Bill Gates’ Market-Driven Experiments Are Not Ready for Prime-Time Public Ed
Dear Mr. Gates,
Your Foundation contributions always seem to make for interesting prime time news. The real story about what is actually happening on the ground where your market-driven policies are now the “norm” is relegated to other venues such as academic research, progressive blogs and media outlets.
While it is honorable for anyone with your wealth to do whatever possible to give back to the community, the community that helped you make your wealth, your history of failed experiments with so-called market-driven, data-based education is well documented.
The test and punish, high stakes testing mandates and the calls for teacher accountability as a means towards improving education have clearly failed an entire generation. Despite this failed policy, however, we are facing the same failed policies on steroids with Race to the Top and the new Common Core Standards.
As communities that have witnessed the impact of these policies, we have shown enormous patience, allowing you to explore untested educational practices with our children, even practices that are disproved by respected education experts at our finest institutions of higher learning (CREDO study from Stanford University).
Expert educators, including teachers, as well as students and families, understand that these undemocratic, and unproven practices are extremely harmful to the students that you say you want to help. Sadly, this seems to have little or no influence on you to stop and consider that perhaps it is time that you respect the educators and listen to the experts.
Perhaps your wealth and influence could be put to better use and have greater results in real solutions to our public schools, if your programs were designed to function like the Bill Gates’ Market-Driven Experiments Are Not Ready for Prime-Time Public Ed | Teachers' Letters to Bill Gates: