Video: Bill Gates “Explains” Common Core
In the following six-minute video at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in March 2014, Bill Gates demonstrates his privileged view of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).
Gates has contributed over $4.3 million to AEI, with over $1 million in 2012 for “exploring the challenges of Common Core,” among other issues, so it is only fitting that AEI should promulgate Gates’ CCSS opinions.
Allow me to counter Gates’ billionaire view with my hundredaire reality.
Gates opens with CCSS as “not a curriculum” and that CCSS does not “tell teachers how to teach.” Nevertheless, according to his 2009 speech to legislators, Gates anticipates that CCSS will lead to curriculum and assessments that set teachers at the mercy of “market forces”:
When the tests are aligned to the common standards, the curriculum will line up as well—and that will unleash powerful market forces in the service of better teaching. For the first time, there will be a large base of customers eager to buy products that can help every kid learn and every teacher get better. [Emphasis added.]
Moving on.
In his selling of CCSS, Gates proposes that “ordering” of standards has been a “problem.” Ordering of standards has nothing to do with the standards themselves. Moreover, at this point in his explanation, Gates assumes that “sameness”– all Video: Bill Gates “Explains” Common Core | deutsch29: