Archives for category: Gates Foundation, Bill Gates
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Laura Chapman : The Gates Foundation’s Newest Reformy Organization

By dianeravitch
August 17, 2017 //
11

Laura Chapman explains the nature of “Education Cities,” the latest plaything of the Billionaire Boys Club!

Here is the latest reformy initiative: Education Cities!

Our dear friend Laura Chapman has deciphered what this latest disruptive program is.

She writes:

“Here is some information about Education Cities.

http://www.educationcities.org/

“It is connected to the Education Entrepreneurship Trust (CEE-Trust) launched by The Mind Trust in Indianapolis.

“Both ventures have received Gates Foundation money to push “personalized learning.”

“About Education Cities:

“FUNDERS Laura and John Arnold foundation, Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, and Walton Family Foundation.

“PARTNERS

“Education Cities works with leading organizations to help our members achieve their missions.”

1. “Bellwether Education Partners works with Education Cities on research and capacity building projects. Bellwether is a nonprofit dedicated to helping education organizations—in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors—become more effective in their work and achieve dramatic results, especially for high-need students.”

“In Cincinnati, Bellwether was the recruiter for the “Accelerate Great Schools,” initiative that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, pushed by high profile local foundations and the business community—all intent on marketing the need for “high quality seats” meaning you close and open schools based on the state’s weapon-ized system of rating schools, increase charter schools, and hire TFA. (We have a TFA alum on the school board). The CEO of Accelerate Great Schools recruited by Bellwether was a TFA manager from MindTrust in Indianapolis. He lasted about 18 months and accelerated himself to a new job.

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/education/2017/01/24/ceo-quietly-quits-school-accelerator/96997612/

2. “Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) at the University of Washington partners with Education Cities to analyze and identify policies that create the conditions that allow great schools to thrive. Through research and policy analysis, CRPE seeks ways to make public education more effective, especially for America’s disadvantaged students.”

“CRPE should be regarded as an operational arm of the Gates Foundation. It marketed the Gates “Compacts,” a make-nice-with-your-charters MOU giving district resources to charters with charters promising to share their “best practices” and other nonsense. The bait included $100,000 up front with the promise of more money to the district if they met x, y, z, terms of the memorandum of understanding. Only few districts got extra money. Many reasons, some obvious like the departure of the people who signed the MOUs.

3. “Public Impact” partners with Education Cities (and Bellwether Education Partners) on research and capacity building projects. With a mission to dramatically improve learning outcomes for all children in the United States, Public Impact concentrates its work on creating the conditions in which great schools can thrive. The Opportunity Culture initiative aims to extend the reach of excellent teaches and their teams to more students, for more pay, within recurring budgets. Public Impact, a national research and consulting firm, launched the Opportunity Culture initiative’s implementation phase in 2011, with funding from The Joyce Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.” Current work is funded by the Overdeck Family Foundation and the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation.”

“Public Impact is marketing 13 school turnaround models, almost all of these with reassignments of teachers and students to accommodate “personalized” something. One arm of the “opportunity culture” website is a job placement service for teachers. In prior administrations Public Impact and Bellwether worked together to get USDE support for charter schools.

4. “Thomas B. Fordham Institute partners with Education Cities to analyze and identify policies and practices that create the conditions that allow great schools to thrive. The Thomas B. Fordham Institute works to advance educational excellence for every child through research, analysis, and commentary, as well as on-the-ground action and advocacy in Ohio.”

“Well, we have a pretty good idea in Ohio of how all of that pontification worked out.

“Here are the cities in the foundation-led move to eliminate democratically elected school boards and substitute public schools with contract schools that receive public funds but usually privately operated. At one time the number of Education Cities was 30, then 28, now 25.

