What the divorcing Bill and Melinda Gates did to public education - The Washington Post

What the divorcing Bill and Melinda Gates did to public education - The Washington Post

Let’s review how Bill and Melinda Gates spent billions of dollars to change public education

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 consumed resources that could have been better spent.

But you don’t have to go any further than the Gateses themselves to learn that some of the billions of dollars they put into public education reform efforts did not go as well as they liked.

In 2013, Bill Gates said, “It would be great if our education stuff worked. But that we won’t know for probably a decade.”

It didn’t take 10 years for them and their foundation to acknowledge that key education investments didn’t turn out as well as they hoped.

In the foundation’s 2020 annual letter, Melinda Gates said: “The fact that progress has been harder to achieve than we hoped is no reason to give up, though. Just the opposite.”

That same annual letter had a rather remarkable statement from Melinda Gates about the role of the wealthy in education policy, given her and husband’s role in it:

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.

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 Gates Foundation began its first big effort in education reform about two decades ago with what it said was a $650 million investment to break large, failing high schools into smaller schools. CONTINUE READING: What the divorcing Bill and Melinda Gates did to public education - The Washington Post

Math Path – Grumpy Old Teacher

Math Path – Grumpy Old Teacher

Math Path

Several years ago, Grumpy Old Teacher (GOT) took a MOOC provided by Stanford University’s Jo Boaler in which she presented ideas about better maths teaching in schools. That’s not a typo, Dr. Boaler is British and they pronounce the subject with an ‘s’ on the end.

GOT is a math teacher and one of the lessons has stuck with him; the one in which Dr. Boaler described a public high school classroom where students were learning by discovery. Observers and visitors could hear the excited buzz pouring out of the room as they came to find out what was happening.

There was only one problem. Parents and others who said, “This is not how I learned math and so no one else should either!”

Sigh.

It wouldn’t help, GOT supposes, to tell you that this is what the Common Core developers have in mind. By now, the phrase ‘Common Core’ is a ringing bell that causes everyone to drool in response, usually a response that involves a lot of growling, snarling, barking, and snapping at the nearest flesh-bearing CONTINUE READING: Math Path – Grumpy Old Teacher

A CORE PROBLEM – Dad Gone Wild

A CORE PROBLEM – Dad Gone Wild

A CORE PROBLEM

“Our values are the same. We disagree on policy, but we don’t disagree on humanity, we don’t disagree about love and compassion. I think that’s true for all of us — it’s just that we get lost in our fear of what’s different.” Michelle Obama speaking on her friendship with George Bush

It’s 9 AM on Friday morning, the second day of TCAP testing for MNPS students, and my fifth grader and sixth-grader are holed up in the TV room watching Fairly Odd Parents on the tube. As I’ve written before, we are a family that has elected to remain remote for the entire school year. A decision based on a desire to establish as much stability as possible. A decision that has been continually validated.

Everyone in our household knows their responsibilities and schedule. Expectations are clear. Earlier in the year, there were some…shall we say…adjustments that needed to be made, but just like in any other year we got there. Both kids received all A’s and high one high B, on their last report card. Wednesday we received a progress report in the mail that showed similar grades.

To be fair, my son has struggled with the drawing part of models in math. He can calculate the problem but has difficulty drawing out the models. His teacher has worked with him and he’s getting it. Like I said, none of it’s perfect, but continually improving.

This week, Schoology went down. I emailed my wife about it and she responded, “Bet they are CONTINUE READING: A CORE PROBLEM – Dad Gone Wild

The Hubris of Billionaire Philanthropy and the Damage Wrought by the Common Core Standards | janresseger

The Hubris of Billionaire Philanthropy and the Damage Wrought by the Common Core Standards | janresseger

The Hubris of Billionaire Philanthropy and the Damage Wrought by the Common Core Standards

Hubris is definitely the tragic flaw in the modern, technocratic tragedy of educational experimentation by mega philanthropy. But there will likely be no tragic fall for a noble hero. The plot doesn’t operate like a classical tragedy. Bill and Melinda pose as our humble hero and heroine, sitting in front of a bookcase and dressed in nothing fancier than plain cashmere sweaters. There is no blood and no sensation. Today the weapon is billions of American dollars buying access to power and purchasing armies of ideological policy wonks. Most people haven’t even noticed the sins of our hero and heroine and there’s no hint of their impending downfall. The plot rises and falls and rises again when the perpetrators just start over with another massive experiment on the 50 million students in America’s public schools and their teachers. But the sin is hubris.

In a February report on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s annual letter, the Washington Post‘s  Valerie Strauss summarizes the three acts so far in the drama of Gates Foundation-funded school reform: “The Gates Foundation began its first big effort in education reform two decades ago with what it said was a $650 million investment to break large failing high schools into small schools, on the theory that small schools worked better than large ones… Bill Gates declared in 2009 that it hadn’t worked the way he had expected…. The next project for the foundation was funding the development, implementation and promotion of the Common Core State Standards initiative, which was supported by the Obama administration. It originally had bipartisan support but the Core became controversial, in part because of the rush to get it into schools and because of what many states said was federal coercion to adopt it… Meanwhile, Gates, while pushing the Core, showered three public school systems and four charter management organizations with hundreds of millions of dollars to develop and implement teacher assessment systems that incorporated student standardized test scores. School systems and charter organizations that took the foundation’s money were required to use public funds on the project, too.  By 2013, Bill Gates conceded that the Core initiative had not succeeded as he had expected, and a 2018 report concluded that the teacher evaluation CONTINUE READING: The Hubris of Billionaire Philanthropy and the Damage Wrought by the Common Core Standards | janresseger

Why the Common Core standards failed — and what it means for school reform - The Washington Post

Why the Common Core standards failed — and what it means for school reform - The Washington Post

Why the Common Core standards failed — and what it means for school reform

A new book tells the story

The Common Core State Standards was one of the biggest initiatives in decades aimed at changing public education — and like many school “reforms” in the era of high-stakes standardized testing, it did not accomplish what its promoters said it would.

(Harvard Education Press)

How and why that happened is the subject of a new book by Tom Loveless, an expert on student achievement, testing, education policy and K-12 school reform — “Between The State And The Schoolhouse: Understanding The Failure of Common Core.” Below is an excerpt.

Common Core was an initiative to create and implement new math and English language arts standards that would be used by all schools. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funded their creation, and they were promoted by the Obama administration.

Then-Education Secretary Arne Duncan used a federal grant program, Race to the Top, to pressure states to adopt them — and the vast majority did during Obama’s first term. The Obama administration spent some $360 million for two multistate consortia to develop new Core-related standardized tests, with Duncan promising that the new tests would be “an absolute game-changer” in public education. They weren’t. CONTINUE READING: Why the Common Core standards failed — and what it means for school reform - The Washington Post

Tom Loveless: Why Common Core Failed | Diane Ravitch's blog

Tom Loveless: Why Common Core Failed | Diane Ravitch's blog

Tom Loveless: Why Common Core Failed

Tom Loveless is an experienced education researcher who taught sixth grade in California. He has long been skeptical of top-down solutions to classroom-level problems. In this post, he explains why Common Core failed.

The theory of standards-based reform is that if everyone has the same curriculum and the same instruction, no one will fall behind. Thirty years ago, I wrongly believed that, and I supported the idea of national standards written by those in the field. But it is perfectly obvious that students in the same school with the same teachers using the same curriculum and having the same instruction do indeed have different outcomes. Having the same standards, curriculum, and instruction does not assure equal outcomes for all students. David Coleman, the architect of the Common Core, and Bill Gates, who funded the standards, did not know that.

He writes:

More than a decade after the 2010 release of Common Core State Standards in English language arts and mathematics, no convincing evidence exists that the standards had a significant, positive impact on student achievement. My forthcoming book next month—“Between the State and the Schoolhouse: Understanding the Failure of Common Core”—explores Common Core from the initiative’s promising beginnings CONTINUE READING: Tom Loveless: Why Common Core Failed | Diane Ravitch's blog

Farewell to the SAT! We Hope. | Diane Ravitch's blog

Farewell to the SAT! We Hope. | Diane Ravitch's blog

Farewell to the SAT! We Hope.

The SAT is in trouble. Its business model is threatened by the more than 1,000 colleges and universities that no longer require it for admission. Many more higher education institutions dropped the SAT due to the pandemic. The SAT is big business. It collects more than $1 billion each year in revenue. Its CEO, David Coleman, was architect of the Common Core standards, with a background at McKinsey. His salary is about $1 million a year. He achieved notoriety when he promoted the Common Core and came out against personal essays; he told an audience of educators in New York State that when you grow up, no one “gives a sh—“ about how you feel. They want facts. His Common Core curriculum insisted on the study of more non-fiction, which drove down the teaching of literature.

Some relevant history: The SAT was created in the 1920s as a replacement for the traditional College Boards, exams that were written and graded by high school teachers and college professors. The leaders of the CONTINUE READING: Farewell to the SAT! We Hope. | Diane Ravitch's blog

A Wonderful Typo! We Need Common CARE Standards! | Diane Ravitch's blog

A Wonderful Typo! We Need Common CARE Standards! | Diane Ravitch's blog

A Wonderful Typo! We Need Common CARE Standards!

Recently Tom Ultican responded to something I posted on Twitter.

His response contained a typo.

He meant to write “Common Core Standards,” but mistakenly wrote “Common Care Standards.”

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our schools had “Common Care Standards,” in which we acknowledged our responsibility to care about students?

The standards might read like this:

All children shall have access to high quality preschool.

All children should have time to play every day, between classes and after school.

All children should have three nutritious meals every day.

All children should see a school nurse whenever  CONTINUE READING: A Wonderful Typo! We Need Common CARE Standards! | Diane Ravitch's blog

SomeDAM Poet: Education Needs Variation, Not Standardization | Diane Ravitch's blog

SomeDAM Poet: Education Needs Variation, Not Standardization | Diane Ravitch's blog

SomeDAM Poet: Education Needs Variation, Not Standardization

Those who seek to apply business thinking on education make a huge error. SomeDAM Poet, a regular commenter, cites the work of the brilliant education scholar Yong Zhao, who has consistently argued that progress and creativity relies on diversity, not standardization. This is, for example, a fundamental flaw of the Common Core, which claims without evidence that the imposition of national standards for teaching, testing, teacher education, and curriculum will lead to vast improvements. Predictably, over a decade, it has failed to produce what was promised.

Bill Gates saw the Common Core standards, which he funded in their entirety, as necessary and beneficial standardization that would transform education. In 2014, he told a conference of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards that teachers should defend the Common Core.

He said:

“If you have 50 different plug types, appliances wouldn’t CONTINUE READING: SomeDAM Poet: Education Needs Variation, Not Standardization | Diane Ravitch's blog

CURMUDGUCATION: CAP: It's the School System's Fault

CURMUDGUCATION: CAP: It's the School System's Fault

CAP: It's the School System's Fault

The Center for American Progress (CAP) is nominally a left-tilted thinky tank, but they have always been solidly on the side of reformsterism, backing charter schools and relentlessly stumping for the Common Core.

They're also fans of the narrow reformster view of education as a mill for churning out meat widgets, and here they are at it again in a post from mid-September (you know, about ten years ago) entitled "Preparing American Students for the Workforce of the Future." It's a pervasive reform idea--that the point of school is as vocational prep (and college is just vocational prep for higher-paying jobs).

And yes-- if schools were cranking out graduates who were completely unemployable, that would be a disservice to those students. But the notion that the years 1 through 18 (or even 22) should be focused simply on making yourself useful to your future employer is such a cramped, meager, joyless, shrunken version of what a human life can be-- Well, I could go on and on, but let's settle for this--no parents with resources to provide their child with more would settle for thirteen (or fourteen or fifteen) years of meat widget training.

But CAP leaps right in with "The United States has failed to prepare all students for college and their careers" and follows up by citing TNTP's Opportunity Myth, one of those non-research "reports" that reformy groups crank out so that other groups can cite them as if they contain actual research. I've discussed it at length elsewhere, so I'm not getting into it here--short form: it's not a good sign.

CAP throws in some chicken littling about the pandemic's effects on the US healthcare, economy and workforce, noting that Black and brown people are worst hit, and they're not wrong. But their CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: CAP: It's the School System's Fault

CURMUDGUCATION: Dear Joe Biden:

CURMUDGUCATION: Dear Joe Biden:

Dear Joe Biden:

If someone has a pipeline to the campaign, please feel to send this along.

Dear VP Biden:

I know that this evening, you have your hands full with the Great Orange Loon in Cleveland. But you've got an education flavored fundraiser tomorrow night, and we really need to talk.

Here's the event:

It might have been of interest to educators, except, of course, the price of admission is, well-- a "champion" ponies up $5,600, and on the bottom end, an "attendee" pays $100. I mean, I was sorely tempted, but as a retired teacher with two toddlers at home, I don't have $100 to spend on something that will probably horrify me anyway.

Because here's the thing.

I really cannot state strongly enough how much actual working classroom teachers don't really like or trust Arne Duncan. Truthfully, they mostly don't know John King all that well--unless they're from New York, in which case they still have a bitter taste in their mouths from his disastrous tenure there.

I'm sure your campaign has a lovely working relationship with union leaders. But the rank and file, the teachers in the trenches, the people who represent millions of actual votes-- they are not so CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Dear Joe Biden:

Bill Gates Is Still Dabbling in Common Core | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog

Bill Gates Is Still Dabbling in Common Core | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog

Bill Gates Is Still Dabbling in Common Core

Billionaire Bill Gates doesn’t use the term “common core” much anymore, but he still dabbles.

