Valerie Strauss is a reporter and op-ed writer for the Washington Post. This opinion piece appeared on May 6, 2021.
Now that the philanthropic Bill and Melinda Gates have announced they are divorcing after 27 years of marriage, let’s look at the controversial investments they made together to reform K-12 public education — and how well those worked out.
Together, the two have been among the most generous philanthropists on the planet, spending more over the past few decades on global health than many countries do and more on U.S. education reform than any of the other wealthy Americans who have tried to impact K-12 education with their personal fortunes.The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has spent billions of dollars on numerous education projections — such as creating small high schools, writing and implementing the Common Core State Standards, evaluating teachers by standardized test scores — and the couple has had enormous influence on what happened in classrooms across the country. Their philanthropy, especially in the school reform area, has been at the center of a national debate about whether it serves democracy when wealthy people can use their own money to drive public policy and fund their pet education projects. The foundation’s financial backing of some controversial priorities of the Obama administration’s Education Department put the couple at the center of this national conversation.
Critics have said that many of the foundation’s key education projects have harmed public schools because they were unworkable from the start and CONTINUE READING: Let’s Review How Bill and Melinda Gates Spent Billions of Dollars To Change Public Education (Valerie Strauss) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice