The Gates Foundation's Imaginary World of School Reform Collides with Reality
Guest post by John Thompson.
The Gates Foundation's Director of Education, College Ready, Vicki Phillips, describes what she admits is the ideal implementation of Common Core and test-driven evaluations. In the "vast majority of cases," these changes would be implemented carefully. The key principle would be that teachers and students would be given "time to adjust to new expectations before they face serious consequences for not meeting them."
If implemented properly, Common Core "test scores shouldn't be used to make consequential decisions, such as whether students should graduate, until we are sure we understand how to interpret the results." Neither would schools or teachers be punished "until teachers have had a few years to get used to the new ways of working."
Such a distinction between idealized implementation and reality would seem to be progress. Just when it seemed like the Gates Foundation was conceding that it is important to acknowledge the facts about their theories, however, Phillips showed she was just spouting rhetoric. Phillips claimed that the ideal state she described "with the exception of a few outliers," is what is "actually happening across the country."
OK, everyone participates in political spin, but this bait and switch is especially brazen. The Gates Foundation and other reformers claim that output-driven accountability is necessary because the