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Wall Street Journal: Schools Invest Zillions in Technology, Parents Push Back

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2019 //
56

Technology in the classroom has become so ubiquitous that the use of papers and pencils or pens seems innovative.

The Wall Street Journal published a front-page story about the high-powered push to buy technology and the growing disillusionment of some parents and teachers.

When Baltimore County, Md., public schools began going digital five years ago, textbooks disappeared from classrooms and paper and pencils were no longer encouraged. All students from kindergarten to 12th grade would eventually get a laptop, helping the district reach the “one-to-one” ratio of one for each child that has become coveted around the country. Teaching apps and digital courses took the place of flashcards and notebooks.

Despite the investment, academic results have mostly slipped in the district of about 115,000 students.

Over the last decade, American schools embraced technology, spending millions of dollars on devices and apps, believing its disruptive power would help many children learn faster, stay in school and be more prepared for a competitive economy. Now many parents and teachers are starting to wonder if all the disruption was a good idea.

Technology has made it easier for students and teachers to communicate and collaborate. It engages many students and allows them to learn at their own pace. But early indications are that tech isn’t a panacea for education. Researchers at Rand Corp. and elsewhere say there is no clear evidence showing which new tech-related education offerings or approaches work in schools.

The uncertainty is feeding alarm among some parents already worried about the amount of time their children spend attached to digital devices. Some believe technology is not doing much to help their kids learn, setting up a clash with tech advocates who say technology is the future of education.

Across the country—in Boston, Fort Wayne, Ind., and Austin, Texas—parents are demanding proof technology works as an educational tool, and insisting on limits. They’re pushing schools to offer low- or screen-free classrooms, picketing board meetings to protest all the online classes and demanding more information about what data is collected on students.

In April, a report from the National Education Policy Center, a nonpartisan research group at the University of Colorado at Boulder, found the rapid adoption of the mostly proprietary technology in education to be rife with “questionable educational assumptions . . . self-interested advocacy by the technology industry, serious threats to student privacy and a lack of research support…”

Baltimore County said earlier this year it would scale back the ratio of laptops in first and second grades to one for every five students. A few miles away, in Montgomery County, a new curriculum this fall will return textbooks, paper and pencils to the classroom to supplement laptops.

In both cases, school officials say they were responding, in part, to parents and teachers. Baltimore County’s early-learning teachers said they didn’t need so many laptops. Parents wanted their children to “have a mixed media experience touching paper and reading books and down on the carpet without a device in their hands,” said Ryan Imbriale, who heads the school district’s department of innovative learning

Categories Billionaires, Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Technology

New Yorker: Did Jeffrey Epstein, Sexual Predator, Persuade Bill Gates to Donate $2 Million to MIT Media Lab?

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2019 //
14

The New Yorker magazine published an expose of Jeffrey Epstein’s connection to the MIT Media Laband its efforts to conceal the connection. After the story appeared, the director of the Lab resigned.

The article:

The M.I.T. Media Lab, which has been embroiled in a scandal over accepting donations from the financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, had a deeper fund-raising relationship with Epstein than it has previously acknowledged, and it attempted to conceal the extent of its contacts with him. Dozens of pages of e-mails and other documents obtained by The New Yorker reveal that, although Epstein was listed as “disqualified” in M.I.T.’s official donor database, the Media Lab continued to accept gifts from him, consulted him about the use of the funds, and, by marking his contributions as anonymous, avoided disclosing their full extent, both publicly and within the university. Perhaps most notably, Epstein appeared to serve as an intermediary between the lab and other wealthy donors, soliciting millions of dollars in donations from individuals and organizations, including the technologist and philanthropist Bill Gates and the investor Leon Black. According to the records obtained by The New Yorker and accounts from current and former faculty and staff of the media lab, Epstein was credited with securing at least $7.5 million in donations for the lab, including two million dollars from Gates and $5.5 million from Black, gifts the e-mails describe as “directed” by Epstein or made at his behest. The effort to conceal the lab’s contact with Epstein was so widely known that some staff in the office of the lab’s director, Joi Ito, referred to Epstein as Voldemort or “he who must not be named.”

The financial entanglement revealed in the documents goes well beyond what has been described in public statements by M.I.T. and by Ito. The University has said that it received eight hundred thousand dollars from Epstein’s foundations, in the course of twenty years, and has apologized for accepting that amount. In a statement last month, M.I.T.’s president, L. Rafael Reif, wrote, “with hindsight, we recognize with shame and distress that we allowed MIT to contribute to the elevation of his reputation, which in turn served to distract from his horrifying acts. No apology can undo that.” Reif pledged to donate the funds to a charity to help victims of sexual abuse. On Wednesday, Ito disclosed that he had separately received $1.2 million from Epstein for investment funds under his control, in addition to five hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars that he acknowledged Epstein had donated to the lab. A spokesperson for M.I.T. said that the university “is looking at the facts surrounding Jeffrey Epstein’s gifts to the institute….”

Epstein’s apparent role in directing outside contributions was also elided. In October, 2014, the Media Lab received a two-million-dollar donation from Bill Gates; Ito wrote in an internal e-mail, “This is a $2M gift from Bill Gates directed by Jeffrey Epstein.” Cohen replied, “For gift recording purposes, we will not be mentioning Jeffrey’s name as the impetus for this gift.” A mandatory record of the gift filed within the university stated only that “Gates is making this gift at the recommendation of a friend of his who wishes to remain anonymous.” Knowledge of Epstein’s alleged role was usually kept within a tight circle. In response to the university filing, Cohen wrote to colleagues, “I did not realize that this would be sent to dozens of people,” adding that Epstein “is not named but questions could be asked” and that “I feel uncomfortable that this was distributed so widely.” He wrote that future filings related to Epstein should be submitted only “if there is a way to do it quietly.” An agent for Gates wrote to the leadership of the Media Lab, stating that Gates also wished to keep his name out of any public discussion of the donation.

A spokesperson for Gates said that “any claim that Epstein directed any programmatic or personal grantmaking for Bill Gates is completely false.” A source close to Gates said that the entrepreneur has a long-standing relationship with the lab, and that anonymous donations from him or his foundation are not atypical. Gates has previously denied receiving financial advisory services from Epstein; in August, CNBC reported that he met with Epstein in New York in 2013, to discuss “ways to increase philanthropic spending.”

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates

Steven Singer: Davis Guggenheim Loves Bill Gates

By dianeravitch
September 3, 2019 //
23

Davis Guggenheim, director of the ill-fated agitprop anti-public school, anti-union film “Waiting for ‘Superman,'” has directed a paean to the genius of billionaire Bill Gates called “Inside Bill Gates’ Brain,” a frightening thought when you think about it. The last place I would want to be trapped is inside the brain of a guy who thinks he is as smart as he is rich. Yech!

Steven Singer didn’t like the experience either. He reviews the premise of the show, which will appear on Netflix, the personal cable network of billionaire Reed Hastings.

Singer writes:

Once upon a time, the world was run by rich men.

And all was good.

But then the world was conquered by other rich men.

And that is something the first group of rich men could not allow.

That is the reason behind Netflix’s new film “Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates.”

The three-part documentary goes live on Sept. 20. But the film’s aims are clear from the trailer.

It’s a vanity project about Bill Gates, the second richest man in the world.

By examining his mind and motivations, director and executive producer Davis Guggenheim will show us how Gates deserves his billionaire status and that we should allow him to use his philanthrocapitalist ventures to rule the world.

After all, shouldn’t the best and richest among us make all the decisions?

It’s a cry for oligarchy in an age of idiocracy, a love letter to neoliberalism in a time of neofascism.

The pity is that Donald Trump and the “Make America Great Again” crowd have goose stepped all over their new world order.

But instead of showing the world why we need to return to democratic principles, strengthen the common good and empower the people to govern themselves, some would rather continue the same plutocracy just with a different set of plutocrats at the wheel.

Bill Gates has the extraordinary brain that has concocted one harebrained scheme after another in his quest to reinvent American education. He may have been impaired by the simple fact that he knew nothing at all about American education, having never been a student, a teacher, or anything else in an American public school. But being very very very rich means you don’t have to know much in order to proclaim yourself ready to redesign American education. It has been a playground for billionaires for at least the past 20 years, though none with as much hubris as Bill Gates.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privatization

Washington State: “Bold Experiment” with Charters Is Flunking

By dianeravitch
July 3, 2019 //
55

 

Give Bill Gates credit for persistence. He wanted charter schools in Washington State and he wouldn’t give up. The state held four referendums about whether to authorize private charter schools, and the idea was defeated time after time after time. Until 2012. Gates and his billionaire buddies raised a multimillion dollar war chest that completely overwhelmed the opposition of the PTAs, the League of Women Voters, the NAACP, the Washington Education Association, and a long list of civil rights and good government groups.

And in 2012, the referendum passed by less than 1%, bought and paid for by Gates and friends. The opposition sued, and the state’s highest court ruled that charter schools are not public schools because they do not meet the State Constitution’s definition of a “common school,” which is governed by an elected board.

Gates then put up money to try to defeat the judges who ruled against his beloved charters, but they were re-elected.

Then he went to the Legislature and through his surrogates, persuaded the lawmakers to pass a bill to use lottery money to fund Bill Gates’ charters. He could have easily paid for them himself, but he wanted the public to pay.

A dozen or so were quickly set up, some of which were recruited by Gates and given seed money.

And so the bold experiment began.

Things went badly quickly. First, the Walton-funded CREDO from Stanford University evaluated the charters and found that overall they did not get better results from public schools.

Recently, some of the fledgling charters folded because of low enrollments.

Read this equivocal editorial in the Tacoma News Tribune, which alternates between acknowledging the disappointing performance of Tacoma charters, the closure of two of them, the good performance of one, blaming the Legislature for failing to provide facilities funding (why not blame Bill Gates?), reminding readers that “the voters” approved charters, but not reminding them that Gates for the vote and it passed by a hair.

This editorial board once called charter schools a “bold experiment,” but even we need to remember that kids aren’t lab rats; when we experiment with schools, we experiment with kids’ futures. The stakes are high.

Joe Hailey, board chairman of Green Dot Public Schools Washington, the nonprofit charter that ran Destiny Middle School, told the News Tribune that lack of access to local levy funding meant a “permanent structural deficit for our schools.” In other words, with a large funding gap, Destiny Middle School was destined to fail.

Hailey is right. Without levy funding, charters compete with one hand tied behind their backs. If the paramount duty of the state is to educate every child, that’s not happening. Instead of being all-in on charter schools, we’re only half-in, and guess who suffers?

Why didn’t Bill Gates warn voters that they would have to pay facilities funding? Come to think of it, why doesn’t he buy a building for each of the charters, since he wanted them so badly? This would be only crumbs off his table.

Due to the opposition of the teachers’ union and lack of facilities funding, Tacoma’s charters are doing poorly:

Opponents — the Washington Education Association being one of the loudest — have launched lawsuits and a hostile public relations campaign against these voter-approved schools. To counter their claims, charters have to prove themselves by meeting higher benchmarks for success, and at least in Tacoma, that didn’t happen.

Third graders In Tacoma’s SOAR Academy had reading and math scores 28 to 34 percentage points lower than their Tacoma Public School cohorts, and now, due to the school’s closure, some of those students will have to go back into the local district and compete with students who may be miles ahead in terms of academic performance.

With results like that, the WEA needs no PR campaign.

Why was anyone so gullible as to believe that entrepreneurs would be better at running schools than professional educators?

Ask Bill Gates.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privatization, Washington State

Mercedes Schneider: Bill Gates Has Been Spending Millions to Buy Influence for Years

By dianeravitch
June 18, 2019 //
43

 

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?

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privatization, Testing

Bill & Melinda Gates Launch a Political Lobbying Organization to Wield Greater Influence

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2019 //
180

 

Mr. and Mrs. Bill Gates apparently feel they are not winning enough battles in the court of public opinion, so they have created a lobbying organization to promote their ideas in Congress and state legislatures. 

Will the Gates lobby push for Common Core? For more high-stakes testing? For more federal funding for charter schools? For evaluating teachers by the test scores of their students? For more technology in the classroom?

These are but a few of Bill Gates’ failed education initiatives. Has he learned from failure or will he use his C4 lobby to push his failed ideas even more?

Bill and Melinda Gates have launched a lobbying organization to advocate for issues in health, education, and poverty, The Hill reported on Thursday.

The Gates Policy Initiative, which was announced on Thursday, will work with lawmakers on issues such as global health, global development, moving people from poverty to employment, and education for black, Latino, and rural students. The initiative, which will be a 501(c)(4) organization under the US tax code, is independent from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the billionaire couple’s philanthropic organization.

Rob Nabors, the director of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the former White House director of legislative affairs during the Obama administration, told The Hill that the Gates Policy Initiative would work in a bipartisan way.

In an article in The Hill, Rob Nabors said the new lobbying organization would reflect the work of the foundation.

Much of what they’ve learned running their foundation will help them through the process of establishing a lobbying shop.

“Probably the most important point for us is similar to the way Bill and Melinda have approached their philanthropic giving and other things that they do. They are interested in learning what works and what doesn’t work,” Nabors said.

He said that if they are not successful in a couple of years, they will “shutter the shop and figure out what else could potentially be done.”

“I think that experimental type of approach, that innovative type of approach, is both relatively unique in this space and embedded into the DNA that Bill and Melinda bring with them,” he said.

Nabors said that when he worked in the Obama White House, his job was often described as the White House chief lobbyist.

“I’m excited to get back into the mix of talking to people specifically about the work that they are doing every day, trying to put bills together that will make people’s lives better,” he said.

He added that Bill and Melinda Gates also bring a unique lens to a lobbying shop.

“They are very data-focused so a number of the types of issues that we will be exploring and the solutions that we are exploring are based on data that we collected from programs that we funded,” he added.

 

Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Data and Data Mining, Disruption, Education Industry, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Ignorance, Online Education, Privatization, Testing, VAM (value-added modeling)

What?! Washington State Charters Closing One After Another

By dianeravitch
June 10, 2019 //
20

Only Bill Gates knows how many millions he has poured into getting charters authorized and funded by the state in Washington State. There have been four referendums, the last one in 2012, which passed by about one percent, over the opposition of civil rights groups, unions, and PTAs. Gates and friends (Jeff Bezos’ parents, Waltons, and assorted billionaires) outspent the grassroots groups by several multiples, and at last Gates got charters past the voters. Then the Washington State Supreme Court said that charters are not public schools as defined in the state constitution, so Gates’s friends, led by Jonah Edelman and Stand for Children of Oregon, funded an effort to defeat the naughty justices at the next election. Happily, they were re-elected.

But Gates would not give up. He went to the Legislature and persuaded his friends to fund the charters with lottery money. The Governor Jay Inslee dared not stand up to the richest man in the state, and he neither signed nor vetoed the legislation, allowing it to become law.

When civilrights groups sued, because the charter schools were back to the public trough, the Supreme Court decided not to alienate the multibillionaire Gates again, and they decided to let the charters have lottery money.

Voila! Gates had charters and public money to pay for them.

But oh no, they are struggling, despite the fact that Gates handed out millions more to lure charter operators to open schools.

The Charter-friendly Seattle Times reports:

Two charter schools — one in Kent and another in Tacoma — will shut down at the end of this academic year, bringing the total number of closures to four since the publicly funded but privately run schools first opened in Washington state five years ago.

The board of directors for Green Dot Public Schools voted Thursday to shut down the two schools, which they oversee: Excel Public Charter School in Kent and Destiny Middle School in Tacoma. The Washington State Charter Association, in a news release, attributed the closures to dwindling enrollment.

The news comes five months after Soar Academy in Tacoma announced that it would close at the end of this school year. The school cited financial constraints.

“Both of these schools (in Kent and Tacoma) experienced significant struggles tied closely to low student enrollment and related operational challenges,” the charter-schools group said in its release.

The Kent and Tacoma schools received a charter, or contract, from the state to enroll up to 600 students. But enrollment data from Green Dot show the Kent campus reached a peak enrollment of  188 as of October 2018. In Tacoma, Destiny reached a peak enrollment of 281 during the 2017-18 school year but tumbled to 162 students as of October.

