Carol Burris, the brilliant executive director of the Network for Public Education, has written the definitive account of Bill Gates’s disastrous teacher evaluation project, which wasted $215 million of his dollars, but over $350 million of state, local, and federal dollars (ours).
I urge you to read it. Not many are likely to read the 600 page RAND report evaluating the project. Burris did. The results were both a tragedy and a farce.
A few excerpts:
The study examined the effects over six years of the Gates Foundation’s Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching (IP) initiative that included, as a key feature, teacher evaluations systems similar to New York’s. It concluded that the IP project did not improve either student achievement or the quality of teachers. In fact, it did more harm than good…
The cost was astronomical. Across the seven sites over half a billion dollars were spent — $574.7 million between November 2009 and June 2016. While many believed that the Gates Foundation paid the bill, overall the foundation paid less than 37 percent — $212.3 million. Taxpayers paid most of the costs via local or federal tax dollars.
Florida’s Hillsborough County Public Schools was one of the participants. Its program alone cost $262.2 million. Federal, state and local taxpayers paid $178.8 million, far more than the Gates Foundation’s contribution of $81 million. Gates used his money as a lever to open the public treasury to fund his foundation’s idea. The taxpayers picked up the lion’s share of costs.
There were indirect costs as well. According to the study, the average principal spent 25 percent of her time administering the complicated evaluation system and teachers spent hours every month on their own evaluations.
The report estimated that “IP costs for teacher-evaluation activities totaled nearly $100 million across the seven sites in 2014–2015 … the value of teacher and SL [school leader] time devoted to evaluation to be about $73 million, and the direct expenditures on evaluation constituted an additional $26 million.” According to Business Insider, the total cost of IP was nearly $1 billion.
When President Barack Obama’s education secretary, Arne Duncan, decided to include compliance with similar models of evaluation in order for states to receive Race to the Top funds, billions of federal taxpayer dollars were put in play. States and local school districts were forced to ante up for data-collection systems, new tests designed to produce metrics of student growth, training seminars that infantilized experienced principals, and pages upon pages of rubrics designed to turn the art and science of teaching behaviors into a numerical score…One of the goals of IP was to help districts recruit better teachers and to assign the most effective teachers to classrooms with low-income minority students. This was to be accomplished through revised recruitment practices as well as financial incentives for teachers to work in high-needs schools.
One participating district, Shelby County Schools in Tennessee, turned over its teacher recruitment efforts to the New Teacher Project (TNTP). TNTP was founded by Michelle Rhee, the controversial former chancellor of D.C. public schools who was a leader in corporate-style education reform. The Gates Foundation gave TNTP $7 million in 2009, the year that it published a report entitled “The Widget Effect,” which was highly critical of the teacher evaluation systems that the foundation was so anxious to replace.
Shelby County Schools allowed TNTP to run its human-resources department, resulting in a strained relationship between TNTP and the existing staff. Other participating districts and CMOs used some TNTP services and, following the advice of TNTP, sought teachers from alternative preparation programs, most notably Teach for America (TFA).
This, according to the report, resulted in increased teacher turnover, since many TFAers only “intended to remain in teaching for only a few years.” The report found no evidence that the quality of the teachers recruited improved.
Access to ‘effective’ teachers for disadvantaged students
A related goal of the project was to move “effective” teachers into schools with the most disadvantaged kids. Not only was this goal not realized, there was evidence that in one district access to more effective teachers declined.
Even with a cash incentive, teachers were reluctant to transfer to schools with high needs because they believed that would result in their receiving a lower VAM score, which was now part of their evaluation. VAM refers to value-added modeling, which in this case uses student standardized test scores in a complicated computer model to supposedly determine the “value” of a teacher on the growth of student achievement by in part factoring out all other influences.
There was statistically significant evidence that the project decreased low-income minority students’ access to effective teachers in Hillsborough County Public Schools — both between schools and within the same school — as teachers sought to flee to the honors classes to avoid low VAM scores, which under the new evaluation system, could cost them their jobs.
