On Education: Bill Gates Admits He Was Wrong (Bloomberg Doesn't)

[Karmadillo]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-singer/bill-gates-admits-he-was_b_389289.html

No, this is not a spoof headline from the satirical newspaper The Onion. In his 2009 annual letter to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bill Gates did something unheard of for an American billionaire. He admitted that one of his proposals for changing education in the United States did not work. Unfortunately, this insight did not stop Gates from continuing to tell everybody else what they should do to improve the schools (read the letter).

Bill Gates believes that providing everyone with a "great education" is a vital step for ending social inequality in the United States and is "the key to retaining our position of world leadership in all areas, including starting great businesses and doing innovative research." He also believes that it is his God-given right as an incredibly wealthy person who attended private schools his entire life and knows nothing about public schools or the problems that face ordinary people to decide how our schools should be organized.

To help Gates achieve his goals, his foundation gave $2 billion over a nine-year period to influence localities to open smaller mini-high schools, a plan that became a major part of the Bloomberg educational reform plan in New York City.

In his letter, Gates said he was proud that "a few of the schools that we funded achieved something amazing." However, to his chagrin, "Many of the small schools that we invested in did not improve students' achievement in any significant way ... We had less success trying to change an existing school than helping to create a new school ... we are trying to raise college-ready graduation rates, and in most cases, we fell short."

Gates admitted, "Unlike scientists developing a vaccine, it is hard to test with scientific certainty what works in schools." However, why should this stop him or his political allies (Bloomberg, Duncan and Obama) from using the rest of us as their guinea pigs.

<edit>

When you read the Gates letter, on the face of it, some of his proposals do not seem so outrageous, until you read more deeply. His "new strategy focuses on learning why some teachers are so much more effective than others and how best practices can be spread throughout the education system so that the average quality goes up." His plan is to have "the best teachers ... put their lectures online as a model for other teachers."

more...

[Frank Booth]

1. At least Bill Gates is trying.

Public education is in severe need of reform. The author acts like Gates is trying to hurt children by trying to make education more effective. That's ridiculous.

I much prefer billionaires like Bill Gates who actually put their money where their mouth is and try to do something positive, than billionaires like Steve Jobs who do nothing more than help people think they're cool by buying his products.

[tonysam]

2. Uh, no you don't. Public education needs "reform," but not the way

Gates and the other "venture philanthropists" envision. They want to fucking privatize public education and turn them into businesses, which they are not.

[Frank Booth]

4. I don't think the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has any interest in making money off of

public schools.

Gates wants to make sure that the best teachers get appropriately rewarded, that lesser teachers learn from the best teachers, and that the worst teachers stop teaching. This is the system that works in every other functioning sector of society -- why not in public schools?

[MichiganVote]

7. Oh get the fuck real....these are billionaire hobbies. They don't give a damn.

[Frank Booth]

9. Obviously they do give a damn.

There are plenty of other ways to spend $2,000,000,000.

I assume you think people who help out in soup kitchens don't give a damn and just do it as a hobby?

[Hannah Bell]

18. The Gates Foundation gives Bill $38 billion (or whatever it is now) to invest TAX FREE.

Then he can use the profits to "invest" in social projects that ultimately benefit Bill & his buddies.

Like charter schools, like genetic research, like blanketing the world with the MS desktop.

Bill makes money on his fucking foundation, as do 99% of rich "philanthropists".

[Frank Booth]

20. Right.

The more kids who receive vaccines, the more kids who survive to buy MS desktop. Brilliant!

[Hannah Bell]

21. "kids receiving vaccines" = 3rd-world test subjects, collection of genetic material for

profit-making research.

the desktop reference = gates' library & school "philanthropies" at home.

you don't have a clue about what gates is doing with his tax-free billions.

applicants for Gates' research $$$ must delinate the potential for "intellectual property" coming out of the deal.

[tonysam]

8. You need to research Gates, Broad, and other

so-called "venture philanthropists." Yes, they DO believe in the privatization of public schools and they are bribing them to force them into their notion of reform.

Education is far different from business. Gates and Broad are totally unqualified to "reform" education.

[Lyric]

3. Cue a horde of angry Applebots furiously posting a list

of Steve Jobs' charitable contributions and OUTRAGE!

:rofl:

Boy, did YOU ever step into the line of fire.

[MichiganVote]

6. Sure, we'll all buy the bullshit that Gates has any idea how public school kids live today.

Gates doesn't live where these kids live today. His ideas of reform means lost jobs for thousands more people than any of the kids he seeks to "help".

[The Magistrate]

11. The Need To 'Reform' Public Schools, Sir, Is Not Only Over-Stated But Mis-Stated Badly

Most of the difficulties displayed in public schools have nothing to do with the schools, and are rooted in the neighborhoods and families around them, being conditioned by economic and social factors absolutely beyond the reach of the class-room. Serious proposals for improving public schools would aim at securing stable employment at decent wages for parents, breaking the endemic racism of lending and police agencies, and possibly lopping a few zeros off the salaries of professional athletes and actors....

[Karmadillo]

12. Your advice makes tons of sense. It's tragic that reform efforts from both parties

tend to focus on everything but the things that would make a real difference.

[The Magistrate]

13. The Instinct For The Capillary, My Friend, Is A Damned Pernicious Thing

But as we are both aware, most people, and certainly the people in charge, do not want to look squarely at the real causes and problems, let alone fix them, because to do so would give the game away, and bring it to a halt entire. Therefore everything but the essential elements will be focused on intently....

[Karmadillo]

36. Indeed. I wish we weren't so passive when they play us for suckers.

It's as if we've forgotten there's even a jugular to be found. I'm feeling hopeless enough to pick up Christoper Lasch's The True and Only Heaven. I know I'll disagree with a fair amount of what he's going to say, but just from what I've read so far, he was on to something about how we've made a wrong turn by chasing a kind of progress whose promise is always disappearing into the distance. All the consumer stuff we've accumulated doesn't seem to balance out what we've lost.

I hope you're doing well. It's good to see someone from DU's golden age still posting. Anyway, here's a snippet from a review you might like:

http://www.georgescialabba.net/mtgs/1991/10/the-true-and-only-heaven-progr.html

<edit>

In The True and Only Heaven he takes a further step. What does it mean, he asks, that the democratic movement of the 18th century and the anti-capitalist movement of the 19th, like the civil rights movement of the 1960s, were wrought not by the “universal class” of Marxist theory, not by enlightened rationalists liberated from local attachments and traditional beliefs, but by people very much committed to such attachments and beliefs, people loyal to the “archaic” creeds, crafts, and communities under attack from the forces of “progress”? Not, that is, by people looking toward the future, but by people looking toward the past?

It means, he answers, that “the victory of the Enlightenment,” with its unwillingness to accept limits on human aspiration and its promise that in a rational society the traditional virtues would be obsolete, “has almost eradicated the capacity for ardor, devotion, and joyous action.” On moral even more than environmental grounds, “the basic premise of progressive thought-- the assumption that economic abundance comes before everything else, which leads unavoidably to an acceptance of centralized production and administration as the only way to achieve it--needs to be rejected.” Not rational optimism but supra-rational hope is true wisdom and succor:

"Popular initiative ... has been declining for some time-- in part because the democratization of consumption is an insufficiently demanding ideal, which fails to call up the moral energy necessary to sustain popular movements in the face of adversity. The history of popular movements ... shows that only arduous, even a tragic, understanding of life can justify the sacrifices imposed on those who seek to challenge the status quo.

The idea of progress alone, we are told, can move men and women to sacrifice immediate pleasures to some larger purpose. On the contrary, progressive ideology weakens the spirit of sacrifice. ... Hope does not demand a belief in progress. . . . Hope implies a deep-seated trust in life that appears absurd to those who lack it. It rests on confidence not so much in the future as in the past. It derives from early memories in which the experience of order and contentment was so intense that subsequent disillusionments cannot dislodge it. Such experience leaves as its residue the unshakable conviction, not that the past was better than the present, but that trust is never completely misplaced, even though it is never completely justified either..."

more...

[Tumbulu]

16. You hit that nail on the head

and I never read anyone making these points. But this is exactly the problem.

[Frank Booth]

19. I'm all for doing everything you suggest.

Unfortunately, none of that is going to happen anytime soon. While we're waiting for it to happen, we can either give up on kids, or we can try to improve the system. And despite what people on DU suggest, the public education system in the US is far from perfect. Thus, I don't see the harm in trying innovative measures (such as firing bad teachers) to try to improve it.

[The Magistrate]

22. Without Those Things, Sir, You Will Achieve Nothing Of Consequence

The surest predictors of a child's performance in school are the literacy and economic stability of his or her parents and family. "Innovative measures" that ignore this achieve nothing, and can achieve nothing. In most instances, they are simply semantic camouflage for union busting and reduction of salaries for teachers.

[Ignis]

31. Yes.

The best we can hope for by continuing down this path is to skim the "best and brightest" off the top to be shipped off to good schools and groomed for the good life.

[Warren Stupidity]

27. well said sir

and as usual our supposedly liberal and left of center party refuses to oppose the rightwing framing. Jobs, affordable housing, and equitable funding would do more to improve failed public schools than 100 amateur science experiments.

[waiting for hope]

29. It's been my experience that if both parents work -

there is more stress at home trying to get it all in a 2-3 hour window at night. I have often thought of how even more difficult it would be in a single parent home, or in one where the other parent has to work at that time. The time that is spent at home with your child, to go over homework, have a decent meal and be in bed at a decent hour, is 50% of the battle right there and many parents do not have that luxury.

[proud2BlibKansan]

30. Wow. Sir, you just nailed it. And you nailed it so well.

Where ya been? We could use you in some of the teacher bashing threads. :)

[tonysam]

33. That's all well and good, but it doesn't address the structural problems

inherent in public education, and that has to do with widespread workplace abuse of teachers and the power structure in education, all financed by the taxpayers.

Nobody addresses this because the public by and large doesn't know about just how corrupt the power structure is.

[The Magistrate]

35. Perhaps, Sir, You Would Care To Elaborate?

[Hannah Bell]

15. "Trying"-- to privatize education. Gates doesn't do *shit* that doesn't benefit Gates, Inc.

[Warren Stupidity]

28. well that is a bit over the top

I think BillG is a well intentioned do-gooder who, at this point in his life, really doesn't care about the money. He certainly didn't make anything off of malaria nets - there just is no play there. I do agree that amateur science experiments with respect to 'edumacation reforming' is generally rightwing foolery, I just don't ascribe profit as a motivating factor. At 40 billion, one really doesn't have any need for more.

[MilesColtrane]

5. Bill Gates is wrong on so much other than how to monopolize a market,...

..and make shitloads of money who's really keeping score these days?

[tsuki]

10. I think one way to help children learn is for their parents to have

jobs that pay well, so they can have a decent place to live, health checkups and a good diet. Or you can bring cheap labor from overseas.

"In an op-ed in yesterday's Washington Post, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates argues yet again in favor of raising the cap on H1-B foreign worker visas from its present number of 65,000. Gates' basic argument boils down to this: fewer students at American universities are opting for computer science degrees, which means that we need to raise the H1-B cap so that the software industry can import more foreign labor to fill those jobs that Americans—for whatever reason—don't seem to be equipped for.

Of course, the fact that the importation of cheap foreign labor into the software industry job market hampers American programmers' ability to compete and leads to depressed wages overall is never mentioned by Gates as a major reason why a computer science degree just isn't that attractive any more to Americans. Who wants to spend four or five years getting a CS degree, only to be priced out of the job market by foreign programmers who are willing to work for less in exchange for a green card?"

http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2007/02/8924.ars

[Karia]

14. Gates' heart may be in the right place

but if he really wants to improve public schools, he needs to change his approach. On-line videos of inspiring teachers at work are not going to do it. Privatization of public schools won't do it (just the opposite when the emphasis is on profit rather than education). But money, directed properly, can help a lot.

For a start:

1. Feed the children. Provide tasty, healthy meals and snacks. A good breakfast should be available to all who arrive in time to eat it. School may be their only opportunity to eat good food, so make the most of it. Soda, chips, candy & other junk should be unavailable except perhaps as a very rare treat.

2. Take care of students' eyes, teeth, and bodies. Equip and staff mobile clinics that can go to each school. Care for the sick. If a child needs glasses, make a pair on the spot and fit them the same day. If a child has cavities, fill them.

3. Support teachers instead of overburdening and underpaying them. Reduce class size and get more adults into each classroom to work as teaching assistants, paraprofessionals, and tutors. Train them to work as a team.

4. Provide one-on-one tutoring for all students who are below grade level in reading and/or math.

5. Provide enrichment courses for the students who are doing well. Challenge them academically so they do not become bored.

6. After-school care is essential these days, because so many parents work. Provide homework help as well as optional instruction in dance, swimming, theater, and sports.

7. Take care of the school buildings and grounds. Make them safe, clean, and welcoming.

8. Each school should have a library and a librarian.

9. Each school should have music teachers, instruments, a band and an orchestra

10. In every school and at all levels, the curriculum should include art, music, laboratory science, foreign language instruction, and a physical education program.

11. Help factories, hospitals, and other employers of night-time staff provide safe dormitories for their employees' children.

[Tumbulu]

17. Excellent suggestions (nt)

[AdHocSolver]

23. Bill Gates admits a mistake in order to head off and minimize criticism of his failure.

Bill Gates was a rich kid and a college drop out, who made billions of dollars selling really lousy software, because he rode to fame and fortune on IBM's coattails and incompetence.

Focusing on teachers as being responsible for the sorry state of education is a ruse to deflect criticism from the fact that the entire education system is based on false premises and is effectively run by people who have political and profit agendas contrary to what is worthwhile to educate children.

Teachers are, in many cases, as much victims of the educational system as are the students.

[Hannah Bell]

25. Bill Gates = the spoiled son of a family connected to Citibank for 3 generations.

There's a reason he led the computer boom = best funded, best connected.

[Hannah Bell]

24. Gates' hidden agenda seems to have been part of the "failure".

I doubt "small schools" failed. I tend to believe it was Gates' concept & implementation of "small schools" that failed.

For starters, small schools without smaller class sizes? What would be the point?

http://www.seattleweekly.com/2005-07-20/news/bill-gates-guinea-pigs/4

And there was ongoing tension between the Gates Foundation and the schools' staff. The foundation wanted strict adherence to its plan for change. But it was too rigid to work, Gering says. "It's clear that the Gates Foundation had a clear agenda. For instance—not allowing kids to switch from one school to another or to take electives out of their own school. They wanted pure small schools; 'The more you share kids, the more you lose control.' The faculty said, 'We're not going to vote for this unless we can share kids.' The Gates people said, 'No way!' But ultimately we did."

In addition, some teachers felt the Gates Foundation was sending a not-too-subtle message that the teachers were the real problem with high schools. "A whole lot of this is built around a point of view that they never really explained," says Helman. "That is, 'the problem is us.' We're not teaching right. If we were, things would be better. They were telling us to be more available, work more, . . . and that class size didn't matter as much." Gering puts it a little differently. "The foundation wanted us to go further in terms of altering instructional practices and assessment," he says. "They wanted to change the way teachers teach. That's been the harder practice."

When spring rolled around and representatives from the five schools went to the district's eighth-graders to present their programs to the soon-to-be incoming freshmen, another potentially destructive issue arose: competition for student enrollment. "We didn't expect that," says Nofziger. "We really have to compete for students. You start to worry about whether you'll have enough for your school."

Does the Gates Foundation want schools run in a more businesslike way, taking a page from Microsoft and using competition to drive higher expectations? Vander Ark, a former businessman–turned–superintendent of the Federal Way School District, before being hired by the foundation, doesn't disown this concept. "We do think a system of managed choice is productive," he says. "Will that create some competition? Yes, and generally we think that's a good thing."

Nofziger, though, disagrees. "We have five different schools. We have to compete for eighth-graders. You have to get them to sign up, to market your school, so you don't lose staffing. We have to compete for rooms and for budget. Everyone acknowledges this is a business model, and it doesn't fit. It has become very divisive for staff."

[eppur_se_muova]

26. Recced for the analysis by DUers, not for Gates' self-serving letter. nt

[KakistocracyHater]

32. convert empty malls into high schools, allow teachers freedom to teach

in whatever way that engages their students; that means it would be customized according to the students & the teachers. Teach them how to read, how to think-not just by rote spit out what seems useless names & dates. Teach them math, maybe show them how to balance a checkbook, how to budget a grocery list. Endless cramming doesn't work here, nclb proved that.

[tonysam]

34. That'll never happen because teachers aren't professionals

despite the Bureau of Labor's classification. Teachers don't have that kind of freedom in public schools. They have to do what they are told by their administrators or face disciplinary action or dismissal. The handwriting is on the wall with public education, and privatization continues unabated and supported by apparently both political parties.