Mercedes Schneider was a little surprised that Bill Gates is setting up a lobbying organization. Why should he? He has been shelling out millions to buy Influence with state and federal policy makers for years.
She writes:
Whereas the idea of Gates paying individuals to lobby to alter policy in line with his billionaire preferences, the public should realize that Gates already has an oversized influence on legislators and other elected and appointed officials.
For example, from 2002 to 2018, the Gates Foundation has paid the National Governors Association (NGA) $33.2M for Gates-approved initiatives, mostly affecting K12 education.
Shall we pretend that Gates’ steadily funding an association of state governors to promote Gates goals does not sway these governors? I think not.
From 2002 to 2018, Gates has also paid $122M to the state education superintendent organization, Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) on his K12 education preferences.
Both NGA and CCSSO were key organizations in promoting Common Core (see here and here, for example). Common Core is a Gates pet; he has been shelling out his billionaire bucks on it for years, even trying to tie it to the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).
Gates has even paid grants to the US Department of Education: $858M (2013 – 2016). Wrap your mind around that one.
But there’s more.
From 2013 to 2016, Gates paid $1.8M to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The largest grant ($1.2M in 2015) was “to support education of state policymakers.”
In 2009, Gates stood before them and, as National Conference for State Legislatures “co-chair,” he told them what he wanted, as excerpted below from my March 20, 2014 post, which also references my March 17, 2014, post about Gates dining with 80 senators:
On March 13, 2014, Bill Gates had dinner with 80 senators and other elected officials. Given his keynote the following day to members of the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), make no mistake that Gates used his time with the senators and other officials to push the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).
However, Gates is more than CCSS. Gates is the entire spectrum of reforms, and he is more than willing to use his influence to promote his opinion of educational reform to those supposedly elected By the People.
The following text is an excerpt from Gates’ 2009, speech to the National Council of State Legislatures, which“co-chair” Gates offered as part of his complete speech on so-called education reform.
The entire speech is worth a sobering read.
Mercedes links to the Gates’ speech and quotes it.
Please open the link and read what he said in 2009.
Ten years later we know that every Gates Initiative in education has failed.
Testing, measuring teachers by test scores, closing public schools and replacing them with charters, Common Core, data-driven everything.
Do you think he knows it?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane An amazing speech–most notable for its many omissions, e.g., teaching for good citizenship, and concern for privacy (he wants legislation that tracks students from K-college-post-college work. He has also bought the “failing schools” idea, hook, line, and sinker; though, as a sort of post-script, he gives some lip service to public schools, book-ended by high praise for KIPP and the suggestion to end caps on charter schools. Here’s just one of the underlying motivations peeking out from under the schmooze:
“When the tests are aligned to the common standards, the curriculum will line up as well—and that will unleash powerful market forces in the service of better teaching. For the first time, there will be a large base of customers eager to buy products that can help every kid learn and every teacher get better. Imagine having the people who create electrifying video games applying their intelligence to online tools that pull kids in and make algebra fun.** (my emphases)
The speech is a real romp through the well-funded fairyland of a very limited person. CBK
From Day 1, the Common [sic] Core [sic] was part of a business plan to sell computers, operating systems, and educational software. He didn’t even try to hide this. A monopolistic power grab in plain sight, and yet people let him get away with this!!!
As always, Bob, no one could have stated it more simply, nor better. But that’s the way it is. We live in a capitalistic nation, that is a whole lot totally (redundant, I know for emphasis!!!) built on money and competition. Gates has made it to the top (as has Trump) and we are really much at their mercy. I would not be able to even know of you or Diane’s site, if it weren’t for computers. At the same (simultaneous) time, I prefer my 1,000’s of books; while at the same (simultaneous) time I SEE (on a computer screen) so much learning to pursue, which might have not been have been otherwise. So, I guess, I’m grateful for the computer guys (of which Bill Gates is one). Not going to do a sad face here.
You make an important point, stiegem. Computers are a tool, useful for some things, worthless for others. Yes, it is altogether wonderful that we have, say, Project Gutenberg and the Internet Sacred Texts Archive. And it is altogether terrible that we have oligarchs plotting cradle-to-grave surveillance and stack ranking systems for the masses. We have to make sure that we preserve the former and destroy the latter. https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/stories/he-sees-you-when-youre-sleeping-a-short-story/
well-funded fairyland: that’s it exactly
If Gates wanted to be an “influencer” he should have got himself a YouTube channel. Would have saved him millions and all of us a lot of grief.
I read through Gates’ speech which is full of impressions and assumptions, many of which we now know to be false. All of us have impressions, and we sometimes make assumptions. The difference is “when Gates sneezes, all America’s public school students catch cold.” Gates weaponizes his wealth to promote his agenda. Charters schools have failed to provide a “world class” education to poor students. More data collection does not improve outcomes for poor students; teachers are not miracle workers, and market based education disrupts, but does not improve public education.
Since Gates has so much money, he should pay out of pocket to create these elite academies for poor students. He doesn’t really need to raid the coffers of public schools. The funding of charter schools is problematic for public schools that are left with stranded costs and are viewed as “schools of last resort” in privatization schemes. Public school students deserve to be treated fairly. They should be able to attend well resourced, fully funded schools without outside political interference.
The prospect of more bad ideas coming from Gates and company, I am sure, puts public education on the defensive once more. Billionaires should not decide policy as nobody voted for them.
Ignorance and arrogance make for a toxic cocktail. Gates long ago got used to expecting two responses to any stupid idea he had: deference and obedience.
Thank you. Given the way other issues are explained because people do not have time to really examine them, especially with public education……we have to start somewhere, as efforts continue to build more useful discussions to battle the Trump-like “this explains everything, therefore.”.krap people like Gates spew out…….a lot of teachers are willing to put up the fight, and one is necessary in the case of Gates—his arrogance is about as dangerous as Trump’s stupidity.
The efforts of Mercedes and Diane are at a watershed moment. Just as DeVos’ appointment forced recognition of oligarchs in education, Bill and Melinda Gates, out in the open, as employers of lobbyists will define the issue for people who want to fight for demcracy.
What scares the rich the most, as author Frances De Pontes Peebles identifies …people doing the unexpected with talents that aren’t there because of the rich. talents that the rich neither made nor paid for and that they can neither buy nor control—people doing something the rich never thought existed. Teachers’ talents enable students to connect with others bringing compassion to decisions and teachers introduce students to values that supersede the monetary. The Gates’ decision to limit their campaign to math and language mirror the Koch’s nihilistic and self-serving goals.
It’s not happenstance that the President of the Gates Foundation is the leading independent director on Z-berg’s board.
Before the Common [sic] Core [sic], the fifty states had varying ELA “standards.” These were pretty awful. They were abstract lists of “skills” and almost content free–the products of lowest-common-denominator groupthink on the part of education officials with little or no expertise in the various fields (composition, rhetoric, literary history, syntax, and so on) that constitute the English language arts. But the fact that the standards were so dumb had little consequence. Here’s why:
In those days, curriculum developers in ELA worked in the following manner: They planned a coherent program to teach literature and writing and language. They developed the program. Then they put together fanciful “correlations” to all those state standards. Sometimes they tweaked their programs a bit to add in something specific that a particular state’s standards called for.
In other words, people understood that the ELA “standards” were NOT a curriculum.
Enter Mr. Gates.
Gates is a computer guy. He long ago decided for the rest of us that education of the masses should be computerized and the roles of teachers minimalized. And he come up with a plan for making that happen: Create a single set of standards–a “common” set–for the entire nation so that there would be one set of criteria to which to key the exercises in depersonalized education software. So, the bankrolled the Common [sic] Core [sic], which was part of a BUSINESS PLAN to computerize U.S. K12 education.
It’s not surprising that a monopolist would favor standardization.
And so the Gates hirelings–Coleman, Pimentel, etc.–hacked together the Common [sic] Core [sic] based on a cursory review of the existing state “standards.” And Gates spent many, many millions paying astroturf groups and government agencies and unions to promote the puerile Gates/Coleman bullet lists as “higher.”
And here’s what happened as a result: Once there was a single set of national “standards,” the educational publishers had one road map to follow. Once those were in place, they started every new online or print textbook project with a spreadsheet that listed the “standards” in the far-left column and the place(s) where those were “covered” in the program in the other columns.
In other words, the “standards” became the curriculum map. They became the default, de facto curriculum. All unity, coherence, and comprehensiveness in ELA curricula was out the window. The ELA products all became thinly disguised test prep, the point of which was to give kids practice doing what they would do on the all-important high-stakes standardized tests: read a completely random snippet of text; apply one of the “standards” to it; and answer a multiple-choice question.
So, the “standards” before the Common [sic] Core [sic] could be extremely sloppy and ill-conceived, but they didn’t make much difference. Now, they are still extremely sloppy and ill-conceived, but they make ALL the difference. They have become the curriculum.
Furthermore, they have stopped innovation in ELA curricula and pedagogy cold. If it’s not on the stupid Gates/Coleman bullet list, it won’t even be considered. Gates and Coleman have done the thinking for us. Period. Who cares what millions of classroom practitioners, researchers, English professors, linguists, cognitive scientists, and so on say about how and what should be taught in English classes? The ONLY QUESTION THAT MATTERS, is “Is it on the Gates/Coleman bullet list?”
And by this means, Gates (and his hireling Lord Coleman) have DESTROYED my beloved field of English language arts and have robbed, now, almost an entire generation of traditional, humane studies in literature, writing, language, thinking, and media.
And the stranglehold continues without respite. The Common [sic] Core [sic] was so ill-conceived and so hated that it inspired a lot of rebellion. So, the oh-so-reverend Mike Huckster-bee went to the annual conservative coven called CPAC and told everyone to go back home and rename the standards with a state-specific name. And that’s what they did. They took the minister’s advice and went back home and perpetrated a lie, calling the Common [sic] Core [sic] homegrown names but leaving it unchanged.
And that’s where we stand.
I LOATHE COLEMAN AND GATES. These bastards have destroyed the English language arts in the United States.
Here, a piece on one of their “standards”: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2014/04/10/on-developing-curricula-in-the-age-of-the-thought-police/
Here, another: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2014/03/15/what-happens-when-amateurs-write-standards/
A thousand curses on them both.
cx: Who cares what millions of classroom practitioners, researchers, English professors, linguists, cognitive scientists, and so on say about what should be taught in English classes and how? Gates and Coleman (by divine right?) have done our thinking for us. Lucky us.
We’ve come to such a point that an entire generation of English teachers now thinks it SANE and NORMAL for administrators to walk into their rooms and say, “What standard are you teaching right now?” It doesn’t even occur to them to say, “I’m not freaking teaching a ‘standard’; that isn’t even a coherent statement; I’m teaching the elements of the short story, or I’m teaching story arcs for narrative composition, or I’m teaching the rudiments of prosody, or I’m teaching some widely used poetic metaphorical frames, or I’m teaching the West African roots of signification in African-American literature.” Many don’t even know, now, that their field consists of such knowledge. They think that ELA = the puerile Gates/Coleman bullet list.
Here lies K-12 English education. Murdered by Gates and Coleman. Her shade calls out,
“Revenge [this] foul and most unnatural murder.” (Hamlet, 1.5.31)
cx: minimized, ofc. How I wish there were a correction feature in WordPress!!!
Bob Shepherd Literature? What a waste of time–doesn’t make money or prepare students for a job; and, (unmentionable:) the hidden curriculum that such curricula contain just might help people understand how to ask questions of the curriculum, or of the deferential tax base, or of corporate quasi-slavery (forget Dickens on that one)<–nooooo, don’t want that.
Don’t you want to teach to the test? It’s so easy, especially since computers came on the scene. Soon, we won’t need teachers but rather only minimum-wage (ugh!) test moderators with stopwatches, or even just video cameras. You must be stuck in the old ways–a controversial-ist and an anti-reformist. (Just kidding, of course–all you say is true.) CBK
A LONG time ago–it’s probably been more than a decade–I read a Gates speech in which he said that all the cost in education was in teachers’ salaries and facilities. And by depersonalizing/computerizing the education of Prole children, of course, one could get rid of both in one fell swoop. He’s had this grand plan for a LONG time. And the Common [sic] Core [sic] was just a step in that master plan. What’s sickening and sad is that so many people in education–so many state department officials and administrators and Edupundits–went along with it. Being a Vichy collaborator in Gates’s takeover of K-12 education has been a very lucrative business for quite a while. Even the teachers’ unions were not above this. I am particularly sickened by the Edupundits who have taken the green from Gates, directly or indirectly. Some of these I had respect for until they sold out so blatantly.
