Bill Gates, On the Record
As I wrote over the weekend, it has been announced that Bill Gates will be among the keynote speakers at the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards' Teaching and Learning conference next month. I have closely watched as Gates has become the most powerful figure in American education over the past decade, as a result of focused investments in research, advocacy, and non-profit organizations like the National Board. (In 2012, I had an extended dialogue with the Gates Foundation.)
Given the audience and Gates' recent statements, we can anticipate what he is likely to say. But I am less interested in the praise that he will heap on the accomplished educators in the room than in what he has said and done in the past, when speaking to altogether different audiences. So like Marley's ghost on Christmas eve, I want to take us on a bit of a tour of the echoes of Gates' past, lest we forget what this man has wrought on the schools of America.
On what we know about effective teaching, Bill and Melinda Gates wrote in 2011,
It may surprise you--it was certainly surprising to us--but the field of education doesn't know very much at all about effective teaching. We have all known terrific teachers. You watch them at work for 10 minutes and you can tell how thoroughly they've mastered the craft. But nobody has been able to identify what, precisely, makes them so outstanding.This ignorance has serious ramifications. We can't give teachers the right kind of support because there's no way to distinguish the right kind from the wrong kind. We can't evaluate teaching because we are not consistent in what we're looking for. We can't spread best practices because we can't capture them in the first place.
It should certainly surprise any NBCTs that the field of education knows nothing about effective teaching, since the entire mission of the NBPTS has been built around this understanding, and