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A Gates Foundation Education Initiative Fizzles
theodp writes "Three years ago, Sarah-Palin-bogeyman William Ayers published a paper questioning the direction the small school movement was taking (PDF) with the involvement of would-be education reformers like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And now, after $2 billion in grants, Bill Gates concedes that in most cases his foundation's efforts in that area fell short. 'Many of the small schools that we invested in did not improve students' achievement in any significant way,' said Gates. Bill does cite High Tech High as one of the few success stories, but even there has to limit his atta-boys to the San Diego branch — the Gates-backed Silicon Valley High Tech High closed its doors abruptly due to financial woes (concerns about the sustainability of Gates-initiated small schools were voiced in 2005). Not surprisingly, some parents are upset about the capital that school districts wasted following Bill's lead."
did he drop out, or did he jump before he got kicked out?
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Many people (I venture to say that the majority, in the US) think that business success is a clear sign of overall excellence. A extreme version of this line of thought is Calvin's doctrine that worldly success was a clear sign of being pre-destined for salvation. Mutatis mutandis with Microsoft and being the saviour of higher education.
There is no justification for Calvin's version of this idea, neither is there for most of its contemporary counterparts.
Take a couple million dollars and set a prize.
$100,000 for the best grades.
$50,000 for the second.
$25,000 for the third position.
$10,000 for ten more students.
etc.
Then, if you discover the grading system is completely flawed and tells more about the test passing skills than the knowledge... Well, you only spent a couple million bucks for a valuable knowledge.
Calvin believed nothing of the sort. He believed that the difference between a Christian believer and non-believer was predestined divine intervention, and not the product of human intellect. He wrote a bunch of books. You can read them if you like.
You see stuff like this happening all the time in the private sector. Notable guy buys stuff, everyone else jumps in and buys the same thing he does. Notable guy sells stuff or stops funding everyone else does the same.
When will people realize that even Notable people are human, are prone to mistakes just like everyone else. So except for blindly following what they are doing you should more carefully examine what they are doing. If you disagree with it, then don't follow, if you do agree with it then follow.
I am sorry there are no quick fixes in life. There is no Messiah who will make things all nice and easy (Even if you are Christian, Jesus actually made peoples lives more difficult then easier, forced them to think about ethics of religion vs just blindly following the rules). Sometimes people will get lucky and become successful quickly however for the most part hard work and dedication is the way.
To improve education there is no quick fix, small schools large schools, high-tech schools low-tech schools... All these are one detail in a more complex subject. If you say swap all the kids from an over achieving schools with those in an underachieving schools with the same budget you will find the overachieving kids will still overachieve. As they have parents who are more willing to participate in the child's education, they understand the value of education.
There is no quick fix for education you will need changes on all levels. Improved Parental involvement, Classes that help integrate other classes, ability to evaluate teachers and reward them for good performance, A grading system that rewards learning and allows mistakes as part of the learning process , not punishes the students for mistakes, Fair market pay for teachers with their skills (Pay Math and Science teachers as much as Engineers). And I know I am missing a much more.
Just putting money in education doesn't fix the problem, if that was true New York State would have the best education in the world. But how you wisely use the money and and work on changing the culture.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
You don't *need* money, you need good teachers. Paying more for a bad ones who can slither their way through interview, know buzzwords and can use a digital whiteboard won't fix it.
I went to a State school in the UK. Half of the kids were rough as anything, and the other half weren't. There were blackboards ('chalkboards' in the colonial parlance) and textbooks.
This is about ten years ago.
Not a rich school.
The teachers were good, so those who wanted to learn ended up going to a University of their choice, and those who couldn't be arsed weren't allowed to disrupt the teaching. If you'd put shiny e-tech and new age / business school teaching methods in there it would have gone horribly, horribly wrong.
That money is required for success in everything is a curious Americanism. India has more programmers and techs than anywhere else, and their schools run on a budget that couldn't run a US schoolbus.
Many people (I venture to say that the majority, in the US) think that business success is a clear sign of overall excellence.
It seems to me that business or political success is *usually* more a result of some type animal cunning with a heapin' helpin' of ruthlessness thrown in for good measure.
As for Calvinists, they always seemed to me like the people that Jesus warned us about instead of the ones he advocated becoming.
No it doesn't. It makes theodp look bad.
It doesn't even do that.
Not everyone is a news junkie and not everyone is going to remember who Bill Ayers is, as the last time he was a regular topic of discussion in the proess in October of last year, nearly 4 months ago. Theodp was simply trying to remind the reader of who Bill Ayers and why he was noteworthy in the news.
My blog
what is it about small schools, social justice, equity and community that conservatives dislike?
It's guys like Ayers that use terms like "social justice" to mean "everyone should get the same stuff in life, regardless of what they produce." And he has spent years overtly advocating for the use of schools as idealogical indoctrination centers aimed specifically at cranking out kids who see the world as one big entitlement engine. He's a redistribution-of-wealth guy, not a create-more-wealth guy, and he wants schools to make sure kids see the world the same way. And he thinks that small schools have a better chance of really drilling socialism into kids' heads.
That's what.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
No, education isn't that big or that complicated.
We've made it big and complicated but the evidence is all around that it needn't be.
There used to be little, red schoolhouses all over the place and their modern descendants, charter schools, are also all over the place. Neither one needed/needs a school district with its inevitable central administration bureaucracy and both had/have to concern themselves with teacher competence since parents can don't have to incur the expense of changing their residence if they're not happy with the school.
Gates almost got it right with his small school idea but the problem isn't the size of the school so much as it is the lack of choices open to parents. A lot of small schools for parents to choose among would mean a lot of schools that live and die by parental satisfaction. Since parents are the only group that can legitimately claim to be interested primarily in getting kids a decent education that makes the concerns of the parents the concerns of the schools.
In a school district the concerns of the parents may, or may not be, of any interest to the professionals because they don't have to care.
Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
You know, even though I am a Microsoft basher I must say that at least Gates is big enough to realize that he was wrong/made a mistake. I'm glad he didn't let ideology blind him to reality unlike the previous administration. Or maybe that was just stupidity.
He is one of the multi-billionaires who is spending a large part of his fortune actually trying to make a (BIG) difference (Carlos Slim are you listening?). (I realize there are some who take a much more cynical view towards his contributions, sorry I don't know enough to judge).
If we need to be reminded, is he really that noteworthy? ;)
It seems to me that business or political success is *usually* more a result of some type animal cunning with a heapin' helpin' of ruthlessness thrown in for good measure.
Let's not forget luck and circumstances. I'm relatively successful (not "Bill Gates" successful, but well above the average income) and I would suppose than many Slashdotters are. It's very tempting to believe that you're there because of some kind of innate superiority, and so it's easy to underestimate the value of dumb luck. Sometimes the difference between a successful person and a failure is "what they choose to do with the opportunities in front of them," but sometimes it really is just "the opportunities in front of them."
But even ignoring that, I don't see any reason to believe that "business success" is any kind of reflection of "overall excellence". Perhaps "business excellence", but successful use of one ability doesn't mean anything about excellence in other fields. Steven Hawking is a brilliant physicist, but I wouldn't want him as my surgeon.
Microsoft itself is great at leveraging success in one part of the computer/electronics market to push other related products, but perhaps not the most fantastic at building the actual products-- and those are just two things within the scope of "business".
Then, on top of that, I would side with you and point out that the skills to acquire success in business and finances are often (a) immense drive and ambition; (b) good connections and/or the ability to acquire good connections (c) animal cunning and political savvy; (d) ruthlessness and extreme moral flexibility. Having those qualities can be immensely useful, but they aren't necessarily the traits that you want exposed an masse in the population at large.
Do you have any friends who are teachers?
Turns out, there's a *lot* of parents who either don't give two shits about their kids' education or really would like to participate, but happen to be working multiple jobs.
Parents are some of the *worst* folks to deal with when it comes to their children's education: they find it hard to believe that their little Johnny doesn't deserve an A because he was up in his room studying *all night long*. I know a few who would call up their children's college professors because their dumbass kids didn't do any work, demanding to know why the professor didn't give them an A / wipe their ass / whatever the parent wants.
I know of parents who don't want exit exams because they knew their kids couldn't pass them. A system which is based on the guidance of the parents would be the worst in the world -- it would give incentive to making parents happy, and the way to do that is give good grades to every dumbass which passed through its doors.
By the time kids are 12 or so they are able to think for themselves a little bit. At that point it's up to schools to "win" students over to their own education. The idea that you "have to" go to school doesn't fly..
"You can lead a horse to water.." applies here when the quality of the "water" is really bad.
Disclaimer: I went to a "progressive" school in the UK. My first form teacher was a Communist who had thrown bricks at Fascists in the 1930s, but many of the staff were socialists, Catholics or both. House prices went up in the area all the time we lived there because parents wanted to be in the catchment area for that school. You see, a real Communist or socialist believes that education can transform society. Whereas it's the right wingers who want everybody else to be poor and uneducated, so they can profit.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
We all know /.'s opinion of Bill and his company, but let's take a moment to acknowledge that the Gates Foundation is a somewhat different animal. It has a track record of spending money on un-glamorous causes where there is big bang for the buck (e.g., malaria). Here, we see it checking the performance data and dropping a program that just wasn't working. Love 'em or hate 'em, that's the smart thing to do.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Hard work doesn't necessarily equate to brute physical labor. It might very well mean sitting down and learning the material, even though it's hard, so you can get a job doing what you want to do.
While I agree 100% with what you posted, those people who espouse "hard work" are espousing the virtues of difficult physical labor, because it's what they are forced to fall back on. I live in Texas, and trust me, this backwards-thinking culture is everywhere. It's a badge of honor. If the former President can spend all his free time moving brush around from one pile to another, it must be good, right? Unless you live in Texas, you have NO idea how true that statement rings to many people. Hell, the whole concept of owning a ranch is based on the fact you drive around in your pickup truck, clearing brush. How that makes any money, I'll never understand, but judging by their trophy wives and their giant SUVs, I suppose they are doing all right.
Good Lord,
Please keep the parents isolated from the educational system. They are the problem.
If you want the solution it is to "DEMAND EXCELLENCE". Let kids know that they will either fly high or sweat in poverty in a coal mine. Be more than willing to flunk them out and more than willing to throw them out for bad behavior. Toss the failures in the front lines during war or keep them in starvation jobs. It worked forever.
"There used to be little, red schoolhouses all over the place...."
And may we never go back to that system. One room schoolhouses were consistently underfunded, and tended to practice trickle-down education. The one underpaid and usually undereducated teacher would teach the oldest students, who would have the responsibility of teaching the younger ones. It was the only way to effectively ensure everyone got instruction, but it tended to mean no one got much.
Since attendance was rarely mandatory---and schools didn't have the resources to combat truancy, anyway---the vast majority of children got far less than twelve years of instruction, and that of a quality completely unacceptable today.
If you don't believe me, look at literacy rates for military recruits during the world wars. Much of the country is effectively no richer than it was then, but literacy rates even in the poorest areas are lightyears beyond what they were then.
Higher level governmental involvement hasn't been perfect by any stretch, but what passed for the educational system before states and the federal government got involved is shocking. Libertarianism isn't an automatic recipe for utopia.
For a relatively quick discussion of the history of governmental involvement in education, check out The One Best System, David Tyack, published by Harvard Press. It's far from a flattering account, but it makes a compelling case for the necessity of government having involved itself the the first place.
Maybe it's no longer necessary; but I doubt it. As long as there are portions of the country too poor to effectively run an educational system without help and guidance, I just don't see how we can avoid giving it. Sure, rich areas suffer for it, but that's a price I'm willing to pay to make sure everyone at least has a shot at a decent education.
There were little red school house districts, of course - call them "townships," if you like or cities.
The geek is never strong on history.
New York state began funding public schools in 1795.
By the mid 1850s you have an easily recognizable system of state supervision. New York State Education Department
The red brick school was small because almost no one continued with school beyond the primary grades - assuming you made it that far.
The red brick school was pure college prep or vocational education. You were in the metal shop or taking courses in Latin.
The scholar and the mechanic strictly segregated.
My father was among the last to graduate from one of these schools - a senior class of twenty-five.