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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."
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."
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.
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.
So how much of this money will be to keep MS the dominant OS provider to schools and therefore keep filling the Gates pockets?
Every new idea and expenditure that goes into the current government school system ends in disappointment. Maybe the problem isn’t the lack of ideas or funds.
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).
Has Bill Gates been successful in spending his money? Is there evidence he has deep knowledge about technology? Is there evidence he has deep knowledge about programming, for example?
Over many years, I have seen almost no evidence of Bill Gates having depth of thinking.
Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold wrote a very poor book together, The Road Ahead. Quote from the Wikipedia page:
That New York Times book review suggests that Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold were deliberately engaged in fraud, and deliberately eliminated anything of value from the book before it was printed.
rich
It's parents and culture. Nothing will overcome this.
"Education starts at home..."
So, the man who brought us Common Core is going to do something else to totally mess with the education system again?
Thanks, but no thanks, Mr. Gates. My state opted out of Common Core. But it's impossible to buy a math textbook that isn't written for Common Core, so the kids end up getting Common Core whether they like it or not.
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.
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.
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.
Most teachers suck. Whether that's because of poor training is unclear.
However, most teachers never get past the "presenting information" stage of teaching. For them, it's just a job. That's fine, but they should do their job more effectively.
How do you get low performers to do better? That's the real secret behind making education more effective. Finding inspiring people is hard. Making bad teachers better is just process improvement, and shouldn't be as hard. After all, you have to work with what you have.
You are thinking of Paul Allen. Gates has himself admitted he was never any good at coding.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
"Education Starts in the Womb" is more accurate.
"Education starts at Home" is just another attempt to deny the biological reality that some humans are systematically more intelligent than others and that human culture flows organically from human intelligence.
Which human culture was it that came up with the idea of universal education, by the way?
Reality is still there, no matter how tightly you tie the social justice blindfold around your eyes.
They have destroyed the Michigan educational system.
He's in it to spread Microsoft Windows and Microsoft software and nothing more. He and Balmer denied their own kids anything but Microsoft products and this is what they want for everyone else's kids too. Yet over and over it's not Microsoft leading the industry with innovation, Microsoft has always been a follower so really he's in no position, but for his wealth, to dictate what'll prepare K-12 kids for the future.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
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.
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Isn't supposed to be about the student? Isn't every student an individual? So isn't the right thing to do is to set up an individual learning program for each student? Or should we only look at students as uniform commodities run through the same industrial process everywhere?
We can do it. We just need the will to do it. Maybe we need an Agile like approach to education.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
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Put math/science/physics problems with timers in any shooter game to get more weapons, which increases difficulty with each level and you will have a land of geniuses. Start with simple operations, finish with quantum mechanics.
The #1 correlation between a student's performance is how much money his or her daddy has.
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
Seems to me, you and your spouse should work a few years averaging 100-120 hours per week between the two of you, for a lousy two-bedroom apartment, before you start lecturing people on how they aren't doing enough to support their families.
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.
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
Might help if he bought a lot of the kids new parents.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
Parents - some parents don't give a damn about their kids. They see school as some sort of subsidized daycare. They don't help their kids with their homework or otherwise participate in the wellbeing of the child. There is no discipline in the home so the kid is undisciplined at school.
Teachers - some are good some are bad. Just like any profession. Getting rid of the bad ones is nearly impossible.
Unions - they have managed to negotiate some very generous benefits for teachers over the years. Teachers have been served well by unions. Everyone else - not so much. Making any sort of meaningful change to the public education system is going to require cooperation from the unions and, traditionally, they have been inflexible.
Students - if a kid shows up to class unwilling to learn even the best teacher in the world is going to have limited success.
Tax Based Funding - unlike many other countries in the world, the amount of money a given school gets in the US is based largely on property valuations in that neighborhood. Schools in wealthy neighborhoods get a lot more money than schools in poor neighborhoods. Up and coming families strive to live in those wealthier neighborhoods so that their kids can attend the better funded schools. Other families in the same situation send their kids to charter schools. Less fortunate families get left behind in the inner city schools with the shrinking tax base. Ironically these are the schools that most need an advantage. The rich kid is gonna be just fine. The poor kid is left with trying to get an athletic scholarship or selling dope on the corner. If you are a good teacher which school would you rather teach at? Yeah.
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
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The final, and sadly the ultimate problem with education in the US is the fact that parents have become completely disconnected for the most part. How many of you remember your parents cracking the whip with you to do your homework? Or when you got a bad grade you got talked to because you didn't put forth the effort?
When you get home from your second job just as the kid goes to bed, there's not a lot of whip cracking you can do.
Yes, helicopter parents exist. But there's a lot more people having to bust their ass to keep their family housed and fed.
There, FTFY.
>"By 2011 the Gates' foundation had already spent $5 billion on education projects -- and admitted that "it hasn't led to significant improvements." "
That's because education improvement is not about throwing laptops in schools. It isn't about giving away "free" licenses to proprietary products. And it isn't about token "coding" projects. It is a lot more complex than that.
The main problems with schools is that there is little flexibility and competition. Teacher's unions slap down any real innovation and oppose any form of family choice. Lots of kids simply do not learn well with "traditional", large-class, 6-period, lecture-style, standardized-test type education.
You make it too easy. Correlation is not causation.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
A big difference between the US and Australia and most other civilized countries is that Australia funds schools by state and federal governments, not school districts. Poorer areas still have worse school, but at least the teachers are paid reasonably well, same as the rich areas. People here do not obsess about living in the right school district like they do in the US.
I lived for a while in Silicon Valley. Those public schools seemed excellent, better than Australian schools. But go over to east bay and it is a different story. Go out into the central valley and it is a different world.
Kids can be very disruptive when they are very young. Most of 5 years old won't sit quietly listen to teachers. And I believe universal pre-K will fail for sure.
If a classroom is organized, it is likely that students could have a better chance to get something (if teachers can teach well).
Could we allow teachers to throw chalks? Timeout chair? These ancient techniques may work. Is there any high tech tool helpful?
^(oo)^pig~
Seriously. He's a mediocre software developer who got lucky. What on Earth does he know about education?
The public education system in the US sucks because there's no political will to make it not suck. No amount of fancy big data and technology will change that. When the Education Secretary in the US is an active opponent of the public school system, you've lost.
It's simple really. If you took the money and hired more teachers to reduce class room size, increased teacher pay to attract and retain the best and brightest, and provided the necessary study aids to help students, you would see student performance improve. Private schools already use this formula and do very well. Public schools that use this formula do very well. It's the poorer school districts that have to cut their budgets, layoff teachers, and increase class room size that have issues.
Bottom line: It's the school budget dummy.
That's actually probably because your best teachers weren't credentialed (which means they have actually studied things like pedagogy), many aren't, the best ones, of which there are also many, are
Maybe you should lay off the "pedagogy" and just try learning some basic grammar. What the hell is that shit-fest of a sentence supposed to mean?
Cutting out the politics and having good teachers fixes education.
The biggest obstacle to improving education is the teacher's unions. With them in the way, you can't deal with the real problem, bad teachers that can't be fired. They refuse to accept any kind of performance metrics, refuse to be accountable for bad teachers kept on payrolls, and put up walls to any sort of change that doesn't involve more money going into union pockets.
...because the Soviets proved that massive, centrally-planned programs are always successful.
-Styopa
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.
Sure, but how you do this?
Russia had some success at this via propaganda promoting scientists and engineers as the ideal role models. Finland has managed this by turning teaching into a highly admired profession (advanced degrees and good pay for teachers were the solution). There may be other options out there. But pointing out the problem is the easy part - coming up with solutions is the real challenge.
Well hell, I just wasted a good half-hour (re)reading a few of those posts, thanks for the link.
Too facil.
1) Note the use of the word correlation, not causation
2) The link is to a study based on hard stats, not anecdotes
See here, for instance: https://www.alternet.org/educa... Rather than charge in and spend tons of money making changes of uncertain sorts, why not fund research?
Right, in the same way that Lenin and Stalin were hardcore capitalists.
/rollseyes
What color is the sky on your world? Not on this one, where the WaPo ran 16 negative stories on Bernie Sanders in 16 hours, and who's owner has a deal with the CIA work more than the paper.
Achieve self-actualization in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Casteism
And in the absolute amount of money and the goods and services that can be bought with it, American poor are much richer than most people in some third world countries, and even some "second world" countries. Those children do better than American children academically - but if a study is conducted it might (or not) so happen that children of "relatively" rich people within that country do better than those of relatively poor people.
By "fighting pov", you can't turn the US into Lake Wobegon - where everyone can be above average financially.
This study doesn't necessarily correlate the absolute amount of money (or the goods and services that can be bought with it) with academic performance, the correlation could be with relative values also. Lack of correlation with absolute values is easily seen by comparing children across countries - which is some evidence for the correlation being with relative values of prosperity.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
"Gates has himself admitted he was never any good at coding."
Can you give a source for that?
he is creating a dependency on a handout.
That's quite an allegation, there. How is their work creating this "dependency"? If anything, this project itself has a huge profit motive. People from failing schools or who drop out of failing schools have little to no incentive to purchase computers or utilize services that use computers. Gates - even though he is no longer the exec of Microsoft - has plenty of opportunity to expand his wealth by making computers available and attractive to an emerging market.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
See Microsoft BASIC for 6502 Original Source Code [1978].
My understanding from reading a book by Paul Allen, Idea Man: A Memoir by the Cofounder of Microsoft and from other sources, is that others wrote the code, or most of it. However, that was never openly stated, apparently.
Quote from that Amazon page, taken from the book:
"While much has been written about Microsoft's early years, Allen has never before told the story from his point of view. Nor has he previously talked about the details of his complex relationship with Gates or his behind-closed-doors perspective on how a struggling start-up became the most powerful technology company in the world. Idea Man is the candid and long-awaited memoir of an intensely private person, a tale of triumphant highs and terrifying lows."
My impressions: The book is definitely NOT "candid". Allen's relationship with Bill Gates was definitely "complex". Allen is definitely an intensely private person.
Paul Allen's relationship with Bill Gates was so intensely unfriendly at times that Allen decided to disconnect from Microsoft. Allen had a lot of Microsoft stock; that's why he is rich.
What does "fighting pov" mean ?
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Every other AC poster is the "previous poster" for me, so that is not really going out on a limb.
The poster of this post called something about my post irrelevant without addressing the issue I was addressing which was "fighting pov", that in my guess too meant fighting poverty, but I would like to be certain about what it means to someone calling something about my post irrelevant.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.