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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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.