Bill Gates keeps pushing Common Core, with big money (and a bid to get Charles Koch to like it)
You can say this about Bill Gates: When he likes something, he sticks to it.
Through his exceedingly wealthy foundation, Gates has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to create and promote the Common Core State Standards over the years. When the initiative ran into opposition from critics across the political spectrum, Gates remained steadfast. Not only did he continue to pour money into Core implementation and promotion, but, according to anew article in Fortune, he dined with conservative billionaire Charles Koch in February 2014 to try to persuade him to stop funding tea party groups that were fighting the Core. Koch didn’t budge, but Gates has kept up his support, and in 2015, he donated more than $42 million to several dozen organizations to support the Core.
In October 2015, Gates made a speech in which he said he was pushing on with his controversial education initiatives, on which he has spent several billions of dollars since 1999. He has funded a number of efforts, including a small-schools initiative in New York City that he abandoned after deciding it wasn’t working, controversial teacher-evaluation systems that use student standardized test scores to determine the “effectiveness” of educators, and the Core. As the world’s biggest philanthropist, Gates has been at the center of a national debate about whether democracy is well served when private individuals fund pet projects with so much cash that public policy is affected — without real public input.
The Core standards were initially approved in full by 45 states, but a handful of states have dropped out and adopted new standards, some of them similar to the Core.
Below are the 37 grants that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has given in 2015 to efforts involving the implementation and promotion of Common Bill Gates keeps pushing Common Core, with big money (and a bid to get Charles Koch to like it) - The Washington Post:
