That is only part of it, but they recently both spoke on these issues. That does make it a little obvious that Bill Gates is playing a much larger role in the nation's education reform than his experience warrants. Money talks.
It just seems incomprehensible to me that these two men who are leading education policy in this country do not want to consider paying teachers with advanced degrees more money. It is also hard to believe they are pushing the talking point that larger classes do not matter.
Notice how similar the two recent speeches are of Arne Duncan and Bill Gates.
The New Normal: Doing More with Less -- Secretary Arne Duncan's Remarks at the American Enterprise InstituteLove that term The New Normal. Seems like that Normal is what Gates and Duncan want it to be.
So, what do I mean when I talk about transformational productivity reforms that can also boost student outcomes? Our K-12 system largely still adheres to the century-old, industrial-age factory model of education. A century ago, maybe it made sense to adopt seat-time requirements for graduation and pay teachers based on their educational credentials and seniority. Educators were right to fear the large class sizes that prevailed in many schools....Today, our schools must prepare all students for college and careers--and do far more to personalize instruction and employ the smart use of technology. Teachers cannot be interchangeable widgets. Yet the legacy of the factory model of schooling is that tens of billions of dollars are tied up in unproductive use of time and technology, in underused school buildings, in antiquated compensation systems, and in inefficient school finance systems.
I have never heard public schools referred to as the "factory model". I have no idea what that means.
I am equally in the dark about who told him to use the phrase "Teachers cannot be interchangeable widgets." What is the world does that mean? I had no idea that teachers were thought of as "interchangeable widgets." That sounds like a talking point to me. Bet we hear more of it.
AND...educators are still right to fear large class sizes. That is a major part of Arne's plan and Gate's plan...to convince us that larger class sizes are just fine....that smaller classes are not necessary.
Rethinking policies around seat-time requirements, class size, compensating teachers based on their educational credentials, the use of technology in the classroom, inequitable school financing, the over placement of students in special education—almost all of these potentially transformative productivity gains are primarily state and local issues that have to be grappled with.
Doing more with less will likely require reshaping teacher compensation to do more to develop, support, and reward excellence and effectiveness, and less to pay people based on paper credentials.
Districts currently pay about $8 billion each year to teachers because they have masters' degrees, even though there is little evidence teachers with masters degrees improve student achievement more than other teachers--with the possible exception of teachers who earn masters in math and science.
We should have thought of that years ago....teachers don't need advanced degrees. Such a waste of money. Yes, that is sarcasm.
He goes on to explain that districts that want to keep music or art should settle with having larger classes in other areas. What kind of trade-off is that?
Read the rest of his speech. They are listening only to business executives, I fear, who know next to nothing about true learning.
Now to Bill Gates speech to be given to Council of Chief State School Officers (I am not familiar with that group).
Note how so many of his points are similar to those of Arne Duncan.
From the NYT
Gates Urges School Budget OverhaulsPay attention to his words which sound pretty much like he thinks he's the boss.
His new area of interest: helping solve schools’ money problems. In a speech on 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.
“Of course, restructuring pay systems is like kicking a beehive” — but restructure them anyway, Mr. Gates plans to tell the superintendents in his talk to the Council of Chief State School Officers, which opens a convention in Louisville on Friday.
He says teachers won't like it but do it anyway. How interesting. He's gonna kick that beehive, and Arne is following suit.
At least two union leaders speak out against his ideas, though rather belatedly in my opinion. Too many union leaders have gone along for years without teachers actually suspecting.
“We know that experience makes a difference in student achievement — teachers get better,” said Bill Raabe, director of collective bargaining at the National Education Association, the largest teachers’ union. “And additional training, too, whether its a master’s degree or some other way a teacher has improved her content knowledge, we think it ought to be compensated.”
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said of Mr. Gates’s speech: “He is proposing to change one of the things that parents count on — small class sizes to differentiate instruction. There’s a mountain of solid research and common sense showing smaller class sizes benefit students.”
She's right. The mountain of research and evidence is on the side of the traditional public schools. Yet the big money and power are taking over.
In fact Arne Duncan in Obama's name has gone along with Bill Gates in almost every area of what they are calling school "reform."
Arne Duncan has adopted Bill Gates education "reform" plans.Gates:
At least according to Leonie Haimson in the Huffington Post. Haimson describes how Bill Gates, and the Gates Foundation, are on a path towards completely dismantling public education and replacing it with a privatized system in which tax-funded profits go to big business.
...The Gates Foundation, endowed with $35 billion, has already spent billions promoting Gates' personal agenda: the proliferation of charter schools. Gates also promotes linking teacher evaluation and compensation to standardized test scores. Spending billions on education might sound good but considering that neither charter schools nor standardized tests stand up to scrutiny, spending billions promoting them is quite dangerous indeed."
Charter schools, merit pay linked to high stakes testing. Neither have been proven to work, but they are steamrolling us with them anyway.
Now to Arne's plans, just like Bill's plans.
The U.S. Department of Education under Arne Duncan has bought into the Gates' agenda completely. Former Gates Foundation officials now serve in the department; including Jim Shelton, former education program director for Gates and now Assistant Deputy Secretary for "Innovation and Improvement". Joan Weiss, former COO of the NewSchools Venture Fund - financier of charter schools with Gates' dollars - joined Duncan's ranks heading the Race to the Top program and has since been promoted to Duncan's Chief of Staff.
Not coincidentally, the $4.3 billion Race to the Top program requires states to eliminate caps on charter schools, forcibly close traditional schools, and even mandate wholesale firing of teachers and turning schools over to charter school operators. The Gates Foundation even "helped" states write their applications for Race to the Top funds - changing laws on charter schools and teacher evaluation in exchange for a long-shot gamble on what is essentially bribe money.
Gates seems to have the inside track and gets Arne's ear closely, but there are others like Eli Broad, the Walton family, and the hedge fund operators. There are
billionaires running the education reforms...the ones left out are the teachers who actually know what works.
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