Across Washington, a dozen charter schools enroll about 3,300 students — a fraction of the 1.1 million students enrolled in public schools statewide.

Figure it out. What did Gates and spend? How many millions to ensure that 3,300 students could attend charters?

When CREDO evaluated the tiny number of charters, it concluded that on average they were no better or worse than public schools.

The findings of this study show that on average, charter students in Washington State experience annual growth in reading and math that is on par with the educational gains of their matched peers who enroll in the traditional public schools (TPS) the charter school students would otherwise have attended. 

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privatization, Walton Foundation, Washington State

Was the Common Core Successful?

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2019 //
107

 

It is probably far too soon to know whether the Common Core succeeded or failed, but the studies are beginning to appear.

The adoption of the Common Core standards was a central requirement of the Obama-Duncan Race to the Top program. States had to agree to adopt the Common Core if they wanted to be eligible to compete for $5 billion in federal funds. The Gates Foundation paid for the Common Core, from its writing to its implementation, at a cost estimated between hundreds of millions to $2 billion. (If anyone can determine how much money Bill Gates plowed into the CCSS, I will salute them on this blog). Arne Duncan could not pay for them because federal law bars any federal official from influencing curriculum or instruction. But Duncan did pay $360 million to pay for two testing consortia to develop new tests for the CCSS. PARCC and Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium.  Almost every state signed up for Race to the Top. Almost all adopted the Common Core. Almost all signed up to use one or both of the new tests.

The whole venture cost the states many billions of dollars. New standards. New tests. New materials. New software and hardware. New professional development.

The Common Core came with dramatic promises about improving test s ores and closing achievement gaps.

Were these promises kept?

No.Since 2007, NAEP scores have gone flat. The lowest achieving students lost ground.

Matt Barnum reports here on a study that found that the Common Core made no difference.

“A new study, released in April through a federally funded research center, shows that states that changed their standards most dramatically by adopting the Common Core didn’t outpace other states on federal NAEP exams. By 2017 — seven years after most states had adopted them — the standards appear to have led to modest declines in fourth-grade reading and eighth-grade math scores.”

Most states have dropped out of the two federally-funded testing consortia, which arbitrarily set their passing marks so high that most students were certain to “fail.”

 

Categories Accountability, Common Core, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Race to the Top, Testing

Jacobin: Foundations and Philanthropy Will Not Cure the Crisis of Capitalism

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2019 //
64

 

The billionaires understand the growing rage caused by inequality on an unprecedented scale. They worry that the rage might be directed at them. This far, it has been captured by rightwing populists like Trump, whose tax policies deepen the crisis of inequality by transferring more wealth to the one tenth of the one percent.

Jacobin explains that multibillionaires like Bill Gates are trying to buy time through their philanthropy and “the giving pledge,” which commits them to give away a big chunk of their billions when they die. Unfortunately, or fortunately for them, their capital is so vast that they make more money than they give away, without working. At a certain point, capital multiplies just by sitting in stocks and bonds.

Anand Girihadaras hit a nerve in his book Winners Take All, where he described the elite Charade of pretending to save the world through philanthropy, while building mechanisms to control the lives of others.

Charter schools are a perfect example of elite philanthropy that offers a way to “save poor children” while destroying democratically controlled institutions and transferring control to private boards directed by financiers. The parents of the children being “saved” will never have a voice in the education of their children, will never meet face to face with a board member, will never gain admission to a board meeting, and-if they complain too much-will be told to take their child and go elsewhere.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Inequality, Philanthropy, Privatization

The New York Times Magazine Interviews Melinda Gates

By dianeravitch
April 16, 2019 //
104

I wish that the New York Times were not behind a paywall. I wish you could read this article in full. It is an interview with Melinda Gates.

You would get a sense of a very rich and very privileged woman who doesn’t realize how out of touch she is with the lives of ordinary people.

The interviewer wants to know how she feels about her privilege, given the rise of tide of anger against elites and the super-rich.

Here are a few snippets:

One of the recurring criticisms of large-scale philanthropists is that they aren’t interested in any redress of the economic systems that create inequality. But in order to rectify inequalities, doesn’t a radical rethinking need to happen? Bill and I are both on the record saying that we believe in more progressive taxes. We believe in an estate tax. We don’t believe in enormous inherited wealth.  

