TECHRIGHTS has published a few dozens of posts about ways in which the Gates Foundation became the underground department of education (it gradually becomes an international issue as even Vietnam and Greece get affected). It really is an attack on the independence of school systems because the personal agenda of one family is being served rather than the agenda of many parents who send their children to school. "YES The Gates foundation IS trying to tear down public education and replace it with CHARTERS," says one headline from Democratic Underground this month. SeattlEducation2010, a site which we first mentioned last week, has a response to “an open letter to Seattle public school parents” by its schools’ coalition. It says:
The Alliance for Education is backed by Bill Gates and the Broad Foundation. Both organizations are big backers of charter schools and high stakes testing among other things
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That seems innocuous enough. Who doesn’t want the best quality education for their children? Unfortunately, after several groups signed on to this statement, it was then used by the Alliance for the purpose of pushing the Race to the Top agenda fueled by Gates and Broad money.
In 2006, for example, Education Week named Bill Gates the single most influential person in education of the past decade - more so than President George W. Bush, who had passed the No Child Left Behind law. (Gates had just spent over $2 billion to promote the creation of small high schools, with much of this money wasted by his own account). Eli Broad, another billionaire -- and strong charter school fan -- has also spent a vast fortune to influence public education, long thought of as one of America's most democratic arenas.
I conclude with a discussion about the final category, the Gates Foundation, particularly the waiver for James H. Shelton III, Assistant Secretary for Education and Improvement, and, to a lesser extent, Margot Rogers, the Secretary’s Chief of Staff (Note: Rogers has since left her post and Joanne Weiss, former COO of NSVF and head of the Race to the Top, is now Duncan’s Chief of Staff). I have focused on these two appointees because they hold important positions; their waivers allow for the most extensive contact with their former employer; and their background in philanthropy raises some interesting questions.
While I am not aware of any other analysis of waivers for Executive Agency appointees, various media outlets have picked up on the Gates Foundation’s significant involvement in federal education policy: Michelle McNeil of EdWeek noted multiple Gates employees filling the Department of Education; Sam Dillon of the New York Times reported on the foundation’s role in helping some states write their Race to the Top application, including complaints the foundation was trying to hand-pick eventual winners; Dana Goldstein of The American Prospect wrote about the i3 fund and how much of the federal agenda is “borrowed” from the philanthropic community; Libby Quaid and Donna Blankinship of the Associated Press began one article with, “The real secretary of education, the joke goes, is Bill Gates,” and noted the foundation’s growing influence on education policy; Erik W. Robelen and Michele McNeil noted in EdWeek that some observers suggest the Education Department and philanthropic organizations are “collaborating to an extend that may well be unprecedented”; Clay Holtzman of The Puget Sound Business Journal noted the similarities between the foundation’s agenda and the federal Department of Education’s agenda; and a recent Washington Post headline read, “Gates Foundation playing pivotal role in changes for education system”.
The new STEM school, financed in part by the Gates’ Foundation, looks to Nova High School as an example of project-based classes.
What I want to focus on briefly is how the Alliance shamelessly used our students to promote their, rather the Gates and Broad, agenda last night. Under the umbrella of the Alliance for Education and paid for by Broad and Gates money is their offspring “Our Schools’ Coalition” developed and produced by Strategies 360, a national marketing firm paid for by Stand for Children. Stand for Children, also backed by Gates’ money, apparently has joined forces with the Alliance or at least they did last night.
This is the business perspective that has been the model for the Broad Foundation and Gates in terms of how they think schools should be run and children taught.
This report was sponsored by the Alliance for Education and has received funds, $9M from Bill Gates and $1M from the Broad Foundation. Some of that money was used to pay for this report as is described on page 2.
This report is a precursor to merit pay, high stakes testing and ultimately charter schools. This has been the method that the Broad Foundation and Bill Gates have used in other school districts around the country to introduce their ideas of “venture philanthropy” in our educational system.
I’ll hit some of the highlights.
“About this study: This study was undertaken on behalf of the 43,000 school children who attend the Seattle Public Schools.”
Or on behalf of Bill Gates? I didn’t know that the students and parents of the Seattle School District or any school board members asked for this study.
Is $1,500 a day enough for a new Memphis City Schools consultant (Aug. 18 article, "New venue / Consultant's ideas for turning around failing schools earned failing grade from parents at last stop")?
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Oh, well, Supt. Kriner Cash probably needs help figuring out how to spend the gazillion dollars MCS is getting from the Gates Foundation.
Vince served as teacher leader of The Discovery School, one of five Gates Foundation “small schools” within Mountlake Terrace High School, where he has taught for 22 years. Vince was twice named the state journalism adviser of the year and Edmonds School District Educator of the Year.
But unlike in baseball, which has a wealth of commonly accepted statistics that are better than batting average, teaching doesn’t, at least not until such efforts as the Gates Foundation’s yield results.
But to prevent those outcomes, more of us must step up to intervene. Help from foundations such as the Belk Foundation is especially needed. The work of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation shows how transformative such help can be when it is targeted on education issues. The Gates Foundation has been instrumental in promoting strategies and school innovations that have become national models for improving educational outcomes for struggling students from economically disadvantaged homes.
Mark Milliron, Deputy Director of Postsecondary Success at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, stresses that the United States is simply not producing enough trained workers.
For instance: In 2005, midway through the Bush administration, Microsoft's Bill Gates told a Washington audience that curbs on immigration and guest workers would provide a boost to research institutions in China and India. A year earlier, then-Intel CEO Craig Barrett warned that the U.S. must dramatically improve its education system.
Additionally, several Gates and Broad Foundation-funded lobby groups have been disseminating inaccurate information relating to the current contract negotiations and the issues involved.
In truth, the Alliance has an “education reform” agenda that is largely funded by Los Angeles AIG billionaire Eli Broad’s foundation and Bill and Melinda Gates’ foundation. LEV is also primarily funded by the Gates
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As for the poll that the “Coalition”/Alliance/LEV/Gates/Broad paid for that allegedly claims parents and community want “merit pay,” by all accounts it started off as a highly questionable and biased “teacher quality” survey, which was withdrawn when genuine school community members protested, and reemerged as a very slanted push-poll taken of a curious cross section of community members (including some teachers via their private cell phone numbers).