Monday, September 17, 2012

What Would You Do for Students in Poverty if you had Billions? - Living in Dialogue - Education Week Teacher

What Would You Do for Students in Poverty if you had Billions? - Living in Dialogue - Education Week Teacher:


What Would You Do for Students in Poverty if you had Billions?

Follow me on Twitter at @AnthonyCody
Though our dialogue with the Gates Foundation has ended, some interesting questions continue to stir things up. In the comments that follow the Gates Foundation's last post in the series, a reader named JT posed this question:
You might be right, but if you were giving away your money, how would you fix poverty? I would invest in education. What are the alternatives? We have deep divides in our society about the role of individual responsibilities and government which have been going on basically forever. To think a family foundation should focus its resources there is not practical.
An educator named Karen Packard provided a wonderful answer. With her permission I am sharing it here:
If I had Bill Gates' money, I would start with one of the inner city elementary schools in a high poverty neighborhood that it's district has failed to maintain, but one where it's teachers and principal have a heart for