Gates-funded advocacy group to shut down
The Gates Foundation, the nation’s most influential education-policy organization, has quietly ended financial support for a locally based national group formed to push for favored reforms, including an overhaul of teacher evaluations.
Communities for Teaching Excellence, headed by former L.A. school board member Yolie Flores, is planning to close its doors next month. Although based in Los Angeles, the group had a presence in Pittsburgh, Memphis and Hillsborough County in Florida — all locations where where the Seattle-based Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has funded the development of new teacher-evaluation systems.
In the L.A. area, $60 million is going to a consortium of charter-school groups. The grants for the other regions totaled $230 million.
Flores, 49, became the founding director of Communities for Teaching Excellence in 2010, after a four-year