Although the report notes that some reformers hoped that the new evaluation system would result in teacher dismissals in the range of 20 percent, the actual rate of dismissal based on performance was similar to the rate under the former system — around 1 percent.
The true cost of corrupting classroom environments and teacher-student relationships is incalculable. The true cost of putting the weight of teacher’s reputations and careers on the backs of 8 to 13 year old children is incalculable. The true cost of distorting the very meaning of the of the K to 12 public school experience is incalculable. And all it cost Gates was some pocket change and a touch of consternation.
well said…
Exactly, and critically important. I plan to read this account, and if it contains this kind of comment, it will likely be a critical piece (knowing and appreciating Carol Burris’s work). As a middle school teacher in one of the Gates’ experiments (Pittsburgh Public Schools) our biggest big big loss has been just what “RageAgainstThe Testocracy” says here. That, plus the big loss of many many amazingly good teachers who just could no do the damage that the Gates’ “experiment” imposed on us.
Communities should be wary of partnerships with reckless billionaires. If the project fails as every Gates education project has, the taxpayers are on the hook for a large portion of the wasted money. Depending on the size of the community, this may have a devastating effect on their school budget.
I posted this at Oped news https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Carol-Burris-The-Definiti-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Burris_Education_Educational-Crisis_Evaluation-180718-41.html#comment706895
My comments have important embedded links at the above address. Please, Go there. Every word is true. My comment:
It was hard for me to read this, because As the Gates plan went into effect, I was a celebrated teacher in NYC, studied by Harvard in the Pew Research into the Principles of Learning, because of my successful practice teaching writing in the seventh grade. Was the NY STATE English Council’s “Educator of Excellence
Teachers like me, who had created a successful curricula through their professional practice were targeted, and the union looked the other way. 2 decades ago, I wrote about this ‘scandal’ that took me, and the most experienced, dedicated and talented professional out of public schools! ( I weep as I post this: http://www.perdaily.com/2011/01/lausd-et-al-a-national-scandal-of-enormous-proportions-by-susan-lee-schwartz-part-1.html
They were unable to charge me with incompetence (as I was one of six teachers int he Pew study of 20,000 teachers, whose work was unique in matching the standards) This was a charge they leveled at thousands of other teachers who did not have my stature..
So, the corrupt superintendent of my district found illegal and despicable ways to remove me from my practice. All my materials– gathered over 8 years at that school– were stolen (redistributed to other teachers althoughI had purchased and created all of it).My research with Harvard was trashed, and I was sent to a rubber-room. My story is the same as that of tens of thousands of teachers across 15,880 school systems.
Thats right. Even as NYC crashed, (don’t miss this film on the demise of a fabulous public school system) our citizens had no idea what was happening across the nation. In LA, the fabricated charges remove teachers willy nilly, with clear civil rights violations–which they did as the media ranted about bad teachers.
There was a hidden and scandalous deprivation of due process — allowed and empowered by unions which did not fulfill their obligation and contract for immediate investigation and fair, prompt, grievance procedures, thus permitting a “waiting game” which prevents due process.
In my case, I was never informed of bogus allegations, never had a hearing, and the first time I heard anything about why Had been removed from my famous practice, was after 6 months in the rubber room in NYC District 2–where the district sup’t published a letter in which she ‘found me guilty of corporal punishment, based on allegations that I cursed at a child.
It cost me 25 thousand dollars to hire an attorney to end that as the Manhattan Bureau rep of the UFT hung up on me. Of course, this PLOY only works when the union* looks the other way and colludes to end collective bargaining rights, and the media sells the lie! Now, the corruption is so ingrained ,that even minority administrators are selling the kids out.
End of comment
Yes, Diane, We need unions… I applaud Randi and support her,
but teachers need to remove corrupt leadership that does not work for the benefit of teachers, like in LAUSD. http://www.perdaily.com/2011/03/lausd-and-utla–connecting-the-dots-of-blattant-corruption.html which supported the dismissal process
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/07/former-ctc-attorney-kathleen-carroll-lays-out-unholy-alliance-between-union-and-public-education-pri.html
Meanwhile, every day we have to live with the detritus of another Gates program, along with people all over the country. We have a system specifically designed to measure who sucks and how much they suck, entirely based on a pipe dream by Bill Gates. When he says, “Oopzie,” it never means he’s going to repair the damage he’s caused. So what if teachers nationwide are demoralized and children nowhere have been helped? Bill Gates is off to hop around another field of daisies and fund some new program, also based on neither research or practice, that he’ll put up seed money for. if the municipalities are stuck funding garbage for decades thereafter, so be it. Bill had fun with it while it lasted.
This is what happens with a system that invites billionaires into functions normally undertaken by government. It subjects ordinary people to the whims of billionaires under the guise of “partnerships.” There is no onus on the billionaires to implement anything legitimate or evidence based. Billionaires know how to make money, and we will see more exploitative programs based on the bias of billionaires or the profit motive. ESSA is a perfect example of shifting public funds into the realm of “partnerships.” The implied message is that billionaires are better than the rest of us so they can use us as guinea pigs.
great word to describe the ONGOING, and still so very devastating mess made by Gates now that we are told to see his failure: detritus
The problem is….that that anyone who has a specific stake in the outcome of the theory should never be fully trusted. All theories should be evaluated from all angles before a community is allowed to put forth money and lay their institutions on the line. Gates had a large stake in bringing down the public school system…since…he was a charter school owner and advocate. And we believed that many of the people involved in promoting charter schools were active in government agencies. Thus, who is most able to point to the truth….it is almost always left to those that are being set up for victimization to keep their eyes on the ball coming down the pike and make and begin the process of fighting back. Once individuals are targeted.they are almost in a weakened position so…other in the field that is being trageted must step in and understand how the handwriting on the wall will come back to bite them. ofcause this is easier said then done.
Education is far more involved than product sales. It is a continuously calibrated system involving so many relationships and so much back-and-forth between all involved: admin, outside supervision and support, teachers, counselors and other internal support, students, parents and the media.
And the first thing that happens almost across the board when high-stakes systems are implemented is the systems are immediately gamed, for survival, out of perceptions (usually rightful) of gross unfairness, because, “Duh, everybody else is doing it,” etc. Hence, the 1%, not 20%.
Real improvement occurs outside of the gaming mentality, when some wisely gleans something needed and workable from some of those complex relationships.
Gates doesn’t understand how stupid he has been, or how disrespectful he is toward so many. The deformers, VAMers and most privatizers deep, deep down don’t get it, at all. They don’t understand what it really is they want to ‘improve’ or destroy.
…when someone wisely gleans…
I so agree with you because education is a complex system and for a school or schools to succeed – there needs to be a lot that is going right. This involves hard work, professionalism and compassion.
Chump change for Gates. I will never forget how Gates, and Bloomberg, destroyed the high performing Bayard Rustin for the Humanities H.S. in Manhattan. I taught there from 1991 to my retirement in 2010. In 2002 the school became part of Gates project to form small school communities, so our 2200 student school was broken down into four “small learning communities”. Each SLC was run by an A.P. responsible for observing all the teachers in all subjects so whatever subject was outside the A.P.’s area of expertise was often handled poorly. Gates’ SLC model combined with Bloomberg’s assault on veteran teachers with his newly minted A.P’s from the disastrous and now defunct Leadership Academy provided a perfect storm for what was to become an utter disaster.
In Asian and European countries, older teachers are considered master teachers. Reformers are quite ageist and like to frame their arguments about tired old teachers with seniority and why should they be given priority ? The long hours at some charters are meant for young naive teachers without knowing their rights.
Gates gambled that we could fire our way to success by firing people since teaching doesn’t require any real training. He was wrong. But absent any real sized private partnerships, the amount he injects year after year into the education system amounts to 3-5% of all title 1 monies. Districts that win the Gates lotto feel like they can’t say no. I’ve become discouraged that there is any other way out of this mess but to refuse all federal money. No state yet has the wherewithal to pull that off and make up the difference. Federal funding makes up only 8% of school expenditures. But because of how unevenly that is spread no state can say no to testing, regulation, and the various forms of idiocy passed along. It’s just enough that the states, which fund about 40% of costs (and this varies and but not greatly) can never increase their spending enough to kick the feds and Gates out. Trying to convince the feds not to get in bed with reform is not happening in the next 20 years. Health care changes are they key. If/when the federal government decides to spend more on health then states that are forward thinking will shift money to education and kick the federal education dollars out. We could be waiting a long time. Elect Bernie Sanders and we have a small chance.
Lotto,
The districts that need Title 1 the most are the neediest and the least able to fend off a predatory billionaire.
This has been the way “reform” has always worked. They prey on the most vulnerable, the poorest and the darkest communities under the assumption that they are better off in some corporate “Frankenstein” school than a dilapidated urban school. Nobody ever says government should step up and fund them equitably. It is easier for government to pass the buck.
BELOW is an eight-year-old Chalkbeat post or COMMENT from NYC parent activist Leonie ( /LAY-nee/ ) Haimson about the new, budding Gates study. It’s the second-to-last comment in a Chalkbeat article written by Arthur “NYC Educator” Goldstein (who wrote the article that is the subject of this thread) … way down at the bottom of the comments section HERE:
https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/ny/2010/04/30/a-bill-of-goods/
Way back in 2010, Leonie was non-plussed that the one thing that 90% of parents and teachers wanted changed in the classroom was to lower the damn class size, so she asked the Gates researchers about their disposition towards this particular “reform” — lowering the class size, or teacher-to-student ratio — which in study after study after ding-dong study has proven over and over and over again to be the most effective of “reforms” and the most beneficial to students.
The Gates researchers told her that their boss Bill G. banned them from any consideration of lowering class size.
Here’s the post (with paragraph breaks & CAPITALS added by me)
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LEONIE HAIMSON: (directed to a person who posted about having contacted the Gates folks for clarity)
“You should ask the people behind the study if they are going to study the factor of class size. If not, why not? Especially as more than 90% of teachers respond in surveys that this is the most important factor in effective teaching.
“But ever since The Gates Foundation did a survey about seven years ago, and found that parents and teachers thought that class size was a far more important factor than school size, they have tried to bury this issue.
“When I asked the researchers in different cities why they didn’t study the factor of class size in their evaluations of the small schools, they told me that THE FOUNDATION HAD DISALLOWED IT, even after the issue had come up in their interviews with teachers and students over and over again.
“Instead, they were supposed to focus on the more amorphous factors of ‘rigor’,
‘relevance’, ‘relationships’, (whatever that means) and ‘community partnerships.’ In the recent Scholastic survey that Gates financed, 90% of teachers said that there was a critical need for ‘teaching resources to help differentiate instruction.’
“When I asked the survey director what ‘teaching resources to differentiate instruction’ meant exactly, she couldn’t answer; when I asked her why they didn’t ask about class size, she said it had been asked before.
“The Gates Foundation cannot be trusted; and all NYC teachers should boycott this study until and unless the researchers agree to systematically include the factor of class size in their analyses.”
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This is particularly infuriating when you consider Gates’ own hypocrisy regarding class size, which was covered here: (BTW, it’s my first post ever on the Ravitch blog, and it led to this article by Dr. Ravitch):
https://dianeravitch.net/2013/01/12/seattle-writer-challenges-bill-gates-to-be-consistent/
Here it is:
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DR. RAVITCH:
“A reader (again, that’s me, JACK) 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 to what he subjects children from middle- and 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:
“He investigated the two rich kids’ private school where Gates sends his own children and—doncha know it?—these schools’ major selling point in their promotional materials 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 on 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.”
(btw, the Weastneat op-ed quoted above was removed from THE SEATTLE TIMES’ website shortly after this 2013 article was posted on the Ravitch blog, most likely after pressure from Gates.)
