Gates Urges School Budget Overhauls

[roxiejules]

NYT

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/us/19gates.html?hpw

Bill Gates, the founder and former chairman of Microsoft, has made education-related philanthropy a major focus since stepping down from his day-to-day role in the company in 2008. His new area of interest: helping solve schools’ money problems. In a speech prepared for delivery Friday, Mr. Gates — who is gaining considerable clout in education circles — plans to urge the 50 state superintendents of education to take difficult steps to restructure the nation’s public education budgets, which have come under severe pressure in the economic downturn.

He suggests they end teacher pay increases based on seniority and on master’s degrees, which he says are unrelated to teachers’ ability to raise student achievement. He also urges an end to efforts to reduce class sizes. Instead, he suggests rewarding the most effective teachers with higher pay for taking on larger classes or teaching in needy schools.

In the speech, Mr. Gates says that improving student achievement is a central challenge, and that budget crises are making change necessary. “You can’t fund reforms without money,” he says. “And there is no more money.”

The only way out, he says, is by rethinking the way the nation’s $500 billion annual expenditures on public schools is allocated. About $50 billion pays for seniority-based annual salary increases for teachers, he says. The nation spends an additional $9 billion annually to pay salary increases to teachers with master’s degrees, he says.

[ananda]

1. What an asshole.

He's of the Stack em deep and teach em cheap school.

[Owl]

4. +1

[dkf]

2. Considering he dropped out of college I guess it makes sense that he doesn't value a masters degree.

He seems to be the product of an excellent high school education but mostly self initiative.

[roxiejules]

6. Private prep school

He was the product of an upper middle class family & an exclusive private prep school starting at age 13.

[dkf]

7. They gave him a lot of leeway to program instead of structured classes.

[HereSince1628]

3. For a guy who I would think understands systems analysis

it's curious that he sees teacher salaries/unit production costs as the only driving variable in improving education outcomes.

Could there be a correlation with dropping out of school and a general disrespect for teachers, or is this just a consequence of not having an education and applying the only model he has some familiarity with (business thinking) to education?

What do you think he feels about how advanced training and specialization of MD's influences medical costs and outcomes?

[no_hypocrisy]

5. My masters degree gave me the ability to teach.

My bachelors degree gave me the ability to think. That is, I completed a liberal arts curriculum that included three foreign languages, English literature and writing skills, deductive logic, European Civilization, music/art/theater histories, and an independent study concluding with a thesis.

Think that doesn't enhance my ability in the classroom?

[thelordofhell]

8. Administrators and outsourced support is the problem

You have principals and vice principals and such making anywhere from 90-250 thousand dollars a year outsourcing the lunch, janitorial, and bus services to big companies that charge an arm and a leg for their services. How did these companies get their foothold you ask? By wining and dining the principals and vice principals. All this shrinks money for school supplies and teachers.

[Igel]

9. Eh.

A lot of teachers find that their ability to raise their students' achievement levels soars when they transfer to schools with different students.

Take how student achievement increases track by student age: from EC through around 6th grade it goes fairly smoothly; in grades 7-9 it tends to take a nose-dive for a most student cohorts. Do we really want to assume that nothing changes with the students but that the teachers that decide to teach junior high are all incompetent? And that they suddenly become competent when they start teaching 10th grade chemistry or French IV?

Gates should have had a similar kind of process for his company: Every 10th person to apply for a job gets it until all the jobs are filled. Doesn't matter if they can read, program, write, or speak English--or hold a pencil. They're hired. And if the managers can't make them produce, well, blame the managers, not him for forcing them to hire people who don't produce or the workers who don't produce.

Then again, considering the quality of MS manuals in the '80s, perhaps that's what he started off doing.

[roxiejules]

10. +1000