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The Gates Foundation Engages Its Critics
sam_handelman writes "The Gates Foundation responded to the critiques of its policies (previously discussed here) by inviting its critics at Education Week Teacher to a dialog on its own site. Edweek blogger Anthony Cody answered the challenge. The two sides negotiated a five-part series of post and counterpost, which can be viewed on both sites. Previous exchanges include Cody's question, Can Schools Defeat Poverty by Ignoring It?, and an answer from the Gates Foundation's Global Press Secretary, Chris Williams, Poverty Does Matter — But It Is Not Destiny. The final round of the dialog has begun, and is available for comment on the Gates Foundation's own blog. Slashdot readers may not know about Gates' sponsorship of specific edutech industry partners, such as Rupert Murdoch's Wireless Generation, and Pearson Education. Cody poses tough questions, including, 'Can the Gates Foundation reconsider and reexamine its own underlying assumptions, and change its agenda in response to the consequences we are seeing?' According to the agreement, the Gates Foundation will answer in the coming week, concluding the series."
Charity is a band-aid over the wounds of capitalism.
I have a response to my liberal friends when they say, “But you are so smart. Why aren’t you a liberal?”
I tell them that I got tired of being told how smart and good I was by the liberal left (yes I used to be a democrat/liberal). I tell them that I felt like a dog that had done a good trick for his master. That the liberal elite was standing over me and patting my head and saying in that smarmy, high pitched baby talk voice how smart and good I was for voting for them.
I then proceed to tell them that because I actually am a smart person those platitudes fell flat. I started to feel abused by the patronizing condescension that was being lavished with such abandon. I go on to let them know, in no uncertain terms, that anyone who believes they are smart because the left has told them so is deluded. They so want to be intelligent that they will fall for the simplest of tricks, being told that they are intelligent.
So, while my liberal friends can believe that they are the smartest people in the room because they are all told they are smart I shall despair for them. I will use logic and reason to come to my conclusions. I will use the classroom of history to make my case. I will watch for results and not be satisfied with good intentions or the platitude of “they tried to do a good thing.”
I shall watch and see through the words of the brain-washers and know my enemy. For that enemy is the scourge of us all. It is called feel good politics. It is called progressivism. It is called failed practices that never bring about good returns. It is called chains, chains so adamantine that they could end freedom as we know it forever. It is called the liberal left. They tell you that you are smart. Go ahead and believe them and watch your country die around you. How smart will you feel then?
Better to rule in hell than serve in heaven. The Gates foundation is self serving, promoting tax shelters through trusts, and self promotion masquerading as charity. their " charity" amounts to token amounts compared to their corporate investments. Regardless, the world will never love Gates, the road to personal redemption will be long and lonely.
and its all the evil in the universe in one place.
Yeesh, what an IA mess. Duplicate blog posts and comment threads across multiple blogs, duplicate author names on blog posts... and if there's an index to the entire discussion, I couldn't find it. So I made my own.
Here are all the posts and responses thus far:
1:
Anthony Cody: How Do We Build the Teaching Profession?
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2012/07/dialogue_with_the_gates_founda.html
July 23, 2012
Ivrin Scott responds for the Gates Foundation: How Do We Build the Teaching Profession?
http://www.impatientoptimists.org/Posts/2012/07/A-Response-to--How-Do-We-Build-the-Teaching-Profession
July 30, 2012
2:
Vicki Phillips writes for the Gates Foundation: How Do We Consider Evidence of Student Learning in Teacher Evaluation?
http://www.impatientoptimists.org/Posts/2012/08/How-Do-We-Consider-Evidence-of-Student-Learning-in-Teacher-Evaluation
August 7, 2012
Anthony Cody responds: How do we Consider Evidence of Learning in Teacher Evaluations?
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2012/08/responding_to_the_gates_founda.html
August 8, 2012
3:
Anthony Cody posts: Can Schools Defeat Poverty by Ignoring It?
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2012/08/can_schools_defeat.html
August 13, 2012
Chris Williams responds for the Gates Foundation: Poverty Does Matter--But It Is Not Destiny
http://www.impatientoptimists.org/Posts/2012/08/Poverty-Does-MatterBut-It-Is-Not-Destiny
August 20, 2012
4
Irvin Scott for the Gates Foundation: K-12 Education: An Opportunity Catalyst
http://www.impatientoptimists.org/Posts/2012/08/K12-Education-An-Opportunity-Catalyst
August 28, 2012
Anthony Cody responds: What is the Purpose of K-12 Education?
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2012/08/Gates_Foundation_Dialogue.html
August 29, 2012
5:
Anthony Cody asks: What Happens When Profits Drive Reform?
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2012/09/the_dialogue_with_the_gates_fo.html
September 03, 2012
Gates response to come.
From the article:
"In the name of reform, the Gates Foundation has wielded its political influence to effectively shift public funds, earmarked for the service of poor children, away from investment in those children's direct education experience. Through the Race to the Top and NCLB waiver conditions, the US Department of Education has instead dedicated public resources to creating state and federal mandates for the Gates Foundation's costly project"
Wow. I'd read the Gates Foundation had links to some shady corporations and projects, but I had no idea they were in league with Bush's discredited attempt to gut public education through the "No Child Left Behind" program.
The fact that Obama pretty much continued and endorsed Bush's program with his own so-called "Race to the Top" program only puts another nail in the coffin of the argument that Obama is some kind of "extreme Leftist" instead of a Bush-lite (in some ways he's even more conservative than Bush).
And the Gates Foundation has links to "Race to the Top" too.
Outrageous!
No, charity is charity.
Any government I would assume you could propose as opposed to capitalism that would prevent these supposed "wounds" would simply be forced charity.
If you have an issue with capitalism I happen to love talking about government philosophically, and would argue governments purpose is to protect freedom.
Protect us from what?
The bad? Or the "better"? As some would argue.
The fittest that is.
You could narrow it down to corruption.
Humans are highly susceptible to corruption. It's in our nature.
From being intelligent we understand merely taking for ones self isn't progressive in terms of the evolution of society.
So what's more important?
The individual? The society?
Should giving be forced?
Or should one want to give?
Should government enforce freedom of the individual?
Or should it be progressive and enforce the evolution of society?
Does the evolution of society lead to everything becoming artificial life and humans obsolete?
We are just animals.
We might make computers but can we control them in the long term?
Integrate them?
Eventually just become them?
Then what?
Could we still be corrupt?
Would we behave as a single entity?
Is that ideal?
Or is self satisfaction all that really matters and anything that builds (government, religion, society) due to us being here is just a fluke?
The form of government is not the issue.
The issue is corruption.
Any of the most known forms of government would do better than any of the country's implementing them now if there was no corruption.
Capitalism would work better than Communism if the capitalistic country has no corruption and the communistic one was corrupt.
Likewise, Communism would work better than Capitalism if the communistic country has no corruption and the capitalism one was corrupt.
Totalitarianism would work better if the leader wasn't corrupt and cared about freedom.
http://slashdot.org/submission/2242227/possible-new-theory-of-everything
You fucking americans wouldn't know what a "liberal" (is that the new word for faggot or nigger now?) or a socialist if one jumped up and bit you on the balls. Turn off Fox News and open a fucking book.
Cody claims teacher performance doesn't correlate with student achievement. I believe him. I don't agree with his assertions that schools are underfunded and couldn't educate poor students even with more funding.
There is even less correlation between cost per student and student performance than between teacher and student performance.http://www.npri.org/blog/does-more-spending-increase-student-performancehttp://www.reuters.com/article/2007/05/24/us-usa-education-spending-idUSN2438214220070524http://www.delcotimes.com/articles/2012/03/02/opinion/doc4f51a55f28207547363660.txthttp://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Little-correlation-found-between-per-pupil-823833.php
It is common for urban poor school districts to cost much more per student than the surrounding suburbs. Look at Kansas City or Washington DC for stark examples.
Seriously, spending more than $10,000 per year per student is a travesty. A class with 30 students should not cost $300,000 and the money is not going to the teacher!
I agree, end the war on drugs and greatly reduce parent incarceration rates.
I agree, find employment for everybody that raises them above poverty.
I agree, support family planning, pre-natal care, nutrition, and free pre-school or head start.
But, it isn't poverty exactly or school financial resources that predict student performance. It's culture. There is an urban poor culture that doesn't exist among poor rural students, and the outcomes differ. How can we change the culture that devalues education? How can we change the violence and street power culture? How can we convince people not to have children that are later neglected and abused?
You can't buy what you want without government permission, corporations can't sell what they want without government permission, and they can't even *speak* about their products without government permission.
Yessir, that's one "free" market.
The ones I'm familiar with are Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, and France. Perhaps you could enlighten me on the one you're describing.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
college has to much Profits and lacking real learning
We need more trades based teaching with non degree based classes and non degree teachers who have skills in the area they are teaching.
The real issue is that poverty reflects the values of those subcultures that reject education and work.
Its hard to talk about this issue without talking about race, because quite frankly American urban poor are mostly minorities, and from that reduced group they are mostly African American.
With that in mind, my own feelings about this follow fairly closely with Bill Cosby. It is certainly a cultural problem more than an economic problem, and it wasn't always this way. There is a stark difference between black culture at the turn of the 20th century and the turn of the 21st century, and the difference has proven to be a great disadvantage. Some of it has institutional roots, but as both I and Bill Cosby believe, that is no excuse for what blacks are doing to themselves.
We cannot legislate this problem away, and there is good reason to believe that every time we try we just prolong the condition. The inner cities need strong inspirational leaders that accept no excuses. Things can't get better until people start being better.
"His name was James Damore."
Much in "Educational Research" is nor valid research. Many terms are undefined, measuring student growth is nearly impossible, and controlling for SES is often not done in a statistically valid manner. Teacher performance can be as simple as an administrator seeing completed worksheets every day. Improved student performance may simply be a school that cheats on tests. It has been known to happen. The research too often is funded by interested parties looking for an outcome. Right now what the interested parties want is validation that generic recent college graduates are the best teachers, so hiring them for a few years, knowing they will leave before vesting, is the best thing to do. Teacher performance not correlating to student performance is key to this finding. OTOH, a teacher that is only going to stay in a couple years, is paid bonuses bassed on student performance, is not going to worry about losing a teaching license if she is caught letting her student cheat in the way that a career teacher who needs her job is.
We have to be brutally honest about poverty. Our society is based on the idea that some people are going to basically be consumers. There is not meaningful work for them. If they can raise a family to consumer product that manufacturers need to have consumed, that is enough. Have you been to Walmart when the government checks come in? That is what I mean. There is nothing wrong with this. OTOH we don't have to have every generation be simply a consumer. We can teach kids to be innovators. This is where a public education can help. This is where Gates Foundation can help, but I think they are trying to be cut rate about it.
This is especially a problem in the city. In a given suburbs or rural area everyone is basically at the same level of dispair. The houses are generally the same, the people are the same. You don't know that you are culturally retarded if there are no example of better cultures. But in the city the kids see the inequity, they see that life can be better, they just don't know how to get there. So if the school is not well funded, if the teachers are not creative, then the children are not going to be prepared to take advantage of the opportunities around them. We will have lost the productivity that we could have gained from moving a child from a consumer to an innovator. This is what one must believe in if one is going to value education and create a culture where it is valued. That any child is a potential contributing member of society, no matter if that child is benignly neglected in a mansion, or actively loved in a shack, or neglected and living on who ever has a spare couch. We must believe that funding a child's basic needs is not charity, not something that we can fight about for political gain, but the right thing to do from moral and practical standpoints. This is what the US stands for. We are not an aristocratic society where the son of a rich man automatically is entitled to all he wants. We are a place where given the basic opportunity of food, shelter, education, anyone can grow up to add to the GDP, which is really all that should matter.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Subject line has no Enough college.
Shhhh, someone will hear you.
We are not an aristocratic society where the son of a rich man automatically is entitled to all he wants.
We are now. Our rich aristocrats set up family trusts and similar mechanisms to protect their children that the rest of the country has no access to to ensure exactly that. For example, only poor and middle-class people pay estate taxes and circulate their money back toward the public upon death if they've accumulated a moderate amount of it. Get a lot of money together and you can afford to start avoiding that with a trust, start moving assets off-shore to avoid paying taxes, and shift income away from regular income and toward things treated as capital gains.
Bill Gates is the founder of a company convicted of monopoly power abuse (US), competition abuse (EU), and that's just major cases they were obviously guilty of. The fact that he's now distributing his wealth is not reason to ask "is the Gates Foundation spending its money wisely?". The real questions should be around who all that money was stolen from to get so rich, because it's usually someone. All of his assets should have been seized as a criminal, and then we'd really have some cash to fund education with.
The reality of our country is that the poor kids who become innovators will still be poor adults as long as they're being ripped off by rich guys who are the songs of earlier rich guys. Gates is at least 3rd generation money, one who started with piles of banking and law related income to protect him and make him feel (rightly) above the law. The way the rich consider it acceptable to flaunt the rules that limit everyone else is at least as big of a problem as the education gap.
It's not about if someone making $149k, $150k or $151k can be considered rich.
Try instead to figure out who's standard of living is poor and how much are they making. Keep in mind that there are many levels below simply "poor".
Then you look above that until you get to an acceptable standard of living.
Then above that you'll find the "Doing OK" crowd.
Then the "Well off" ones.
Then the rich.
Then the very rich.
Then the super rich.
Or... you can take a shortcut and just look at the minimum wage.
I'm guessing that we can agree that it is a decent enough economic indicator for an online discussion between laymen.
You're making one minimum wage? You can barely afford the cost of living for one person. Yourself.
1-2 MinWage? You could support another person and still live poorly, or live at some more acceptable level alone.
5 times minimum wage allows you alone to support an entire family of four and then some.
Incidentally, that is apparently also the point where one earns enough to be happy.
It's pretty easy to see where those $150k guys, making 10+ minimum wages, fall on such a scale.
As for a "why a specific number"...
Well, try it like this.
If you are making enough money to provide a family of 4.1 (Mom, dad and the statistical number of children needed to continue the growth of population.) with their own 2*MinWage - you are the golden standard of upper middle class.
Each member of a such family can afford a middle class life on their own, and together they are a happy, economically functional, upper middle class family.
The fucking ***American DreamTM***. America The Beautiful starts playing in the background, a bald eagle flies through the frame.
Add those numbers up for the highest US MinWage (Washington) and you get:
$9.04 * 8 hours * 5 day * 50 weeks * 4.1 people * 2 = $148256
That is the PEAK of upper middle class in the USA. Above that starts the upper class - the rich.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Just a heads up. The cost of school infrastructure is built into the cost of teaching. That land, those building and the recreation facilities. In urban areas, that land could be a high rise apartment structure, often several high rise apartment structures and is priced into the cost of teaching at that location. Next due to local government school administrations, the cost of school administration is repeated again and again and again, easy fix go from local government school administration to state government school administration, one state education body, doing all the administration, hiring and firing and setting curricula.
The was no great problem until knee jerk right wing reactionaries got involved and started fixing things. The more they fixed the worse it got, with them complaining all the way they if only they could fix things more suddenly somehow by some miracle instead of their fixes making things worse it would suddenly make things better.
You have got ignorant uneducated (speciality knowledge) people making 'from the gut' decisions. Measuring student education costs in one year can be affected by postponed building maintenance cost suddenly blowing out with repair it now at double the cost of keeping it maintained or it will fall down. Text book replacement put off for years finally being updated. Local government with a minimal number of schools to off set administration costs. Accounting fudges inflating capital infrastructure right downs for more federal funding. Inflated administration wages due to political appointees. Regional security and vandalism repair costs. Of course often forgotten stuff like heating and cooling bills, some locations get away with spending very little on that, whilst others pay a fortune.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
But, it isn't poverty exactly or school financial resources that predict student performance. It's culture.
I heard someone who was trying to change organizational culture and values talk about this. As he explained, you can't really change this kind of thing directly. For instance you can't tell people, "you should value education" - you can't force them directly to do that. It doesn't work well if you try.
What he argued was that you have to change the structures. In this case, I'd say it's that you need to find them a job so the they don't have time to hang out on the street, don't start drinking and fighting to prove that they're at least something in this world where everyone considers them loser scum. Then they'll change their culture themselves.
Yesterday I read about a project in Copenhagen where they found some small jobs, some of the slightly silly, like cleaning up the streets or something like that, but basically an excuse to have kids from poor areas who get out of primary school (around 14-16 years) show up, do some real hard work and get paid. According to this page, the difference in employment rates when they turn 19 is 65% for no small jobs vs. 92% for those who had.
"The real questions should be around who all that money was stolen from to get so rich, because it's usually someone." Really? So Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods stole money from people to become rich? ... and before you start backpedaling and explaining that that's not what you meant, let me correct you and say it is - you're saying that if someone earned a lot of money, they probably didn't deserve it and that they took it from someone else.
In Michael Jordan's case, that becomes a little harder to prove, since he just happened to be the best professional basketball player of all time AND people in this country and around the world find value in that - so they're willing to watch him play on TV, buy products he endorses, etc. No one puts a gun to someone's head and said, "You have to watch the Bulls play tonight!" People chose to do that. A lot of people.
Now, from your worldview, Jordan should have given some of his pay to his fellow basketball players - let me correct that - to everyone who ever wanted to play basketball professionally (whether they succeeded or not) - because some of the outsized earnings he accumulated SHOULD've gone to them. You think that there's some fixed amount of dollars that is somehow magically allocated to the game basketball, and Jordan unfairly took most of that for himself. The fact is, Jordan expanded the amount of time and money people spend on enjoying the game of basketball, and he rightly deserves a significant portion of that. He practiced hard, he showed up for games, he made the difficult shots when it mattered most and deserves the rewards. Why does he owe anything to players that didn't make that commitment?
The reason that most people, even those with a preference for state-driven wealth distribution, don't level these allegations at Michael Jordan or Tom Cruise or Taylor Swift is that they probably, at one time or another, played basketball in junior high, or did some stage acting or performed at an open mic and realize that Jordan and Cruise and Swift are REALLY GOOD at what they do. They deserve their wealth. However, most people have NOT tried to run a company with 100,000 employees, develop new products and services to bring to market, placate fickle customers and deal with mountains of regulators, lawyers and shareholders. They think that being the CEO of Target or Wal-Mart or Microsoft is easy - anyone can do it (how would they know otherwise?) - and so they clearly don't deserve their wealth.
I would submit, though, that being the CEO of a large corporation demands as much dedication, focus and drive for excellence as being a top NBA ball player or chart-topping musician. The US economy is littered with the remains of once-large companies that couldn't hack it (Circuit City, Palm, Commodore, etc.), and the fact that Microsoft or Wal-Mart or Coca-Cola or GEICO are still going strong decades after their launch is something more than simply "luck". They deserve their success.
You cannot help someone until they decide to help themselves. You can't "make" an addict stop being an addict. They have to make the decision they want to fight their addiction, only then can you help them. We can't "make" Iraq a Democracy, the people have to decide for themselves they want to do it and only then can they be helped.
Same deal with kids in school. Teachers can't force them to achieve. They can help them achieve, but only if the kid is willing to work towards it. If there's a culture of stupidity, if kids actively fight against it, there's little teachers can do.
Basically I can open any number of doors for you in life, but you have to be the one to walk through.
Not all students cost the same to educate. This is proven in the fact that charter schools, who do [list of variables], all are based on that kids can be educated more cheaply. [list of variables]
Much in "Educational Research" is nor valid research. Many terms are undefined...
I find it hilarious that you can make those two statements back to back. Your idea is a proven fact, as long as you have these requirements and ignore these short-comings, yet any other thoughts on the matter aren't valid.
usually
Michael Jordan is not rich on the scale Bill Gates is. He's also not the CEO of a company that's been convicted of illegal tactics all around the world. Athletes, musicians, and people like your other examples are a bit rich and earned it. To become massively rich on the sort of world's richest man scale takes shady tactics. The appropriate rich people pile to sort Gates with is next to people like the trading firm CEOs who paid themselves massively while defrauding their customers.
You should learn how to separate legitimate business success from very profitable business activity due to illegal tactics. I was talking about the tactics of rich family dynasties in that regard, not rags to (some) riches stories like NBA players.
For example, only poor and middle-class people pay estate taxes and circulate their money back toward the public upon death if they've accumulated a moderate amount of it.
That's exactly incorrect. You should look it up sometime. The estate tax exemption, currently over $5 million dollars per person (basically $10 million per couple) means that no poor or middle class person pays any estate tax at all. Even if the estate tax exemption were lowered to the $1 million dollar default amount it would mean a couple could pass a $2 million estate without paying estate tax. That's not really middle class, given the current numbers of people that assemble that much in assets, and a greater than $10 million dollar estate is no where near middle class. So the only people that pay estate tax are rich people, especially currently. There is a certain amount of finagling, and or dishonesty they can do to lower the tax, but it still doesn't hit poor people. If I recall, there are still exemptions for qualified farm land so small family farmers don't get nailed as long as it stays a farm.
You can take the nigga out the jungle, but you cant take the jungle out the nigga. They will always eventually revert to their primal roots. Their minds just aren't adaptable like ours.
As a result, our urban cores have become horrible urban jungles. Around blacks, never relax.