Bill Gates Claims Foundation Does R & D Only, Stays Out of "Political Process"
By Anthony Cody.
Bill Gates sounded surprisingly defensive when asked about the Gates Foundation’s work in education, in a video interview made available this week by the Wall Street Journal. His statement suggests he is unaware of much of what his money is buying in the field of education. Here is the exchange (my transcript from the video.)
Rebecca Blumenstein:
Bill, are you concerned about some criticism that the Gates Foundation has, you know, a private foundation, has basically funded a huge shift in public education; a couple lawsuits have been filed, people are saying “why should the federal government be playing such a big role in what’s happening in my local school district and why is the Gates Foundation playing a role in this?”
Bill Gates:
Well, we fund R & D, and the idea that there will be better online software – we’re the biggest funder of these online courses, and seeing how do they work for students who are not high income [not especially well, according to comments Gates made last year in Los Alamos]. Does it help with their schedule flexibility, does it help when they fall behind, that it’s personalized and can give them positive reinforcement, to help them catch up. And so the huge underinvestment in education, foundations can come in and fill some of that gap. The actual decision of what should be taught, and what the personnel policies should be, obviously that’s under political control. The state government, the school board, the negotiation with the union. But the idea of having some of these tools that can be adopted – peer feedback, you know we have some districts that have adopted that, it’s gone very well. We hope other districts come in and see that and choose to participate, but that’s gonna be all inside the political system. But the underinvestment in learning why some teachers are so good – we’re trying to close some of the gap there.
Starting at the halfway point, when he starts talking about political control, his arms start waving around a lot. That is where the story gets a bit murky. First of all, we might take a look at an earlier interview that shows a rather different attitude towards the political process.
Back in 2008, Gates said this to Wolf Blitzer on CNN:
There’s a lot of issues about governance, whether its school boards or unions where you want to allow for experimentation, in terms of pay procedures and management procedures, to really prove out new things. As those things start working on behalf of the students, then I believe that the majority of teachers and voters will be open-minded to these new approaches. And so we have to take it a step at a time – they have to give us the opportunity for this experimentation – the unions, the voters. The cities where our foundation has put the most money in is where there’s a single person responsible. In New York, Chicago and Washington, DC, the mayor has responsibility for the school system. So instead of having a committee of people, you have that one person. And that’s where we’ve seen the willingness to take on some of the older practices and try new things, and we’ve seen very good results in all three of those cities. So there are some lessons that have already been learned. We need to make more investments, and I do think the teachers will come along, because, after all, they’re there because they believe in helping the students as well.
And we know that the Gates-inspired experimentation expanded to a national level after the election of Barack Obama, and the appointment of Arne Duncan, as described in my recent book, The Educator and the Oligarch.
But what about the most recent Foundation investments?
I took a look to see if Gates’ statement that “we fund R & D and stay out of political decisions” holds water. I am afraid it is a bit leaky. Here are a few of the holes. Reviewing the latest grants in the Foundation’s database, in the US program, College Ready issue, there are some patterns that emerge that show funding Bill Gates Claims Foundation Does R & D Only, Stays Out of "Political Process" - Living in Dialogue:
