This article explains succinctly why certain members of the billionaire boys club have decided that Washington State absolutely positively must have charter schools. Their recipe for school reform: the free market. And why not? The free market works for them. Will they put their own children (or in the case of the Bezos family, grandchildren) in charter schools? Don’t be silly.
Archives for category: Gates Foundation, Bill Gates
TeachPlus is one of those Gates-funded teacher organizations that is supposed to provide a different perspective on teaching than the teachers’ unions. It can be counted on to advocate for the interests of new teachers who allegedly want merit pay, don’t care about job protections, and want to be judged by the test scores of their students. The teachers for whom it seems to speak are part of the New American Economy, where jobs are short-term, not seen as part of a career.
TeachPlus has just conducted a survey of teachers. Its first startling discovery is that “For the first time in almost a half-century, teachers with ten or fewer years experience comprise over 50% of the teaching force. We refer to these teachers as the New Majority.” This “new generation” of teachers–unlike, we may suppose, the older generation of veterans–have “high expectations for their students and a strong desire to build a profession based on high standards.”
The “new generation” wants student growth to be part of teacher evaluations (the veterans do not); the new generation wants students growth to count for at least 20 percent of their evaluation (the veterans do not); the new generation wants to change compensation and tenure so younger teachers (themselves) can get higher salaries (the veterans do not). The veterans want licensure tests to cover the skills needed in the classroom (the new generation does not).
Both generations agree they need more time to collaborate with their peers. Both agree on the importance of clear and measurable standards.
And here is the interesting part:
Both agree that current evaluations are not helpful in improving practice (what are current evaluation? Using test scores to measure teacher quality.)
Both agree that a longer school day would not be helpful “to support students more effectively.”
Both agree that increasing class size to pay some teachers more would be a mistake.
The takeaway: Teachers, young and old, agree and disagree on various “reform” proposals.
On two issues they are united: They do not see the value of a longer school day, and they do not want larger class sizes in exchange for higher pay.
But a matter that should concern us all: Current “reform” policies are driving experienced teachers out of the nation’s classrooms. This cannot be good for anyone. It is certainly not good for the young teachers, who need senior teachers to help them improve.
How can a profession become “great” by demoralizing and ousting those who know the most?
Who would go to a hospital in an emergency and insist on being treated by an intern, not a senior physician?
Who would want their legal affairs to be handled by a lawyer who just graduated law school if they could get a senior partner instead?
When will President Obama, Secretary Duncan, Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and all the other people driving current policy realize that they are inflicting harm on the nation’s education system?
Please consider signing this petition.
Several states plan to share confidential student data with a corporation funded by the Gates Foundation. This information may be shared with other entities, for purposes that are not clear.
As parents, grandparents and educators, we must protect our children’s rights to privacy.
We expect schools to understand the needs of children. We do not expect them to share this information with corporations, marketers, or other government agencies, except in the aggregate–not with individual identification– for informational purposes only.
It is understandable that government needs to collect data about enrollment and attendance and special education and trends.
There is no reason to release the names of individual students to outside entities.
Please protect our children and our students against commercial and governmental intrusion into their lives.
The petition begins as follows:
“New York State, along with Colorado, Illinois and Massachusetts, intends to provide confidential student information to a private corporation called the Shared Learning Collaborative, funded by the Gates Foundation, which in turn will make this data available to for-profit companies to develop and market their commercial learning products.
This confidential data will include student names, addresses, test scores, grades, attendance, economic and special education status, IEPs, and disciplinary records. All this is being done without parents’ knowledge or consent, and represents a shocking violation of our children’s right to privacy.
Four more states have said they will soon follow in phase II: Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky and Louisiana, and the Gates Foundation is soliciting even more states to join in.”
Matt Taibbi really doesn’t like Tom Friedman. He has written several articles taking Friedman apart, both for his writing and his thinking.
What educators have learned about Friedman is that he has no first-hand knowledge about schools and teaching. Whatever he writes seems to be based on conversations with Bill Gates or Arne Duncan. It’s a shame that a journalist who is so out of touch does not take the time to meet with teachers and principals and students, or take a few days in public schools to learn about their challenges and their accomplishments. Until he does, he should not write about what is happening in education–because he is uninformed–and should not offer advice about what ought to be done to improve education–because he is misinformed.
It’s happening in local school board races around the nation.
Out-of-state money is pouring in to capture seats on local school boards.
The money comes from billionaires like Michael Bloomberg and Reed Hastings, owner of Netflix, and Alice Walton of the Walmart family. They fund candidates who support privatization of public education. Their resources overwhelm local candidates.
The first high-profile race to attract big money was last year in Denver, when large amounts of money arrived from businessmen with no previous interest in school board races, targeted to defeat Emily Sirota, a Denver mom. Sirota threatened control by hard-line privatizers.
Earlier this year, millions of dollars were spent by out-of-state donors to hand control of the Louisiana state school board to Governor Jindal, so he could pursue his privatization plans.
In Washington State, the charter referendum is financed by a handful of billionaires, some local, like Bill Gates, some not, like Alice Walton of Arkansas.
In Georgia, the charter referendum is funded almost entirely by out-of-state donors like Walton of Arkansas.
Now in little Los Altos, California, out-of-state money is targeting a charter school critic with negative ads. The school board member had raised questions about a charter school serving some of the wealthiest residents of the district.
The privatization movement may not have a popular base, but it is adept at marshaling big money to buy support and elections. The only way to stop them is to build an informed public.
Anthony Cody has a stunning article this week about what is happening in Louisiana.
The expansion of vouchers and charters will facilitate the re-segregation of the schools, he predicts.
Governor Jindal eliminated all funding for public libraries in his new budget.
The TFA Commissioner has put a young and unqualified TFA alum in charge of teacher evaluation.
The freight train of reform (aka privatization) is running full blast in that unfortunate state.
Arne Duncan will be there any day now to congratulate Governor Jindal on the progress made in “reforming” the schools.
And lots of thanks to the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, the Walton Foundation, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Netflix founder Reed Hastings, and Teach for America for turning the clock back to 1950 and calling it “reform.”
Parent Revolution, the organization handsomely funded by the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, and the Walton Foundation, has finally gotten a charter conversion in the state of California, nearly two years after the law was passed.
Some victory: In a school with 600 plus students and 400 families, only 286 parents voted for the charter; when some changed their mind and tried to rescind their vote, they were told by a judge that they could not take their signature off the petition.
Only those who supported the charter were allowed to vote on which charter operator would run the new charter. That reduced the number of eligible voters to180.
Of the 180 who were eligible, only 53 voted on which operator would win control of their public school.
The winning operator received a grand total of 50 votes. That is 1/8 of the parents in the school. That is less than 15% of the parents in the school.
In the linked article above, no mention is made of the fact that the Adelanto school district had a charter that was closed last year because its operators engaged in funny business with the public’s money.
The Tampa Bay Times reports that teachers are baffled, confused, and outraged by their value-added ratings, which will determine their evaluation, their longevity and their career.
The story begins like this:
Geoffrey Robinson is a National Board certified teacher at Osceola High School in Pinellas County who says 60 percent of his upper-level calculus students last year tested so well they earned college credit.
But this week Robinson received his teacher evaluation, based on a controversial new formula being rolled out statewide.
He was shocked to see how poorly he scored in the “student achievement” portion: 10.63 out of 40.
He’s not alone. Teachers all over Pinellashave received their scores, calculated by a new formula that confounds even math teachers. Hillsborough teachers also got their scores, though their situation is different due to participation in a grant program with its own evaluation rules. In Pasco, the scoring is on hold while the teachers union and the district figure out how to implement it.
Another teacher said that she is one of the best in the state in terms of test scores, but was rated only 57 out of 100 points. She said:
“I know I’m good, I’ve been teaching for 19 years, I’m not stressing about that. But if I was new, I’d go home crying.”
Teachers were wondering how these wildly erratic and inaccurate ratings are supposed to improve education.
In Hillsborough, where the Gates Foundation poured in many millions of dollars ($100 million?), 95 percent of teachers were rated either “effective” or “highly effective.” So they are not as unhappy as the bewildered teachers in Pinellas County.
Some teachers were rated based on the scores of students they never taught.
As one teacher says in the article, this system is not ready for prime time.
Can anyone remember how or why it was supposed to improve education?
It would be interesting if someone figures out how much money Florida received from Race to the Top and how much it has spent to implement the mandates of Race to the Top.
The U.S. Department of Education is doing something to the nation’s schools that has never been done before.
Through the leverage of its Race to the Top program, it has persuaded, pushed, and prodded at least 36 states to evaluate teachers by the test scores of their students.
There is no evidence that this will improve education or teaching. There is reason to believe it will incentivize narrowing the curriculum, cheating, and teaching to the test.
There is plenty of evidence from sources like the National Academy of Education and the American Educational Research Association that the ratings will reflect who is in the class, not teacher quality.
John Thompson, guest-blogging for Anthony Cody, asks why the Gates Foundation went full-steam ahead with value-added assessment and the MET Project, encouraging rapid implementation of value-added assessment without waiting to get the results of its experimentation.
Wouldn’t it have been wiser to learn how to do it right rather than imposing this untried, unproven methodology on millions of students and teachers?
Never before has the U.S. Department of Education imposed its views on the nation–even when there was ample evidence to support its policies.
No one knows how to make VAA work without incentivizing all the wrong consequences.
It would have been a good idea to do this right, not fast.
Unfortunately both Gates and Duncan agreed that the basic problem of U.S. education is “bad” teachers.
They are wrong, and they won’t admit it.
The basic problem of American education is poverty.
The kids in affluent districts are doing very well indeed.
Remember that the LA Times created a firestorm in 2010 when it created value added ratings for teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District and released the names and ratings of thousands of teachers. Arne Duncan said it was a good idea, but many researchers warned that the ratings were volatile, inaccurate, and unstable. And others saw a violation of confidentiality as well as ethical issues. In the aftermath, a teacher named Roberto Riguelas committed suicide, and his family said he was depressed to see what he thought was an unfair rating of his work.
New York City released the teacher ratings earlier this year, and again there were many complaints about inaccuracy. This time, Bill Gates published an op-Ed opposing the practice on grounds that it makes it impossible for supervisors to counsel teachers when their ratings are published.
Be all that as it may, the Los Angeles Times is now suing LAUSD for access to teachers’ names so they can release their ratings again.
I am still trying to understand what the newspaper thinks it is accomplishing, what purpose is served other than selling papers.
Diane Ravitch's blog 