Bill Gates and Education
'Race to the Top' Federal Stimulus Program for Education Is Really About Funding Charter Schools with Public Money
March 30, 2010Washington Post - Moments ago, President Barack Obama signed the reconciliation bill reforming the student loan system and expanding Pell grants into law. But the most interesting education news is elsewhere: The administration has announced the winners in the first round of “Race to the Top” grants, and only two states, Delaware and Tennessee, made the cut.
Race to the Top is a $4.35 billion grant program created in the stimulus package. You can read the official description here, but the short version is that the states submit proposals to improve their education system to the federal government, and if the Feds approve, the states get a pot o' money with which to implement the plan. The idea isn't just to fund public schools, but to use the promise of federal money in a time of strapped state budgets to empower reformers. The program has garnered bipartisan praise, including a glowing column from David Brooks.
But it's hard to say no to states. A lot of people worried that the government wouldn't be very rigorous in its selection process, so there'd be little incentive for states to work for the funds. Think again. Out of 16 finalists, the administration only gave money to two of them (which, as Jay Matthews notes, will make the results easier to track). That means there's more than $3 billion left in the pot. And the efforts made by the winners are instructive: Tennessee's legislature, for instance, met in two special sessions and passed a law lifting the cap on charter schools. It also got endorsements from 93 percent of the state's teachers unions.
This is empowering reformers in other states to demand similar efforts. New York finished second-to-last, leading Mike Bloomberg to criticize the state legislature for not lifting its cap on charter schools.
"We are not going to qualify unless the state understands this," he said.And that's where the promise of the program really lies: Using the money to get the states to make legislative changes they wouldn't otherwise make, and unite stakeholders who wouldn't otherwise come together. The fact that states are in particularly desperate financial times also means the promise of federal money exerts a stronger pull than would ordinarily be the case.
Now the competition goes to a second round, and states that want the money know what they need to do, and know the administration won't give them funds if they don't do it. And in the 2011 budget, the government asked for another pot of money to run another round of these grants, this time letting non-state entities like communities compete. And so it will go.
Traditionally, the federal government has had trouble doing much on education because they have a lot less power over it than people think. Most of the important decisions are made at the state and local level. The Obama administration is using federal money to influence that decision-making. And if they keep being this tough about who gets the grants, it just might work.
Did Bill Gates Buy His Podium at the American Federation of Teachers’ Convention in Seattle?
August 22, 2010Seattle Education 2010 - This summer, the two national teachers’ unions held their annual conferences, one in New Orleans, the other here in Seattle.
A big difference between the two, though, was the choice of keynote speaker. The National Education Association chose Diane Ravitch, noted education historian, former education cabinet member in both the Bush I and Clinton administrations, author of numerous books on education, including her most recent “The Death and Life of the Great American School System,” in which she explains her opposition to all the key agenda items currently being pushed by the ed reformers – charter schools, “merit pay,” high-stakes testing.
“The current so-called reform movement is pushing bad ideas,” said Ravitch to the delegates at the 2010 NEA Representative Assembly in New Orleans. “No high-performing nation in the world is privatizing its schools, closing its schools, and inflicting high-stakes testing on every subject on its children. The current reform movement wants to end tenure and seniority, to weaken the teaching profession, to silence teachers’ unions, to privatize large sectors of public education. Don’t let it happen!”
Over here in Seattle, however, the American Federation of Teachers had Bill Gates as their keynote speaker. Gates, who heavily supports non-union, privately run charter schools, is on a rampage against teachers, declaring that many aren’t “effective,” based solely on standardized student test scores, and wants to tie their pay to high-stakes test results (even though this is proven not to improve teacher or student performance), force them to compete against each other for money, spy on/videotape them, and dissect their teaching methods, maybe even replace teachers and schools altogether with online lectures.
In other words, he’s not an obvious or uplifting choice for keynote speaker to a conference of teaching professionals.
Not surprisingly, a number of AFT members got up and walked out when he gave his speech. Sure, he dropped in a couple of token niceties about how hard it is to be a teacher (though he has no experience in the field other than parenting), but beneath the icing remains the basic icy message: You guys aren’t good enough and I know how to make you better.
It’s true that Gates spends millions of dollars on education, but he has zero background in the field, and all his grants have heavy strings attached. He has pet projects and the weight of his wealth and his connection to the Obama administration (former Gates Foundation staffers now staff the Obama administration and vice versa – also see p. 5 of the recent Businessweek article about “Bill Gates’ School Crusade” and the attempted move by Brad Jupp from the Obama administration to the Gates Foundation) gives him a disproportionate and unchecked influence on the direction of public education in this nation right now.
Some have jokingly referred to Gates – not Arne Duncan — as the true Education Secretary. This has a number of sound-minded people worried — including Ravitch, who was recently interviewed on KUOW, and had this to say about Gates:
“I’m just concerned about the unaccountable power of the Gates Foundation. They are now virtually managing education policy in the United States.”
So why did AFT invite ‘Bill the teacher-basher’ to address a national conference of its teachers?
Perhaps this has something to do with it: That same month, the Gates Foundation gave the AFT $3.4 million to push for “teacher quality initiatives,” and another “$217,200” in June for “conference support.”
From the Gates Foundation web site:
American Federation Of Teachers Educational Foundation
Date: July 2010
Purpose: to continue the American Federation Of Teachers Innovation Fund’s efforts to support local affiliates that engage in research-based, union-developed teacher quality initiatives and to work with a consortium of local and state affiliates—the Teacher Excellence Collaborative—to create and implement a comprehensive development and evaluation system based upon the American Federation Of Teachers framework
Amount: $3,421,725
Term: 2 years and 1 month
Topic: High Schools
Region Served: North America, Global
Program: United States
Grantee Location: Washington, District of Columbia Grantee
Web site: http://www.aft.orgAmerican Federation Of Teachers Educational Foundation
Date: June 2010
Purpose: for conference support
Amount: $217,200
Term: 7 months
Topic: High Schools
Region Served: North America, Global
Program: United States
Grantee Location: Washington, District of Columbia Grantee
Web site: http://www.aft.org
Bill Gates Touts Charter Schools, Accountability
June 30, 2010Associated Press - Billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates said Tuesday that charter schools can revolutionize education, but that the charter school movement also must hold itself accountable for low-performing schools.
"We need breakthroughs," Gates said at the National Charter Schools Conference in Chicago. "And your charters are showing that breakthroughs are possible."
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has been a big player in the school reform movement, spending about $200 million a year on grants to elementary and secondary education. Gates said charter schools and their ability to innovate are a key part of the foundation's education strategy.
"I really think that charters have the potential to revolutionize the way students are educated," Gates said.
Charter schools receive taxpayer money but have more freedom than traditional public schools to map out how they'll meet federal education benchmarks.
Nelson Smith, president and chief executive of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, said 457 charter schools have opened in the last year for a total of about 5,000 charter schools educating about 1.65 million children nationally.
Gates said his foundation wants to focus on promoting and sharing effective teaching practices. But he said charters that fall below public school performance averages also need to be identified and either improved or closed.
"The deal that allowed for the autonomy really has to be a real deal," Gates said. "The freedom to perform in new ways meant that if you don't perform that things are shut down after being given a chance."
Smith said charter schools are being shuttered if they don't meet academic standards.
"People who oversee charter schools are getting very serious about that," he said. "The charter promise of autonomy for accountability is really being realized."
Obtaining proper facilities also has proved to be a challenge for charter schools nationally, said Caprice Young, president and chief executive of KC Distance Learning in Portland, Ore.
"While the money may follow the student, the facilities don't," said Young, who also is a board member of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.Gates said his foundation is working to help charter schools with financing facilities so they can receive larger loans at better rates.
Gates said charter schools find themselves with an "historic opportunity."
"The majority of children in the country are attending schools that don't work for them," Gates said. "So it's imperative that we take the risk to make change, not just small changes at the margin but dramatic changes that are centered around the student."
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