Gates: Not Much To Show For $5B Spent On Education 496
theodp writes "Since 2000, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has poured some $5 billion into education grants and scholarships. Ten years into his record-breaking philanthropic push for school reform, the WSJ reports that Bill Gates is sober about the investment and willing to admit some missteps. 'I applaud people for coming into this space,' said Gates, 'but unfortunately it hasn't led to significant improvements.' This understanding of just how little influence seemingly large donations can have has led the foundation to rethink its focus in recent years. Instead of trying to buy systemic reform with school-level investments, a new goal is to leverage private money in a way that redirects how public education dollars are spent. Despite the good intentions, some are expressing concerns about how billionaires and the Gates Foundation rule our schools, including the lack of transparency and spotty track record of the wealthy would-be reformers. Perhaps Gates should consider funding a skunkworks educational project for retired Microsoft CTO Ray Ozzie, who was working on networked, self-paced computer assisted instruction in 1974 — 36 years before Bill and Google discovered Khan Academy!"
$5B spent on education "reform" (Score:5, Interesting)
My understanding that much of Gates' donations have been spent on organizations trying to reform public education along "market-based" lines -- i.e., public schools run by private companies, which supposedly makes them more accountable. Maybe he's discovering this isn't the panacea that the reformers have sold?
Re:$5B spent on education "reform" (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems like the vast majority of people think that education and job training are the same thing or at least should be the same thing. My opinion has been that this is actually the root of the problem. If this actually is true then making schools "accountable" actually makes the problem worse.
I know talking with those older than me that companies didn't used to expect people to know everything before they could be hired. Now companies don't want to hire except when the person is perfect. It's not only education that has changed.
Re:$5B spent on education "reform" (Score:5, Insightful)
Now companies don't want to hire except when the person is perfect.
That's a symptom of oversupply of labor, not a structural change. With unemployment so high, if I'm looking to hire someone, why would I hire someone who needs training if I there are 10 people in a line with high experience who are competing for the same job? When demand outstrips supply, you'll see this trend reverse, as it did during the dot-com boom of the 90s, where any fool was being hired as a "web developer".
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This occurred before the crash and resulting unemployment. It is more a problem of over-education more than anything else. As a lawyer, I had bosses before the crash who were complaining about how much we young lawyers whined. But they went to law school at a time when even a pretty bad law school got you a good jobâ"simply put, they couldn't get hired today with their credentials. They also paid a fifth of the tuition we did, even adjusted for inflation, so they didn't have the pressure we have to pay
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I saw a video once on companies trying not to find employees [youtube.com] because they wanted people on H1B Visas*, but one of the requirements was that you had to establish that there are no US citizens who can and will do the job. I don't know if that is related to what you're discussing, but it is one possibility.
* (you work a little harder when a job termination followed by a bit of bad luck can get you deported)
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So in the end we have both employers and potential employees lying their asses off. Bet this will resolve itself to a good conclusion. And people wonder why today's society is the mess it is today.
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If Gates wanted to improve the quality of humans, he should have invested in creating more and better preschool/kindergartens. By the time the kids are in school more of their brains/minds have already "set".
This reminds me of something I saw about a similar experience with Oprah. She intended to do something similar to Gates by helping inner city kids get a better education. She was disappointed to find that very young kids in elementary and middle school didn't care one whit about education and were only interested in tennis shoes and other fashionable trinkets. This lesson took Oprah about 1 day to learn, took Gates quite a bit more.
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Do not forget that if Kahn Academy is a watershed for education that it will be attacked by the entrenched powers that need education to stay "as is".
I think that Kahn Academy is great for education. I do not think though that it will be able to stand against big money union propaganda and government hatred on the Local, State and Federal levels that will surely come down upon it.
Re:$5B spent on education "reform" (Score:4, Insightful)
The basic fact is the public education system, as it's currently constituted, is beyond reform. I don't know if Gates has come to that realization yet although he seems to be headed in that direction with his enthusiasm for Khan Academy and the change of focus to the politics of public education. There seems to be a gradually building national consensus in favor of the view that the public education system is beyond redemption which is what's propelled charter school law adoption in forty states and, more recently, a burst of legislation to enact vouchers, tax credits, trim tenure and increase accountability. All those are the sorts of substantive changes that erode the foundation of the monopoly the public education system enjoys and as the catastrophes predicted by the supporters of the status quo fail to emerge they'll be the encouragement for more such law.
While much is broke about our educational system, charter schools, as currently operated, will do little to fix the structural problems. Rather, they will respond to market pressures in way start maximize their profit, which does not necessarily equate to improving the educational system.
For example, charter schools do not want to operate on the basis of providing an appropriate education to everyone within their district - they want to be free to pick and chose who can attend - essentially cherry picking the most capable / least problematic students. What happens to the others? Who now pays for the kid that needs a para-pro for feeding during the school year?Who tells the school they have to accept someone and allow them to attend unit the are 21? More to the point - what happens to those the charter school doesn't accept?
We really don't value teachers. We expect them to deal with all sorts of social and behavioral issues with students *and* the students to *achieve* and then blame the teachers when that happens. Is it any wonder teachers leave as soon as they can? Or that, in areas where their skills are more marketable working for a private company - they bolt at the first chance they get? Try hiring a math or science teacher in a lot of districts - and see how many people you get when they can make 2x in a private company and not have to deal with a bunch of students and parents every day. Sure, there are bad teachers - but there are plenty more who care about the kids and do whatever they can to help; but at some point they have to decide if it is really worth it.