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Well, we’re two years away from that 2020 graduation, and Gates’ privileged kids will have benefited from a K-12 experience of extremely low class sizes, while — thanks to that hypocrite Gates — Weastneat’s and other public school parents will have not.
Gates has ALWAYS been a chump. If you haven’t read the below, do READ.
https://www.dw.com/en/microsoft-slapped-with-biggest-fine-in-eu-history/a-1149932
Compare the above to this one from the US: https://money.cnn.com/2004/05/03/technology/gates_penalty/
Gates wants to OWN us for his endless stream of $$$$$. Gates is a “SLICK” predator.
Thanks you, Carol Burris.
Gates has moved on from his failed Measures of Effective Teaching project to some equally ridiculous efforts to micromanage teacher education and define precisely what counts as “high quality” teacher education
One of Gates’ ventures in teacher education is called US PREP. Among other specifications, US Prep teacher education programs must use the discredited VAM (value-added measure) as a one of the metrics for looking at the “effectiveness” of teacher education.
Here is a sample of the micromanaging in US PREP programs–requirements for rubrics in evaluating teacher candidates while they are “on the job” for the first half of a school year and also in the second half of the year when they are in charge of a classroom. Begin quotes from a sample of the rubrics:
–State standards are displayed and referenced throughout the lesson,”
–All learning objectives and state content standards are explicitly communicated.
–Sub-objectives are aligned and logically sequenced to the lesson’s major objective.
–Oral and written feedback is consistently academically focused, frequent, and high quality.
–Feedback is frequently given during guided practice and homework review. —Modeling by the teacher to demonstrate his or her performance expectations
— Concise communication
–Logical sequencing and segmenting;
–All essential information and;
–No irrelevant, confusing, or nonessential information
–There is evidence that most students demonstrate mastery of the objective.
End quotes.
Source: https://edleadership21com.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/tap-big-6-indicators-untd.pdf
But there is more. This Gates-funded venture into teacher education, includes specifications for the student teaching course syllabus. One of these clearly states that candidates must score 3s in the TAP Rubric Big 6 Indicators in order to graduate. These indicators (each with rubrics like those above) are for: Instructional Plans, Standards and Objectives, Presenting Instructional Content, Activities and Materials, Academic Feedback, and Managing Student Behavior: (on a rubric scale with three levels of performance for each of the six factors).
Any university-based teacher education program that allows the Gates Foundation to articulate the content of the course syllabus for teacher education (regardless of the intended subject-certification of the teacher) has dumped academic freedom in the garbage can in favor of a tech Billionaire’s vision of “effective” teaching.
No surprises here. The teacher delivers content to the student, sage on the stage, helicopter monitoring of students. Everything MUST be perfectly planned just as you might in designing lessons for computer-delivered instruction. That vision of instructional delivery was also embedded in the teacher education accreditation scheme required by Aren Duncan for any program that hoped to have students receive TEACH grants.
The result was a set of standards produced by the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) that required measuring teachers-in-training using student test scores of their students. Many of those signing on to CAEP scheme were beneficiaries of funding from the Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation operates as if it had legitimate authority to determine policies for eduction in the United States. It does not. Any “authority it has comes from the willingness of educators to go along to get some bucks from the billionaire. He buys a lot of shoddy ideas.
Thanks Laura. For God so loved the world that he did not send a rubric. People who think they are gods can have the rubrics.
The difference between us and billionaires: our silly ideas are free.
Lance,
Are you the same Lance Hill that’s an Ed. prof. at Tulane.
If yes, then what’s up with that recent “New Orleans’ charter schools are all miracles” study that just came out of Tulane?
He is the same and he says look at the funders
These are not grants; they are hush money. What does Betsy expect from a research group that declares the last four years of flat scores is a victory.
Rigoberto Ruelas.
Hence the situation we now have in PA-
PA granted certificates to just 4,412 new teachers in 2016-17, down from 15,247 certificates just seven years earlier. I could not understand why the Unions did not bring suit