This is a fascinating interview of Bill Gates in 2014 by Washington Post reporter Lyndsey Layton.
Layton wrote a comprehensive account of how the Common Core was funded single-handed by Gates. Gates engineered a “swift revolution,” a near coup, by subsidizing and promulgating the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), with cheerleading by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
CCSS may have been the biggest policy disaster in the history of U.S. education. States and districts spent billions of dollars to implement new standards, new tests, new teacher training, new software, new textbooks, new professional development, all in pursuit of illusory standardization.
The U.S. Department of Education paid $360 million for two consortia to develop tests (PARCC and the Smarter Balanced Consortium). The consortia started life with almost every state but most have now dropped out. Gates paid for everything else. By some estimates, he invested as much as $2 billion subsidizing the writing, development, evaluation, and promotion of CCSS.
The Common Core was adopted by almost every state because states had to adopt common standards if they wanted to be eligible to compete for a portion of nearly $5 billion in Race to the Top funding. Arne Duncan worked closely with the Gates Foundation, and several former Gates officials worked for Duncan. States, still staggering from the 2008 recession, needed the money. Race to the Top and CCSS were a package deal meant to standardize American education.
If the goal was to raise test scores (it was) and to close or narrow achievement gaps (it was), both Race to the Top and Common Core failed. Neither happened. Read my book SLAYING GOLIATH, which contains the data.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
And the worst part was that we were already in a recession and had to COMPETE for our own tax dollars. The individual states had $$$$$ to pay for garbage in the way of standardized testing AND had to compete for our federal tax dollars to help cover the cost by signing up for the stupid CCSS. That to me is taxation without representation and extortion. This was THE moment that education became a privatized “social service”. This was the moment when real education got flushed down the toilet. This is why we have a Betsy Devos installed as Secretary of Ed. ALL led by our wonderful G-d of Greed….Bill Gates. The crimes this man has unleashed on humanity should be prosecuted.
so very frustratingly, his crimes are not seen as crimes by the masses
Not by the media who are still worshipping at his feet.
The media still seems to hang on his every word.
“The Common Core was adopted by almost every state because states had to adopt common standards if they wanted to be eligible to compete for a portion of nearly $5 billion in Race to the Top funding.”
Gates also sent a bunch of money to help states apply for those competitive grants. Somewhere in my files I have the amounts.
I couldn’t stand to watch the whole interview, but thanks to Lyndsey Layton for managing this interview. It is good to see Gates squirm, if only for a short time before and for the record.
The Common Core is not dead yet, unfortunately.
CCSS can’t die. States have changed the name but still have the standards firmly in place. I don’t know how states can get rid it or if they are even able to? So much money was spent to demolish/destroy and then “rebuild” that states can’t afford to do this again. All that money and time spent that could have been better used in schools (teachers, nurses, counselors etc). I hate wasting $$$$…but worse is wasting time (and energy). There was saying a while ago “A mind is a terrible thing to waste”.
Gates wants to be viewed as a benevolent billionaire that wants to “improve” education. By weaponizing his wealth, he has been using carrots and sticks against public education since bribed his way into the Obama Department of Education. All the standardization is designed to support personalized instruction, his new monetization project. Gates is trying to force his way in the door of public schools.in states that are cash strapped from the Covid-19 pandemic and years of disinvestment.
If Bill Gates had given 2 billion to a carefully chosen group of educators with input from parents and students, amazing progress could have been made. He goes to Africa to help poor children when our nation is disgustingly full of them. Until we deal with U.S. POVERTY, our schools in urban areas will suffer. I was a K- through grad school educator for 50 years and nothing changes. We continue to cycle through changes too often determined by non-educators. We blame the kids, the parents, and the teachers. THEY are the experts. Listen to them! I loved President Obama but he was not a public school student. He and Arne Duncan were clueless.
After watching Gates, watch..
Story-Killers: How the Common Core Destroys Minds and Souls by Terrence O. Moore
“In a town that does not have a doctor, sometimes a snake oil salesman looks pretty good” — spot on.
Ed Johnson
I do not understand the purpose of your response to the Common Core. Granted the video includes complaints about the Common Core from the President of Hillsdale College. But what does that mean?
Hillside College is devoted to “classical” free-market trickle-down economics embedded in a classical liberal arts education…a mash up that is common in elite private schools.
Hillsdale College is notorious for denouncing all federal “interference” in education. At the same time, it seeks federal tax deductions for its operations.
Hillsdale College is also a sponsor of twenty-one “classic” charter schools. Are you recommending charter schools and a classical education of the kind Hillside College enshrines and noteworthy for an absence of black children inpromotional videos?
Whence the notoriety of Hillsdale College?
“From the website: “Hillsdale college has been committed to independence since its founding in 1844. When a 1984 US supreme court ruling threatened Hillsdale with the entire range of federal regulations because some of its students received federal financial aid, the college resolved that not a single Hillsdale student would accept even one cent of federal grants, loans, or scholarships. Instead, Hillsdale established the privately funded student independence grant and loan fund in place of taxpayer-funded aid for deserving students who seek the kind of classical liberal arts education offered at Hillsdale. … Approximately 95 percent of Hillsdale students qualify for and receive some form of institutional aid.”
Here are some other factoids from Hillsdale’s 2017 IRS form. Hillside had net assets of $1,011,256,16 and an endowment of $688,451,311. ”Earnings from the endowment were primarily used to provide scholarships to students and to fund the operations of the college.”
The IRS Form has a section for reporting on “Organizations Maintaining Collections of Art, Historical Treasures, or Other Similar Assets.” Hillsdale reports the following, valued at about $7.2 million. (I could find no details about the method of appraisal).
–Alwin C. Carus coin collection. Foreign and domestic currency divided into three smaller displays: ancient coins collection, American coins, and a history of money collection with early non-metal forms of currency, precious metals, and modern fiat currency. The collection…is a tool for teaching economics, history, finance, and classics.
–Special library collections. In addition to the main study and research collections, Hillsdale has the Ludwig Von Mises (personal) Library, donated by Von Mises, the father of Austrian free-market economics.
–Liberty walk, set up in 2003. Includes eight statues …”of those who labored to defend freedom”: the Alpha Kappa Phi civil war soldiers monument, 1895; George Washington, 2003; Winston Churchill, 2004; Margaret Thatcher, 2008; Thomas Jefferson, 2009; Abraham Lincoln, 2009; Ronald Reagan, 2011; and Frederick Douglass, 2017.
–Pre-Columbian art collection. Statues, pottery, jewelry, and carved or woven vessels, from as early as 500 BC to as late as 1532 AD available for faculty and student use, especially by those studying prehistoric and non-western art.
–Daniel Moses Fisk museum of natural history. Established in 1874…contains thousands of biological, geological, and archaeological specimens. Two recent additions: real-bone dinosaur skeletons of an Edmontosaurus Annectens and a Triceratops.
The 990 form shows that the President/CEO of Hillsdale is paid about $1 million and enjoys many other perks. Hillsdale College also has many activities and investments outside of the United States.
The video is interesting but it is about far more than a criticism of the Common Core.
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/381374230/201901419349301225/full
“The video is interesting […] criticism of the Common Core.”
Also interesting is the video alluding to the importance of story and contrasting with, for example, Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichi speaking on The Danger of the Single Story…
I filtered out what Hillsdale College stands for just to hear the interesting. So interesting is as far as it goes for me.
“Are you recommending charter schools and a classical education of the kind Hillside College enshrines and noteworthy for an absence of black children in promotional videos?”
If I were I should expect Diane to kick me off her Honor Roll in a nanosecond and just as quickly revise Slaying Goliath.