Steven Singer asks a reasonable question: Why is a Gates-Funded, anti-union, pro-charter advocacy group part of Pennsylvania’s effort to end the teacher shortage?
That would be TeachPlus.
Singer begins:
So Pennsylvania has unveiled a new plan to stop the exodus with the help of an organization pushing the same policies that made teaching undesirable in the first place.
The state’s Department of Education (PDE) announced its plan to stop the state’s teacher exodus today.
One of the four people introducing the plan at the Harrisburg press conference was Laura Boyce, Pennsylvania executive director of Teach Plus.
Why is this surprising?
Teach Plus is a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that works to select and train teachers to push its political agenda.
What is that agenda?
Teach Plus has embraced the practice of widespread staff firings as a strategy for school improvement.
Teach Plus mandates that test scores be a significant part of teacher evaluation.
Teach Plus advocates against seniority and claims that unions stifle innovation.
Teach Plus has received more than $27 million from the Gates Foundation and substantial donations from the Walton Family Foundation.
How can an organization dedicated to the same ideas that prompted the exodus turn around and stop the evacuation!?
That’s like hiring a pyromaniac as a fire fighter!
Read on.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Like hiring a demolition expert to build a building.
Like hiring Exxon Mobil to save the planet from CO2
Like hiring John Wayne Gacy to oversee a hone for wayward boys.
Like hiring Jeffrey Epstein to oversee a home for wayward girls.
Like hiring Bill Gates to oversee school reform.
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“Like hiring Donald Trump to be your president. Ha ha. Joke’s on you.” –Tzar Vladimir the Wee
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If Trump is your precedent, then Stare Decisis should give way to ” sorry, ignorthis”
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Why is it that so many superintendents and state department officials buy into the absurdities of the schooling deformations being pushed by Gates and his foundation? WT__ is wrong with these people? Are that many of them that ignorant of really basic stuff about education? Are that many of them clueless about valid test design, motivation of educators and students, the backwardness of the Common [sic] Core [sic], and so much else? Where T__ do these people come from, and why do people this ignorant have power over our schools?
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Gosh, do you think maybe their goal is not what they say it is?
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Oh NO! Bill Gates is no friend to education. Gates is actually a wrecking ball when It comes to educating our young.
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This is precisely the case. And here’s the strange thing: he is so clueless that he doesn’t have any idea how much damage he has done and how pervasive that damage is. No clue whatsoever. What a moron. Incapable of learning, clearly. Blinded by his lack of understanding of how people work and his own breathtaking self-regard, which rivals that of Donald Trump.
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A privileged moron who lucked into wealth and then was allowed to play dirty and amass an obscene fortune and then to use that as a wrecking ball based on childish notions about learning and an extraordinarily narrow and twisted point of view derived from and based in basic mathematical and scientific error.
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YES, lowest common denominator: can the kid run computers? Education done
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Good enough education for Prole children. Not, ofc, for the children of Masters of the Universe like Gates.
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Everything Gates backs is an attempt to undermine public education and deprofessionalize teaching. He uses his weaponized wealth to push his way into cash strapped states. Pennsylvania’s fiscal mismanagement of the privatization of education are legendary. Adopting anything from the continually failing Gates Foundation is a slippery slope in a race to the bottom. Pennsylvania, you are the epicenter of American democracy! Kick out the bums in your state legislature ASAP. Wake up Pennsylvania; this is another bad idea.
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cx:is legendary.
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exactly
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Thanks so much for posting this, Diane. Pennsylvania’s program to retain teachers and even Teach Plus’s involvement have been reported everywhere. However, no media that I have seen has said anything about who Teach Plus is beyond the organization’s mission statement. Yet there is so much information out there about what disruptive neoliberal policies they support and who funds them. They are astrotrurf supreme. I just wish journalists weren’t so lazy and actually did even a minimum of digging or even questioning the state’s program at all!
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I don’t think journalists are lazy. They just don’t dig deep. Why bother when the truth will need to be watered down/omitted to make it to publishing. Who owns the media and newspapers? So many good and credible journalists now write on their own Substacks because they weren’t allowed to tell the whole truth in MSM.
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Steven, the hidden, deceptive nature of groups like TrachPlus is a problem. Like the Walton-funded “National Parents Union.” The media doesn’t know which are real and which are astroturf. Like “Educators4Excellence,” another Gates front.
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To become a member of TeachPlus, you have to take a lie detector test, a test to detect whether you can consistently let no words out of your messed up face unless they are lies. Every TeachPlus teacher I’ve met in Los Angeles has a serious dishonesty disorder.
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Lie injector test
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