Author William Doyle and Superintendent Michael Hynes—both known for supporting whole-child education—-say that they would welcome Bill Gates to New York if he agrees to meet three conditions.
They suggest that Gates has a chance to redeem his reputation after 20 years of failure in education.
They write:
The Gates Foundation has been a driving force behind nearly 20 years of consistently failed federal and state attempts at education reform, including the widely reviled “Common Core” state standards. In that time, little-to-no system improvement has occurred, despite the squandering of vast sums of money by the Gates Foundation and by taxpayers. In a blog post noting the flaws of Common Core and announcing plans to re-focus their funding, Gates announced, “As we have reflected on our work and spoken with educators over the last few years, we have identified a few key insights that will shape our work and investments going forward.”
The Gates Foundation now has a historic chance to redeem and distinguish itself as a world leader in education as it has in the field of public health. In fact, we believe that the educators, parents and children of New York should welcome the Gates Foundation to New York with open arms and marching brass bands — but with three ironclad conditions.
Open their post to learn what their “ironclad conditions” are.
Do you think Gates might agree?
Do you think New York needs him, with or without the conditions?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I would suggest the Gates foundation stop using language like “reinventing”. It isn’t honest language – a Kahn Academy lecture online doesn’t “reinvent” anything and either does a “playlist” of assignments. Paying a private entity to provide services to the public is called “contracting”, not “reinventing”.
Just tell people what you’d like to do, specifically, and drop the marketing campaign and the outsize claims and bragging. They’ll trust you more and they won’t be disappointed when the claims don’t match the reality. Stop selling. Hire fewer political/marketing people and more teachers.
Kids aren’t fooled by this anyway- they grew up with this stuff. They know a video lecture is a lecture and a film clip followed by 20 questions is a quiz. Don’t exaggerate.
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The First Thing About Logic
❝Upon this first, and in one sense this sole, rule of reason, that in order to learn you must desire to learn, and in so desiring not be satisfied with what you already incline to think, there follows one corollary which itself deserves to be inscribed upon every wall of the city of philosophy:
☞ Do not block the way of inquiry ☜
❝Although it is better to be methodical in our investigations, and to consider the economics of research, yet there is no positive sin against logic in trying any theory which may come into our heads, so long as it is adopted in such a sense as to permit the investigation to go on unimpeded and undiscouraged. On the other hand, to set up a philosophy which barricades the road of further advance toward the truth is the one unpardonable offence in reasoning, as it is also the one to which metaphysicians have in all ages shown themselves the most addicted.❞
C.S. Peirce, Collected Papers, CP 1.135–136.
From an unpaginated ms. “F. R. L.”, circa 1899.
http://web.archive.org/web/20061013235600/http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2004-January/001027.html
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Or, “Why Billy Can’t Learn”
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The Road Ahead
The Road Ahead
Is barricaded
Light is red
And lines are faded
Potholes pock
The Road Ahead
Follow schlock
And wind up dead
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Exactly, Jon, SomeDAM!
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“Bill and I have always been clear that our role isn’t to generate ideas ourselves; it’s to support innovation driven by people who have spent their careers working in education: teachers, administrators, researchers, and community leaders.”” –Melinda Gates quoted in the link mentioned above.
Really?
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“Bill and I have always been clear that our role isn’t to finance our pet projects like Common Core ourselves; it’s to get saps …er, I mean “the public”… to finance them”
Fixed
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In this Biz, this is called the Co-Optation Hook.
The reason you can’t have a real conversation with con artists like Billinda is long habit prevents them from ever dropping the hooks, lines, pitches, and spiels of their game.
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What a wonderfully succinct statement of educational philosophy and practice. Should be sent to every superintendent in the nation.
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Can we trust that the Gates foundation will collaborate with professional educators when their past behavior has been to consider educators as little more than flies in their ointment?
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Well said, retired teacher.
Thank you, again for being so clear and focused. TRUE.
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Flies in the software
Flies in the software
Teachers in schools
Outing the shaftware
Exposing the stools
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Just a contextual point: From the broader view of education as a right, as stated in the Gates link, and its reference to the Brown v. Board of Education decision, there exists a weakness.
I have copied below the fuller context of the quote they use in their linked website, and bolded that weakness, and then commented briefly below that. CBK
From the Brown v. Board of Education Decision:
“We must consider public education in the light of its full development and its present place in American life throughout[p493] the Nation. Only in this way can it be determined if segregation in public schools deprives these plaintiffs of the equal protection of the laws.
“Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the great expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition of the importance of education to our democratic society. It is required in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even service in the armed forces. It is the very foundation of good citizenship. Today it is a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment. In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.” (my bold)
I wouldn’t put it past the die-hard reformers and billionaires to take that phrase as their mandate to eliminate State support of education altogether from their history of laws. CBK
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Addendum to my note on the Brown decision. That decision was made in the context of equal protection under the law. I doesn’t address whether the Constitution itself, the laws, or democracy-as-such rests on or infers education-for-all (or even basic reading-literacy) as a foundation. I think that argument can be reasonably made and probably is somewhere in the philosophical literature, but not in the Brown decision. For its own meaning, we can hardly refer to it as “weak.” CBK
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Funny! We have no opt-out laws in MD for the tests so I had to use civil disobedience measures and used Brown v BOE. What got me my way when admin kept pushing back was the line that you have in bold. They told me that I had to take what the state provided and I kindly informed them that testing was not education and that I had the right to refuse for my children. I was allowed to review the outlines of the curriculum but not of the “state” mandated tests (PARCC) which means that they were separate entities. I won.
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LisaM Don’t you love it. CBK
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Here are the three conditions I would require before letting Gates anywhere near schools:
Leave the money.
Shut the ____ up.
Go away
This man and his foundation have been the ebolas and coronaviruses of U.S. education. The misery and waste resulting from his tinkering in matters he knows nothing about have been incalculable. The Common Core has led to dramatic and ongoing devolution and trivialization of our pedagogy and curricula. The invalid tests based on the Common Core have done these things as well and have had enormous direct costs (in dollars, especially for computers to take them on), opportunity costs (in time and resources taken from humane curricula for test prep and for test-pretty curricula), and emotional/psychological cost (in the toll on teachers and kids).
The Gates program has amounted to forced, systemic child abuse.
This man should be allowed nowhere near schools. There should be a truth and reconciliation tribunal on the Common Coring of U.S. education and the invalid, scam testing and evaluation systems associated with the puerile Gates/Coleman bullet lists. Then, Gates should be made to pay reparations for the damage he has done.
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Memo To Gates
Just leave the money
Don’t say a word
Teachers gonna flip you
A mocking bird
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As always, SomeDAM, said more succinctly and elegantly than I did. Thank you.
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Inspiration is 99%
Perspiration only 1%
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And I get lots of inspiration from you and others on this blog
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great twist on the word “mocking” 🙂
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“There should be a truth and reconciliation tribunal…”
From the tone of your writing, a Truth and Retribution Tribunal, maybe even a lynch mob, might be more what you are envisioning. Not that there’s anything wrong with that…
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Not at all. I think that the facts about this scamming of the country need to be revealed to all. They need to become a national conversation.
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But yes, Roy. I am angry. I have seen what Gates has done to textbooks, to kids, to teachers, and the damage is enormous. I weep for our kids.
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Bow down, ye ordinary mortals. The WALLET is here.
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Stopping by School on a Disruptive Afternoon
by Bob Shepherd
after decades of test-driven education “reform”
Whose schools these are, I think I know.
His house is near Seattle though.
He will not see me stopping here
to watch what kids now undergo.
My better angels think it queer
to see a place so void of cheer
what with the tests and data chats,
the data walls with children’s stats.
Where are the joys of yesterday—
when kids would draw and sing and play?
The only sound I hear’s defeat
and pencils on the bubble sheets.
Disrupters say, unflappable,
“We’re building Human Capital!”
Such word goes out from their think tanks,
as they their profits build and bank.
“Music, stories, art, and play
won’t teach Prole children to obey
with servile, certain, gritful grace
and know their rightful, lowly place.”
The fog is heavy, dark and deep.
Where thinking tanks, Deformers creep
and from our children childhood steal
and grind them underneath the wheel.
Postscript:
Disruption of the Commonweal
is that in which Deformers deal
that they might thereby crises fake
as cover whereby they might take
(the smiling villains!) take and take
and take and take and take and take.
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Excellent!
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High praise from one of your talents, SomeDAM.
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Great poem Bob!
But I have promises to keep
And you can take a flying leap
Away perhaps you soon will creep
And leave the little ones alone
And leave the little ones alone.
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Wonderful, RT!
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Another excellent adaption!
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Read “The Winners take all.”
Gates should pay his fair share of taxes so all benefit and keep away from our children.
I agree with their solutions but he should not be paying for it unless it is through paying taxes. He, as well as other billionaires, have strings attached.
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Exactly. Exactly. Yes. Yes. Yes.
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I have worked as a teacher and as a writer and editor of language arts textbooks (literature, grammar, speech, composition, theatre) for my entire life. I’ve seen how the Coring of U.S. education has destroyed ELA textbooks and courseware, and I’ve witnessed the damage, in classrooms, done by the testing. What are the chances that Mr. Gates would sit down with me or with people like me and listen honestly and openly to a detailed critique of his puerile, backward “standards” and to explanations of what those “standards” and the associated testing have done to U.S. curricula?
Well, I think it about as likely that Donald Trump will take up yoga and reading Wittgenstein.
There is no such thing as a conversation with people like Gates. He and Trump have this in common.
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“What are the chances that Mr. Gates would sit down with me..”
I must quote a Southeast Missouri Farmer in his response to a friend of mine many years ago on another matter:
I wouldn’t bet a piss-ant couldn’t eat a bale of cotton on that”
Whatever that meant.
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I love those old country sayings. When you can understand them, they are very wise.
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Yes, I saved the last set, “Don’t listen to no rich people, they didin’ git that way worrying about you.“
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“As we have reflected on our work and spoken with educators over the last few years, we have identified a few key insights that will shape our work and investments going forward.”
Key insight number one: Diane Ravitch has been a royal pain in the asterisk.
The Foglifter
The billionaire was beaten
By lady with a blog
Who managed to defeat him
By dissipating fog
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Beautiful. And spot on. Though the battle is ongoing, it will, it must be, won, for the sake of the children.
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The Charge of the Gates Brigade” (based on “The Charge of the Light Brigade”, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson)
Half a bake, half a bake
Half a bake, onward!
All in the Valley of Dumb
Bill and Mel foundered
“Forward, the Gates Brigade!
Charge for the schools!” he said.
Into the Valley of Dumb
Bill and Mel foundered
II
“Forward, the Gates Brigade!”
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the Coleman knew
Someone had blundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to sell and buy
Into the Valley of Dumb
Bill and Mel foundered
III
Teachers to right of them,
Teachers to left of them,
Teachers in front of them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with fact and stat,
Boldly they tuned out that,
Into the Ravitch jaws,
Into the mouth of cat
Bill and Mel foundered
IV
Flashed all their bullcrap ware
Dashed was their savoir faire
VAMming the teachers there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wondered.
Plunged in with mir’s-n-smoke
Valiantly went for broke;
Cluelessly rushin’
Reeled from reality’s stroke
Shattered and sundered.
VAMming attack, for naught,
Bill and Mel foundered
V
Teachers to right of them,
Teachers to left of them,
Teachers behind them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with fact and stat,
While Bill and Mel chewed fat
They that had fought the BAT
Came through the Ravitch jaws,
Back from the mouth of cat,
All that was left in end:
Bill and Mel foundered
VI
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Gates Brigade,
Bill and Mel foundered
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Great adaptation! I wish Gates and company would “go for broke.” Then maybe they would leave public education alone.
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Wonderful, SomeDAM! My stab at the same, “The Coring of the Six Hundred”: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2017/10/02/the-coring-of-the-six-hundred-with-apologies-to-alfred-lord-tennyson/
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Gates being a Scorpio, it is always the story of the frog and the scorpion. One condition, would be he gives all his money to the needy. His ideas don’t float on their own merit, the bricks which should sink are buoyed by his millions in PR floaties.
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Gates dream, one homogeneous world run by one governmental management organization where he and Buffett are the majority stockholders. What’s not to love?
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Lesson Learned?
Boiling pot
And lesson learned
Stove is hot
And we’ll get burned
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Gates will not follow anything he does not like, His own inherent inflexibility and fixation has been the basis and M.O. of his financial success and hoarding of riches. Forgot about it.
Next . . . . .
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He would peg Angela Duckworth’s Gritometer for sure.
Along with any standard bogometer
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Rendo, I agree with you. Gates does not take advice. He listens to his gut, like Trump.
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Billy Gates has grit
And listens to his gut
While most would bend
And reach the end
The Billyanaire won’t quit
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Ravitch,
Gates is renowned for screaming at the executives and top directors of his product research and development division. They come up with ideas that work, are productive, and are profitable; but if they wont fit his mold and vision, he has been known to put them down and berate them loudly and with no holds barred.
They put up with it, albeit with their stress and cortisol levels elevated, but they are paid a lot and hope to keep onto the bucking bronco for as long as they can ride it. He gets his way as a result of tantrumming and bullying.
Microsoft has developed an internal culture of a monarchy, and Gates, being on the spectrum himself, has not learned to compensate for his weakness in social skills. He truly believes he can avoid developing those muscles because he can buy his way out of situations. And his beliefs have emerged as true over the years. Worse, he has extended his self-aggrandizement and megalomania far behind the walls of Microsoft, spilling them well into the federal and state governments, which allow this enfant terrible to kick, stomp, and scream until he gets his way.
He is a monster, an egotist, a narcissist, and is more self absorbed than a role of Bounty towels . . . . . He is a menace to free societies.
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Billy Gates Gruff ???
I’m guessing some local wag has already wagged that one …
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The trolls are waiting under bridge
To pounce upon the passing kids
Disguised as broads and billy goats
With candy and with diet kochs
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Brilliant!
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Tell Gates and his foundation to take a hike. We don’t need his ideas or his dirty money. He and his education policies have hurt a generation of children. He wants to rule. He will not change. He thinks he’s the savior. You can’t make a deal with the devil.
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Thanks to all for a lovely array of insights, some fun, most perspicacious.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is a major supporter of IMS Global where IMS stands for Instructional Management Systems.
This is an international organization seeking status as the “certifier” that computer programs are interoperable. Interoperable means users do not need to do much more than offer the computer software “one click” to get started, including an upload of class rosters, information on the teachers of record and so forth. The users, mostly schools, can upload the software and with no problems.
I have talked about IMS global and entered some comments about it now and then. Part of this reduces every possible standard, assessment, categories for describing students and teachers along with inquiry tools written for education into computer code (e.g., the Bloom taxonomies, Gardner’s categories of multiple intelligences).
If you poke around the website you will see that many of the organizations that have given us “deformation strategies” from the last two decades or so are also helping to pay for this project, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, identified as a “platinum level funder.” Another is platinum funder is eLumen. The eLumen system claims to integrate curriculum and tests, with learning outcomes monitored for individual students, dashboards, and the rest. What more could a data-driven system want?
In addition to the big funders, the IMS Global Consortium is supported by about 180 vendors in education, including Google, IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle. IMS Certified products have been purchased by schools in Houston, TX; Volusia County, FL; and Gwinnett County, GA. IMS Global also has relationships with computer-centric education agencies in Japan, the Netherlands, the European Union, United Kingdom, Canada, Norway, Sweden, and Spain.
In other words, a future for education is being written as if online platforms should be the new normal and shaped by transnational alliances. In this respect, computer-centric education is being designed to minimize or by-pass national and state policies It is designed to silence the voices of teachers, parents, students and all others who are not part of the international tech industry.
Now imagine how the pandemic is incentivizing all of the funders, vendors, and fans of IMS Global.
Pasi Sahlberg called this and other forms of standardized education GERM–The Global Education Reform Movement. He also urges educators to stamp out GERM.
New York has enough problems with Covid-19. It does not need Bill Gates to propagate GERM. Get the disinfectants ready and keep GERM from reducing our students and their education to computer code.
On a lark for this discussion, I entered the phrase “Common Core” in the IMS Global search engine. Look at what turned up. Some readers of this blog will not be surprised.
https://site.imsglobal.org/certifications?query=Common%20Core
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Fromt he IMS to Total Surveillance: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2019/05/11/he-sees-you-when-youre-sleeping-2/
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Thank you, so much, Laura, for this. So, so important!!!! Another player at this game: Pearson, whose Pearson Online Learning Services is now run by the former head of InBloom. Pearson has committed itself, it says, to a “digital learning strategy” because,
Pearson, not Persons.
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OMG, Laura. I just clicked on that last link you posted. Pear$on. Pear$on. Pear$on. Pear$on. . . Pear$on
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How do you get Gates to use his billions so that Gates is useful to educators? Give him some specific ideas. He prefers to use his money as “leverage”–a term he got from Penny Noyce. Give him a reason to use it up on something beneficial to low-income kids.
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Gates always knew some kind of virus was coming. Looks like he planned ahead to gin up maximum fear to promote his agenda on health and education.
If he is really a great guy, how much air time is he promoting financially backstopping state and local budgets? This is teachers and public education at stake here.
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Why not one winner among all the ideas he has bankrolled in education? I’ve looked at his Big History Project, too.
Can’t he find another area (far away from education) to involve himself in.
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Dear Melinda
Please find Bill another hobby.
Thank you,
Bob
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Bob
Unfortunately, Melinda shares the ” education hacking” hobby with Bill and is little more than a “yes woman” for his “experiments” on school children.
That is crystal clear in pretty much every interview of the two together. He says stuff and her role is to agree. Though I can’t see as I can blame her. Based on what others (including his former partner Paul Allen) have said, its not hard imagine how Bill would react if she actually disagreed with him.
So it’s going to have to be someone else who gets them both to take up a different hobby.
But I think Diane and teachers have done a good job in exposing their hobby for what it is. Bill and Melinda did not plan on their “serfs” being so much smarter than they are.
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Michael Hynes makes too much sense for Cuomo and Gates they will never agree to those conditions. Also, Michael left out his important play initiative
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