Gates Foundation failures show philanthropists shouldnt be setting America's public school agenda

[yurbud]

This is an LA Times editorial.

Can the Democrats finally admit that letting billionaires dictate education policy ends up wasting taxpayer dollars and harms our kids?

Can't the Democratic Party pick at least a few areas like education for one, where donors don't pay set policy and the rest of suffer the consequences of their whims?

If they did so, they might win back the full enthusiastic support of teachers and parents of school age kids.

Then the foundation set its sights on improving teaching, specifically through evaluating and rewarding good teaching. But it was not always successful. In 2009, it pledged a gift of up to $100 million to the Hillsborough County, Fla., schools to fund bonuses for high-performing teachers, to revamp teacher evaluations and to fire the lowest-performing 5%. In return, the school district promised to match the funds. But, according to reports in the Tampa Bay Times, the Gates Foundation changed its mind about the value of bonuses and stopped short of giving the last $20 million; costs ballooned beyond expectations, the schools were left with too big a tab and the least-experienced teachers still ended up at low-income schools. The program, evaluation system and all, was dumped.

***

The Gates Foundation strongly supported the proposed Common Core curriculum standards, helping to bankroll not just their development, but the political effort to have them quickly adopted and implemented by states. Here, Desmond-Hellmann wrote in her May letter, the foundation also stumbled. The too-quick introduction of Common Core, and attempts in many states to hold schools and teachers immediately accountable for a very different form of teaching, led to a public backlash.

***

But the Gates Foundation has spent so much money — more than $3 billion since 1999 — that it took on an unhealthy amount of power in the setting of education policy. Former foundation staff members ended up in high positions in the U.S. Department of Education — and, in the case of John Deasy, at the head of the Los Angeles Unified School District. The foundation’s teacher-evaluation push led to an overemphasis on counting student test scores as a major portion of teachers’ performance ratings — even though Gates himself eventually warned against moving too hastily or carelessly in that direction. Now several of the states that quickly embraced that method of evaluating teachers are backing away from it.

Philanthropists are not generally education experts, and even if they hire scholars and experts, public officials shouldn’t be allowing them to set the policy agenda for the nation’s public schools. The Gates experience teaches once again that educational silver bullets are in short supply and that some educational trends live only a little longer than mayflies.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-gates-education-20160601-snap-story.html

[murielm99]

1. Why are Democrats being blamed for things?

Look at what 45 has done to the Dept. of Education: DeVos!

[dalton99a]

2. +1

[BigmanPigman]

3. As a 15+ year teacher in one of the largest school districts I know this is the norm unfortunately.

I have learned a lot as a teacher and union member. Schools are run as businesses and that means money is what dictates the agenda. Politics and personal agendas come next on the list. Students' concerns come in at around 4 or 5 when school boards make decisions. Whether it comes from a corporation or a kind philanthropist money still talks loudest.

[yurbud]

4. that money affects the kind of admins you end up with too

when a job requires you to do bad things, you eventually get bad people doing them.