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A Strange Deference to Gates Foundation at Education Nation
Last September, NBC brought us the first Education Nation, programming developed in coordination with the release of the pro-charter school documentary, Waiting For Superman. The network caught flak when it was pointed out that panels were loaded with school reform "superheroes," such as former D.C. Schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, while largely absent were voices of reform critics, such as education historian Diane Ravitch and classroom teachers.
This year, NBC has made an effort to be a bit more balanced and inclusive of teachers’ voices, and the Teacher Town Hall yesterday made a start.On a stage journalist Brian Williams interviewed mostly teachers, while his colleague, Tamron Hall, took comments from the crowd. The teachers’ comments are worth a listen, but what most caught my attention was an interview with philanthropist Melinda Gates.
Here are some of the things Williams said about Melinda Gates and her husband, Bill, who, together, have the largest private foundation in the world and have donated billions of dollars to projects — some of them controversial — in the education world.
At the top of the show, we were told:
We're also going to be joined by Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Gates Foundation, one of the sponsors of this event, and the largest single funder of education anywhere in the world. It's their facts that we're going to be referring to often to help along our conversation.
Then, in his introduction of Melinda Gates, Brian Williams said:
You could refer to our guest as the top funder of education in the world. A partner and sponsor of this year's gathering. Also spending half a billion dollars to devise a way figure out what makes a great teacher, what makes them most effective. The estimates are the Gates Foundation has already spent, obviously a record for any education spending, spent or committed to spending five to seven billion dollars.
But I want to focus on what Mrs. Gates said, because there is something deeply disturbing about the way the issues have been framed. And since this foundation is, according to Brian Williams, the source for the very facts that are guiding this conversation, it seems crucial to understand the thinking that is behind their work.
Brian Williams asked:
You and your husband have always said this all comes back to a single relationship a student and a teacher. What have you learned about what makes a great teacher?
Melinda Gates responded:
Everybody says 'you can't just look at test scores at the end of the year, because there are so many factors, there's poverty and other things that go into this.' But nobody had done the research to say 'how do we know that a teacher's making a difference in a student's life?' So we set out to do this enormous piece of research. Three thousand teachers signed up in six different districts. We videoed the teachers, and we said 'at the end of the day, what is predictive of great teaching? What besides that test score?' And it turned out a teacher who's good one year is good usually in the second year. It turned out you could look at the test scores and see in terms of value added, how had they moved kids up in the system. But then you could also look at student perceptions. It turned out that student perceptions of a teacher were also predictive of how they would do at the end of the year and whether they learned all that material.
Brian Williams:
How do you keep that from becoming a popularity contest?
Melinda Gates:
We learned you have to have multiple measures of what make a great teacher. Right now teachers are observed by their principals at regular intervals. We need to have peer observations. But we need to know that the tool that we're using -- there are ten different tools for peer observations. But which ones actually predict whether the students learned the material at the end of the year? So we need to test the peer observations, and the principal observations, and we need to look at the scores at the end of the year, and we need to look at the student data. When you ask the students did you have an effective teacher, you ask specific questions, 'did the teacher help you when you didn't understand the homework, or what you missed on your homework? Did they go help you learn that? Did the teacher get a sense of when he or she didn't explain the information well, and help get your class on track? Did your teacher manage the classroom well? It turns out there are about six questions you can ask the students - not 'did you like the teacher,' but what they did in the classroom that actually measures and correlates to whether the test scores got better at the end of the year.
Do you notice what is bothering me? Gates begins by acknowledging that good teaching cannot be reduced to a test score — or at least that this is often said. She then asserts that the half a billion dollars that her foundation has spent on research in this area have uncovered a number of things that can be measured that allow us to predict which teachers will have the highest test scores. A great teacher is defined over and over again as one who made sure students "learned the material at the end of the year."
If you look closely at how she describes peer observations, the method at work is even clearer. Teachers tend to support peer observation, because it can be a valuable basis for collaboration, which yields many benefits to us beyond possible test score gains.
But what does Melinda Gates say about it? It can be worthwhile, BUT: only the models of peer observation that have been proven to raise test scores should be used. And presumably we can count on the Gates Foundation to provide us with that information.
It appears that the Gates Foundation is laboring under the same logical fallacy that doomed No Child Left Behind. Employing circular reasoning, they have defined great teaching as that which results in the most gains on end of year tests, and then spent millions of dollars identifying indicators of teaching that will yield the best scores.
The most deceptive strategy is how they then try to pretend that these indicators are "multiple measures" of good teaching. In fact, these are simply indicators of teaching practices associated with higher test scores. The things she describes that supposedly go beyond test scores --peer observations, student perceptions -- are only deemed valid insofar as they are correlated with higher test scores.
Melinda Gates begins with the question "How do we know a teacher's making a difference in a student's life?" That is an excellent and complex question. However, when we look at her answer, we find she commits the logical fallacy known as "begging the question." One begs the question when one assumes something is true, when that is actually a part of what must be proven.
The question she begs is "what defines great teaching?" This is not answered by finding teaching methods associated with higher test scores. This question remains hanging over the entire school reform enterprise. Until we answer that question, we are devising complex mechanisms to elevate test scores assuming this will improve students' lives, when this is manifestly unproven.
This episode should remind us of the crucial need to teach critical thinking in our schools — and apply such thinking to the dilemmas we face.
The other thing that was rather disturbing was the omnipresence of the Gates Foundation's largesse. Towards the end of the show, Brian Williams offered this advice to viewers:
This is a couple who have decided to give away their fortune. I heard two educators earlier today, one said to the other, "they never set out to do anything other than put money into education and help kids." So thanks to our audience for being mindful of that.
There was some pushback, however, and NBC deserves some credit for giving space for some differing views. New Haven teacher Matt Presser was one of the winners of an essay contest, and he offered his thoughts:
Too often school reform is something that is happening to our students as opposed to with them or for them, and so many decisions are being made by people in board rooms, people in the White House, when the real people who know what our students need are the people here today, the people in our classrooms every day.
This must have seemed to be a bit ungrateful to Brian Williams, because he then said:
We just had Mrs. Gates here. This is a guy, I think the Forbes latest figure is $60 billion ... here's the Gates family, spending upwards of $7 billion so far, haven't broken a sweat yet, trying to talk to you guys, ask you questions, including students, asking questions about what's working, what's not working. Do you support their efforts? Do you think it's money well spent?
Matt Presser replied,
I think it's a shame that we have to rely on philanthropy to support our schools, to make up for an educational debt that has accrued for generations. I think certain communities, especially in urban areas, have been neglected by education for so many years, we have so much to make up for - not just in education, but in housing policy and job discrimination. In so many areas across the country, that even those efforts to get more money into our schools, there needs to be more a holistic approach, instead of just something that is thrown at our schools.
But perhaps the most potent counterweight to the Gates approach was offered by teacher John Hunter. He said,
My first job interview, I asked the supervisor, what should I do? She said "What do you want to do?" As a teacher, to be given that kind of open space, that kind of mandate-less position to be in where you can create out of the emptiness, it allowed me to create that kind of template for my students, where I could ask them, "What would YOU like to do today? What is your passion? What drives you?" If the students have the interest and you build towards that, then they can come with more passion for learning.
He took advantage of this latitude to create a now-famous eight-week long interactive game where his students are challenged to solve world problems. Was this great teaching? Do we have to wait until we see how his students performed on the end-of-year standardized tests to find out?
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19 Comments so far
Show AllThis is not the first article I have seen which points out the fallacies in the reform movement - Nearly anything by Diane Ravitch does the same thing. But this is the first one which points out that all the Gates Foundation has going for it is money.
