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

Completely useless

[PhantomHarlock]

Speaking as someone who is married to a teacher and sees all of it firsthand (and hears about all of it every night when I am not actually visiting the school) there is some technology that works and some that is completely useless. Endless standardized testing and data collection are completely useless. It takes away from actually teaching and does not contribute anything back. You are not teaching a data metric. You are teaching a child, and education is not just learning to take a test. Look abroad to find more well rounded and less myopic views of education, or look at Montessori schools. Education that includes, art, music, fun science and free play time. A healthy balance and a much reduced focus on data metrics.

Using computers to administer tests when they are needed, and to track grades and scores are good. That's about where it ends. Endless repeated testing that requires all children to follow the same learning schedule and eats away at classroom time is completely useless.

I would say that the single most important factor in determining an individual child's quality of education is class size. The difference between 20 kids in a classroom and 30 kids is enormous. What 20 kids buys you is the ability to give a much more individual focus on each child and help them personally. It greatly decreases the chances of a child slipping through the cracks and falling behind for no good reason other than they needed a little extra help and they didn't get it. It allows you to see and spot problems much more easily through the noise.

Also, classroom aids and special programs to help children with behavioral issues are very thin on the ground. The lower the socioeconomic scale in the neighborhood, the more this becomes critical. The average family income of schoolchildren should be proportionate to the class size. The lower the income, the lower the class size should be. Anyone who has observed classes in both high income schools and low income schools would probably agree with me. There are far more behavioral issues and other needs in a poor classroom. Their home life is much more varied, and for many of these children, School is their only safe place where they are welcomed and loved. You are a teacher, a counselor, a mom, a dad, whatever they need. My wife sometimes go buy clothes for the kids that show up with dirty clothes with holes in them. Just that small act makes the child feel so much better about themselves, and their performance in school improves. She is always there for a hug or to listen to their problems and help them cope with life.

The class sizes are one way to illustrate how funding is the opposite of what it should be now. Wealthy schools typically have lots of tax income as well as plenty of extra money generated through PTAs and parent donations.

Poor schools, who need extra activities and support the most get the least amount of either.

I don't have a good answer for any of this, only realities of what's on the ground here. Perhaps if schools stopped spending money on technology that is aggressively marketed to them and does not work, they could use the money on more staff. Case in point, I know that in our local district, hundreds of thousands of dollars have gone towards technology programs that could have been used to hire a few more teachers and made a big dent in class sizes.

It's easy for people who are not teachers or principals to come up with ideas that sound good. But ideas that actually work require a lot of input from the troops on the ground, and not just at your blessed Cupertino school where children are well supported with highly involved, highly educated parents. You need to look at what works in poor, rural schools where many basic needs are not met. Talk to the teachers. Ask them what they need to help their kids. More often than not, it has nothing to do with technology. It has to do with nurturing and that fuzzy stuff that cannot be quantified.

How spend $1.7 billion on education?

[myid]

Of course having good parents makes a huge difference. But just talking about money - how would I spend $1.7 billion on education?

1) Buy the rights to highly-regarded educational books, and release the books freely over the internet.

2) Set up some private schools that teach as they do in Finland. This imitating Finland would include hiring outstanding teachers, and paying them well.

3) Open private schools for students who want to learn, putting them in areas with bad schools. The students in the good schools don't have to be geniuses, but they do have to work hard and behave well. Make these schools low-tuition or free, for students whose parents can't afford the cost. I hate reading articles like this one, about students who were physically attacked by other students for the "crime" of studying hard.

4) For students who are fighting peer pressure to not study and to behave badly - if they don't have an alternate good physical school to attend, then set up a free, high-quality online school for them to attend.

Re:Here's a billion dollar idea:

[ShanghaiBill]

Finland pays them over 100K a year

Teachers in Finland are paid $37,500 on average, which is considerable less than most American teachers make.

You need a masters degree too

There is no evidence that advanced degrees improve teaching ability in any objectively measurable way.

Re:Here's a billion dollar idea:

[ChrisMaple]

Teachers are hounded out of the business if they don't parrot the political bias of the department head, principal, superintendent. Good teachers won't work under such conditions, hacks do.

I find it hard to imagine any teacher in any subject before 10th grade being worth more than $50,000/year. The material isn't difficult and teaching isn't difficult.

Still barking up the wrong tree.

[jcr]

Adding money to a failed institution like our public schools is pointless. If Gates wants to help poor kids escape the school-to-prison pipeline, he needs to create schools that have no government involvement at all.

-jcr