1. Albuquerque, NM, Excellent Schools New Mexico

2. Baton Rouge, LA New Schools for Baton Rouge

3. Boise, ID Bluum

4. Boston, MA Boston Schools Fund, Empower Schools

5. Chicago, IL, New Schools for Chicago

6. Cincinnati, OH, Accelerate Great Schools

7. Denver, CO, Gates Family Foundation, Donnell-Kay Foundation

8. Detroit, MI, The Skillman Foundation

9. Indianapolis, IN, The Mind Trust

10. Kansas City, MO, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation

11. Las Vegas, NV, Opportunity 180

12. Los Angeles, CA, Great Public Schools Now

15. Memphis, TN, Memphis Education Fund

16. Minneapolis, MN, Minnesota Comeback

17. Nashville, TN, Project Renaissance

18. New Orleans, LA, New Schools for New Orleans

19. Oakland, CA, Educate78, Great Oakland Public Schools Leadership Center, Rogers Family Foundation

20. Philadelphia, PA, Philadelphia School Partnership

21. Phoenix, AZ, New Schools for Phoenix

22. Richmond, CA, Chamberlin Family Foundation

23. Rochester, NY, E3 Rochester

24. San Jose, CA, Innovate Public Schools

25. Washington, DC, Education Forward DC, CityBridge Education

“These cities have been targeted for capture by promoters of choice, charters, tech, poaching talent and resources from public schools, and pushing the idea that established public schools are failures.”

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates

Nancy Bailey: Bill Gates Wonders What the Purpose of Life Might Be

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2017 //
27

Nancy Bailey read a post written by Bill Gates (or his writer). It seems he read a book that led him to write a post called “The Purpose Problem: What If People Run Out of Things to Do?”

Nancy responded here.

I can say that the purpose problem could be very troubling for a billionaire. Most people find their purpose is to survive, or to make enough money to have a comfortable life and to send their children to college. Others find a purpose in their religious activities, helping others.

For a man worth north of $50 billion, the purpose problem must loom large.

He doesn’t need to work, but most people find their life enriched by work.

He doesn’t need to make money, but most people find that making money is necessary for the essentials of life.

He has spent billions trying to solve global problems, and he very likely has helped untold numbers of people by investing in medicine and science.

His educational investments have not panned out very well, but he can’t seem to give up trying to fix the schools and ending up by demoralizing teachers and driving them out of their profession.

Bailey hopes that Gates will give some thought to how his activities have a negative effect on other people’s careers, lives, and purpose:

Gates ironically reflects on what it means to have purpose in one’s life.

I say ironically, because many blame Bill Gates for the current push to replace teachers in our public schools with technology—calling it personalized or competency-based learning.

Not only will teachers lose their profession and their purpose, a whole segment of society will be displaced—careers shattered.

This will drastically affect how and what students learn. Even our youngest children will obtain their knowledge on machines.

Brick and mortar schools will be a thing of the past. Children will learn on devices anyplace and anytime. Or they will attend online charter schools with baby-sitter-like facilitators instead of teachers. Connections to humans for learning will be distant…

He doesn’t ponder what troubling results can occur when “disruption” through technology happens in our public schools, or what it will mean when there is no more public school system in America.

Can you help Bill Gates as he tries to find his purpose in life?

Categories Gates Foundation, Bill Gates

Rachel M. Cohen: Is VAM Dying? A Review of the Evidence

By dianeravitch
July 21, 2017 //
10

It is called VAM. Value-added-measurement, or value-added-modeling. It means measuring the effectiveness of teachers by the rise or fall of the test scores of their students.

Rachel M. Cohen, writing in The American Prospect, documents the slow but steady retreat from evaluating teachers by the test scores of their students. Only a few years ago, VAM was lauded by Secretary of a Education Arne Duncan as the ultimate way to determine which teachers were succeeding and which were failing; Duncan made it a condition of competing for Race to the Top billions, and more than 40 states agreed to adopt it; Bill Gates spent hundreds of millions of dollars promoting it; a team of economists led by Raj Chetty of Harvard claimed that the actions of a teacher in elementary school predicted teen pregnancy, adult earnings, and other momentous life consequences, and earned front-page status in the anew York Times; and thousands of teachers and principals were fired because of it.

But time is the test, and time has not been kind to VAM.

Cohen reviews the role of the courts, with some refusing to get involved, and others agreeing that VAM is arbitrary and capricious. She credits Duncan and Gates for their role in creating this monstrous and invalid way of evaluating teachers. The grand idea, having cut down many good teachers, is nearing its end. But not soon enough.