Why should anyone think that Bill and Melinda Gates can produce positive changes in our educational system? What do they know about education? All they can do is repeat what their staff tell them, and their staff clearly has been chosen carefully - from those who believe that standardized testing is diagnostic.
The physicist Banesh Hoffman said everything that needs to be said about such testing - he said it about 40 years ago, and it is still true. The tests tell us little to nothing.
I was stopped cold upon reading that the Gates foundation is the "largest funder of education in the world." Of course, that is false. Governments, state and federal, pay out far more than Gates. Five billion dollars spread out over an entire nation over a decade is chump change.
Perhaps what rankles is the hubris of the Gates Foundation, telling educators how they should do their jobs. If it nurtured grassroots, local reform efforts, all of us educators would cheer them on. Instead, they preach, they vilify, they humiliate fine teachers, principals, and all who have devoted their lives to education. We don't need them. Until they come up with a better way to help students and teachers, they should stay away from education altogether. Malaria in Africa would be a better bet.
The tests do tell us something -- the System's faith in numbers, in quantifiable results. Making it all about test scores means that one can rate teachers by the numbers that are produced rather than by having someone do a subjective assessment of how the teachers are doing, which is the only reality based way teaching skills can be assessed -- but that requires someone who has the wherewithal to understand good teaching.
It also tells the kids something -- that getting good numbers are what's important and that acquiring knowledge is just to have something to regurgitate during test taking and is of little importance in living a life. The gets are getting that message. That's why many are mostly OK with cheating, or as they call it "being results oriented."
Not to put too fine a point on it, but what screams between the lines in this article is the extent to which a technobarbaric capitalist culture dedicated to the service of Mammon creates an obscene aristocracy of wealth.
Über-technocrat Bill and his mate, by virtue of being filthy rich, are automatically elevated to the status of demi-gods of pedagogy.
I've never acquainted myself with Melinda's biography, so I don't know her professional background. Yes, I do recognize that Bill Gates is revered as a Very Smart Man and an iconic paragon of Commercial Success.
One of the most common fallacies in our prolapsed culture is the fatuous knee-jerk tendency to assume that someone who has proven to be a Very Smart Man in a narrow area of expertise is automatically qualified to be an Authority Plenipotentiary in any area to which the Very Smart Man cares to direct his wealth-- er, attention.
As in any monarchy or aristocracy, whatever Melinda's independent qualifications, she is elevated to the level of Authority Plenipotentiary simply because she occupies the penumbra of her husband's glory and rides in her own bucket seat in the locomotive of the Gravy Train.
Money talks, and in a wholly commodified culture, mega-money irrationally entitles its possessors to slavish respect and deference.
RIGHT ON.
O.S. Great point, and well-stated.
PARANOID: A millionaire friend of mine used to joke that Americans loved scores. He worked with me briefly on coming up with an astrological compatibility report that would provide scores in all sorts of categories. (That was his idea).
In one of my screen plays I have a scene where Hestia turns to Zeus, head of Olympus, to reply to his asking her how she thinks he's doing--as leader. She answers that all he's concerned about are stock averages and sports scores.
This thing with number, or score, could even have a Biblical root insofar as many worship that source, and it states, "And to everything, there is a number."
When I was in junior high school I was called to the principal's office, and then interviewed by the guidance counselor whose name was "Mr. Friend." The reason? I scored in the top 5-percentile of the nation in science and math and the bottom 20% in mechanical aptitude, and they'd never SEEN that combination before. I really find simple mechanics very difficult... because my thinking is on a very abstract level.
One time my sister and I had to load up a U-haul and she was stunned that I could not see what she could see, insofar as where a certain object could be placed or fit in. I've dated a few carpenters and construction workers because they are SO left brain, and their affinity with measurements and mundane details exists in such complete polarity to my inner logistics. Moral: Life should be comedy, when it's not geared to tragedy... in this way, laughter helps to keep us sane in insane times.
