The likelihood that CBS’ narrative is designed to promote opportunities for the distant rich to bleed profits out of communities, is exceedingly high. The network’s news division is led by a former Fox executive.
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There is a big difference between charitable giving and what Gates thinks is philanthropy. If I were going to give money to help education, whether $575 million or $5 and seventy-five cents, it would be to students and schools with few strings attached. Scholarships, grants to build libraries and buy books and supplies, field trips, food and clothing, etc., nothing revolutionary, just helpful gifts to people who could use them.
I would not weaponize my donations. I would not use my money to attack people (teachers and students). I would not use my money to force people to give up their rights to privacy and free speech. I wouldn’t dangle the money before cash strapped school districts, essentially bribing them to go “data-driven”. You know he’s cheering the Janus decision so that unions can do less to protect schools and teachers from his attacks.
What is Bill Gates’ end game? More money for Bill Gates. He has not donated, but invested in the monetizing of children all over the world. He wants data. He craves data. He buys, sells, and abuses data. Basically, he buys, sells, and abuses us.
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Why not a class action lawsuit filed against Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation for population abuse?
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We no longer have a justice system, though.
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The justice system works in a few places, but when there is a verdict the autocratic billionaires don’t like, they appeal and appeal and appeal until they reach a higher court they already bought. And if they lose there, they file more lawsuits seeking a verdict that will achieve their goals anyway.
Justice in America is bought and paid for and if you don’t have the money to fight, you lose without even getting a chance.
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Exactly. Lawsuits are for billionaires. So again, ENTER the Justice Democrats (stage left). I love that name, Justice Democrats. Sounds like the Justice League of superheroes I watched on Saturday morning cartoons when I was little (before Dad came in and told me to study Hebrew and mow the lawn). The real Democrats running on Bernie Sanders’ platform are the future we’ve been waiting for. And, if I can fit my tongue in cheek without being too cheeky, I’ve been, for some time now, waiting for Superman. One day we will take back what the oligarchy stole from us. I have been to the mountaintop.
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I would like to answer the original question…field trips and assemblies, generous supply reimbursements, new teacher supply start up of 500 $, science labs at elementary, art room, music and movement room, staff to teach in those labs and rooms, universal preschool, preppy K, extra tutoring at primary grades, lower class size, increased salaries, P.E. teacher at site, school garden, free lunch for all students, after school group study for upper grades, and built in prep time as part of your paid hours. My answer is for elementary….oh, and bring back teacher’s aides.
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