Categories Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Standardized Testing, Teacher Evaluations, VAM

Gary Sasso: Why Don’t the Billionaires Help the Schools That Most Children Attend?

By dianeravitch
July 20, 2017 //
86

Gary Sasso, dean of education at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, asks a simple question: if billionaires like Bill Gates and Eli Broad care about our nation’s future, why don’t they help the public schools, which enroll 85% of America’s children?

Sasso wrote in Salon:

“Obscured by the rancor of the school reform debate is this fact: Socio-economic status is the most relevant determinant of student success in school.

“It is not a coincidence that the so-called decline of the American public school system has coincided with the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor. According to a 2014 Pew Research Center report, the wealth disparity between upper-income and middle-income families is at a record high. Upper-income families are nearly seven times wealthier than middle-income ones, compared to 3.4 times richer in 1983. Upper-income family wealth is nearly 70 times that of the country’s lower-income families, also the widest wealth gap between these families in 30 years.”

So why do the 1% blame teachers and unions for sociology-economic conditions they can’t control?

“Charter schools will never be the answer to improving education for all. It is simply not scaleable. And yet titans of industry such as Bill Gates, Eli Broad and the Walton family, and billionaires such as John Paulson who earlier this year gave $8.5 million to New York’s Success Academy charter school system, are pouring their millions into support for charter schools—millions that will not, incidentally, be invested in improving the schools that the vast majority of U.S. students attend: traditional public schools.

“Can it be a coincidence that those who have benefited most from the last 50 years of steadily increasing income inequality—the top 10 percent–support an education solution that hinges on denigrating public school teachers, dismantling unions and denying that income inequality is the underlying condition at the root of the problem?”

The facts don’t support their crusade for charters, he says, so they must be driven by ideology.

What do you think?

Categories Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privatization

News Flash! Bill Gates Discovers Multiple Intelligences

By dianeravitch
May 23, 2017 //
43

To those of us who have been around education for a while, we know that Howard Gardner of Harvard University was first to write about the idea of multiple intelligences. This has been the guiding idea of much of his work, recognizing that some young people are gifted in one area, but not in all areas. All of these intelligences are worthy and should be cultivated. His seminal book, Frames of Mind, was published in 1983 and attracted enormous attention.

But, lo! Bill Gates himself has just discovered multiple intelligences! Maybe he read about it and forget the source.

Gates built his career on strong logic and mathematical skills, establishing himself as a brilliant coder with a knack for solving technical problems. But he admits he lacked other strengths, such as strong interpersonal skills.

In a series of posts on Twitter, Gates shares the things he wishes he knew when he was just starting out in his career.

“Looking back on when I left college, there are some things I wish I had known,” Gates writes.

“Intelligence takes many different forms,” Gates says. “It is not one-dimensional. And not as important as I used to think.”

Do you think this will change his view on standardized testing as the only valid measure of students, teachers, and schools?

I doubt it.

But it is strangely encouraging to know that he has discovered multiple intelligences 34 years after Gardner pronounced them to be valid and important. Gates should give credit where credit is due. It is kind of like someone who arrived on the shores of Cape Cod in 1792 and announced that he just discovered America.

Categories Gates Foundation, Bill Gates

Tennessee: Parents Explain Why National PTA No Longer Represents Them

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2017 //
9

This is a must-read.

The Momma Bears of Tennessee are ferocious in protecting their children against corporate reform.

In this post, they excoriate the National PTA for selling out the interests of real parents and deferring to the powerful.

The National PTA supports Common Core and high-stakes testing; it opposes opting out of tests.

“As Momma Bears, we are beyond frustrated with TNReady testing. Every year, it’s one testing fiasco after another. Already, reports are coming in this year that the test booklets and answer sheets don’t line up. It’s just another source of frustration for our children. So, its no wonder that more and more parents are wanting to opt their children out of testing. Unfortunately, the Tennessee Department of Education refuses to recognize that parents do have opt-out rights.

“​So, wouldn’t it be great if we had a state law that settled things once and for all by giving parents the explicit right to opt out of standardized testing?

“YEAH!!! Momma Bears would love to see a law giving parents explicit opt-out rights!!! But guess what?

“​If you are a Momma Bear PTA leader, you are not allowed to publicly advocate for legislation allowing parents to opt out of standardized testing. That’s right. A couple of dozen uppity-ups in the National PTA all got together last year and decided that parents didn’t want the right to opt their children out of testing.

[National PTA said:] “National PTA does not believe that opting out is an effective strategy to address the frustration over testing. Mass opt-out comes at a real cost to the goals of educational equity and individual student achievement.”

“We know, parents are scratching their heads on that one!! When did dues paying PTA members vote to oppose a parent’s right to opt their children out of abusive standardized testing?

“Oh, yeah, they didn’t. Nope. There wasn’t a vote. PTA members did not approve this position statement.

“Instead, the PTA uppity-ups aligned with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to oppose parents who wanted the right to protect their children from abusive testing. While the PTA attempts some lame plattitude about supporting parental rights, it’s clear the PTA thinks that parents only get to decide what’s best for their kids when it doesn’t run afoul of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.”

Why did National PTA become cheerleaders for Common Core? Was it right after receiving a grant from the Gates Foundation in 2009 to promote Common Core?

The Mama Bears say:

“Now, we know why the PTA likes to say, “it’s not your Momma’s PTA” because our Momma’s PTA actually taught parents to advocate for the best interests of their children. Today’s PTA is nothing more than a corp-ed shill who wants to push parents right out of the decision-making process.”

Categories Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Opt Out, Parent Groups, Parents, Resistance, Special Education, Tennessee, Testing

Gary Rubinstein: The Oops Factor at Bill Gates’ Favorite School in Colorado

By dianeravitch
April 21, 2017 //
16

The trouble with hailing a school as a model is that you can’t predict what might happen next year.

This has never stopped Bill Gates!

In 2012, he visited the Eagle Valley High School in Colorado. In 2013, he celebrated the school in his annual letter as one that was successfully adopting his ideas.

But…Gary Rubinstein reviewed Eagle Valley High School’s latest state report, and it is no longer a model school. Gary doesn’t know why. Maybe it is just a regular school. No miracles here. Or maybe it is the Kiss of Gates.

Update On Colorado District That Gates Praised in 2013

Categories Accountability, Colorado, Corporate Reform, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Testing

Nancy Bailey: Poor Memphis! The Guinea Pig District of Tennessee

By dianeravitch
April 9, 2017 //
3

Nancy E. Bailey, who teaches in Tennessee, posted a blog about the legislature’s habit of using poor Memphis as its experimental district, where disruption is the rule and failure is persistent. Jim Gifford, a high school English teacher in Murfreesboro wrote the post on Nancy’s blog.

Tennessee Legislators Cry, “Thank God for Memphis!”

Tennessee had the bad fortune to win a bundle of Race to the Top cash, so some district had to be the donkey where everyone pinned the tail. It was Memphis. Every bad reformer idea lands on the students, teachers, and schools of Memphis (Shelby County).

Bill Gates dumped a barrel of money into Memphis to try out his pet ideas about teacher evaluation. Oops!

Then came the so-called Achievement School District. A total disaster!

Now legislators have decided to experiment with vouchers. Where? Memphis, of course.

The people who live in Memphis don’t like the idea of vouchers. But nobody cares what they think.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Failure, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Memphis, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, Tennessee

Education Law Center: America’s Most Fiscally Disadvantaged School Districts

By dianeravitch
February 24, 2017 //
10

The Education Law Center lists the most fiscally distressed districts in the nation. You will note that one of them is Shelby County, Tennessee, where the Gates Foundation and Stand for Children expended a great deal of effort to introduce charters and district consolidation as a mini-bandaid to the district’s financial problems. The Gates Foundation paid to bring in the Boston Consulting Group to offer advice a few years back on merging districts, not on how to solve its fiscal problems. The Gates Foundation gave Shelby County a grant of $90 million over seven years to improve teacher quality. Yet Gates never addressed the basic fiscal disadvantage of the district. Presumably he thought that if he could VAM the teachers, then the test scores would go up, and the district’s budget would not matter. But it does matter. Once again, the Gates Foundation proved that it addresses the wrong problems and diverts attention from the need for a fair tax code that would reduce the billions accumulated by people like Bill Gates!

