RAVITCH: Does Gates Foundation or the Gates family puts profits before kids' education?
Sometimes, asking the right questions can be more devastating than the most in depth investigative reporting.
If every politician who backed repetitive standardized testing to prove schools were failing so they could be handed over to private, for profit education management companies and charter schools with no track record of producing better results than public schools were asked some of the questions here on camera and their reactions posted online, it wouldn't take too long for this movement to go the way of privatizing Social Security.
If you don't know who Diane Ravitch is, she is a former Assistant Secretary of Education, who worked with conservatives on education reform issues until she realized they were doing far more harm than good and were motivated by profit more than the best interests of kids. Unfortunately, too many elected Democrats have bought into the agenda she and many of us are fighting.
Worse, this "reform" agenda that has done so much damage to K-12, is increasingly being pushed for public colleges and universities, who have already been starved of funding in hopes that it would make the claims of failure look more credible.
educators from pre-school to grad level need to stand together to protect our kids' education from becoming the next bubble that hedge funds inflate and then burst, leaving us intellectually living under a bridge the way they did literally with the housing bubble.
Diane Ravitch
The Gates Foundation has more than $30 billion, and when Warren Buffet’s gift of another $30 billion is added to the Gates fund, the Gates Foundation will have the power to direct global policy on almost any issue of its choosing.
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I am puzzled by what I read in the column cited here. I am also puzzled by the Gates Foundation’s persistent funding of groups that want to privatize public education. I am puzzled by their funding of “astroturf” groups of young teachers who insist that they don’t want any job protections, don’t want to be rewarded for their experience (of which they have little) or for any additional degrees, and certainly don’t want to be represented by a collective bargaining unit.
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When Bill or Melinda Gates is asked whether it is democratic for one foundation, their foundation, to shape a nation’s education policy, they don a mask of false modesty. Who, little old us? They disingenuously reply that the nation spends more than $600 billion on education, which makes their own contribution small by comparison. Puny, by comparison. Anyone with any sense knows that their discretionary spending has had a powerful effect on the policies of the U.S. Department of Education, on the media, on states and on districts. When Bill Gates speaks, the National Governors Association snaps to attention, awed by his wealth. They are pulling the strings, and they prefer to pretend they aren’t.
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But their disclaimers do not change the fact that they have power without accountability. They want accountability for teachers, but who holds them accountable?
http://dianeravitch.net/2012/07/05/i-am-puzzled-by-the-gates-foundation/
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