Accountability is great - many teachers would love real accountability - but what they get instead is parents who say "What are you going to do about my kid who is failing math? It's not *his* or *her* fault she skips school, never turns in assignments, and is drugged out when they are here." i've even had college professors tell me they get kids who call Mommy and Daddy during a meeting because *they* aren't getting an A and what Mommy and Daddy to tell the prof to give them an A. Until we realize teachers are one small part of the solution it isn't going to get fixed.
I'd say - make the charter school splay by the same rules - take all comers, make all legally required accommodations (and get sued when a parent doesn't like what you did" and let them charge no more than what the voucher is worth - and reduce their payment based on scores. Let them take over an entire district - and see who long they last on vouchers and a population that can vote on how much to give them and vote themselves out of paying if they want.
Until the fundamental issues are fixed, all we are doing is creating a few pockets of success that rally have no relevance to the overall solution. Of course, it's easier to point to the system and say it's broke than it is to really try to fix it; which is why most politicians simply pick a favorite solution an push it.
Goes to prove the point . . . (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Goes to prove the point . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Throwing money at the wrong thing will never fix a problem.
You can spend all the money you want on your plumbing, if you gaskets are salvaged from a junk yard, and can't make solid seals, you are going to have leaks.
The problem with the modern education system is parental apathy. Observe the better school districts, you'll have more parents that care, but not necessarily better teachers or equipment (though usually at least better equipment). Now, look within a school district, and compare students who do well, vs. those who do poorly (excluding those with learning disabilities), the better students, in general will have parents who have more concern with their kids education, and play a more active role.
Parental education is a better place to start with reform. Getting them to care about their kids future, and teaching them that their kids have more than just McDonalds and WalMart in their employment future is what is needed.
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True, but it can be a critical role.
Note: I know this isn't all cases, but it at least shows an important one
I went between two school districts when I was younger. The first had EXCELLENT teachers, but parents who didn't care. It ended up being a very low rating school district. Most of the parents simply thought of the place as a free daycare, most actually discouraged their kids from learning. Those who wanted to learn, however, got pushed to think, encouraged to be creative, helped when they needed it,
And? (Score:2, Insightful)
The second district had parents who cared. They wanted their kids to be successful like they were. The teachers however, were there for a 8 to 4 job, and didn't give a damn if the students learned or not.
And?
Where is the rest of the story/comparison with the first district?
Did the kids in the second district get better education/better grades?
Or did they win the basketball game with the help of a crazy inventor/a teenage werewolf?
You can't just leave us hanging there.
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I think, you can deduce from the nature of the story, that the second had much better standardized test scores and college acceptance.
But hey, if you needed it spelled out, that deduction is correct.
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I know this isn't true for large cities with huge school districts, but in small towns at least if the parents care good teachers are hired, schools get funded, and a lot of other factors get addressed besides. Lets face it, a lot of school funding comes from local sources. If parents are involved and concerned you have an army of people willing to go door to door to drum up support for a .2% tax increase that the school needs. If parents are involved the principles and super superintendents are held mor
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The problem with the modern education system is parental apathy.
If only it were that simple.
Let's say you have a school district which is incredibly poor, but has a highly motivated but not unusually smart set of parents (Such districts aren't hard to find - they exist in most US cities and more isolated rural areas). Because they are poor, they are facing these problems:
* outdated textbooks
* a facility that gives their kids respiratory problems
* teachers without a strong background in either teaching or their subject matter (because smart and capable teachers prefer di
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many people are taught that Columbus proved the world was round even though everyone thought it was flat (invented by Washington Irving), George Washington cut down his dad's cherry tree (also invented by Washington Irving), and that Paul Revere said "The British are coming!" (invented by Henry Longfellow).
Find me a school that teaches that, please. Ive never heard a school teach that throughout my educational years.
Let's say you have a school district which is incredibly poor, but has a highly motivated but not unusually smart set of parents (Such districts aren't hard to find - they exist in most US cities and more isolated rural areas).
You mean like New York and DC, who have the twin distinctions of being the MOST funded per pupil, and also the least performant, in the country?
To give our highly motivated parents the benefit of the doubt, we'll assume they've:
* Ensured that their kids can read, count, and possibly add or subtract 1-digit numbers before entering first grade.
That puts them at about a second to third grade level in the public schools I went to, and FCPS (fairfax county) is one of the better school districts in the country. Id say "motivated parents putting kids 2 years ahead of peers" is a pretty good example
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I wouldn't hold outdated text books up as an example. I doubt there have been many changes in basic mathematics up to calculus in the last 300 or so years, same with thing with: classic literature, basic science, history, microeconomics, geography (I know there have been a few map changes but excluding former soviet states and the split of Sudan in Africa nothing that I studied in grades k-12 has changed). I will give you text books having incorrect info and teachers telling kids wrong things.
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those who do poorly (excluding those with learning disabilities)
I had two relatives in the biz, one got out, the other is trying to escape before the system completely implodes. Which, frankly, is probably not too much longer. There's already a lost generation where virtually all teachers between 22 and 40-something have been laid off per union seniority rules, and all the boomers are starting to retire, so rather suddenly the average age, salary, and competence level of school teachers is about to collapse once the last boomer leaves the building and they hire all fr
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Re:Goes to prove the point . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd agree with the other reply, it's probably the biggest factor, although I'd put classroom size as #2.
I've been between multiple school districts, and it seems the more parents cared, the better the district, regardless of all other factors.
Yeah, it's anecdotal, but it's rather hard for a teacher to convince a student an education is important, when his/her parents have convinced him/her that the maximum that can be achieved is working at McDonalds, dealing drugs, or collecting welfare/disability checks, and that school is just a government funded daycare.
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I completely disagree with your assessment. My parents have been teachers for 30+ years, and it is the parent's attitude not their wealth or free time that affects their success.
In fact, very often the children of poor parents are often the best ones because their parents actually discipline them. They want their kids to succeed and reinforce what needs to be done for this to happen.
Then there is another group of poor, the fatalistic, who don't believe it is possible to move up, and who don't want to do any
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You don't need more books, you need better teachers.
How you attract good teachers to schools full of self-entitled bratz and/or gang-bangers is another matter. It has to be one of the most unrewarding jobs ever. Some things can't be paid for with money.
Re:Goes to prove the point . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Money might be a good start. Even in schools where this $5 Billion reaches, they still expect to pay teachers poverty wages.
The social contract was you pay them poverty wages at age 22 right outta college then every year they get inflation adjusted PLUS 5% more. So rather suddenly they find themselves middle class, and by the time the gray hair arrives, they're doing pretty darn well.
This is completely different from the private industry model, where you hire at 22, pay pretty good wages, fire at 35 due to ageism, and after that they ... I donno what we/they do.
The problem is we're having a second great depression, and the hiring has stopped, and the laying off has begun. So they no longer hire at 22, they hire at, say, 35. Not so easy to get 40 years in if you're not hired for your real job until 35. So the social contract has gone from "you'll start out young and poor, and retire rich" to "you'll work as a day care worker and/or bartender until middle aged, then be dirt poor, and maybe with luck retire as almost middle class".
The other problem is the union busting government wants to change the social contract to the private industry model, yet not modify salaries to match. So they wanna hire them at 22, tell them they'll get 5% wages until they retire, then fire them at 35 once they get too expensive relative to a new grad who will hear the same old lie about starting out in poverty but you'll get 5% raises until you retire (forgetting to mention they'll be forcibly retired at 35 now instead of 65)
The only solution is to let it completely blow up and self destruct, then start over with something new.
The problem is refusing to teach (Score:2)
beginning in preschool "Education" has a small number of goals
1 teach a kids that they can learn (and should do so)
2 teach them how to get knowledge
3 teach them how to "fill in the edges of the map" (if "there be dragons" beyond this point find out what kind and how many are there)
everything else is just drum beating (and providing resources)
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4 teach them word and excel because every corporation uses it.
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Time to ditch it (Score:2)
It is indeed time to ditch the whole idea of schools. It is parents who should be educating their children, not some poorly trained teacher in charge of 50 kids. All parents do instead is obssess over not having time to do it because they work all day, and send kids to school as if it were a daycare center. How about taking some personal responsibility for your kids upbringing? Your kids want to spend time with you (and if they don't it's because you kept pushing them into institutions) because they love yo
Re:Goes to prove the point . . . (Score:5, Informative)
One word: Parents.
Re:Goes to prove the point . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
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When is ANY difficult answer like this able to be addressed in one or two words?
One word : Americans.
Why? Because everywhere else in the civilized world, that sort of investment in the school system shows immediate results.
Re:Goes to prove the point . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
What you have to understand is that large areas of American cities are not part of the civilized world.
Re:Goes to prove the point . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
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Oh please... The number of books in one's home is not a determining factor. You sound like you work for a publishing or printing company. A person can be well educated by simply borrowing the books they need at a particular time in their study and return or sell said book when they are done. It doesn't matter if I've kept all my books from college if I retained the information. To me, you sound like the typical "push blame onto the television" crowd.
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Re:Goes to prove the point . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
There is definitely a cultural aspect to this problem. Consider the 2011 Intel STS, for example: 60% of the finalists were children whose parents entered on an H-1B visa, even though former and present H-1B holders make up less than 1% of the US population (source [nfap.com].) These children are American citizens, and educated in American schools, but for some reason being born to non-American parents gives them a significant advantage in STEM subjects even when controlling for their parents' education and socioeconomic status.
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This may be on the way to the real problem: American culture
We tend to glorify stupidity, ignorance, and idleness. At my previous job I was out with some of the other people on the team one was a black guy. When we were walking back from the bar some other black guys shouted out the window of a crappy car that he was a traitor to his race. The black guy on the team just shrugged it off and I asked if he gets that a lot. He said he did but it doesn't bother him as he is making $200 an hour as a contractor an
Re:Goes to prove the point . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
Unions are not necessary for filling the ranks of teachers; there are numerous professions without any unionization that have no trouble being filled.
Furthermore, while parental apathy is certainly a problem, parental antipathy is far worse! Nowadays, many of the "involved" parents are actually doing more harm than if they did nothing at all.
"My little Johnny is just being creative when he breaks all the crayons and throws them at other students."
"My little Susie is a genius and is not being challenged enough, that's why she fails all her tests and doesn't do her homework."
Or my favorite: "My children are your responsibility while they're at school" shortly thereafter followed by "You can't discipline my children, you're not their parent."
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"My little Susie is a genius and is not being challenged enough, that's why she fails all her tests and doesn't do her homework."
Actually, when I was a kid I hated doing homework and rarely ever did it. I never failed a test though. I wouldn't consider myself a genius, but I could never understand why I had to do mundane things like that at home when all I needed was in class instruction. It wasn't until I was placed in an extended studies group where we studied things like Shakespeare and computer programming in the 6-7th grades that I started to get really interested in what I was being taught. It showed me the importance of Ma
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Or my favorite: "My children are your responsibility while they're at school" shortly thereafter followed by "You can't discipline my children, you're not their parent."
Which is why we need to bring back the "board of education". All kidding aside my wife deals with this all the time since she is a teacher. One thing I like is that her coworkers always mention how well behaved my oldest is (almost 3). There is a clear understanding that poor behavior is not tolerated even when mom or dad aren't around.
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They don't have to be unionized to be fundamentally broken.
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Two words: teacher's unions.
The reactionary media have done such a good job at smearing 'teachers unions' that right wingers will use that very name as reference to a belief structure claiming that America is better off with teachers who live in poverty. Without unions, there would not be a blue collar middle class.
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The funny(?) part of what you sated is that most "union jobs" have employees that do live in poverty. I can't think of a union job that has employees that make six figure salaries (on a regular basis*)
*I happen to know of a particular set of people in a union job that drive Corvettes to work... but they slack off during regular work hours and do all their work on overtime hours so that they get paid more. (And they admitted it to me...) Their homes are not what I would call spectacular and they pretty mu
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The reactionary media have done such a good job at smearing 'teachers unions' that right wingers will use that very name as reference to a belief structure claiming that America is better off with teachers who live in poverty. Without unions, there would not be a blue collar middle class.
That's like saying that without buggy whips, there would be no modern car industry. While technically true (we had to have buggy whips to get horse-drawn carriages, which led to horseless carriages), it's not really relev
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Re:Goes to prove the point . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
I"d argue that's a correlation and not a cause.
People who have money will tend to value knowledge, because it's how they got the money. They'll tend to pass it on to their kids, and even if they don't agree with the education system as it is, they will encourage their kids to learn, which will help them in school.
It's not the money, it's what got the money, that helped those kids.
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One of the richest in the state, eh? It would be interesting to see your ethnic mix.
GASP! (Score:2)
What? Throwing money at a problem does not automagically fix things? The deuce you say!
What, no one size fits all solution? (Score:5, Insightful)
If I learned anything from my teacher wife*, it's that there are dozens of ways that children (and adults) learn, and you have to tailor the learning experience for each of them.
Some children may do very well with things like the Khan Academy. Others will not.
Anyone who tries to shoehorn all children into the same learning solution is likely to leave a large percentage of them behind.
* and my own experience in contrast to my brother, and my own two childrens' very different learning experiences in public schools.
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"No child left behind" just drags everybody down to the lowest common denominator.
One of the problems with the USA is that everybody is constantly being told they're amazing. Sometimes a kid needs to be told "you're never going to be a professional singer/dancer/whatever, try something else ..."
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Thanks for the soundbite. However, no one is talking about that misguided attempt to normalize test scores across the nation. They're a useless metric that proves nothing.
What is being discussed is solid: Everyone learns differently, and these differences need to be recognized and allowed for as much as possible. Telling someone they'll never be something is a stupid plan and will never pan out in the long run. (Although some kids will overperform just to prove you wrong - this approach could work for
Re:What, no one size fits all solution? (Score:4, Insightful)
Who is qualified to make that judgement? I say stop being a dick and let the children define their own lives.
I think you'll find that people excel in fields that they like, and fail in those that they don't. One problem I see with today's educational system is the idea that we should educate people in fields that have the greatest chance for employment instead of what is in the best interest of the child. This lead to the decline of the "fundamentals" (ie Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic) in exchange for "technologies" (ie computer science, trade skills).
If we actually taught the fundamental subjects in a way that didn't require it being reviewed at almost every grade level, we could actually have an educational system worth bragging about. Not to mention, we would have more time to really teach the advance topics instead of pretending.
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You are sort of right, and sort of wrong. You're right that not all kids learn the same way, and much more importantly at the same rate.
However, there are ways to teach kids that can work for most (as in 90%* of them). Those remaining 10% won't learn, either because they are too stupid or they don't want to... but I repeat myself. Trouble is, we teach the 90% as if they were the 10%, since "we can't leave any child behind!". And of course, you can't really discipline them either, since the parents won't le
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If I learned anything from my teacher wife*, it's that there are dozens of ways that children (and adults) learn, and you have to tailor the learning experience for each of them.
Some children may do very well with things like the Khan Academy. Others will not.
Anyone who tries to shoehorn all children into the same learning solution is likely to leave a large percentage of them behind.
I don't understand. The whole idea about Khan Academy is to tailor the learning experience to each student's need, as opposed to shoehorning all students into one set format/pace/etc, and no one gets "left behind".. only moves at a slower pace, until they get over whatever obstacle they have and can speed along afterward. And no one is held back either, according to the same theory. I can see you saying what you did about some traditional lecture format, but... do you know what Khan Academy is all about?
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However do you want a system where only the rich can get good healthcare and schooling?
In a basic way I agree with your point, but in the U.S. every system is dominated by corporate power that keeps pushing outcomes to their own ends. Do you really want corporate schools because that is what would happen. The corporate-dominated sector of healthcare is just as bad as the government sector.
This is easy, the problem with our schools... (Score:3)
The problem with our education system is simple; it's run by politicians. Education should not be run by people who a) don't have a solid grasp of the material they are mandating and b) are more interested in reelection.
The only way we'll get meaningful reform is by pushing control ( ie: money ) down to the county level and letting them figure it out.
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The problem with our education system is simple; it's run by politicians. Education should not be run by people who a) don't have a solid grasp of the material they are mandating and b) are more interested in reelection.
and c) have a vested interest in the populace being uneducated therefore easier to manipulate. A fox guarding the henhouse situation.
not surprising. (Score:5, Insightful)
I did a Master of Arts in Teaching in the early 90's. What I think I learned from my History of Eduction Reforms was this: 1) kids will learn given half a chance, 2) most (if not all) education reforms have had AT BEST marginal impacts, 3) so you can do something good or screw up and it doesn't matter all that much. Education and the drive to become educated starts at home.
Seemingly large donations... (Score:2)
One major problem with education is that is is big - really really big, like healthcare and military spending. $5B over 10 years is something like 5 cents per student per day.
So, while an impressive feat for a single man to accomplish, approaching every student in the U.S. every morning for 10 years and saying "hey kid, here's a nickel, try to do a better job in school today," is apparently about as effective as you would imagine it to be.
And, the real problem, while Bill was giving kids a nickel, the loca
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
cynical about corporate donations? (Score:2)
Two big problems with Deep Pocket donations:
1) No audit trail for where/how the donation was spent
2) No evidence the donation was ever *actually* made
I apologize if this sounds cynical, but I have very, very little faith in any corporation/monopoly in the US right now. It's far too easy for companies to game tax breaks with large wads of cash. Sure, maybe you donated 5 billion to a school, but in return did you get a 8 billion tax credit from taxpaye
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... but in return did you get a 8 billion tax credit from taxpayers?
This is completely fucking irrelevant and a separate point entirely if you want to say the U.S. tax codes are broken.
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Self-paced computer assisted instruction - yeah! (Score:4, Insightful)
Kids do as well as their parents... (Score:5, Interesting)
Putting money to redirect "how public education dollars are spent", isn't going to help, if we don't know how to do better.
You'd probably do better to judge a school based on how happy the students and parents are. If the S&P's are unhappy, fire the principle and try a new one until the "customers" are happy. Frankly, if the students are happy with school, and actually going, then learning will happen. You have to actively beat down a human to keep it from learning, but that's exactly what many schools do.
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You are funny.
"You'd probably do better to judge a school based on how happy the students and parents are."
When I was in High School a million years ago I asked a teacher this question.
"Why do the teachers get better food and better parking spaces at the high school?"
I was told it was because they worked at the school.
So I said, "Well at the mall and most stores the people that work their part far away and give the best parking to the customers, since it is the teachers job to teach us the students that mak
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I don't buy the argument that teachers unions cause all the problems since this problem is so complex and there as so many factors, but one my earliest observations I had of the school system as a child was that everything was being run for the good of the administrators first and the teacher's second. For instance the school year kept starting earlier in buildings that were not built to be usable during summer heat. Kids were always in classrooms that would bake while teachers could go to a cooled lounge
I question his real intentions (Score:4, Interesting)
I get suspicious when people like Gates "leverage private money in a way that redirects how public education dollars are spent." Like those who believe schools should operate how they want schools to operate instead of how they should operate. There was a time when someone completes high school they have reasonable education to be an adult, though trade school or college will help. Instead these "big donors" are trying to form school kids into what they want to function at their companies. Though not necessarily a bad thing if done for the right reasons. Yes, corporations need intelligent employees but people should have a right and ability to pursue a career they have a personal interest instead of having to work $9/hr in IT.
Everyone has all kinds of ideas for school reform, but what did schools do before they became so "bad?" What was their methods of teaching? I wonder if some of these old people forgot what methods were used to make them successful. Or did they simply grow up in neighborhoods that had good schools and not experienced growing up in neighborhoods with bad schools. There is a huge difference in Palo Alto, CA school district (where many parents have college degrees) when compared to east San Jose school districts (where many parents are poor working class). For you that say, "tango sierra, they'll just have to work harder!" Be careful because poor uneducated can easily be recruited into gang activity, and that can lead to bigger problems.
My big gripe is they increase spending on prisons, TSA, etc. and decrease spending on schools so it should not be a surprise we'll have more young people going to jails instead of schools.
Sorry, but we education spending has increased (Score:2)
but I will give you a hint, the same problem that exist with the prison system exists for the school systems. The unions.
Unions love three strikes and your out. They love long prison sentences. Just like they love testing without accountability and "tenure" and seniority.
You can go read up on the horrors on California prison and you can read up on the latest big education scandal, the Atlanta Public School cheating problem.
The APS cheating scandal shows exactly what is wrong with the system. They have evid
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They focused resources on teaching the brightest prospects, and didn't force children to stay beyond their learning capacity. Future janitors didn't have to take 3 years of math in High School. Sure there were some problems with discrimination and one of the key requirements for getting an education was your parents being rich/educated, but still...
(one of) The problem(s) with our education system now is that it is aimed at bringing all students up to some minimum standard acceptable level, on the pretens
Billionaires ruling public schools... nothing new? (Score:2)
If certain sources are to be believed, the entire American public school system was the nefarious brainchild of 19th Century "billionaires", conceived as a means of mass-producing humans conditioned to be ideal top-to-bottom factory workers. If that conspiratorial tale is true, then Bill Gates meddling in the school system to achieve goals that benefit the tech industry would just be more of the same, wouldn't it?
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Or maybe they just wanted to copy what already worked in other countries.
"Historically, the Lutheran denomination had a strong influence on German culture, including its education. Martin Luther advocated compulsory schooling so that all people would independently be able to read and interpret the Bible. This concept became a model for schools throughout Germany.
During the 18th century, the Kingdom of Prussia was among the first countries in the world to introduce free and generally compulsory primary educa
Ahead of his time (Score:3)
Perhaps Gates should consider funding a skunkworks educational project for retired Microsoft CTO Ray Ozzie, who was working on networked, self-paced computer assisted instruction in 1974 â" 36 years before Bill and Google discovered Khan Academy!"
To paraphrase Heinlein, who was paraphrasing someone else, "when it's time to railroad, people will build railroads" and the corollary "you can't railroad until it's time to railroad."
Networked computer instruction was a great idea back in the 70's, but the infrastructure wasn't really there to support it. Right now it's entirely possible and it's only entrenched notions about education that are holding it back. A couple decades more and in retrospect it will seem both obvious and inevitable.
The problem... (Score:2, Interesting)
Schools are ran like a corporation.
Administrators that are worthless getting paid 20X-30X of what the teachers get paid. Sorry, that will not cut it.
Teachers MEDIAN pay range needs to be 20% higher than the MEDIAN pay range in that area to attract good teachers.
Administrators need to have a PAY cut to no more than 8X more than the MEDIAN pay of their school or district.
Finally, expenses need to be realistic, teachers and kids using computers from more than 4 years ago is a waste of resources. IT budgets
He's on a Roll! (Score:3, Interesting)
He's done some excellent work with vaccines and malaria. He started an initiative on sanitation that likely could be transformative in poverty struck areas, and now he may have the resources to turn the goliath that is public education towards a direction that helps students instead of the current path that aims at creating unthinking easily controlled sheep.
He is on the path to becoming the most influential philanthropist in a hundred years.
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He is on the path to becoming the most influential philanthropist in a hundred years.
You do realize that every philanthropist throughout history has been a fraud, don't you? I guess not. Do you really think that a sociopath changes in his old age to become a compassionate human being? Dream on. When you have Billions, spending a few pennies on PR to get people to like you is just another part of the game.
If you want someone who came into his money via talent and hard work, and not putting other companies out of business, just look at Woz. He gave away stock options to co-workers, and h
It's not money, or teachers unions, or parents (Score:4, Interesting)
Or the kids that are the problem. It's the school boards and administration in most cities that is the problem. The administrations is full of failed middle-management idiots, that have transferred their complete lack of skills into D-level politics.
And the school board is usually nothing but lunatics just trying to draw a paycheck, and hoping to somehow jumpstart a political career.
And, of course, there are kickbacks and deals at every level.
Basically, every school district in the country is representative of the absolute WORST aspects of government corruption and incompetence. And it's not the system, it's the people.
VOTE IN YOUR SCHOOL BOARD ELECTIONS! Throw the idiots out. Run for the board yourself. That's the only way.
The real reform... (Score:2)
should have come in using that money to dismantle the teachers' unions. We are protecting the incompetent and complacent while rewarding the thugs at the top of the food chain. Better yet, maybe he should have used it to make a foundation that provides tuition assistance to move more kids to private schooling.
From my perspective (Score:2)
Parents that show interest in their kids learning, sit and help them with homework, direct them at a young age to appreciate culture and to be engaged in problem solving and a creative pursuit that requires discipline, then I have found the kids may still not be the shar
Serious Games (Score:2)
These have gotten a bit of a bad rap, but I believe the right balance between entertainment and education can still be found. Kids will play video games 24 hours straight if you let them, because they become so absorbed. When they're on a console, the house could catch on fire and they wouldn't notice.
The risk/reward mechanic of modern video games produces a neurochemical response that can be quite addictive.
So if you can insinuate education into that experience such that at the end of completing a missio
Formula for success (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with the United States is that people are deluded by the belief that throwing money at a problem will fix it. The thing is that the US already spends way more per student than any other developed nation. Teachers and school administrators are certainly part of the equation, but the true source of the problem are the parents and popular culture. American culture glorifies the celebrity and the athlete. It creates the expectation that a person can get rich overnight and that everyone will be fabulously wealthy. When isn't there some celebrity dipshit on television flaunting their wealth? There's no idolization of the hard working individual, of the person who studies hard in school. American parents care more about having a child who is popular than they are having one who's studious. The mindset that is endlessly perpetuated is that you should do something you love, because it's fun.
Look at Asian kids going through the same exact school system. They consistently excel. Not because they're innately smarter than anyone else. Live in Asia any length of time and you'll be cured of that misconception. Asians excel because from birth their parents are pushing them to work hard and do well in school. As a friend explained to me, your average American parent is happy with a child getting B's in school whereas an Asian parent will tolerate nothing less than straight A's. So from the start a child is learning that good enough is all they need to do to satisfy people.
Every single thing they do is aimed at ensuring their kids not only do well but can get into a good university. This means everything from no computers or televisions in the bedroom to no socializing during the school year. And the parents are always aware of what their kids are doing. Too many American parents are too concerned with giving their kids freedom, with being their buddies.
And this has nothing to do with the academic system in Asia because most of these Asians kids were born in the States and are growing up here. For a while I considered moving back to Asia and for a variety of reasons stayed here. One of those reasons was the school system here versus in Asia. The thing with the American system is that it's problems can be easily countered with parental involvement. In Asia, on the other hand, there is little that can be done to address the problems there. Asian schools still suffer the problem of focusing on rote memorization, parroting the teacher, and a fixation on taking tests. Study schools are still huge there. After school kids go to these cram schools in the evening with the purpose of studying to pass tests more effectively. School there is a lot more oppressive. I suppose the upside to all that is that at least they're still very focused on academics.
And of course, the final piece here is that when Asians choose careers they consistently choose those which will ensure the greatest success. They're much less likely to choose a career that merely feels good. So this means that they get into finance, technology or healthcare. But even those who don't go that route, when they've had such a strong work ethic instilled in them ultimately find another path to success, even if they've started off in construction. Where your average individual will remain stuck working for someone else indefinitely, they'll find a way to grow to the point that they've got their own thriving business, as is the case with a good friend of mine. And the funny thing is that I've known Asians who've been fully Americanized, and they pretty much end up in the same situation as the average American; they've lost the formula for success.
The thing here is that these techniques are especially important for a child growing up in lower to middle-class environments. These are the kids who are less likely to be exposed to successful role models. A kid growing up in an upper-class neighborhood has little to worry about. The success of everyone around them will rub off on them, and if it doesn't, well, they're connected enough that they wi
And thus we learn about diminishing returns... (Score:2)
on both money AND technology, and as a culture we get a little closer to growing up.
Well, honesty is a good policy... (Score:2)
a new goal is to leverage private money in a way that redirects how public education dollars are spent
It's good that they're being honest and upfront about trying subvert our education system with lobbyist money, but it's kinda shocking they're so blatant about it.
At least he isn't pushing for a voucher system and killing off public schools.
Encourage Better Teaching (Score:3, Interesting)
Education was clearly a second priority at times - teachers showing up baked, obsession with authority, and, of course, not much prize placed on student interaction with the lessons. School's a job for kids and it's always such a rare and special thing for a teacher who has kids that 'love to learn' - bloody hell! Maybe if we started treating the teachers well and clearly explaining their jobs, this would be [i]every[/i] class. They teach stuff that's interesting as hell! American History and Civics? You've got Franklin Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, FDR, JFK...Chemistry? Work more experiments in, kids like combining stuff, especially if it looks pretty, explosive, or shiny. English? Focus less on literary classics (You know, which let you not update your lesson plan for 20 years) and work in books that the kids will actually like to read and discuss them.
Teachers will half-ass it because their pay and direction are half-assed; they're treated more like bureaucrats then educators, so why are we surprised that throwing money at the problem without fixing the broken fundamentals has resulted in little improvement? The only reason that you see the H1-B discrepancy is the monumental difference in effort that comes from living in a harder life, having more pressure, but that's not the only way to succeed - good teachers can produce these results from all students. We just don't have, and don't encourage, good teaching.
My Ire with Gates' work in education... (Score:3)
... is nearly limitless. Honestly.
Here's a guy who is smart. He has a LOT of money because he knew how to use his brain at the right time and right place in history. Now, being older, he wants to do good with his money. Great. Or not so much... because given the cultural assumption that multi-billionaires understand something about the world that the rest of us don't, his quests are followed and worshiped as good steps. But lets look back at his severe missteps in his attempts to reform education:
1) Scholarships: The whole effort start with giving away hundreds of millions of dollars in competitive scholarships. That's really nice, but here's the thing about competitive scholarships-- they almost always go to the kids that are already destined for higher education funding. He was helping the easily helped. Of COURSE this wasn't going to change the state of education in the USA. He was/is just holding the status quo.
2) Building Super Schools: Bill funded/helped to fund tech super schools. As Bill knows from the planned obsolescence model, those schools aren't fiscally sustainable because all the high tech hardware needs upkeep, security, and replacement regularly. That means more cost for the schools. Bad move, Bill.
3) Charter Schools: Bill, despite his great intentions, has fallen into the latest fallacy trap: "Private business survives on lean budgets and thus public service has something to learn." But there's a problem... private/corporate businesses are "lean" in their budgets because their shareholders demand evermore short-term profits at the cost of service and employees. Turning public schools (where the shareholders are effectively the students) into genuine private businesses opens up schools to the profit motive and thus low-investment teachers and cherry-picked students. So what's the plan when stocks take a dive...?
Bill, here's a tip: Go through an MA in education program and get your California Teachers' Credentials. Experience the massive bureaucracy and cost associated with becoming a teacher and ask yourself, "Who in the world is willing to do this to themselves... and how do we make sure more are able to do it?" What do I mean? Well, here's a quick walkthrough of the path to becoming a well-prepared teacher:
***Take your SATs during high school = ~$75
***Apply to undergraduate programs at 4-year universities = ~$60 each
***Get accepted, go through college, graduate with B or better average = $125,000 (UC education)
***Prepare for and take the GRE, CBEST, and CSET (in your planned area of teaching) = $250
***Explore the completely non-standardized MA/PhD world, tons of websites, more phone calls and emails, and find the right MA Education program for you. Apply to many and prepare to move house. ~$80 each. Don't forget to save money for all that travel for interviews you'll have to do!
***Complete your MA and get your credentials over 2-3 years while also teaching for free = ~$50,000
***Congratulations, you're a mostly-prepared teacher with temporary credentials and have only spent $200,000.
***Additional fees: $55 per copy of your credential (you'll need multiple), the cost of fingerprinting in each county you apply as a teacher (non-transferable).
***Start your job search in a state that recently had MAJOR teacher downsizing. Hope for a 75+% appointment but take whatever you can. Prepare to move house.
***Start work making $30,000-$40,000. Don't settle in to your new apartment. There are still more cuts and teacher tenure is under attack. Oh, expect to pay $1,500 out-of-pocket for your class supplies because neither your students nor your school can afford to buy them.
***3 years pass, and you have to complete your credentialing. You take more classes, more tests, get evaluated. You've spent $4,500 on school supplies since starting.
And it goes on.
Bill, if you REALLY want to change education for the better, here are two ways to do so:
1) Affect the poorest and lowest performing children. Fund the fixing of thei
More cash for teachers, less for gizmos. (Score:3)
I would suggest the best way to help teachers is to make the wages competitive.
And before everyone jumps all over this on a "TEACHERS GET OVERPAID", stop and do the math:
For a pre-schooler, it's going to cost you around $600 a month for day care. That's about $30 a day to supervise and entertain a child.
A teacher is expected not only to do those two things, but also educate them. And they're doing this for a much larger group (your day care is required to have one staff for every ten kids here; your kid's classroom will be double or triply as large).
Do you think your kid's teacher is making $900 a day? (30 kids x $30/day)?
sorry Bill, you can't have it both ways (Score:3)
And I just loved how you blasted the OLPC for its poor design and unfamiliar software yet turn around and claim that a standard Windows desktop is all they should have to know how to use.
So you can not have it both ways Bill. You either educate the educators and people learn concepts and standard usage patterns which expose them to the ability to use other platforms or you continue keeping them ignorant and spending your billions to keep them generating more money for you by locking them into Microsoft products.
Besides, it surprises me that you and your Foundation are even allowed to pedal Microsoft software being so financially tied at the hip. I had thought there were laws against such conflicts of interest.
LoB
Turning a blind eye to poverty (Score:3)
Gates and Broad and whoever else controls education reform direction have an assumption in common. Namely that poverty doesn't matter. To prove this, they point to KIPP schools where great test scores are achieved. More on that in a minute. I don't know much about what else they accomplish at KIPP schools. I have a vague notion that they excel in performance arts as well, which is great. Anytime a child gets arts experience in school, it's a good thing.
I have a few major problems with this, mostly that students are selected to go to KIPP (self-selection counts) and that all they demonstrate with high test scores is success on tests. It could just be gaps in my knowledge about how much success kids have in KIPP. But the self-selection and ability of KIPP schools to dismiss students both undermine the idea's scalability.
Until we address America's 23%-and-climbing rate of child poverty, the scores posted by poor students are going to continue to drag the average down. I don't mean to be cruel here, but scores by non-poor students are generally fine. In some cases, better than many countries'. Poor kids need some basic needs met that are traditionally not the responsibility of schools. You're familiar with Maslow's hierarchy of needs [wikipedia.org] I hope. Throwing more money at the administrators or putting in bonus programs for schools (as in NYC) will not accomplish this. There was a guy in Harlem with a charter I think who put in a dental office in the next building over because his students were not getting dental care. That's a start.
School reform efforts that ignore or dismiss concerns about poverty will always fail.
Note that this is still better than the conservative vision of school reform, where the greatest resources are spent on the highest (student) achievers and everyone else gets enough education to serve as their working class.
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there is a need for more freedoms in the economy, freedoms from government intervention, government subsidies, taxes, regulations.
If this is the goal, education is starting at ground zero. One of the fundamental tenants of the public education in the U.S. is that it is provided free of charge, paid for by tax dollars. If you turn that on its head and make parents pay for their children's education, there will be a vast class of uneducated children - who are themselves much less likely to be any kind of asset to the country, unless you think we're heading for a Soylent Green future?
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This point seems the most salient. While I have huge admiration for Gates's philanthropy, it seems he doesn't quite have the hang of it. In fact his willingness to cede control over his wealth (throw it away, so to speak) instead of managing it wisely seems foolish and irresponsible. The proper way to administer a trust fund can't be beyond him. Or have I missed his point? The very fact that such a successful capitalist would support
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His take on Rupurt Murdoch?
Is Murdoch an 'average businessman'? No, he is part of government system. An 'average' businessman is not part of the government system.
Anything and everything that is wrong with the world is the governments fault. If a business fails, it's the governments intervention. If a businessman does something illegal, it's the government's regulation that made him do it. Rober baron? Obviously he's secretly part of the "government system".
If a volcano explodes, he'd probably blame the government for not allowing the free market to appeal to pseduo-volconologist fear-mongers that wou
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The trick is figuring out where the actual problem is. If you don't have enough money to hire a great Principle or Teacher for your school, you might settle for Nth best. Then after the school is filled with dysfunctional admins and teachers, giving those people more money certainly won't fix the problem.
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...and they certainly don't care for sitting in the average classroom day-in, day-out shouting at people who simply won't behave.
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But if you think you can fix a problem with money (or just money), you are in for a rude awakening.
Tell that to the New Jersey State Legislature about Abbott Districts like the one you referred to.