In 2008, he agreed to bankroll the effort. Over the next several years, in his effort to “release powerful market forces” because “scale is good for free market competition,” Gates spent roughly $200M to cement Common Core as a fixture in American K12 education.

Gates is no longer dropping hundreds of millions of dollars on Common Core. Still, it seems that he feels some obligation or interest or fancy in investigating Common Core “adoption behaviors.” So, in May 2019, Gates paid $250K to the Innosight Institute “to study the adoption behaviors of districts who are now using high quality common core curriculum and better understand their ‘switching behaviors'”:

Innosight Institute Inc

---

Date:  May 2019

Purpose:  to study the adoption behaviors of districts who are now using high quality common core curriculum and better understand their “switching behaviors”

Amount:  $248,703

Term: 17

Topic: K-12 Education

Program: United States

Grantee Location: Lexington, Massachusetts

Grantee Website: https://www.christenseninstitute.org/

Innosight Institute was “founded on the theories of Harvard professor Clayton Christiansen,” who is none other than the originator of the idea of “disruptive innovation,” which only sounds like a swell education theory to those who view CONTINUE READING: Bill Gates Is Still Dabbling in Common Core | deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog

WHEN IS COMMON CORE NOT EXACTLY COMMON CORE? – Dad Gone Wild

WHEN IS COMMON CORE NOT EXACTLY COMMON CORE? – Dad Gone Wild

WHEN IS COMMON CORE NOT EXACTLY COMMON CORE?

“This country’s drifting into serious trouble because of the clamor for simple and immediate solutions to complex problems that will take years to solve—even with total effort on both sides.”
― John Jakes, North and South

“What would men be without women? Scarce, sir…mighty scarce.”
― Mark Twain

Looking at my social media feed this AM makes for a strange juxtaposition. Across the country, and in surrounding communities, children are heading back to school while my children, and all the children of MNPS, prepare for week 5 of virtual schooling.

I think it’s the correct decision. COVID numbers may be dropping and the effects on children who contract the virus may be mild, but we still don’t know the extent of long term effects for children who contract the virus. Adults have reported long term heart and respiratory issues even after having recovered from COVID. That could hold true for children as well. In light of this, it’s important to err on the side of caution.

As critical as I can be of board member Gini-Pupo-Walker, her newest blog post makes a strong argument for the strategy that MNPS is presently employing. I concur when she states,

I am grateful that Dr. Battle has been clear and decisive, and that our board has supported her. For the first time in my memory, the MNPS family is unified, and rowing in the same direction. We are also collaborating with our charter schools, who support remaining in a virtual setting until October. Mayor Cooper has helped us get laptops and hotspots into the hands of every student who needs one. I recognize that remote learning is not a substitute for in-person learning, and never will be

Still, I feel for the student-athletes, musicians, actors, and such across the district that are facing cancelation of after school athletics. We need to find a way in which they can continue their passions, yet remain safe. For some, it potentially determines their pursuit of post-secondary CONTINUE READING: WHEN IS COMMON CORE NOT EXACTLY COMMON CORE? – Dad Gone Wild

Video: Watch Bill Gates Defend His Decision to Fund the Common Core | Diane Ravitch's blog

Video: Watch Bill Gates Defend His Decision to Fund the Common Core | Diane Ravitch's blog

Video: Watch Bill Gates Defend His Decision to Fund the Common Core

This is a fascinating interview of Bill Gates in 2014 by Washington Post reporter Lyndsey Layton.

Layton wrote a comprehensive account of how the Common Core was funded single-handed by Gates. Gates engineered a “swift revolution,” a near coup, by subsidizing and promulgating the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), with cheerleading by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

CCSS may have been the biggest policy disaster in the history of U.S. education. States and districts spent billions of dollars to implement new standards, new tests, new teacher training, new software, new textbooks, new professional development, all in pursuit of illusory standardization.

The U.S. Department of Education paid $360 million for two consortia to develop tests (PARCC and the Smarter Balanced Consortium). The consortia started life with almost every state but most have now dropped out. Gates paid for everything else. By some estimates, he invested as much as $2 billion subsidizing the writing, development, evaluation, and promotion of CCSS.

The Common Core was adopted by almost every state because states had to adopt common standards if they CONTINUE READING: Video: Watch Bill Gates Defend His Decision to Fund the Common Core | Diane Ravitch's blog