Slashdot Mirror
Gates: Not Much To Show For $5B Spent On Education
theodp writes "Since 2000, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has poured some $5 billion into education grants and scholarships. Ten years into his record-breaking philanthropic push for school reform, the WSJ reports that Bill Gates is sober about the investment and willing to admit some missteps. 'I applaud people for coming into this space,' said Gates, 'but unfortunately it hasn't led to significant improvements.' This understanding of just how little influence seemingly large donations can have has led the foundation to rethink its focus in recent years. Instead of trying to buy systemic reform with school-level investments, a new goal is to leverage private money in a way that redirects how public education dollars are spent. Despite the good intentions, some are expressing concerns about how billionaires and the Gates Foundation rule our schools, including the lack of transparency and spotty track record of the wealthy would-be reformers. Perhaps Gates should consider funding a skunkworks educational project for retired Microsoft CTO Ray Ozzie, who was working on networked, self-paced computer assisted instruction in 1974 — 36 years before Bill and Google discovered Khan Academy!"
My understanding that much of Gates' donations have been spent on organizations trying to reform public education along "market-based" lines -- i.e., public schools run by private companies, which supposedly makes them more accountable. Maybe he's discovering this isn't the panacea that the reformers have sold?
Proves the point that we knew all along, throwing money at the educational system does not fix it! Just look at the govt track record. Time to dump the institutional model? I'm sure this article will spark the ever repeating slashdot argument about what's wrong with America's school system.
billionaires and the Gates Foundation rule our schools,
Well, it was printed in a blog by none other than "gatekeeper1", so it must be true!
The problem is that people who care about ideas (and those are exactly the sort of people that you'd want in education) don't care much about money.
What? Throwing money at a problem does not automagically fix things? The deuce you say!
If I learned anything from my teacher wife*, it's that there are dozens of ways that children (and adults) learn, and you have to tailor the learning experience for each of them.
Some children may do very well with things like the Khan Academy. Others will not.
Anyone who tries to shoehorn all children into the same learning solution is likely to leave a large percentage of them behind.
* and my own experience in contrast to my brother, and my own two childrens' very different learning experiences in public schools.
The problem with our education system is simple; it's run by politicians. Education should not be run by people who a) don't have a solid grasp of the material they are mandating and b) are more interested in reelection.
The only way we'll get meaningful reform is by pushing control ( ie: money ) down to the county level and letting them figure it out.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I did a Master of Arts in Teaching in the early 90's. What I think I learned from my History of Eduction Reforms was this: 1) kids will learn given half a chance, 2) most (if not all) education reforms have had AT BEST marginal impacts, 3) so you can do something good or screw up and it doesn't matter all that much. Education and the drive to become educated starts at home.
One major problem with education is that is is big - really really big, like healthcare and military spending. $5B over 10 years is something like 5 cents per student per day.
So, while an impressive feat for a single man to accomplish, approaching every student in the U.S. every morning for 10 years and saying "hey kid, here's a nickel, try to do a better job in school today," is apparently about as effective as you would imagine it to be.
And, the real problem, while Bill was giving kids a nickel, the local taxing authorities were cutting back by dimes, quarters and dollars - if you don't get a lid on that behavior, you'll never make positive progress.
here in california with 'charter schools' which have turned out to be little more than money laundering operations for major corporations, business elite, and a handful of food service vendors. Corporations are also granted another platform to showcase to the public a model of business sans union.
businesses are dismally suited toward the task of education. Their mandate, a legal one at that, is to maintain and grow shareholder earnings and profit.children are complex and perform differently. as such they are a poor if not dangerously unpredictable revenue generator for shareholders. So, instead of measuring childrens success in education by plausible means like college enrollment rates or hireability in the workplace, businesses running education tend to emphasize performance based on standardized testing batteries and total number of students enrolled; a sort of quantity over quality model
i surmise when bill says 'education reform' what hes tacitly implying is nothing less than what was implied when charter schools were created.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Two big problems with Deep Pocket donations:
1) No audit trail for where/how the donation was spent
2) No evidence the donation was ever *actually* made
I apologize if this sounds cynical, but I have very, very little faith in any corporation/monopoly in the US right now. It's far too easy for companies to game tax breaks with large wads of cash. Sure, maybe you donated 5 billion to a school, but in return did you get a 8 billion tax credit from taxpayers?
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
It's true. If $5B went into developing a full and open instructional curriculum online, we'd be done by now and the whole world would be a better place. I'm not saying that this would fix all of our problems in education, but at least it would give kids who are ready and able to learn the access to an education. Most money in our educational system goes to kids who are either not ready or not able to learn. It's no wonder that with them, progress will be hard to see. I'd much rather see more money spent on educating girls in the third world, or at least those who are motivated to learn. I think they are much more important to the future of our planet than the unmotivated children of US rednecks and methheads.
I had a friend who was an education Ed.D. candidate. She did a lot of studies of studies and for the most part found that any new education initiative could have a large positive impact, but it was all the Hawthorne Effect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect Young, idealistic, teachers could make any new program work, but once it was filtered down to regular schools, there was no difference in student achievement. Study, after study, and basically the kids do as well in school and after as their parents did.
Putting money to redirect "how public education dollars are spent", isn't going to help, if we don't know how to do better.
You'd probably do better to judge a school based on how happy the students and parents are. If the S&P's are unhappy, fire the principle and try a new one until the "customers" are happy. Frankly, if the students are happy with school, and actually going, then learning will happen. You have to actively beat down a human to keep it from learning, but that's exactly what many schools do.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
I get suspicious when people like Gates "leverage private money in a way that redirects how public education dollars are spent." Like those who believe schools should operate how they want schools to operate instead of how they should operate. There was a time when someone completes high school they have reasonable education to be an adult, though trade school or college will help. Instead these "big donors" are trying to form school kids into what they want to function at their companies. Though not necessarily a bad thing if done for the right reasons. Yes, corporations need intelligent employees but people should have a right and ability to pursue a career they have a personal interest instead of having to work $9/hr in IT.
Everyone has all kinds of ideas for school reform, but what did schools do before they became so "bad?" What was their methods of teaching? I wonder if some of these old people forgot what methods were used to make them successful. Or did they simply grow up in neighborhoods that had good schools and not experienced growing up in neighborhoods with bad schools. There is a huge difference in Palo Alto, CA school district (where many parents have college degrees) when compared to east San Jose school districts (where many parents are poor working class). For you that say, "tango sierra, they'll just have to work harder!" Be careful because poor uneducated can easily be recruited into gang activity, and that can lead to bigger problems.
My big gripe is they increase spending on prisons, TSA, etc. and decrease spending on schools so it should not be a surprise we'll have more young people going to jails instead of schools.
mfwright@batnet.com
there is a need for more freedoms in the economy, freedoms from government intervention, government subsidies, taxes, regulations.
If this is the goal, education is starting at ground zero. One of the fundamental tenants of the public education in the U.S. is that it is provided free of charge, paid for by tax dollars. If you turn that on its head and make parents pay for their children's education, there will be a vast class of uneducated children - who are themselves much less likely to be any kind of asset to the country, unless you think we're heading for a Soylent Green future?
I live near one of the worst urban areas in America: Camden, NJ. It gets plenty of money per pupil. You just can't link money to a good education.
What we have is a correlation. People who have money generally take a strong interest in their kids education. It really comes down to the parents.
But if you think you can fix a problem with money (or just money), you are in for a rude awakening.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
If certain sources are to be believed, the entire American public school system was the nefarious brainchild of 19th Century "billionaires", conceived as a means of mass-producing humans conditioned to be ideal top-to-bottom factory workers. If that conspiratorial tale is true, then Bill Gates meddling in the school system to achieve goals that benefit the tech industry would just be more of the same, wouldn't it?
beginning in preschool "Education" has a small number of goals
1 teach a kids that they can learn (and should do so)
2 teach them how to get knowledge
3 teach them how to "fill in the edges of the map" (if "there be dragons" beyond this point find out what kind and how many are there)
everything else is just drum beating (and providing resources)
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Perhaps Gates should consider funding a skunkworks educational project for retired Microsoft CTO Ray Ozzie, who was working on networked, self-paced computer assisted instruction in 1974 â" 36 years before Bill and Google discovered Khan Academy!"
To paraphrase Heinlein, who was paraphrasing someone else, "when it's time to railroad, people will build railroads" and the corollary "you can't railroad until it's time to railroad."
Networked computer instruction was a great idea back in the 70's, but the infrastructure wasn't really there to support it. Right now it's entirely possible and it's only entrenched notions about education that are holding it back. A couple decades more and in retrospect it will seem both obvious and inevitable.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
This point seems the most salient. While I have huge admiration for Gates's philanthropy, it seems he doesn't quite have the hang of it. In fact his willingness to cede control over his wealth (throw it away, so to speak) instead of managing it wisely seems foolish and irresponsible. The proper way to administer a trust fund can't be beyond him. Or have I missed his point? The very fact that such a successful capitalist would support an antithetical method of socialism (or is it totalitarianism?) is mindless. His same investment applied to founding a college of programming and computer science would ensure his goals for the next century at least.
Idiots raising idiot babies are the problem.
by privatizing the school system and busting up the teachers unions, it allows for competition in the school system, then parents can choose which school to send their kids based on the curriculum and the better schools wins the most students,
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
You honestly believe that this recession was caused by *OVER* regulation? HAHAHAHAHA
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
there will be a vast class of uneducated children
- and it's different from now.... how?
If this is the goal, education is starting at ground zero.
- yeah. The entire US economy will have to restart from ground zero, unfortunately. It blew away the wealth accumulated prior to creation of the Fed/IRS and the culture of dependency (bread and circuses voter).
fundamental tenants of the public education in the U.S. is that it is provided free of charge
- yeah, it's wrong. It just seems to be free of charge, but the payment is the economy ruined by the political system that provides this so called 'free or charge education', as if education is somehow not covered by the fundamental laws of economics, the same way anybody is covered by fundamental laws of nature, such as gravity.
parents pay for their children's education
- they are paying for their children's education with the economic future of those children being destroyed.
The parents, grand parents and great grandparents of those very children didn't have a problem voting for politicians who promoted the agenda of social obligations, which transfer wealth from the old generations to the new ones, as for example SS taxes do, with 17 trillion being already transfered and gone from the future generations to the past ones.
who are themselves much less likely to be any kind of asset to the country
- no, with government out of the picture those very kids would actually have a better economic future with a working economy, where they could be trained at work without having to get into an impossible debt to get a worthless degree, with it's value inflated away by pointless government mandates.
unless you think we're heading for a Soylent Green future?
- figuratively speaking that's what the future holds for those kids, as their future has already been eaten by their great grandparents and grandparents and parents, who voted themselves a system, that promoted bread and circuses, income transfer from the young and unborn to the old and the dead.
You can't handle the truth.
"Khaaaaaan!"
(With a fist pumping in the air...)
Schools are ran like a corporation.
Administrators that are worthless getting paid 20X-30X of what the teachers get paid. Sorry, that will not cut it.
Teachers MEDIAN pay range needs to be 20% higher than the MEDIAN pay range in that area to attract good teachers.
Administrators need to have a PAY cut to no more than 8X more than the MEDIAN pay of their school or district.
Finally, expenses need to be realistic, teachers and kids using computers from more than 4 years ago is a waste of resources. IT budgets need to be changed. The school building needs to be maintained right, sorry but that 120 year old building is a LIABILITY not an advantage... tear it down and replace it with a efficient modern structure that will not rob the school of funds every month.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Bill Gates has been doing pretty good lately. If I owned MS stock I'd be pissed he wasn't still there putting this level of effort into my investment.
He's done some excellent work with vaccines and malaria. He started an initiative on sanitation that likely could be transformative in poverty struck areas, and now he may have the resources to turn the goliath that is public education towards a direction that helps students instead of the current path that aims at creating unthinking easily controlled sheep.
He is on the path to becoming the most influential philanthropist in a hundred years.
Or the kids that are the problem. It's the school boards and administration in most cities that is the problem. The administrations is full of failed middle-management idiots, that have transferred their complete lack of skills into D-level politics.
And the school board is usually nothing but lunatics just trying to draw a paycheck, and hoping to somehow jumpstart a political career.
And, of course, there are kickbacks and deals at every level.
Basically, every school district in the country is representative of the absolute WORST aspects of government corruption and incompetence. And it's not the system, it's the people.
VOTE IN YOUR SCHOOL BOARD ELECTIONS! Throw the idiots out. Run for the board yourself. That's the only way.
Of-course, absolutely, 100% government fault.
From FDIC and IRS and Fed to labor regulations, all of the social obligations and mandates, starting with public works of the Great Depression, that the government created by inflating the USD to prop up UK debt and to all other regulations, all of the government departments, FDA, FAA, EPA, CIA, etc.etc., all of them.
Once you get government into business, you get that specific business to be your government, and that's the end of the economy and the republic.
You can't handle the truth.
should have come in using that money to dismantle the teachers' unions. We are protecting the incompetent and complacent while rewarding the thugs at the top of the food chain. Better yet, maybe he should have used it to make a foundation that provides tuition assistance to move more kids to private schooling.
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
Parents that show interest in their kids learning, sit and help them with homework, direct them at a young age to appreciate culture and to be engaged in problem solving and a creative pursuit that requires discipline, then I have found the kids may still not be the sharpest knives in the drawer, but they are much more capable, confident, and competent individuals that the tweakers stuck to the screen.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Khan is great but the problem is motivation. I love to learn and they have all kinds of topics there that I don't know anything about. In general, most people aren't motivated to learn new things when surfing the web. They would rather look at lolcats or check their farmville plants. I don't think any of my friends or family even know Khan Academy exists let alone visit the site.
The US is full of apathy. Sure there are exceptions but there are too many people who are happy being average or are oblivious to the fact that they are.
These have gotten a bit of a bad rap, but I believe the right balance between entertainment and education can still be found. Kids will play video games 24 hours straight if you let them, because they become so absorbed. When they're on a console, the house could catch on fire and they wouldn't notice.
The risk/reward mechanic of modern video games produces a neurochemical response that can be quite addictive.
So if you can insinuate education into that experience such that at the end of completing a mission or game they suddenly speak a new language or have a solid grasp of organic chemistry, then you'll permanently solve all of our problems with the educational system.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
The second district had parents who cared. They wanted their kids to be successful like they were. The teachers however, were there for a 8 to 4 job, and didn't give a damn if the students learned or not.
And?
Where is the rest of the story/comparison with the first district?
Did the kids in the second district get better education/better grades?
Or did they win the basketball game with the help of a crazy inventor/a teenage werewolf?
You can't just leave us hanging there.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Back in the day before businesses wanted worker bees, the school system tried to make thinking
individuals who were a benefit to society. This was the informed electorate theory. This fell by the
wayside and business interests took over. I have always disagreed with this mentality. I may be wrong,
but I think not. There was this thought that a well rounded individual would be fair and not swayed
by the popular myth. This has been proven wrong on so many levels!!! Changing this trend will be
almost impossible, since so many people are bound by the status quo. Everyone wants their share
of the graft this thinking encourages.
The problem with the United States is that people are deluded by the belief that throwing money at a problem will fix it. The thing is that the US already spends way more per student than any other developed nation. Teachers and school administrators are certainly part of the equation, but the true source of the problem are the parents and popular culture. American culture glorifies the celebrity and the athlete. It creates the expectation that a person can get rich overnight and that everyone will be fabulously wealthy. When isn't there some celebrity dipshit on television flaunting their wealth? There's no idolization of the hard working individual, of the person who studies hard in school. American parents care more about having a child who is popular than they are having one who's studious. The mindset that is endlessly perpetuated is that you should do something you love, because it's fun.
Look at Asian kids going through the same exact school system. They consistently excel. Not because they're innately smarter than anyone else. Live in Asia any length of time and you'll be cured of that misconception. Asians excel because from birth their parents are pushing them to work hard and do well in school. As a friend explained to me, your average American parent is happy with a child getting B's in school whereas an Asian parent will tolerate nothing less than straight A's. So from the start a child is learning that good enough is all they need to do to satisfy people.
Every single thing they do is aimed at ensuring their kids not only do well but can get into a good university. This means everything from no computers or televisions in the bedroom to no socializing during the school year. And the parents are always aware of what their kids are doing. Too many American parents are too concerned with giving their kids freedom, with being their buddies.
And this has nothing to do with the academic system in Asia because most of these Asians kids were born in the States and are growing up here. For a while I considered moving back to Asia and for a variety of reasons stayed here. One of those reasons was the school system here versus in Asia. The thing with the American system is that it's problems can be easily countered with parental involvement. In Asia, on the other hand, there is little that can be done to address the problems there. Asian schools still suffer the problem of focusing on rote memorization, parroting the teacher, and a fixation on taking tests. Study schools are still huge there. After school kids go to these cram schools in the evening with the purpose of studying to pass tests more effectively. School there is a lot more oppressive. I suppose the upside to all that is that at least they're still very focused on academics.
And of course, the final piece here is that when Asians choose careers they consistently choose those which will ensure the greatest success. They're much less likely to choose a career that merely feels good. So this means that they get into finance, technology or healthcare. But even those who don't go that route, when they've had such a strong work ethic instilled in them ultimately find another path to success, even if they've started off in construction. Where your average individual will remain stuck working for someone else indefinitely, they'll find a way to grow to the point that they've got their own thriving business, as is the case with a good friend of mine. And the funny thing is that I've known Asians who've been fully Americanized, and they pretty much end up in the same situation as the average American; they've lost the formula for success.
The thing here is that these techniques are especially important for a child growing up in lower to middle-class environments. These are the kids who are less likely to be exposed to successful role models. A kid growing up in an upper-class neighborhood has little to worry about. The success of everyone around them will rub off on them, and if it doesn't, well, they're connected enough that they wi
on both money AND technology, and as a culture we get a little closer to growing up.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
but I will give you a hint, the same problem that exist with the prison system exists for the school systems. The unions.
Unions love three strikes and your out. They love long prison sentences. Just like they love testing without accountability and "tenure" and seniority.
You can go read up on the horrors on California prison and you can read up on the latest big education scandal, the Atlanta Public School cheating problem.
The APS cheating scandal shows exactly what is wrong with the system. They have evidence on nearly 200 teachers and administrators. They asked for resignations. They got, last I heard, less than a dozen. Quite a few are going to hide behind their union (and the union is going to help those who are innocent - which apparently is most of them). All of it comes down to the same thing, the school systems cater to the teachers and administrators. They are not accountable to students or parents. Those are somewhere on the list below the copiers I think.
There are many many good teachers in our systems. Yet we have rules which allow the fail teachers to keep their jobs, we have rules to protect those who cheat. Hell, NYC has rules to protect molesters.
APS spends a third to half more per student than the surrounding suburban counties do for results far far lower than then. So its not a matter of money, its a matter of responsibility.
Testing like NCLB should be done by independent groups where the tests and testing rooms are never occupied by people other than the testing organization and the students. The tests should never be out of their control. There should be NO UNIONS in public education. We already have enough laws to protect from abuses, all the union is doing is protecting the abuse of our children.
So what has gone wrong, simple, we cater to the lowest common denominator and it isn't the students. Schools serve the unions who in turn serve the politicians who use the power of the unions to keep their jobs.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Of-course, this is /., but how is the parent comment 'off-topic', when it's replying to a question posed by another commenter in the thread, and the reply is about the education system?
nonsense.
a new goal is to leverage private money in a way that redirects how public education dollars are spent
It's good that they're being honest and upfront about trying subvert our education system with lobbyist money, but it's kinda shocking they're so blatant about it.
At least he isn't pushing for a voucher system and killing off public schools.
Oh Slashdot, why have you lied to me!?
'I applaud people for coming into this space,' said Gates, 'but unfortunately it hasn't led to significant improvements.' This understanding of just how little influence seemingly large donations can have has led the foundation to rethink its focus in recent years. Instead of trying to buy systemic reform with school-level investments, a new goal is to leverage private money in a way that redirects how public education dollars are spent"
Does anyone else feel very very cold all of a sudden?
School priorities are still screwed up. To put this in perspective: At my school, I was a member of the Quiz Bowl and Deabte teams both. And in terms of the attention we got from the school newspaper, announcements, and so forth, it was, quite literally, about 10% of the coverage that our sports teams got.
Education was clearly a second priority at times - teachers showing up baked, obsession with authority, and, of course, not much prize placed on student interaction with the lessons. School's a job for kids and it's always such a rare and special thing for a teacher who has kids that 'love to learn' - bloody hell! Maybe if we started treating the teachers well and clearly explaining their jobs, this would be [i]every[/i] class. They teach stuff that's interesting as hell! American History and Civics? You've got Franklin Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, FDR, JFK...Chemistry? Work more experiments in, kids like combining stuff, especially if it looks pretty, explosive, or shiny. English? Focus less on literary classics (You know, which let you not update your lesson plan for 20 years) and work in books that the kids will actually like to read and discuss them.
Teachers will half-ass it because their pay and direction are half-assed; they're treated more like bureaucrats then educators, so why are we surprised that throwing money at the problem without fixing the broken fundamentals has resulted in little improvement? The only reason that you see the H1-B discrepancy is the monumental difference in effort that comes from living in a harder life, having more pressure, but that's not the only way to succeed - good teachers can produce these results from all students. We just don't have, and don't encourage, good teaching.
Or maybe they just wanted to copy what already worked in other countries.
"Historically, the Lutheran denomination had a strong influence on German culture, including its education. Martin Luther advocated compulsory schooling so that all people would independently be able to read and interpret the Bible. This concept became a model for schools throughout Germany.
During the 18th century, the Kingdom of Prussia was among the first countries in the world to introduce free and generally compulsory primary education, consisting of an eight-year course of basic education, Volksschule. "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Germany#The_Prussian_era_.281814.E2.80.931871.29
"Aware of the inadequacy of bureaucracy in Austria and, in order to improve it, Maria Theresa reformed education in 1775. In a new school system based on the Prussian one, all children of both genders from the ages of six to twelve had to attend school. Education reform was met with hostility from many villages; Maria Theresa crushed the dissent by ordering the arrest of all those opposed. Although the idea had merit, the reforms were not as successful as they were expected to be; in some parts of Austria, half of the population was illiterate well into the 19th century.[116][137]
The empress permitted non-Catholics to attend university and allowed the introduction of secular subjects (such as law), which influenced the decline of theology as the main foundation of university education."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Theresa#Education
"Rule our Schools?"
Really? Does the hate really go that deep? I hope the Gates foundation doesn't find a cure for cancer; a lot of brilliant people on /. will die refusing the cure so they can have a little circle jerk about how much they revile Microsoft.
His take on Rupurt Murdoch?
Is Murdoch an 'average businessman'? No, he is part of government system. An 'average' businessman is not part of the government system.
Anything and everything that is wrong with the world is the governments fault. If a business fails, it's the governments intervention. If a businessman does something illegal, it's the government's regulation that made him do it. Rober baron? Obviously he's secretly part of the "government system".
If a volcano explodes, he'd probably blame the government for not allowing the free market to appeal to pseduo-volconologist fear-mongers that would have warned us about this.
It is indeed time to ditch the whole idea of schools. It is parents who should be educating their children, not some poorly trained teacher in charge of 50 kids. All parents do instead is obssess over not having time to do it because they work all day, and send kids to school as if it were a daycare center. How about taking some personal responsibility for your kids upbringing? Your kids want to spend time with you (and if they don't it's because you kept pushing them into institutions) because they love you. So put your kids first, before your job. Rearrange your off days so there is always someone home with them. You work 5 days a week and have 2 days off. A couple will have 4 days to thus distribute.
That of course is not enough, but most people are not alone in the world. You have two sets of parents, who would be delighted to spend time with grandkids. You may have friends and neighbors who also have kids and may be interested in pooling into a "school" together. With 4 adults you have 8 days off every week, which is enough to always have someone watching and educating the kids. Isn't it better to have them spend the day with their family and friends than to languish in a windowless prison where they walk through metal detectors, are forbidden to eat with real forks, are in danger of being prescribed antipsychotics for being playful, are constantly yelled at by overworked teachers and told to sit quietly like robots and do nothing they are not explicitly permitted to do. The choice is yours.
One of the things that's stunning about all the education reform right now is that there's a critical group not at the table right now: teachers! This top down reform isn't working because these are solutions coming from people who aren't in the trenches actually teaching kids. As a teacher (6–8 grade English, which means the No Child Left Behind target is squarely painted on my forehead) I'm stunned at the obtuseness of all these solutions.
Testing kids to death and then evaluating teachers based on their students' solutions is a terrible strategy. This automatically creates a conflict of interest. Teachers won't want to work with challenging students. Teachers will teach to the test instead of “teaching” in order to avoid negative reviews. Why would I as a teacher even want to teach challenging students if I could very likely get fired if they don't do well?
There are many good ideas out there for improving education, but please let's stop shoving “improvements” down teachers' throats. This won't work.
The solutions that work cost money (some): smaller classes, better pay for teachers, more teacher autonomy to help students in need and to make decisions that help education as a whole. Yes, this means you'll have to trust teachers to make those good decisions, but these *are* the experts. (Yes, I know teachers' unions can be a drag to work with. I'm in one, and even as a member I find it a drag sometimes.) People get involved with teaching to help young people, teach, and to share what they know, not to collect a huge paycheck. Let's let them come up with the solutions, not people who haven't spent thousands of hours in front of the classroom.
I don't begrudge Mr. Gates's involvement with education and his money is certainly welcomed. However, even though I am a former IT worker, I wouldn't humiliate myself by telling him how to program and build operating systems. That's his business and expertise. However, if he's going to involve himself and spend some money in my profession, perhaps he should talk to more experts. Hint: they're not behind desks or collecting consultant fees; they're standing in front of children every day, teaching.
-Ian
www.teachthefantastic.blogspot.com
David Cameron insists conversations were 'appropriate' and comes close to apologising over decision to hire Andy Coulson
You can't handle the truth.
The key problem is Cultural.
Schools are now a Baby Sitting service more then education. Teachers spend most of their time trying to get the kids to behave then actually teaching them anything. If a child is disruptive, just kick him out of the classroom, have a hall monitors round them up and put them in the gym and run track for the rest of the period (A lot of the time disruptive students are just because they have too much energy and cannot tolerate just sitting there, after a period of exercise they may be less disruptive in the next class), if they fail a class they have to take it over again, no parents begging for their kids to get advanced, they failed they will have to go again, Non-of this raise your grade 2 points into passing... If you were that close to failing then you probably gain from taking the class over again.
Teachers should need to be politicking, or baby sitters for their job. They need to focus on teaching. Also with the issue of grading, they should have a much higher failure rate then they do now. Kids should fail classes, and you need a culture that doesn't punish failure, they have to do the class over again but not be a stain on their record. Even if this means kids graduate at 19 or 20 that is Ok.
His same investment applied to founding a college of programming and computer science would ensure his goals for the next century at least.
Looking at his background and his desire to make things better for fellow humans, the most sensible thing he can do imho is to support a free (beer & speech) OS and office suite.
"I'm not much interested in interoperability. I want substitutability. I want to be able to throw your software out."
Now, look within a school district, and compare students who do well, vs. those who do poorly (excluding those with learning disabilities), the better students, in general will have parents who have more concern with their kids education, and play a more active role.
I have on numerous occasions studied the correlation between free-and-reduced lunch percentage data per school (a good indication of what percent of students are from low-income and improverished families) and school test scores in states that allow open-enrollment (parents can enroll their children in schools located outside their home district). The correlation coefficient has always been strong, and particularly strong within large municipal areas. Impoverished and low-income families are much less likely to instill within their children the skills they need to be successful in school.
What "philanthropists" like Bill Gates don't understand is that the skill set necessary for success that most school "reform" pushers are ignoring is not academic in nature. (It's well documented that intelligence is fairly independent, though not completely mutually exclusive, from environment.) It's rather a social skill called "self-regulation" which is instilled at the home, not at school. Self-regulation is the ability to control and plan emotions, cognitions, and behaviors. Students who can self regulate are the students who can keep their emotions from impeding success (a.k.a. perseverance), who can look at a problem or a set of problems and determine a step-by-step approach to solving them (a.k.a. problem solving & task management), and who can determine an appropriate reaction to a given stimulus depending on the setting they are presently in (a.k.a. good behavior). And studies have documented that self-regulation is taught most successfully in the home, but is not taught as successfully in low-income and impoverished homes.
The academic divides that currently exist within the school setting are more a symptom of a deeper social problem that needs to be addressed. Beating up on schools will not solve the problem when the problem is in the home, not the school.
(A more in-depth article on self-regulation can be read here.)
Quite simply, he's not using it correctly.
He should have spent the money on things that provide long term improvements, if only incremental.
Like spending money on research involving education. Things like whats the best class schedule setup for results, how technology/computers affect thinking and learning, and other things. Research/studies like these that won't normally be bothered with should exactly be funded as they provide valuable insight which then can be collected and submitted to the educational world.
Spending money on reducing higher educational cost. Like books are insanely expensive after high school. It's ridiculous. Spending money on standardizing and digitizing books for higher education would greatly reduce educational cost for higher educational students. Many of these books barely change in information but are changed slightly only to be called a new edition.
Spend money on parental outreach programs. I'd argue that parent's influence has more impact on how a student learns then the educational system. Brining greater awareness as well as educating parents may provide a better result then the limited relationships between school and students.
Spending money to change our cultural views. Put more emphasis on being smart. If you compare the view of being the jock, and being the nerd, it's obvious which one is considered more "cool" in the US culture. While both should be considered good (one excel in the body while the other excel in the brain), their is a huge disparity between the two views in general. Won't such a thing make people downplay being smart? Won't it make people feel less motivated about education? I believe this is a big issue as those who look down on being smart won't be willing to study.
I'm sure there are many ways to spend money that are probably even better or more creative then mine. It's not a question of throwing money into the system. You can't argue that money *hurts* the state of education we are in. It's a question of how to use it wisely.
Sources such as Internal memos from CEO's of some of the aforementioned companies to their largest shareholders?
The teacher unions represent the teachers, admittedly to the detriment of the children if necessary.
The administration represents the bureaucracy and is often in collusion with the unions anyway (see Atlanta cheating scandal).
The PTA is just a fundraising/social group, forget it.
What collective group with one influential voice represents the children?
Chris Rock went over this very well.
Get out of jail, you're a hero in the neighborhood.
Come back to town with a Master's degree, they don't give a damn, "Smart boy with a degree. But, can you whoop my ass?"
They were going to hold me back in the second grade until they realized I was just bored out of my mind. They gave me some more challenging work to do and I was performing well.
Some kids just don't have the patience to do boring things. I aced almost every test in high school, but I rarely did homework so my GPA wasn't all that hot. Plus there's the rebellious "I understood it the first time, you idiot, so why are you making me do it again?"
others have tried as well: http://www.newsweek.com/2011/05/01/back-to-school-for-the-billionaires.html
Are the smartest kids in two of my kids' classes.
But overall, black students fare much more poorly in our school than any other demographic.
The difference: Parents who impress upon their children that a good education is the ticket out.
Go right ahead, The odds of the kid your telling NOT having either "Sue them" parents or "Kill them" parents are fairly low. About 1 in 10 I would say. Oh, you got 40 kids in your class. But hey, that is why you make the big bucks right!
Most teachers start out with plenty of good intentions and then the system grinds them dry. The solution? Far to complex for simple slashdot post. That is the issue, fixing it would take far to many people working together for to long and giving up on their own special agenda.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Let's keep going with this great idea. At a few thousand adults, you can pay a few adults in the community to teach the kids full-time.
What a great idea!
Thank you for pointing out the problem with US education, student attitudes.
You are not a customer of your school, you are its product. You might wonder about the parking spots at the restaurant of customers vs the employees but why do care? You are the cow.
really, this self-entitlement is a big reason why education is going to hell. Who wants to teach kids like this for minimum wage? I know plenty of teachers, all ex. More money to be made in the business world where a trainer can earn a good salary and not have to deal with kids who think the world owes them a thousands favors.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
One: Many school systems have become quite top-heavy. The administration at district, state and federal sucks huge amounts of money from teachers and supplies. Trim it down.
Two: Get rid of the feel-good and PC instruction. We pay for extra administrators and instructor hours to do stuff that is not education.
Three: Get rid of the extra expense in firing bad teachers. It can cost over $100,000 to fire a bad teacher, after he's sat on full pay for the two years it took to fire him. Most districts just buy the teachers out with no admission of wrongdoing or poor performance, and the teacher is free to move to the next district -- wash, rinse, repeat.
Public education will always be a failure, since there is virtually zero competition and little accountability to the customer.
Movie or virtual reality based learning would be great. I learn a lot more by seeing stuff done and then doing it. If you can get the best of the best to teach lessons, and get great film-makers to tell the stories, education might be better. It would be a lot cheaper as well.
The problem is what do you do with the unemployed teachers and administrators.
Of course if Unions were the problem then the EU where unions are far more powerful would have far worse problems... they don't...
But hey, you are the product of a failing education system, can't expect you to know about the rest of the world or be able to apply basic logic.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
... is nearly limitless. Honestly.
Here's a guy who is smart. He has a LOT of money because he knew how to use his brain at the right time and right place in history. Now, being older, he wants to do good with his money. Great. Or not so much... because given the cultural assumption that multi-billionaires understand something about the world that the rest of us don't, his quests are followed and worshiped as good steps. But lets look back at his severe missteps in his attempts to reform education:
1) Scholarships: The whole effort start with giving away hundreds of millions of dollars in competitive scholarships. That's really nice, but here's the thing about competitive scholarships-- they almost always go to the kids that are already destined for higher education funding. He was helping the easily helped. Of COURSE this wasn't going to change the state of education in the USA. He was/is just holding the status quo.
2) Building Super Schools: Bill funded/helped to fund tech super schools. As Bill knows from the planned obsolescence model, those schools aren't fiscally sustainable because all the high tech hardware needs upkeep, security, and replacement regularly. That means more cost for the schools. Bad move, Bill.
3) Charter Schools: Bill, despite his great intentions, has fallen into the latest fallacy trap: "Private business survives on lean budgets and thus public service has something to learn." But there's a problem... private/corporate businesses are "lean" in their budgets because their shareholders demand evermore short-term profits at the cost of service and employees. Turning public schools (where the shareholders are effectively the students) into genuine private businesses opens up schools to the profit motive and thus low-investment teachers and cherry-picked students. So what's the plan when stocks take a dive...?
Bill, here's a tip: Go through an MA in education program and get your California Teachers' Credentials. Experience the massive bureaucracy and cost associated with becoming a teacher and ask yourself, "Who in the world is willing to do this to themselves... and how do we make sure more are able to do it?" What do I mean? Well, here's a quick walkthrough of the path to becoming a well-prepared teacher:
***Take your SATs during high school = ~$75
***Apply to undergraduate programs at 4-year universities = ~$60 each
***Get accepted, go through college, graduate with B or better average = $125,000 (UC education)
***Prepare for and take the GRE, CBEST, and CSET (in your planned area of teaching) = $250
***Explore the completely non-standardized MA/PhD world, tons of websites, more phone calls and emails, and find the right MA Education program for you. Apply to many and prepare to move house. ~$80 each. Don't forget to save money for all that travel for interviews you'll have to do!
***Complete your MA and get your credentials over 2-3 years while also teaching for free = ~$50,000
***Congratulations, you're a mostly-prepared teacher with temporary credentials and have only spent $200,000.
***Additional fees: $55 per copy of your credential (you'll need multiple), the cost of fingerprinting in each county you apply as a teacher (non-transferable).
***Start your job search in a state that recently had MAJOR teacher downsizing. Hope for a 75+% appointment but take whatever you can. Prepare to move house.
***Start work making $30,000-$40,000. Don't settle in to your new apartment. There are still more cuts and teacher tenure is under attack. Oh, expect to pay $1,500 out-of-pocket for your class supplies because neither your students nor your school can afford to buy them.
***3 years pass, and you have to complete your credentialing. You take more classes, more tests, get evaluated. You've spent $4,500 on school supplies since starting.
And it goes on.
Bill, if you REALLY want to change education for the better, here are two ways to do so:
1) Affect the poorest and lowest performing children. Fund the fixing of thei
If you're still worth 56+ billion (according to http://www.forbes.com/profile/bill-gates), after putting x billion into your charity, you're not a philanthropist, you're just diddling with the lives of "poor people" like a kid with a magnifying glass frying ants.
The working, single mother of two who gives $5 to her church on Sunday feels that $5, far more than Bill Gates would feel donating another 20, 30, 40 or even 50 billion dollars. What's the difference to his lifestyle if he's worth 5, 10, 20 or 50 billion? Nothing. The single mother donating the fiver deserves the philanthropy award, not a man still so rich a staff of accountants can barely compute his wealth.
When Bill gives 55 billion to his charity, then wake me (and I mean BEFORE he dies). Until then, he's doing it to assuage his conscience, placate his wife and stroke his ego.
Stock it with things enterprising students could teach themselves with like musical instruments, trade stuff (i.e. wood working tools, plumbing tools, etc), computer parts, computers with a bunch of productive software (web dev stuff, programming stuff, statistical tools, math tools, cad, etc), AND hire some some specialists (or get them to donate their time) to teach kids about things. I have to believe 5B toward that would have gotten Bill farther.
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
So what you're saying is that we should stop investing in our own kids and invest abroad? Outsource the student component of the student-teacher relationship? I know, let's just have uncle sam extend full citizenship to the entire continent of Africa while we're at it.
One problem is that most regulations are written by politicians who are in bed with those they are regulating. Dodd-Frank was a great example, since both of those are in bed with the financial industry, and pull a huge amount of money from the industry to stay in office.
And then there's the revolving door: One of the FCC commissioners who helped approve the Comcast merger immediately resigned to be the head Comcast lobbyist. Chris Dodd also pulled money from the MAFIAA for years as a senator before quitting to become their head lobbyist.
Another problem is ideologues regulating out of a sense of fairness without looking at the economic realities. Everybody should own a home? BS. But their efforts to make that happen regardless of economic fitness to own a home helped cause the crash.
Bill Gates meddling would be more of the same, except not as bad. Factory workers (early 1900s) don't need critical thought, should be averse to questioning authority (however wrong), should be mentally suited for repeating the same simple task over and over again until the shift change bell rings, etc. Engineers for example really need creativity, critical thought, and the ability to question authority when they think authority is wrong. The '19th Century "billionaires"' needed trained factory workers, whereas Gates needs educated technical professionals.
In some cases parents are apathetic. They use school as day-care. But there are usually reasons for this. Perhaps parents themselves never saw value in education. Perhaps more fundamental survival-related priorities exist within the family. You don't seem to be in this category. But there are some. Start with the group of parents who don't come to parent-teacher conferences and who have children who are under-performing (whatever that means). You will find some.
The teachers who discouraged reading ahead are a product of the educational system. I would bet they are overworked and burdened with motivation-sucking busy-work and pressured to prepare students for a standardized test rather than lazy. The only way they know how to square that circle is to maintain a rigid schedule.
A strong argument can be made that nations currently outperforming the U.S. have (a) a single national common curriculum structure, (b) teacher training in college which is focused on the specifics of teaching that curriculum, (c) textbooks in support of that curriculum, and (d) ongoing support and mentoring for a professional class of teacher.
With the history states rights in the U.S., of course, you can't have a common curriculum, and schools of education can't dig into the specifics of any particular subject matter, so it's pretty much all lost in an abstract cloud (of which some Slashdotters will sing praises, but it doesn't work too well in practice). And teachers are mostly thrown at the wall like cannon fodder (I think the turnover rate in the first year teaching in the U.S. is like 50%).
Is a common, nationally-supported curriculum possible in the U.S.? Possibly not. And we tend to be more accepting of a lottery-like structure to our society with some huge winners and a lot of hopeless losers.
http://www.aft.org/newspubs/periodicals/ae/winter1011/index.cfm
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
I would suggest the best way to help teachers is to make the wages competitive.
And before everyone jumps all over this on a "TEACHERS GET OVERPAID", stop and do the math:
For a pre-schooler, it's going to cost you around $600 a month for day care. That's about $30 a day to supervise and entertain a child.
A teacher is expected not only to do those two things, but also educate them. And they're doing this for a much larger group (your day care is required to have one staff for every ten kids here; your kid's classroom will be double or triply as large).
Do you think your kid's teacher is making $900 a day? (30 kids x $30/day)?
One of the main goals of the Prussian model was to train future soldiers: infantry. They had to be knowledgeable enough to read and execute orders from their better educated officers, but dull enough to execute only those exact orders. Imagine the threat to the Kingdom if it had a bunch of intelligent serfs running about and thinking for themselves!
What's one of the reasons school is so dull? As soon as a child starts really getting into a topic or task... *RING*, they get purposely distracted and ordered to have their mind change gears completely. This is done over and over again. The Prussian model doesn't want smart & happy kids: it wants obedient infantry.
They are accountable to their admins, then their district admins, then state, then federal. The only way they are accountable to the parents are through school boards, which aren't necessarily filled by people who actually care about the kids. And then throw in the unions, a huge power in opposition to the parents.
I was talking about more direct accountability. If the parents don't like the teacher, get rid of him. One correlation to the decline of the schools has also been the increasing centralization of the administration of the schools. IMHO, it's a partial causation too.
As far as parents teaching, I have a neighbor who I doubt could teach a fat kid how to eat a Big Mac. She's supposed to be in this teaching circle? Not my kids.
1. Digitally wired brains
If you have listened to Philip Zimbardo's 'The Secret Power of Time' lectures (here is the summary version:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3oIiH7BLmg), he mentioned about students with 10,000 odd hours of video gaming having 'digitally wired brains'. Even though it sounds preposterous, as someone who worked as a TA for last 3 years, I have to agree with his thesis. I taught number of units ranging from computer-based lab classes to just paper-and-pencil math tutorials. Though students were doing alright in lab classes, they were paranoid in math tutorials. Simply they hated staring at a white-board. Their concentration levels dips in few minutes, ended up taking out their tablets, mobiles to rectify it (which mostly annoyed me and everybody else).
Literally, modern day class room is too 'analog' for the 'digitally wired brains' coming into study. I don't know the solution. But education as a whole should address this issue. Perhaps we should put up LCD screens instead of white boards.
(side note: I am still impressed how big univ like Stanford, MIT manage to survive with blackboards alone.)
2. Student attitude
About 10% of a class population is genuinely interested and enthusiastic about their learning (DISCLAIMER: just my rough observation). Rest just want to get through the unit, possibly with higher grade if possible. And the latter group are the usual troublemakers, who push the assessments to be more "tick-point-like", and line up at your office door pushing you to give higher marks (and some of them go to admin and lodge complains even).
It is an idealistic dream to bring everyone in a class to the same level of maths or physics or . If the student has the desire to learn, he/she will soldier on. Others will find their own way. I had one math student under me, pretty average student, and he took his 2nd year off to go tour with his metal rock band (he is bloody good at playing the guitar). My thoughts and wishes are with him on this, and I repeatedly asked him to drop out from college and work on his band. Simply because, he will be average in a classroom, while top in his game at a live stage.
3. Institution's attitude
I worked in a private institution. I think they are moving from 'educational institute' model to 'business company' model. Institution I attached to introduced a massive 'performance monitoring' exercise, where each department is rewarded based on their performances. It went down to the insane level, where you as a lecturer will get x-mas bonus only if your students' feedback is positive.
This led to a sea change in teaching attitudes. Instead of teaching, lecturers were giving away high grades generously while pampering them in classrooms. As a math TA, I always marked assignments giving high priority towards methodology and logical reasoning. It takes 4-5 days to mark 160 scripts. Eventually, the math lecturer accused me of marking them strict and insisted me to "just give marks if you see the final answer" in the next round of assignments (voila!, I marked the next batch in just one afternoon, and half the class got A+).
I think any educational institute (be it school, college, university) shouldn't run like private companies who are desperate to make profit to show off to their investors. Such attitudes certainly kills the "education" aspect of the institute, and becomes more like "degree issuing factories for a fixed price".
(similarly, there were dodgy practices in research dept as a consequence of institution's attitude)
As somebody said , "degrees kills education". So might well as close all the schools, or get rid of grades. (kidding!)
Bill gives $56 billion. That's it, done.
Bill keeps the $56 billion principle and it keeps making money.
If it makes only 2% a year, that's a billion a year he can continually give away until he dies.
And then he can give away the rest.Total giving figuring he lives 30 more years: 86 billion.
WOW Bill! You found out what millions of taxpayers figured out decades ago. Throwing BILLIONS of dollars at something, 99% of the times DOESN'T fix anything! Mostly, the money goes to lining the pockets of bureaucrats, building fancy buildings so someone can have their name on it. Teachers unions (for the most part) saddle some of the blame also. How many stories do you hear about teaching being placed in a "rubber room", doing nothing all day long, but getting PAID in full. All due to the union contracts. Teachers unions try to stop any evaluation system that would weed out poor performing teachers, and reward the good teachers. I know several teachers who have quit, because they tell me the mentality of the school boards & teachers unions have no clue how to actually run the school systems, and do not back teachers who want respect & authority in the classroom.
Which - if we were all honest - would be written
You can wish your kids will excel regardless of the school's infrastructure, but if you are working at a low-wage, dead-end, full time job (and maybe even two of them) just to stay one step ahead of financial oblivion, all you will have time for is wishing. Wereas in the upper, uppper, upper middle class enclaves, there is plenty of time for parents to to take interest (and frequently an unhealthy one) in their snowflakes' education because of their wealth and the plentiful time it buys in the form of gardeners to maids and even tutors.
The GOP has been gutting education programs and the property taxes that pay for them for decades. They spend hundreds of $millions to get their shills elected, and their shills then go about dismantling anything that doesn't make rich people richer, and that especially the education of their childrens' competitors.
Gates, if he's truly against these clowns, should be spending his money to fight their spending to subvert democracy.
Throwing money at a system run by the same politicians and bureaucrats who created the problem is not going to fix anything. It just allows pointy haired bureaucrats to continue business as usual adopting one lame education fad after another. The problem isn't new and isn't something that will be fixed by pouring money into the same broken system. That system will remain entrenched until external forces such as parental demands (e.g. Hispanic parents boycotting the schools in California over bilingual education) or competition from voucher funded private schools force the broken system to change. Here's some further reading: Richard Feynman's adventure into reviewing school textbooks in the early sixties. http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm and the Wikipedia entry on New Math: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Math
By law a percentage of the fund must give money to charitable causes to remain a charity in the eyes of the IRS. In addition the gates foundation has been pledged most of warren buffets money under the assumption that the foundation will remain a charity. I'm not sure how much $5 Billion is compared to the amount of money that was 'required' to be spent over that time period.
One thing I used to find where we wanted to live was Greatschools (www.greatschools.org) They base their ratings on standardized tests and parent input. I think it's better then nothing. What also is interesting is that teachers WANT to work at Ithan and the other schools in the Radnor School District-even though they pay quite a bit less money then the school district next door (Lower Merion School District).
In Philadelphia proper there are a lot of charter schools-some good, some average and some poor. Many of them are 'culturally diverse', meaning they teach a particular culture (unlike Gabriella which though the students were mainly Hispanic taught the 3 Rs plus English). I think that schools should concentrate on EDUCATING children more and LESS on celebrating cultural diversity, because good grades and a degree are more important to a future employer then that.
I'm a science teacher who moved to South Louisiana to teach in a low-performing school. Many posters have identified quite a few of the problems faced by our country's schools.
Teacher quality is important, but equally important is pedagogy (strategies used for learning). The Khan Academy is great for students who want to learn. Watching a Khan video might help you do your homework tonight and help you pass the test tomorrow, but is the learning really internalized? Have they really learned it so they can perform the test in May, or, more importantly, when further learning or job necessities down the road require the skill?
There has been some research into the effectiveness of videos for learning:
https://fnoschese.wordpress.com/2011/03/17/khan-academy-and-the-effectiveness-of-science-videos/
The method of instruction I've adopted for science education is known as Modeling Instruction (http://modeling.asu.edu). Everything we learn is based on evidence or data collected through lab activities/experiments. Students are responsible for analyzing data to develop a model for the situation. Through Socratic questioning, the teacher guides students in the right direction so the model can then be applied to new situations and problems. All research done has shown students learn more and are better conceptual thinkers when instructed using this method, when compared to traditional instruction.
Aside from the benefits to my students, Modeling is great because it's not a commercial product from some profit-seeking company (as are most curricula nowadays)--it was developed by teachers for teachers and is fostered by institutions of higher learning. Unfortunately, funding for this sort of professional development for teachers is being cut from ESEA re-authorization bill in congress. Funding is now being sent to states and school districts, who are notoriously bad at providing quality professional development for science teachers.
Khan Academy is great, but several other modelers and I have been critical of the attention given to Khan Academy when there are much better instructional methods that are being ignored.
Anyway, yes, quality teachers are important, and just as important is providing teachers training in quality (research-supported...) pedagogical methods.
5B is a lot of money to waste if there is nothing to show. Was it spent on Microsoft licensing? Probably a lot of it was given with such ties and 5B is easy to spend on licensing stuff. Was it spent on 'investigating' what needs to be changed? Probably as well as some administrator buildings could've been filled with random people looking for stuff to do but never producing any results.
What we need is for that type of money to be spent in an open fashion on stuff that is actually productive. Spending $5B over 100,000 schools in 10 years is useless. Give $1B to a single school or school district to invest in better buildings, infrastructure and reform it's set of teacher's, learn from it and use what you have learned as you go along and then give the next school $1B to do the same.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You can not have computer illiterate educators and users and get educational improvements using computer technology. Your Foundation's donations not only lock them into Microsoft products but do nothing to educate the educators in even the basics of computer operating system usage. You've gone great though selling them on teaching "The Word", "The Excel" and "The Powerpoint" so you've locked another generation into only knowing products and not concepts of word processing, spreadsheets, or presentations. You've also done a great job at instilling fear of the computer by doing nothing to educate on the concepts of file systems, printing systems nor even general desktop metaphoric use. File - Open and File - Create New are perfect because they first must start "The Word", ie _your_ application. And the 3 or 4 other methods of getting new files created must be the right way to do it considering the 10s of millions you've spent in User Design Pattern research over the years.
And I just loved how you blasted the OLPC for its poor design and unfamiliar software yet turn around and claim that a standard Windows desktop is all they should have to know how to use.
So you can not have it both ways Bill. You either educate the educators and people learn concepts and standard usage patterns which expose them to the ability to use other platforms or you continue keeping them ignorant and spending your billions to keep them generating more money for you by locking them into Microsoft products.
Besides, it surprises me that you and your Foundation are even allowed to pedal Microsoft software being so financially tied at the hip. I had thought there were laws against such conflicts of interest.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Once we have an accurate assessment of each teacher, we could pay them accordingly and/or let the poorly performing teachers go.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
1) Reality really *is* broken. Invest in math/science "games" and kids will play them, especially if they're good. 2) The education establishment is the definition of an entrenched, vested interest. Adding money is like trying to fill up a sinkhole. Sign me, dissatisfied former customer/pupil
Smaller class sizes, more carrots and sticks to spur parental involvement, less time spent on mandatory testing, more money spent on teachers than stuff, and more empowerment and accountability given to teachers as opposed to administrators, school boards, and politicians. Cash or check is fine, Bill.
Being a teacher was on my short list at school, but life got in the way. I've been told several times that I would've made a good one - once from a retired teacher who happened to overhear my conversation with two of my kids in a doctor's waiting room. I'd still like to be one. But making the switch now would take two years of college and a 50% pay cut. That's a tough pill to swallow.
Jesus told him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. - John 14:6 NLT
The main issues with schools require that we 'fix' them from a variety of angles. Why aren't teachers ever consulted on these things?
1. Overworked, underpaid staff: You cannot expect teachers to know and give 110% all the time for each of 40 students in a classroom, with coursework, designed for half that number. My wife works 12+ hour days and feels constantly behind.
2. Uninterested, overworked, or otherwise-absent parents: Learning begins at home, before school age and well beyond the school day. If a student doesn't have this influence at home due to poor families required to work 3 jobs, or due to the incarceration of a parent, or due to drug abuse, or due to a parent being a rich prick... if parents aren't there to model good, responsible behaviour and enforce rules, the kids certainly won't enforce this upon themselves.
3. Transiency, which is hard to fix: No Child Left Behind (NCLB) forces schools to take tests and improve, but poor urban schools have different populations all the time and the test results are with a whole different group of kids. Of course these schools cannot improve if the teachers and students don't have a working relationship and previous years of teaching went with the last group of students to move on.
4. Cultural differences: Some cultures value hard work more than others, some cultures value their children being free or wouldn't dare punish a male child. This may melting-pot away over time but new immigrants make it a constant issue.
They don't want the high-performing teachers getting paid more. They say it's because teaching is a group effort. My translation: Just because the crappy teacher saw that kid once and wasn't able to ruin him, he should get a share of the bonus meant for the good teacher who really helped that kid.
In reality, they simply don't want anything hooking pay to performance. That would ruin the cushy racket.
Just, wow. A charitable organisation admitting - no, freely and openly stepping forward and announcing - that they haven't achieved much for the money?
Posting AC as I work in financial audit, specialising in charities.
I was the beneficiary of a little Gates Foundation grease ($1500 + the occasional coffee mug and water bottle, full disclosure) via the Measures of Effective Teaching project. Gates alludes to this project in the article when he notes the foundation's ongoing effort to record teachers in the classroom and then breakdown the resulting video to identify the various metrics that separate a highly effective teacher from his or her peers.
I'll be very interested to see what metrics do indeed come out of this effort. In the meantime, the most valuable part of the experience has been the MET Project's requirement that I watch and log my own recorded lessons. The video unit has a special 360 lens that picks up every yawn, shuffle and spitwad in the classroom in addition to your own presentation. The experience is not unlike being an NFL quarterback forced to breakdown game film on a Monday morning. As a supervisor attached to the project joked after a teacher said she couldn't stop cringing at her utter lack of stage presence: "Now you know how the kids feel."
Anyway, it'll take some artful incentives to get it past the unions, but I think this video reflection policy could scale quickly, especially if you made it opt-in and threw in a peer-rating component a la Amazon or YouTube that gave you a chance to watch and (kindly) critique others' work. For a novice teacher, it'd be an invaluable way to speed up the "eyes in the back of your head" awareness you need to survive in a tough school. For an experienced teacher, it would give you a chance to compare yourself to the true rock stars of the discipline. In the end of year feedback survey I was practically begging to be a video reviewers on that point alone.
While I expect that request to get about as much attention as a Windows 7 bug report, I think this might be a place where Gates, spending millions instead of billions, could trigger a quick change in industry best practices. We'll see. I don't want to project Google-type fantasies on a Microsoft-underwritten project.
Vouchers are equivalent to dismantling public education. Since every family will have a voucher worth $X the school with the best reputation will simply charge $2X. The well off parents will put their kids in that school, leaving the not so well off and poor for the bad schools. You may as well have not bothered with the vouchers in the first place. Not to mention that I want no part of a system that takes my tax dollars and sends them to religious schools that fill kids' heads up with dogmatic nonsense.
The goal of public education is not to reinforce the societal class system. It's not even to 'train' kids for their 'careers'. The goal of public education is to help democracy by ensuring a well informed citizenry. It's failing at that objective but that *is* the objective. Dismantling public education would guarantee failure indefinitely.
Make drug test failure (for obvious illicit substances) an automatic expulsion with no recourse.
yeah, that is a FANTASTIC idea. That way the kid who is on drugs has absolutely no chance to finish a normal education and they can get right to work on the only group that will have them: Criminals.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Gates and Broad and whoever else controls education reform direction have an assumption in common. Namely that poverty doesn't matter. To prove this, they point to KIPP schools where great test scores are achieved. More on that in a minute. I don't know much about what else they accomplish at KIPP schools. I have a vague notion that they excel in performance arts as well, which is great. Anytime a child gets arts experience in school, it's a good thing.
I have a few major problems with this, mostly that students are selected to go to KIPP (self-selection counts) and that all they demonstrate with high test scores is success on tests. It could just be gaps in my knowledge about how much success kids have in KIPP. But the self-selection and ability of KIPP schools to dismiss students both undermine the idea's scalability.
Until we address America's 23%-and-climbing rate of child poverty, the scores posted by poor students are going to continue to drag the average down. I don't mean to be cruel here, but scores by non-poor students are generally fine. In some cases, better than many countries'. Poor kids need some basic needs met that are traditionally not the responsibility of schools. You're familiar with Maslow's hierarchy of needs I hope. Throwing more money at the administrators or putting in bonus programs for schools (as in NYC) will not accomplish this. There was a guy in Harlem with a charter I think who put in a dental office in the next building over because his students were not getting dental care. That's a start.
School reform efforts that ignore or dismiss concerns about poverty will always fail.
Note that this is still better than the conservative vision of school reform, where the greatest resources are spent on the highest (student) achievers and everyone else gets enough education to serve as their working class.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
"King Billy" (AND I do so, out of respect, NOT sarcasm, mind you).
Fact is, I wish we had a guy like this @ the wheel of our nation in fact, because he's ALREADY GOT MONEY (so I doubt he'd be "the best politician MONEY CAN TRULY, BUY" (ala corporate "lobbyists" (bribery spelled sideways, let's face it)).
He, or a fellow like Ron Paul (whom I predict now that next election, will finally win... mark my words on this in fact!). We need more educated & INFORMED problem solvers, not glad-hander climbers, in political office!
Unfortunately (getting back on track)?
THAT is the kind of guy John F. Kennedy was (already wealthy), & look @ where his honorable intentions got him... He was the "example" being set for anyone that "steps outta line"... how damn sad: My parents told me that when he was assasinated, people cried openly... that told me WORLDS alone!
APK
P.S.=> In fact, iirc? I recall some interviewer asking Mr. Gates WHY he doesn't run from President, & it wasn't lack of pay, but more along the lines of (in his usual thoughtful pause first replies):
"I don't want to be part of a system where my ideas are... arrived at... via 'compromise' & arm-twisting"
I, unfortunately, agreed, & got my 1st REAL VIEW into the world of "politics", as they are today currently, with that statement of his...
That, & his being put on trial etc. for antitrust monopoly b.s. where he did a "Howard-Hughes-ish" type of reply of:
"Microsoft has built a BETTER mousetrap - In fact, I freely invite & encourage my competitors to do a better one... but, until then, I cannot see WHY I am here in a free-enterprise competition-based system!"
Smart man... the U.S.A.? She needs MORE LIKE HE, @ the helm/wheel, imo @ least...
... apk
For all of you that are saying Bill Gates just threw money at education and expected change, you are crazy. I am sure Bill and Melinda Gates had a bunch of advisers and a plan. At least they tried something, even if it was not as successful as one would hope with that much money. The one thing that we will never know is the true success. As a teacher, we rarely see how we impacted students lives. They may have made horrible grades in school and no passed the high-stakes testing the year you taught them, but you don't know what impact a teacher has on a student.
The success of the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation may not be realized until these students are much older and/or out of high school or college. I run in to students years after they graduated high school. Surprisingly, the students that were unsuccessful in my class tell me something I did that turned their life around later. Teachers will rarely find out the impact they had on their students. The students that took part in the schools funded by the Gates Foundation, may not show success until later in life, which is not measurable by a test.
That's even worse. That's the problem with people who came into money and power too easily. They overestimate themselves.
Windows was a knock off of Apples OS. It made money without having to really be paradigm shifting.
In fact, if anything, Windows was just that - the continuation of normality. It extended the same "desktop" paradigm, as in 'desk 'top' of a desk. It was file sharing networks, and search engines that really changed things.
And now, he simply wants to use money to lobby government. So instead of throwing money at at private groups to change things, he wants to throw money at the government. It's this disconnection that leads nowhere. If Bill Gates had to sit down in a modest cubicle for a few days with Windows 7 (XP v. 3) for a few days, he might actually start to think about what people really want.
If he actually had to delve into the real problems of education, spend some time in a real school, and see the real root of problems with education, he might make more head-way.
Education starts in the home. He might want to start there, before he goes off to bribe Washington.
The problem with too much freedom is, a corporation (eg. sports-wear company) has the freedom to lobby government and media and create a culture of "hip" that is spread into schools. Junk-food culture, American-pipe-dream movie culture etc. I think Asian people arrive in America and just know something's up, and they capitalize. They know the dumb-ass whitie spends most of his/her time being suckered, and see the enormous opportunity to be a non-sucker in a sucker country (no offense) and they take the bacon.
Whities bought into their own imperialism and supremacy so much that they were easy prey. African people in general had more of a victim complex, and are predisposed towards taking it easy, from their native countries, so they were even easier prey.
I assure you I'm not Asian but I see them as the rightful first-world citizens in this world. It's all hindsight is 20-20 looking back, it seems all-Americans are a victim of their own freedom. The old saying. Capitalism would sell the rope used to hang itself, and that is indeed what's happened. Most Americans bought into (everything). Americans also became a victim of the 'big' culture, the worship of anything big. You became the big no. 1 and grew to worship big corporations, big government, big spending, and now..you have big debts. To the detriment of your country, and so to many people in the world, you are a big mess now.
Can you get out of this big mess? Who knows. It doesn't help that Europe is also a mess, and so no bail-out there.
If I was Chinese or Russian, or whoever, and harbored some long-distance plan on how to ruin America, I think that would be a very clever plan - feed you on your own sense of overestimation. But who knows who has vested interests in the demise of America.
Any powerful country will end up like Microsoft Windows, the most targeted for viruses etc. but if China is the up and coming challenger (the Apple or Chrome so to speak) they may eventually reach their zenith and begin inevitable demise. Maybe human civilization (an maybe even civilization in general) is meant to be short-lived. Up and down.I certainly don't know.
Unlike parents, teachers consider students asking why as indiscipline.
Slashdot = Sarcasm
How? The Republicans sided with Big Oil and the OPEC countries against the American people and the United States of America on behalf of the super-wealthy who had oil interests. Consequently, we did not get off of oil and the soaring price of energy drove the price of everything else up. That kicked a bunch of spouses - spouses who used to ensure little Tommy and Janie did their homework - out of the home and into the job market so so their families could meet basic living expenses and afford the occasional luxury, creating a generation of latchkey kids.
Worse, those energy-driven shocks to the economy enabled the Republicans to foist the lie of flood-up/trickle-down economics upon the American people with the consequence that the American worker's wages started being suppressed because the head cheese (a.k.a. the CEO and his or her executive suite) wanted any increase in profits resulting from price increases and productivity gains them since they could now keep any compensation increases they gave themselves rather than seeing their taxes soar as a penalty for excessive greed. So inflation - unmatched by wage increases - kicked even more spouses out into the job market, creating even more latchkey kids.
And "flood-up/trickle-down" economics in turn incentivized the few to look to reduce the cost of "labor" (their term for the American people...that is, for those Americans who did not fall into "entitlement spending"...the status most equivalent to the dogs and cats in the "Pending Euthanasia" cages at the shelter to the super-wealthy and the right)...so they bought inequitable free trade from a corrupt Congress and White House, bringing yet more wage pressure upon the American family...sending even more spouses to work...creating even more latchkey kids whose parents didn't have the time or were too tired to take the active role in their children's education of previous generations...
In conclusion, the super-wealthy got super-wealthy through manipulating our economy and tax structure - and in the process inflicted enormous damage upon the nuclear American family that, once upon a time, consistently featured a supervising parent at home around the clock...a parent who - among other duties - supervised the doing of homework and monitored the educational performance of their children.
And I do believe at least some of the super-wealthy are cognizant of their role in the destruction of the American family and attempt to assuage their consciences by throwing money at the problem.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
An example of this that I use to help a friend learn English is http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/ It is a great site.
On your sig of "There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.", there is also the mailbox (to mail representatives) and moving box (to move to a new jurisdiction with different laws).
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ca9_1254431392&comments=1
http://floridaegu.blogspot.com/2010/10/boxes-of-liberty.html
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
http://patapata.sourceforge.net/WhyEducationalTechnologyHasFailedSchools.html
This essay could be considered supporting Alan Kay's suggestion that
"the computer revolution hasn't happened yet".
http://squeakland.org/school/HTML/essays/face_to_face.html
Why Educational Technology Has Failed Schools
by Paul D. Fernhout
January, 2007
Educational technology has been a big success at homes, in libraries, in
museums, and in business.
Let's say you have an interest in, say, Aardvarks. At home and want to :-) Try Amazon:
know the weight of a typical aardvark right now? Google it:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=aardvark+weight
Want to buy one?
http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Safari-Aardvark/dp/B000H6H4VK
Want to sell one you no longer need? Try ebay:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Aardvark-Direct-Pro-Q10-PCI-Audio-Interface-w-CubaseLE_W0QQitemZ270076288454QQihZ017QQcategoryZ64446QQcmdZViewItem
Want to collaborate with others on making one better? Try sourceforge:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/aardvark
Want a 3D simulation written by an aardvark?
http://flyawaysimulation.com/article746.html
Want to make your own educational simulation about aardvarks? Try one of
the tools linked here:
http://www.ambrosine.com/resource.html
An endless variety of information related to just one arbitrary topic,
easily accessible using Google or another search engine.
At the library, want to find a good book on, say, Zebras? Use an online
library catalog system:
http://leopac.nypl.org/ipac20/ipac.jsp?menu=search&aspect=basic&npp=10&ipp=20&ri=&index=GW&term=zebras
Want to make a museum kiosk showing protein folding in action in 3D? Write
a simulation with Python:
https://simtk.org/search/?type_of_search=soft&words=&topics=18+307
Does your business need to know more about "quality control" to prevent
customer complaints? Lots of online resources:
http://search.dmoz.org/cgi-bin/search?search=quality+control
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_control
So, at home, library, museum, or business, technology is delivering the
goods (physical or digital) and making these places all a lot better.
With all that technological success in other areas, why are schools still
considered a problem area, see:
"To fix US schools, [bipartisan] panel says, start over"
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1215/p01s01-ussc.html
Or in other words, why has technology failed in compulsory schools?
Clearly something is wrong here -- technology is helping make these other
places more productive and more flexible -- but in schools, there is not
much change, despite a huge expenditure in technology and training.
Ultimately, educational technology's greatest value is in supporting
"learning on d
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Redistributism, but to families as basic income: http://www.pdfernhout.net/towards-a-post-scarcity-new-york-state-of-mind.html :-) because ultimately local schools will grow into larger vibrant community learning centers open to anyone in the community and looking more like college campuses. New York State could try this plan incrementally in a few different school districts across the state as pilot programs to see how it works out. This may seem like an unlikely idea to be adopted at first, but at least it is a starting point for building a positive vision of the future for all children in all our communities. Like straightforward ideas such as Medicare-for-all, this is an easy solution to state, likely with broad popular support, but it may be a hard thing to get done politically for all sorts of reasons. It might take an enormous struggle to make such a change, and most homeschoolers rightfully may say they are better off focusing on teaching their own and ignoring the school system as much as possible, and letting schooled families make their own choices. Still,homeschoolers might find it interesting to think about this idea and how the straightforward nature of it calls into question many assumptions related to how compulsory public schooling is justified. Also, ultimately, the more people who homeschool, the easier it becomes, because there are more families close by with which to meet during the daytime (especially in rural areas). And sometime just knowing an alternative is possible can give one extra hope. Who would have predicted ten years back that NYS would have a governor who was legally blind and whose parents had been forced to change school districts just to get him the education he needed? So, there is always "the optimism of uncertainty", as historian Howard Zinn says. We don't know for sure what is possible and what is not. "
"New York State current spends roughly 20,000 US dollars per schooled child per year to support the public school system. This essay suggests that the same amount of money be given directly to the family of each homeschooled child. Further, it suggests that eventually all parents would get this amount, as more and more families decide to homeschool because it is suddenly easier financially. It suggests why ultimately this will be a win/win situation for everyone involved (including parents, children, teachers, school staff, other people in the community, and even school administrators
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
"figuratively speaking that's what the future holds for those kids, as their future has already been eaten by their great grandparents and grandparents and parents, who voted themselves a system, that promoted bread and circuses, income transfer from the young and unborn to the old and the dead."
True enough, sadly, especially when you consider social security and medicare, and if ou assume the money on schooling is mostly misspent like John Taylor Gatto or John Holt suggest. Still, with robotics and other automation, 3D printing, better design, voluntary social networks, and accumulation of infrastructure, and so on, the future may still be bright. Stuff like Social Security or the US debt may become meaningless when money has less value (like Iain Banks says, "Money is a sign of poverty.")
I like the Peter Schiff video you link to (even as I can quibble that he may ignore some issues like the USA having the only intact major economy after WWII allowing expansionism, or ignoring an explanatory reason the chinese made stuff for the USA as a way to gain access to US technology to bootstrap themselves and gain political advantage, as a sort of tax on Chinese workers).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj8rMwdQf6k
Here is a video on 21st economics economics I made that can help understand how our kids may still have a good future:
"Five Interwoven Economies: Subsistence, Gift, Exchange, Planned, and Theft"
http://www.pdfernhout.net/media/FiveInterwovenEconomies.pdf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY
I put together a knol on the deeper issues, and why the kind of business cycles and bubbles Peter Schiff talked about are only some of the trends, where deeper trends of rising productivity in the face of limited demand are createing permanent structural unemployment (without other major changes) -- so his explanation is incomplete, like he ignores no net job growth in the 2000s and flat real wages for three decades in the USA despite productivity increase during those decades by a factor of two to three times.
http://knol.google.com/k/beyond-a-jobless-recovery
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
"Classroom Spectaculars" might work better, and it'd be FREE (the TV networks would foot the bill):
www.ideasforourfuture.com topic #4
Check out topic #4 on www.ideasforourfuture.com about "Classroom Spectaculars". Let's bring our educational system up to where the kids already are. They're WAY ahead of our current teaching methods. Their attention spans are short, we need to GET THEIR ATTENTION. Classroom Spectaculars will work and it won't cost a PENNY -- the TV networks will pay for it, gladly. Please give it a look: www.ideasforourfuture.com, topic #4. You won't be sorry.