Maybe Bill Gates Can’t Ever Fix Education
Bill Gates has given some $28 billion, though the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to help fix the world’s problems. He’s tackled global poverty, agricultural development, disaster relief, and combatting AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, with notable success. But there have also been some big failures.
One of the biggest problems, he said, has been trying to fix American education. Maybe it’s time to consider why that’s so difficult for him. According to an Associated Press piece :
Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates says eradicating malaria, tuberculosis and polio is easier than fixing the United States’ education system.
Gates talked about his foundation’s work improving and distributing vaccines across the world. But he says making advances in education is the foundation’s hardest challenge.” You name it, we have been passed by,” Gates said of the country’s math and science programs. New technology to engage students holds some promise, but Gates says it tends to only benefit those who are motivated.
This is an interesting admission. He has said before that, “America is the land of equal opportunity, and the reality is we’re not delivering on that promise when low-income households end up in public schools that don’t educate their kids well.”
He believes it’s important to fix the American education system because education, and nurturing Americans to do amazing things, is important to American prosperity.
But maybe he can’t fix education. Despite building 10,000 new schools, investing in 100 education policy nonprofits, and placing 500 op-eds, it might be actually impossible for him to make a difference. That’s because our education performance problem might be more serious than the schools can fix at this point.
Over the long run we might see that can throw billions more at education and it will never make a difference, at least not as far as our performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the county’s nationally Maybe Bill Gates Can’t Ever Fix Education by Daniel Luzer | College Guide | The Washington Monthly: