Bill Gates Tries A(nother) Billion-Dollar Plan To Reform Education (washingtonpost.com)

theodp shared this article from the Washington Post: Bill Gates has a(nother) plan for K-12 public education. The others didn't go so well, but the man, if anything, is persistent. Gates announced Thursday that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation would spend more than $1.7 billion over the next five years to pay for new initiatives in public education, with all but 15 percent of it going to traditional public school districts and the rest to charter schools... He said most of the new money -- about 60 percent -- will be used to develop new curriculums and "networks of schools" that work together to identify local problems and solutions, using data to drive "continuous improvement." He said that over the next several years, about 30 such networks would be supported, though he didn't describe exactly what they are...

Though there wasn't a lot of detail on exactly how the money would be spent, Gates, a believer in using big data to solve problems, repeatedly said foundation grants given to schools as part of this new effort would be driven by data. "Each [school] network will be backed by a team of education experts skilled in continuous improvement, coaching and data collection and analysis," he said, an emphasis that is bound to worry critics already concerned about the amount of student data already collected and the way it is used for high-stakes decisions. In 2014, a $100 million student data collection project funded by the Gates foundation collapsed amid criticism that it couldn't adequately protect information collected on children.
"In his speech, Gates said that education philanthropy was difficult, in part because it is easy to 'fool yourself' about what works and whether it can be easily scaled," according to the article. It also argues that big spending on education by Gates and others "has raised questions about whether American democracy is well-served by wealthy people pouring so much money into pet education projects -- regardless of whether they are grounded in research -- that public policy and funding follow."

By 2011 the Gates' foundation had already spent $5 billion on education projects -- and admitted that "it hasn't led to significant improvements."

Comments

Here's a billion dollar idea:

[DatbeDank]

The problem with education is the following statement:

"Those who can do, those who can't teach."

My best teachers were always those who had a non-teaching career first before going into education. One particular AP History teacher I had worked extensively at the state department for many years and moved back home to his podunk country town to raise a family.

  Find a way to get those who do or have done something notable into the classroom either as a teacher or a visitor on a regular basis and you'll see a turn around in education.

Re:Here's a billion dollar idea:

[Anonymous Coward]

"Those who can do, those who can't teach."

Fuck You. Public education is failing because of assholes like you. I don't know a single teacher that recommends entering the profession because of this type of bullshit.

Blame teachers for all social problems, and go out of your way to pass laws to restrict their right to unionize. Make sure that teachers have no due process, and no professional respect. Be sure to siphon off money to for-profit charter schools who often do not teach high school students because extra curriculars are more expensive. Don't hold charter schools accountable when they mishandle public funds, fail to report progress numbers to the State, or refuse to provide services to special education students. Couple that with abysmal pay and benefits in most districts, and the reality is that there is a massive shortage of teachers across the U.S.

Try teaching kids who are hungry, exhausted, and homeless. Students who have no support at home, and nobody to advocate for them fall easily through the cracks. Everything revolves first and foremost around the parents, but many have abdicated their responsibility long before a student meets a teacher.

Take some time out of your important life to volunteer in a school and you will see the reality of the situation. If public education is failing it is precisely because you are not there to make a difference.

Re:Here's a billion dollar idea:

[Billly Gates]

The problem with education is the following statement:

"Those who can do, those who can't teach."

My best teachers were always those who had a non-teaching career first before going into education. One particular AP History teacher I had worked extensively at the state department for many years and moved back home to his podunk country town to raise a family.

  Find a way to get those who do or have done something notable into the classroom either as a teacher or a visitor on a regular basis and you'll see a turn around in education.

Or I don't know. I suppose you can pay them like a real professional and not an upper hand blue collar worker. Finland pays them over 100K a year and it is very hard to get into teaching school as it is such a high sought out job. You need a masters degree too and tons of constant workshops.

There are good teachers. The problem is those who are driven to succeed can take the same drive in another field and earn double the income. What kept them in teaching was a desire to help kids out as well as the generous government penchants.

Thanks to conservatives cutting the penchants promised as well as the great recession forcing states to cut funding that is now gone too! Imagine if your 401K could be taken away just like that due to a politician trying to score points or the CEO needs a bonus?

Education is not valued in America. Money talks shit walks on any who say otherwise.

Many teachers today are expected to get masters degrees and tons and tons of debt and do constant training workshops and work well after 4pm when the students leave but only make 40K a year who may have penchant if they do this for 30 years. Screw that man.

Now you end up with the losers who have a degree but can't find work and just get another 2 year degree to be certified to teach. Beats McDonalds right? Those are the ones teaching your kids.

Re: Here's a billion dollar idea:

[modmans2ndcoming]

Right, ignore the failures of the parents of the students in failing schools....its all the teachers....

Re:Here's a billion dollar idea:

[stabiesoft]

Teachers are paid ok. Let them teach is the problem. Friend teaches. The kids run the class. He would be non-renewed if he sent too many disruptive kids to the vice principle. They have 3 security guards full time roaming waiting for fights to break out. I saw a story about a sub who duct taped a few kids mouth shut. I am positive they deserved it. But of course the sub got canned that day. And parents are just as bad. I recall when I was in school my parents backed the teacher. I did not dare get in trouble. Now the ax murderer student's parents justify the kid killing the teacher.

Re:Here's a billion dollar idea:

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you miss the part where parents of disruptive children do not support teachers and actively fight to undermine them. It doesn't matter if all teachers get paid 6 figure salaries if they do not have the authority to command respect from children and their parents. Children within that kind of setting will not get an effective education no matter how much money is spent into salaries.

Re:Here's a billion dollar idea:

[Billly Gates]

What you describe is a completely rotten administration.

What he said is 100% true. No Child Left Behind deals with metrics. One of them is discipline and classroom management. A principal who has a high number of students sent home is less effective than one who doesn't.

What? You think just because it is the government and not the private sector that bullshit metrics are not used?

Re:Here's a billion dollar idea:

[DarkOx]

ugh can we stop telling this bald face lie about teacher pay!

While there are a few pockets in this country where teachers are under paid the national average pay rates for public school teachers are only slightly below that of work requiring similar educate with other fields. They are HIGHER than average when you consider most teachers have 2 months off in the summer time, in addition to multiple breaks during the school year plus discretionary PTO. Finally its a position where you enjoy greater job security than most. Workers in other fields can expect to be laid off at some point in their career. Teachers provided they are willing to go where they are asked are virtually assured a job once they get past their first few years.

Which is not say teacher compensation is well managed. Its known to every large corporation's HR department that within a reasonable pay band (extravagant CEO pay aside) there comes a point with professional employees where you really can't motivate them as effectively with bonus and wages. You get less renewed enthusiasm for each additional dollar you compensate them with, its a diminishing returns thing. Generally you offer other perks like added vacation (but teachers already have a lot of that) and new responsibilities ( hard to do with teachers because each successive generation of students has about the same needs).

Maybe the problem is that teaching is looked at as a career. Maybe it should be a Job and teachers should be encouraged to simply move on after a few years.

Re:Here's a billion dollar idea:

[werepants]

"Special education" is frequently exorbitantly expensive, more expensive than one full-time tutor per student (easily over $100,000 per year). The return on investment is zilch, and certainly not a responsible use of taxpayer money. If a child's mental potential is limited to basket weaving, spending 12 years in a futile effort to teach him to read does no good.

At least you're honest about your desire to cull the weak from the herd. You're right that special ed is tremendously expensive, but many of the students that enter into these programs have physical handicaps, not mental ones. Look at Stephen Hawking for perhaps the best example of how special education students can succeed academically. Additionally, for many of these students, an education is the difference between a life collecting disability and a life of contributing to society at a basic minimum wage job.

Regardless of the fact that providing education to all yields a very tangible public benefit, it's also simply the right thing to do. What do you recommend as an alternative? Shuffle the disabled away into asylums? Euthanization? Let them starve on the street? Or just plan that they will be dependent on government handouts for their entire lives and get them started early? You really only have a handful of options available, all of which have been tried in various places and times. Using public education to give each individual a fair chance at self-sufficiency seems to be the obvious choice from a perspective of liberty, equality, and social good, not to mention simple decency.

I would love to see your attempt at a rebuttal, both for the entertaining mental gymnastics and so we can observe exactly how atrophied your moral compass has become.

Self serving jerk

[Topwiz]

Most of the money the foundation donates is spent purchasing products from companies that are owned by him or a friend of his. It is a big tax avoidance scheme. Donate money with one hand to get a tax deduction that offsets the income of the same money returning to the other hand.

Money to keep MS in the schools?

[Insanity Defense]

So how much of this money will be to keep MS the dominant OS provider to schools and therefore keep filling the Gates pockets?

Education Starts at Home

[Anonymous Coward]

Money was wasted because it wasnâ(TM)t focusing on the actual problem: parents. Seems to me that it is really parents that need educating to create a change. Education starts at home and by the time kids get to school you can already tell the dummies from the smart kids; thatâ(TM)s because of parents (and parenting).

The problem is not the schools

[thinkwaitfast]

It's parents and culture. Nothing will overcome this.

it's a free country, more power to him

[levicivita]

I am no Bill Gates fan by any means. I think Microsoft's domination of the PC industry through aggressive business practices set the IT landscape back 10 years. That being said - the money is now his and he can do whatever he wishes with it. The Washington Post is strangely bothered that someone is trying to improve the horrid state of American education - at least in a way that is not simply "more cowbell." "This has raised questions about whether American democracy is well-served by wealthy people pouring so much money into pet education projects — regardless of whether they are grounded in research — that public policy and funding follow." Is our current educational policy eminently "grounded in research" and producing extraordinary outcomes? I think we can agree that is not the case. Furthermore, I think this line of questioning "raises questions" whether the Washington Post has an even rudimentary understanding of the American constitution, or at least of the first few amendments. Mr Bill Gates is free to engage in the pursuit of his happiness as he sees fit. The people and institutions choosing to work with Mr Gates or his charities are equally free to do the same. And we are free to not encourage clickbaity low quality content from the WaPo.

Fuck Charter schools

[modmans2ndcoming]

They have destroyed the Michigan educational system.

Want to reform education ? Start with this

[nehumanuscrede]

Being smart and / or successful in school is looked down upon by the majority of their peers. You're labeled a geek or a nerd and ostracized for it.

Those who attempt to learn are merely targeted and ridiculed by the rest who seem to exist only to make everyone's life as miserable as possible. Some kids endure it and move on. Some give up and join the crowd. Others snap and go on a killing spree.

Some of the brightest people in this GD country are financially dwarfed by half-wits who can throw a ball, cry on cue or had the luck of being born with the right genetics and / or wealthy parents. High schools pour hundreds of MILLIONS of dollars into athletic programs, but seem to have little interest in funding anything academic outside of the bare minimums.

America has little interest in intelligent people, they want stupid ones who will serve as entertainment for the rest. The powers that be all but beg kids to get interested in STEM programs while, at the same time, they're outsourcing all the jobs associated with those programs overseas. :|

Kids see this and they ask themselves " Which one would I rather be ? "

You want to fix education ?

Start by figuring out how to make advanced learning something kids will strive for vs something they shun to avoid the persecution and misery that usually comes with it.

What's most effective?

[VeryFluffyBunny]

First problem, the world's full of people, who've never taught a class in their lives, giving their poorly informed advice to teachers. And too many pundits berating teachers for issues that aren't caused by teachers.

Next, you can't sack "bad" teachers and hire "good" ones. Teachers aren't factory or office workers. Education isn't a service or product. Pupils/students learn in communities cultivated within schools and neighbourhoods. "Good" teachers are cultivated, mentored, and encouraged, not hired. "Good" teacher means a teacher who is sufficiently well supported and given the autonomy over curriculum and assessment so that s/he can do his/her job well. Give teachers shitty status (i.e. constantly under attack from govt. and the media) and working conditions (i.e. long hours, insufficient resources, bureaucratic overload, and held to account for things outside their control) and guess what you'll get. Most of the policies for 'improving education' are actually making it worse.

Want to know what's most effective at improving learning outcomes across the board? Formative assessment (AKA feedback & actually talking to pupils/students about their work). If teachers can get that right, learning outcomes improve. In order for teachers to learn how to get that right, they need effective in-service continuing professional development (CPD). It's also a lot faster and cheaper than trying to train and sack-and-hire your way to improvement, especially when it's not the teachers themselves who are the cause of the problems. Most CPD is ineffective because it's too short, not followed up on, misdirected, and so doesn't change what the vast majority of teachers do in their classrooms in any significant way.

Also, when govt. and the media stop parroting 80s Reagan adminsitration "A Nation at Risk" style "Education is broken" rhetoric and actually acknowledge that the USA has top-rate education systems and that much of the poor performance on the OECD PISA tests every 3 years is due to child poverty and social exclusion (Why study hard when it won't get you a good job?), then we can start having well-informed, constructive conversations about how to improve US education outcomes.

And finally, we have to stop this nonsense about 21st century skills. How often do the people who use this buzz-phrase actually define what 21st century skills are? When you look at the few definitions that there are, they look an awful lot like 3rd century B.C. skills... apart from the learning to use computers for studying and work part. I'll give them that.

End of rant.