ELC RELEASES 2017 LIST OF NATION’S MOST FISCALLY DISADVANTAGED SCHOOL DISTRICTS

47 Districts in 20 States

Education Law Center released today the 2017 list of the most financially strapped public school districts in the nation. The 2017 list includes 47 school districts in 20 states, with every region of the country represented. Over 1.5 million children are educated in these districts, attending underfunded schools under severe fiscal distress.

The report – “America’s Most Fiscally Disadvantaged School Districts” &#45 identifies school districts across the country with higher than average student need and lower than average funding when compared to other districts in their regional labor market.

“A district’s funding level relative to other districts in the same labor market is perhaps the most important factor in whether schools have the resources they need, including effective teachers,” said Dr. Bruce Baker of the Rutgers Graduate School of Education and a co-author of the report. “School districts must compete for teachers and support staff, the largest share of any district’s budget. Districts are fiscally disadvantaged if they don’t have the funding to offer competitive wages and comparable working conditions relative to nearby districts and other professions.”

Among the report’s key findings are:

Sumter, South Carolina, and Shelby County, Tennessee, face extreme fiscal conditions, with nearly 3 times area poverty rates and less than 84 and 83 percent, respectively, of the average state and local revenue per pupil. School funding levels in Tennessee and South Carolina are among the lowest in the nation.

Reading and Allentown, Pennsylvania, are also in extreme distress, with nearly 2.5 times area poverty rates and below 80 percent of the average state and local revenue per pupil.

Chicago and Philadelphia are again the most fiscally disadvantaged large urban districts in the nation. Illinois and Pennsylvania have a highly regressive school funding systems, marked by wide funding disparities between low and high poverty districts.

California has the highest number of fiscally disadvantaged districts.

Massachusetts has a relatively progressive funding system, but Lowell is severely disadvantaged with a poverty rate 2.6 times higher than surrounding areas and only 83 percent of the average state and local revenue per pupil.

Connecticut has four districts on the list, while Michigan and Arizona have three fiscally disadvantaged districts.
“These findings again show that Governors and Legislatures in far too many states stubbornly resist investing in K &#45 12 education so all children have the resources needed to succeed in school,” said David Sciarra, ELC Executive Director and a report co-author. “The states with districts on this list chronically underfund their poorest schools, leaving behind thousands of vulnerable children. This is our national hall of shame.”

America’s Most Fiscally Disadvantaged School Districts is a companion report to Is School Funding Fair? A National Report Card. For the complete Report Card, please visit: http://www.schoolfundingfairness.org

Education Law Center Press Contact:
Sharon Krengel
Policy and Outreach Director
skrengel@edlawcenter.org
973-624-1815, x 24

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Funding, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privatization

Mercedes Schneider: Bill Gates Goes Strangely Silent About His Education Agenda

By dianeravitch
February 19, 2017 //
40

For more than the past decade, Bill Gates has dabbled in education. He launches initiative after initiative, with slim or no research, and all of them flop. While he dabbles–whether it is the Common Core or evaluating teachers by test scores–he messes up other people’s lives with no accountability for his screw-ups. He just moves on to his Next Big Idea.

Mercedes Schneider points out that the Gates Foundation spends more money “reforming education” in the U.S., but has nothing to show for it.

Curiously, the Gates Foundation’s annual letter doesn’t even mention education! (Correction: Leonie Haimson pointed out that education was not mentioned in the Foundation’s annual letter; its annual report is not published yet. So maybe we will hear some Trump-style claims about the successes of VAM and charters, and other DeVos strategies for privatization.)

Will he butt out? Will he admit error?

I saw him on TV Saturday night warning about the dangers of bio-terrorism. A few weeks ago, he met with Donald Trump in his golden penthouse and came away expressing admiration, prophesying that Trump had the chance to be transformative, like John F. Kennedy, by driving education innovation with new technologies. What’s on his mind? Saving humanity or market share?

Categories Accountability, Common Core, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privatization, Teacher Evaluations, Trump
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »