Bill and Melinda Gates have spent billions to shape education policy. Now, they say, they’re ‘skeptical’ of ‘billionaires’ trying to do just that. - The Washington Post

Bill and Melinda Gates have spent billions to shape education policy. Now, they say, they’re ‘skeptical’ of ‘billionaires’ trying to do just that. - The Washington Post

Bill and Melinda Gates have spent billions to shape education policy. Now, they say, they’re ‘skeptical’ of ‘billionaires’ trying to do just that.

You won’t believe what Bill and Melinda Gates are saying makes them “skeptical.”

For years, they have spent a fortune trying to shape public education policy, successfully leveraging public funding to support their projects, but never having the kind of academic success they had hoped for. That never stopped them from continuing to fund pet projects.

Now, in the newly released 2020 annual letter of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Melinda Gates says that lack of success is no reason to “give up,” and then, she says this:

We certainly understand why many people are skeptical about the idea of billionaire philanthropists designing classroom innovations or setting education policy. Frankly, we are, too. Bill and I have always been clear that our role isn’t to generate ideas ourselves; it’s to support innovation driven by people who have spent their careers working in education: teachers, administrators, researchers, and community leaders.

She seems to be attempting to make a distinction between a billionaire personally “designing classroom innovations or setting education policy” and a billionaire pouring so much money into existing ideas and projects they like that it has the effect of shaping public policy. The couple’s investments in public projects are so huge that public money invariably follows, and, thus, their pet projects get implemented.

But such a distinction is lost on, say, a teacher who is evaluated through a badly flawed assessment system that exists because the Gateses funded it. That teacher doesn’t care whether Bill and Melinda Gates sat down and designed it themselves or, rather, chose to ignore the advice of assessment experts who had warned against it.

In their 2020 annual letter, the two take turns talking about their unprecedented philanthropy in health projects around the world and education reform in the United States. They are among the most generous philanthropists on the planet, spending more on global health than many countries do and more on U.S. education reform by far than any of the other wealthy people who are making K-12 a cause.

Yet over the years, while they have certainly funded worthwhile projects, questions have been raised about the power they have to dictate social policy because of their enormous investments, as well as whether the targets of some of their philanthropy are the most deserving of attention. Why should CONTINUE READING: Bill and Melinda Gates have spent billions to shape education policy. Now, they say, they’re ‘skeptical’ of ‘billionaires’ trying to do just that. - The Washington Post