Bob Shepherd Even from this speech from 10 years ago, it seems (and I do mean “seems”) that Gates HAS changed, if only “somewhat.” It’s probably just a few nuances, however, and mostly aimed at better-communicating his plan to all of us really stupid people who need his guidance–because he has so much money.
Ultimately, we’d like to get him to pay appropriate taxes; to become appropriately humble in recognizing his place in relation to truly committed teachers and to the theory-informed PROFESSION of teaching (where neither he nor Melinda is one); and to understand what is foundational to the relationship between democracy and all-things-public, like education (. . . history and citizenship?). I wish he’d do something right so we could compliment him about it. Sigh . . . . CBK
Gates chose this guy, Coleman, who had no relevant experience or training whatsoever to do the thinking for the rest of us. That says it all. It didn’t matter WHAT Coleman produced, as long as there was one bullet list for the entire country so that monopolistic educational software products could be created “at scale”–products that generate data for recording in cradle-to-grave Prole stack-ranking databases.
Arrogance and ignorance. Quite the toxic cocktail.
Yeah. Well, now we have Gates and Coleman to script everything for us. Thank goodness. All that thinking for ourselves was so difficult and messily democratic. And it did nothing to increase the value of Microsoft or Pearson.
Bob Shepherd I’m glad you see it my way. Thinking is so difficult. CBK
You do such a fine job of it, again and again and again, Catherine! Such a pleasure to read your posts!
Gates isn’t even a good computer guy. He steals and develops BAD software.
Remember, his father is a lawyer and that is why Gates’ software is just so BAD. He let’s his customer debug the software he “so-called” developed.
Your explanation of how all this went down is exactly correct. Your job as a textbook editor gave you inside views of this process, no doubt. Your flawless prose lays it out exactly as I remember it. When I first started teaching, we paid scant att nation to curriculum guides and lists of objectives now termed with the self-important moniker, standards.
The one thing you left out was the complicity of low level administration that swallowed the retoric hook, line, and stinker. Local admin people could have sunk this boat quickly with adroit handling of silly paperwork, but many of them bought the idea that this was the wave of the future, so many, in fact, that their continued presence in places where they wield power threatens the ability we have to undo this travesty.
Travesty is precisely the right word.
It is up at OpEd news: https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/About-Gates-New-Lobbying-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Education_Education-Curriculum_Education-Funding_Education-Laws-190618-607.html#comment736669
with this comment:
Click here: https://dianeravitch.net/?s=gates
and read about about this power elite billionaire is doing with is money to control education ‘deform!’
It is a con-game run my a billionaire selling a “magic elixir: no evidence required,” https://www.opednews.com/articles/Magic-Elixir-No-Evidence-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-130312-433.html just a backpack full of cash to legislators.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6633412/
His curricula, when mandated in a schools system (and there are 15,880 of the which works for his hidden agenda) robs the professional classroom teacher of autonomy in the practice… where learning is the key, because the practitioner knows what learning looks like!.
Schools fail when kids do not learn how to apply knowledge to do work. Teachers are the professionals who need to set the curriculum in order to reach the learning goals of each. child the sits in that room. The Gates curriculum helps to bring about school failure… and then the charters and vouchers move in as “choice.”
Diane Here are two links that are backdoor-related to this discussion, regarding the adult education system in the U.S. FYI
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-36-million-american-adults-cant-read-enough-to-work-and-how-to-help-them
https://www.educationnext.org/adult-education-comes-of-age-new-approach-blends-basic-academics-job-training/
In an American democracy following rule of law and with an independent media, Mercedes’ story would be in the news with the title, “Subject to Indictment Inquiry – Previously Un-named Co-Conspirator Lobbyists”.
Adding a secondary tier to Mercedes’ top tier, an organization that deserves its own headline– the Gates-funded association of public employees from the 50 state departments of ed., State Education Technology Directors Assn. (SETDA), which, either FOR their private Gold, Silver, Event and Strategic partners or WITH them, promote digital learning and public-private education partnerships, evidently while on the public’d payroll.
Was Randi Weingarten’s invitation to Bill Gates to address educators before or after this speech? And, was it after Bill Gates donated to her about $15 million dollars? Just wondering.
If making money is your idea of what education is about , Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Jeff Bezos have collectively have more money that the the bottom 50% of Americans. Why would one bother to teach things mentioned above when one can make all that money and receive such adulation.
Our priorities MUST be wrong when educators dare question such exalted men of genius.
Gates and Bezos are “NOT” exalted men of genius … love your sarcasm.
Chicago’s Governmental Ethics Ordinance regarding lobbyists… A person must register as a lobbyist if, as part of his job duties, he acts to influence legislative or administrative action…a single phone call…a single e-mail
Wiley Rein March 2017, “Heavy Penalties Assessed Against Unregistered Lobbyist in Chicago”.
I hate Bill Gates. He is even more dangerous than I knew.
On Tue, Jun 18, 2019 at 6:05 AM Diane Ravitch’s blog wrote:
> dianeravitch posted: ” Mercedes Schneider was a little surprised that > Bill Gates is setting up a lobbying organization. Why should he? He has > been shelling out millions to buy Influence with state and federal policy > makers for years. She writes: Whereas the idea” >
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
If you admire Bill Gates and think he is a great man, think again. Bill Gates misleading image is manufactured by his lying PR image machine.
It’s difficult to imagine that some benefit wasn’t anticipated by a writer/ publication for describing Melinda Gates’ finger tips as brilliant. The description seemed a bit of a reach.
The subject of the post could make for interesting case law. Are government employee associations required to register as lobbyists when they get external funding to sway legislators toward a foundation’s agenda?…
never mind, the Federalist Society judges will bend themselves into pretzels to find in favor of the foundations of the wealthy (Citizens United)
The old meritocracy of ideas versus here’s the wrong one riding an unstoppable tsunami of money.
Good wording.
Bill Gates has always been the public face of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (B&MGF) on matters of education.
I think he has timed the “Gates Policy Initiative” for some of these reasons.
Bill Gates’ new interest is the economic worth of postsecondary education including four-year and graduate college degrees, two-year programs and technical training with competency-based certificates. The latter is a shared interest with the Lumina Foundation. The two foundations have collaborated on some projects.
Bill Gates no longer enjoys a revolving door relationship with the Department of Education.During the Obama era there was no bright line between Gates’ wishes and what Obama and Arne Duncan would provide. I think Gates want’s to re-assert his power to influence federal and state policies for education and sooner rather than later.
Trump has nominated (and Congress has confirmed) the six-year appointment of a new Commissioner for the National Center of Education Statistics. The Commissioner is Dr. James Lynn Woodworth. Woodworth was a data analysis at the Walton-funded Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO). He has a Ph.D. in educational policy from the Walton-funded Arkansas School of Educational Reform.
Gates has an interest in shaping everything that Woodworth is now in charge of at the National Center of Education Statistics, including longitudinal and postsecondary data. Woodworth may be vulnerable to “guidance” from Gates. To date, the new Commissioner of NCES has not received a warm reception from statisticians and researchers who rely on reports from NCES.
Woodworth is not entirely his own boss. The NCES is an arm of the Institute of Education Sciences. The IES also has a relatively new Director, a Trump appointee, confirmed by Congress. He is Dr. Mark Schneider, who once served as Commissioner of NCES, became a VP at the American Institute for Research, and President of College Measures. College Measures has a dashboard for college students based on exactly the kind of data that Gates is determined to upgrade and expand. It shows likely return on investments that correlate with on your choice of a major.
Dr. Mark Schneider of IES is a now a member of the B&MGF’s newly formed ”Postsecondary Value Commission” whose charge is “to define the value of postsecondary education in the US.” This 30-member commission knows perfectly well that they will be tweaking recommendations and data points already in use or easy to generate. The Commission’s work will be completed in June 2020. The efforts of the Commission will culminate in published rankings of the best degrees and credentials for an economic return on investment (best bang for the buck). One member of the Commission is an experienced editor and author of publications with such rankings. https://www.postsecondaryvalue.org/members/
The Postsecondary Value Commission offers a layer of legitimacy to the Gates-funded document: ”A Blueprint for Better Information: Recommendations for a Federal Postsecondary Student-Level Data Network (2017). This publication is part of a project Gates had funded since 2015, with 11 commissioned policy papers from the Institute of Higher Education all of them justifying specific “metrics” (p. 10) for tracking student’s personally identifiable information (PII). Data attached to PII is essential for linking success in postsecondary programs to economic returns, and developing links to other PII data (e.g., from the IRS; records of financial aid, loans and loan repayment rates). PII is also wanted to track the effectiveness of online programs with “personalized” instruction that verify competencies (instead of course credits and seat time). http://www.ihep.org/research/publications/blueprint-better-information-recommendations-federal-postsecondary-student
The new Gates lobby shop may be able to influence the “College Transparency Act,” (S.800) co-sponsored by Elizabeth Warren and now in committee with bi-partisan support. Among other provisions, S.800 repeals the section of the Higher Education Act that PROHIBITS the creation of a student unit record system with PII. S.800 also gives the Commissioner of NCES extraordinary power to use databases that include student’s personally identifiable information (PII) for four years. The Act is rationalized as necessary to address the student loan crisis. It does nothing to help on that.
S.800 also empowers the Commissioner of NCES to appoint an “advisory committee” to oversee implementation of the College Transparency Act. I am confident that Gates would like to help populate that advisory committee and if S. 800 passes, I am confident he would love to introduce amendments that would permanently allow federal agencies to use PII and remove many of the prohibitions in S.800 that prevent data links into preK-12, health records beginning in infancy and more. Gates yearns for public and proprietry uses of PII in the belief data will drive evidence-based decisions about “Interventions” and outcomes of interventions, pre-natal, through infancy to workplace. A member of the Postsecondary Value Commission is a guru on financial products that require such data (e.g., pay for success contracts or social impact bonds).
In other words, I think the Gates Policy initiative has been timed to insert his voice and interests into an environment where Trump appointees have power, at least for now. Gates’ image of proper postsecondary education is evident in his rambling rants to an audience of buisness mangers in higher education. https://www.gatesnotes.com/Education/The-Future-of-College-NACUBO-Remarks
I think the Gates lobby shop is intended to amplify the many forms of lobbying now carried out by recipients of grants from the B&MGF. The official lobby shop amplifies the voice of Gates, makes him a visible brand among registered lobbyists, and compensates for his loss of power over federal and state policy with the exit of Obama, Duncan and others.
Laura H. Chapman Thank you for this analysis. My first thought is that Gates’ efforts are about clearing the way (from the beginning of life) for economic self-sufficiency for all–how democratic of him.
Second thought, or question: Hmmmm….. Is this, still and again, really about the rich avoiding taxes? . . . that are slated (by those bleeding-heart tax-and-spend democrats) to help raise all boats and provide for whole-culture development? . . .even for those who cannot work, or who like the idea of remaining healthy, or doing things that don’t directly provide for one’s economics, e.g., raising a family, or informing oneself about political events (or other citizenship issues<–remember citizenship?), or becoming involved in extended study, etc., etc., etc.?
Third thought: Gates’ gnosticism is only outrun by his not-so-covert tendency towards totalitarian control<–need an example?–how about Gates’ efforts to track and record all-things-human and under the sun? We do need to keep trying to better ourselves, but having a new king won’t get us there. CBK
Bill and Melinda Gates are Solzhenitsyn’s definition of “Ill-educated people…behave with arrogant impatience whereas truly profound education breeds humility”.
Perhaps Mr. Gates is starting a lobbyist group now in an attempt to wash his hands of his previous ten years of failure. “Look, everyone. I’m going to get into influencing policy now. (Please don’t blame me for all the failures of the past decade.)”
For all his altruism, Bill Gates is an extraordinarily selfish man. At some point, when he realized that his billions weren’t having the impact he had hoped for, he realized that by redirected this money towards affecting public policy, he could control tens of billions of dollars annually. Just how much harm has this single man caused? And how much more is he capable of?
Gates once said that it would take a decade to figure whether “this stuff works.”
He didn’t define what he meant by “this stuff,” but whatever it is, it doesn’t work.
How humane of him (showing great “social & emotional learning”), stealing a decade of education from other people’s children!
The very definition of villainthropist.