It would seem those who've been the biggest hypers of Standardized testing & NCLB / RTTT driven Charterized [= privatized = profitized] leveraged take over Gov't funded Public schools - are mostly rich or affluent white guys [Obama, Melinda Gates, Michelle Rhee are a bit of an exception], who have little or no formal academic training &/or practical real-world experience as an educator [Arne Duncan & Paul Vallas were Not educators before their Political appointments by Rich Daley Jr as 'CEOs of CPS' Schools -&- Bill & Melinda Gates' expertise is in software development @ Their MicroSoft Corp - Not Education], & have no personal stake in Public Schools- IE: neither they nor their children have attended any. So are they really all that altruistic or is this all about something else?!
Take Bill & Melinda Gates for example. They definitely have a Financial stake in being able to unduly influence Gov't Public School policy, because MicroSoft's OSs & Apps are being rolled-out in these schools as both the back-bone of their essential IT infrastructure & in the trend of computerizing classrooms- using MicroSoft's Windows Desktops in combo w their educational software! Public Schools are a Big Market for which the Gates' MicroSoft can take a Lion's Share! [Note: If a person whose training & experience was focused solely on Teaching English Lit, were to apply for a job at Bill & Melinda Gate's MicroSoft Corp- for a position in Software Development, Hardware Design &/or Integration, Network &/or Desktop Admin & Support, etc; what would be the chances that they'd get that job {about Zer0}?! So why is it that rich white guys {& gals} like the Gates- who have Little or no training &/or experience in either Education, Agriculture, or Heath & Medicine- are literally seen as Gurus {are literally fawned all over} in areas for which they have little if any formal academic training &/or real world practical experience in {Hell- Gates didn't even finish his BS degree at MIT??!!]
Standardized tests [which have been proven to generally favor school kids from well-to-do families] are pushed as the back-bone of NCLB / RTTT phony reform because: First} There's a Lot of Money [Big-$] In it for the Corps that Make &/or Manage these tests! 2nd} They knew most inner-city Black & Brown school kids would have trouble meeting their 'standards' based on standardized testing [IE: their whole point was to 'Play this Race Card']! Thus they've cynically used this as a Hammer to seize control of inner-city public schools & break teachers' unions! 3rd- These testing Corps prefer so-called standardized tests [rather than teacher developed essay tests] because they can be graded in mass by machines or by clerks [IE: Non Educators] w NO Knowledge of the subject matter using a score-key! In other words these trends tend to de-professionalize teaching!
In principle I'm not against private schools [ala Catholic Schools] as an alternative to Public Schools - which this trend of NCLB / RTTT driven Charterization of Public Schools Is Most Definitely NOT! Folks like Bill & Melinda Gates have Plenty of Money of Their Own to set up a truly independent private school system, likened unto other traditional private schools, in which they could freely roll-out all of their student achievement theories based on testing [Note: Bill scored 1590 out 1600 on his SAT]- as an alternative to Public Schools! Or the Gates could have taken that $1/2 -$1Billion & Donated It, w no strings attached, to some particular needy inner-city Public School district [say in Bill Gates home-town of Seattle]. So the $Billion Question is why have they chosen to target inner-city schools w NCLB / RTTT Phony reforms instead!
I agree. In the past, I think rich people donated money for buildings and schools but they didn't become experts on everything just because they were rich. Melinda Gates makes a really poor John Dewey.
"A Strange Deference to Gates Foundation at Education Nation."
Follow the money: Education Nation ===> NBC ===> MSNBC ===> MicroSoft ===> BILL GATES.
Gods, you are stupid.
The reason Education Nation is soft pedaling is because THEY DON'T WANT TO PISS OFF THE BOSS!
Exactly -- follow the money!
Several years ago, when I still tuned into Oprah occasionally, I tuned in one day, and there was Bill Gates. The show was about innovative education/schools and Bill Gates had the answers. I had NO idea he was interested in education until that day, and Oprah was SO impressed.
Fast forward to the Obama campaign, and suddenly, for me, some dots connected. If you recall, Oprah's show was also broadcast on NBC. Oprah campaigned for Obama, and Arne Duncan, another Chicago connection and CEO of the Chicago Schools, was appointed Secretary of Education in the U.S., Next, came the Bill Gates charter school scheme, anointed as the "race to top," or as I like to call it, "the race to the bottom," with Waiting for Superman in the wings.
The circle goes around and around and around! Now, we have Education Nation.
"Über-technocrat Bill and his mate, by virtue of being filthy rich, are automatically elevated to the status of demi-gods of pedagogy." -- Obedient Servant
I agree!
Two or three years ago, I watched Bill Gates testify a couple of different times before congress about how congress needs to raise the number of H1b Visa applicants, allowing additional foreign workers into the U.S., because people in this country are NOT smart enough to do the work in various fields. Mr. Gates was very blunt! None of our MIS-representatives on the committee challenged Bill Gates for real data and/or stats, etc. Nor did any of them stand up for U.S. workers. Not surprising, they, too, are in awe of the man with the money.
I am not very good with computers because they are SO linear. Even when I am ready to log off, that impulse is countered by the machine flashing the option to upgrade this or that; and before I can get the computer turned off, I have to satisfy WHAT THE MACHINE demands of me.
I preface my comment with that "prelude" because those who are comfortable in the linear step-follows-step sequence that computers operate by, are likely rather robotic in their approaches to life, itself. And I would suspect that Melinda Gates, irrespective of any inclination towards altruism, qualifies.
I mean ultimately aren't these programs aimed at turning children's cerebral processes into those consistent with computer models? And who is to say that all this indecent emphasis on testing won't bring mega-millions, year after to year, to the Gates Foundation (or any one of its auxiliary components) in providing those tests?
I think the Montessori approach is much better... and that today's high schools should be teaching farming, plumbing, intro to electrical engineering, and all sorts of JOBS that communities will need. Since much taught as history is based on deception, and much of the upper math (calculus? Trig?) of no use... it's time schools provided SKILLS to help young people find entrepreneurial work in an unstable, about to become rapidly decentralized nation.
SR: I agree that training in the trades should start sooner than they do in schools. In my district students can begin their training in electrical, plumbing, carpentry, etc. in the eleventh grade. Compared to, say, Germany, that is quite late. There, I think ninth grade is about where it starts. Nowadays technical training is not about pounding and sawing, but about computer diagnostics and such. It takes a fair amount of intelligence and ambition to stick with some of these programs.
Community Colleges offer second chances to many students who screwed around during high school. They provide a ladder to management positions or to technically skilled positions that would not be available to young people in many foreign countries. That is something good that we do here.
You could argue that math is good discipline for the mind (as Plato did). It may or may not be useful, but it does value precision and logical thinking--things we should encourage in all people. What ever happened to the idea that school disciplines the mind? It might not get you a job, but it certainly enriches your life.
Drosera: I concede the point to you on math, however, I would therefore add music to the list. In my view, music is an expression of higher math. If you've watched the film, "Amadeus" and observed the manner by which Mozart had to calculate what note the trombone would play (as one example) to form a harmonic interface with the entire musical score, you get a sense of how these relationships operate. The Fibonacci Series comes to mind.
KAY: It's good to see you posting again!
any discussion of education that ignores curriculum to focus on method and result is misguided, at best, and suspect, at worst...
perhaps the reason schools suffer is they teach lies, and both the teachers and the students know it...(I hope the teachers know it!)
our entire lives are lies...why should we be surprised our schools are?
oh, for the day school consists of walking around the world, learning what to eat, and what not...how to spot a liar, or disable a violent oppressor...
one of the first clues is to be very wary of anyone who seems unwilling to do their own 'work'...
or someone who siphons billions off of other people's intellectual efforts...
High-stakes, computer assessed testing are the driving force of school reform as defined by our latest robber baron/philanthropist Gates. One keeps hearing of the wonderful words of Diane Ravitch, but remember she was a high-level cheerleader for NCLB. Apparently she did some research eventually after doing her damage to the educational system, and now is a progressive educational hero. Oh please. If she had done the equivalent of a sophomore research paper on high-stakes testing while instituting the practice, it wouldn’t have taken her so many years to reach her conclusions, which are and have been obvious. They are our eugenics. Remember The Bell Curve?
I graduated from college with a B.A. in mathematics. So I think I know what it's like to sit in a classroom with a teacher or lecturer up front trying to impart knowledge to a group of students. As one of the students I've decided that that procedure is not the way I best learn anything. For one thing my mind has a tendency to wander from the narrow focus at hand. My experience is that I learn better from books. Books are objects that sit still and allow me to set my own pace. Also, in my own privacy I can profusely use trial and error. Doesn't what we learn from our errors and mistakes stick with us better than what we get right the first time?
It's been said that the best schooling is to sit one on one on a log with (e.g.) Socrates, at the other end of the log. I'm not so sure about that, because Socrates might not let me be the one to set the pace!
But couldn't we achieve the log sitting model with a computer?! And what could be more non-judgemental, and have more patience, than a computer. Now maybe school teachers don't like the idea of using computers for reasons of luddism. But
for the sake of allowing each student to learn at his or her own pace we shouid consider computer programs, something that was not available to earlier generations. And using computers that way might reduce the bad effects from peer pressure and stereotyping.
Teachers are still vital. Students need help at do-it-yourself learning. Teachers can demonstrate short cuts and procedures that bring to life what's in a book or computer program. And they can otherwise generally help and guide the individual do-it-yourselfers.
Nothing wrong with using computers for learning, but the schools do quite a bit of that already. Students need face-to-face contact with educated adults, and with their peers. Computers do a very poor job of teaching a lot of less-easily measurable but very important things like social skills and ethics and aesthetics--which of course, those tests will also never measure. But why should the corporations that run our country care about such matters? What they want is robot-like efficiency, basic knowledge, and obedience. What struck me reading this piece is that nobody talked much about the STUDENTS' perceptions or needs. To the Gates and other corporate kings, the students are not real people whose needs or desires or daydreams or poetry need to be taken into account. They are tools. They would no more ask the students for their opinions of teachers or of the curriculum than they'd ask the computers or bench presses what they want.
I suspect this is a big part of what's wrong with the schools, a big part of how they manage to produce young people who resist learning--despite occasional lip service, schools don't exist FOR the students. It's hardly surprising that they react to the prison atmosphere with an attitude.
Education had a goal of scholarship and civic excellence to ensure our democracy.
Teachers functions and true scholarship for it’s own sake were protected from political influences and competitive models in the workplace with the tenure system insuring academic excellence.
Now, it seems, everyone is after the money of education.
mwildfire said,
"Computers do a very poor job of teaching a lot of less-easily measurable but very important things like social skills and ethics and aesthetics--which of course, those tests will also never measure."
I say,
Schools are a place where individuals are herded together, The powers that be hope to use that occasion for indoctrination. It obviously has mixed results. Some students submit to the power of peer pressure, which, is a "law of the jungle" that has more bad than good consequences. e.g. some students lose a sense of guilt about cheating on exams.
I look back on my own schooling (graduated college 1955) as an assortment of mostly bad events. There were a few good events, but I wish I had been home schooled. My parents couldn't have done it. They didn't even go to high school growing up before and during WWI. It's just a dream I have about myself that may or may not be realistic. Some reporting I've read says that the home schooled do better on achievement tests.(than those from schools). I feel I couldn't have done any worse at home than what I did do in public school (at learning subject matter). The social interaction was a distraction and a tragic waste of time..