There are certain places where Bill and I sit where that is not a popular idea. Bill will be the first person to tell you, and Warren Buffett will be the second, that they could not have done what they did without having grown up in the United States, benefiting from the United States education system, benefiting from the infrastructure that exists here to build a business. If they had grown up in — pick your favorite place — Senegal, they couldn’t have started their businesses. There’s no way. So they have benefited. But we do need to think about how we right some of these inequities. How do we open our networks of power for women and people of color? We have to think about our privilege. I have to think about my privilege every day.

Yet, they choose to live in the lowest-taxed state in the nation, where there is no income tax and no corporate tax. With all of Gates’ power and influence, he has not lobbied the Washington State legislature to pass a progressive income tax. The schools of Washington State have been underfunded for years, and it took a long-running court case to get the legislature to allocate more money to them. Meanwhile, Bill used his influence to fight for a charter school law, enabling about 3,500 students to attend charter schools in a state with a student enrollment of one million.  Warren Buffett and Bill Gates had very different experiences in “the United States education system.” Bill went to private school in Seattle, with small classes, lavish facilities, and experienced teachers; his own children attended the same elite private school. Warren Buffett went to public school in Omaha, sent his own children to public school in Omaha, and they sent their children to public school.

What’s a recent epiphany you’ve had about your privilege? That it’s not enough to read about it. You have to be in the community with people who don’t look like you. When I read about a shooting, maybe in the south side of Seattle, I’m not living the experience. Whereas if I have a friend who’s a person of color, they most likely are living that experience or know somebody who was part of that community. And so my youngest daughter and I — she has a lot of friends whom I’m meeting, and they’re of very mixed races, I love that — have this motto that we go by: Every single person who walks through our door should feel comfortable in our house, despite how large it is and that it has nice art. And, believe me, there are people who show up at my front door who are not that comfortable. So sometimes that means sitting down inside the front door with our dog — and I’m in my yoga pants, no makeup on — and petting the dog until they’re comfortable being there. And only if we’ve made them comfortable can we be in real community. I have to do more to break down those barriers. It is very hard for almost anybody to show up at my front door….

To get back to philanthropy: What about the notion that the foundation’s work on an issue like public education is inherently antidemocratic? You’ve spent money in that area in a way that maybe seems like it’s crowding out people’s actual wants in that area. What’s your counter to that criticism? Bill and I always go back to “What is philanthropy’s role?” It is to be catalytic. It’s to try and put new ideas forward and test them and see if they work. If you can convince government to scale up, that is how you have success. But philanthropic dollars are a tiny slice of the United States education budget. Even if we put a billion dollars in the State of California, that’s not going to do that much. So we experiment with things. (Including funding small-population schools, bonuses for high-performing teachers and supporting the development and implementation of the Common Core educational standards.)

 If we had been successful, David, you’d see a lot more charter schools. I’d love to see 20 percent charter schools in every state. But we haven’t been successful. I’d love to say we had outsize influence. We don’t.

Certainly you have more influence than, say, a group of parents. Not necessarily. I went and met with a group of three dozen parents in Memphis. We thought we had a good idea for them. They were having none of it. So we didn’t move forward. A group of parents, a group of teachers, they can have a very large influence.

Well, Melinda is wrong about the influence of the foundation and the Gates’. After all, they singlehandedly (or four-handedly) funded the Common Core standards and paid out millions to every organization they could think of advocate for them. More than anyone else, the Gates Foundation imposed the Common Core standards on the nation, and they flopped by any measure one could think of. All of their “experiments” on the American educational system have failed. But she is right that the charter movement has stalled. In some states where the Gates’ have been most active, only 3-5% of the students are in charter schools. Now that scandals appear daily in the charter industry, this investment is blowing up too. And as she said, “a group of parents, a group of teachers, they can have a very large influence.” Yup. Parents and teachers can beat big money. They can beat the Gates’ money and protect their public schools from being one of Bill & Melinda’s “experiments.”

 

 

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Common Core, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates
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