Laura H. Chapman on Gates’ Efforts to “Transform” Teacher Training
Laura H. Chapman
As a complement to this February 10, 2016, guest post by Southeastern Louisiana University professor James Kirylo concerning the pressure on teacher educators to adopt canned teacher education, retired Ohio arts teacher, Laura H. Chapman, weighs in on the Gates push to shape teacher training programs in his image:
I have been looking at all five of the Gates “Teacher Transformation Grants,” each for 33 months and just shy of $4 million for each grantee. All of the press releases are filled with jargon about “elevating” the teaching profession. The interlocking networks and complementary funding by other foundations of these new Gates investments is amazing.In October 2015 the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education received a 33 month grant for $3,928,656 from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation to support the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (ESE) “teacher transformation” effort: The Elevate Preparation: Impact Children (EPIC) center. This is an addition to a separate Gates grant in October 2015, $ 300,000, “to launch, execute, and utilize implementation data collection at the state-level.”On other blogs, I have commented on this takeover of 71 “providers” of teacher education in Massachusetts, where a large administrative unit in the state department of education is functioning as one of Gates Foundation’s Teacher Preparation Transformation Centers.Why Massachusetts? Massachusetts has already imposed industrial strengthLaura H. Chapman on Gates’ Efforts to “Transform” Teacher Training | deutsch29: