Not Bill Gates: Meet Ted Dintersmith, an education philanthropist with a different agenda
Most Likely to Succeed Trailer from One Potato Productions on Vimeo.
If you have paid attention to education reform at all in recent years, you know what Bill Gates, Eli Broad, various Waltons and other very wealthy philanthropists have done with their education grants: support charter schools, and/or Teach For America, and/or standardized test-based teacher evaluations, and/or school voucher programs, and/or other elements of corporate school reform. But now meet Ted Dintersmith, a different kind of education philanthropist with a different school reform agenda.
Dintersmith is a highly successful venture capitalist and father of two who is devoting most of his time, energy and millions of his personal fortune to education-related initiatives that call for a radical remaking of what and how students learn. Instead of classrooms in which kids passively take in facts and figures, he said the U.S. education system should be re-imagined into cross-disciplinary programs that allow kids the freedom to develop core competencies through cross-disciplinary, project-based learning.
He discussed his vision in a book he co-authored, titled, “Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing Our Kids for the Innovation Age,” and he funded and produced a compelling documentary called “Most Likely to Succeed,” which goes into a California school, High Tech High in San Diego, where the project-based educational future he wants to see is already here. You could call it the antithesis of “Waiting for Superman,” the Davis Guggenheim-directeddocumentary which presented an often misleading account of public education and how to improve it. In fact, Dintersmith said, “Waiting for Superman” inspired him to do something very different.
The documentary has already been met with enthusiasm at numerous film festivals and audiences around the country (you can see a schedule of screenings here), and some educators, including Pam Moran, the superintendent of Albemarle County Public Schools in Virginia, are paying attention. At Albemarle High School, for example, Moran has started an interdisciplinary project-based program based on what she saw in the the film. Last month, at the private Foxcroft School in Middleburg, Va., faculty and administrators from private as well as public schools came to a screening of the film and a discussion about education reform.
Dintersmith, who was also executive producer of “The Hunting Ground” film about sexual assault on college campuses, is partner emeritus with Charles River Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm. He earned a PhD in engineering from Stanford University, and in 2012, was appointed by President Obama as an alternate representative of the United States to the Sixty-seventh Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations, where Dintersmith focused on global education and entrepreneurship.
He is now on a 50-state tour with “Most Likely to Succeed” to encourage Not Bill Gates: Meet Ted Dintersmith, an education philanthropist with a different agenda - The Washington Post: