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Bill Gates on State Budgets and Education
Some Sunday food for thought and a follow-up to my comment on Bill Gates being worried about public pensions. Bill Tufts of Fair Pensions For All blog
sent me Gates' TED lecture (see video below). It's worth listening to
as Gates raises many legitimate points, especially as it concerns
transparency of accounting rules.
On education reforms, Gates has his share of critics. Bruce Krasting wrote an excellent comment on "Ponzi Science".
I will add that there are way too many ''rocket scientists'' on Wall
Street earning outrageous bonuses doing nothing but programming useless algorithms
(and structured finance but that's down considerably) while the real
scientists working at Bell Labs, MIT, Harvard and many, many other
research centers get almost no funding whatsoever.
Sam Blumenfeld of the New American discusses Why Bill Gates' Billions Will Not Improve Education. I quote:
So
we know that there are great independent-minded teachers in the
system, but they must keep a low profile in order to survive in a very
hostile environment. If Gates really wants to know what is going on in
teacher training these days, he ought to visit with Sue Dickson. She’ll
tell him stories that will curl his hair.But to Ms.
Weingarten, teacher quality is something of a mystery. She said, “But
there’s this notion of really figuring out what the best teachers do
and trying to scale that up.”
Would you hire Ms. Weingarten to be president of anything but a teachers’ union?
Of
course, if you visit a primary school classroom today, you will know
why our schools can’t produce enlivened children with intellectual
curiosity, who love reading books and conversing at an adult level. They
are now seated around little tables facing classmates who may be
talking or pestering them or coughing in their faces. Everyone is doing
something else. The teacher is now a facilitator roaming around the
room. She is using a reading program called Whole Language which turns
children into dyslexics. There are all sorts of things making it
impossible for many students to concentrate, so they acquire the new
school disease called ADD, and are put on a powerful drug like Ritalin.
The
curriculum is now made up of politically correct subject matter:
global warming, multiculturalism, alternate fuels, organic nutrition,
values clarification, sex ed, death ed, drug ed, diverse life styles,
sensitivity training, and anything else the educators can dream up.
Gates, unfortunately, believes that the key to the problem is in improving teacher performance. Obviously, he doesn’t
know what goes in in today’s colleges of education. He said: “If you
improve teachers today, the country doesn’t see the benefit of that for
15 years or so. So to be in this business you have to have a long-term
view….So you can’t be too impatient.”
Again, Bill is way off
track. A good, solid intensive phonics reading program in all of the
primary schools of America would be all that is needed to send American
education soaring to the moon. But apparently Bill Gates doesn’t know
this, and none of the education charlatans will tell him this. Too bad
he’s going to waste his money on phony reforms.
But one comment that really got my attention was posted by Valerie Strauss over at the Washington Times, Why Bill Gates is wrong on class size:
This
was written by educator Anthony Cody, who taught science for 18 years
in inner-city Oakland and now works with a team of science
teacher-coaches that supports novice teachers. He is a National
Board-certified teacher and an active member of the Teacher Leaders Network. This post appeared on his Education Week Teacher blog, Living in Dialogue.
Here is an open letter to Bill Gates written by Cody:
Dear Mr. Gates,
I
am writing to you because you have been getting a great deal of
attention for your ideas about education, and from my perspective here
on the ground in an impoverished urban district, I think you might be
making some mistakes.I read your recent commentary in the Washington Post (How Teacher Development Could Revolutionize Our Schools),
and reports from your presentation to governors, where you advised
them to raise class sizes in the rooms of the most effective teachers.
In your comments
to the governors, you said "there are too many areas where the system
fails. The place where you really see the inequity is the inner city. "You presumably are hoping to redress this inequity when you make this proposal:
"What
should policymakers do? One approach is to get more students in front
of top teachers by identifying the top 25 percent of teachers and
asking them to take on four or five more students. Part of the savings
could then be used to give the top teachers a raise."
I am
glad you are aware of the inequities. But your suggestion that caps on
class sizes be lifted does not suggest to me that you actually have
much understanding of the nature of these inequities. First of all, do
you actually believe that in the short time frame in which these
governors are trying to balance their budgets, they are going to
magically revamp their teacher evaluation systems so as to not only
identify the best teachers, but also make sure that ONLY the best
teachers have class size increases?
What is actually happening
is that, partly buoyed by your suggestion that class sizes should not
matter, there are going to be wholesale increases in class size across
the board, for every teacher, at every grade level. In Oakland,
principals have been told to prepare for cuts ranging from $300 to $900
per student. The only way to achieve such savings will be to lay off
teachers and significantly boost class size.
And there is no
mechanism that can be put in place to reliably identify the top 25% of
our teachers, no money to pay them extra for taking on these students,
and if the class size increases were only limited to a fourth of the
teachers, the savings this would provide would be inadequate.
In point of fact, the teacher turnover rate is one of the biggest problems we face in Oakland's schools.
This instability makes it difficult to build the kind of caring,
collaborative, reflective community that allows us to improve as
professionals. This turnover is not a function of our teacher evaluation
system. While improving our evaluation system is worth doing, it will
not fix this problem. Getting rid of ineffective teachers is not the
key. The key is keeping the good ones and helping them become better. A
good evaluation system is part of this, but it is much more than this.
We need to pay attention to the working conditions, and make sure
teachers are well-supported.
One of the most important working conditions, especially in high poverty schools, is small class size.
As a middle school teacher, my student load was capped at 160 a day.
That meant about 32 students in each of my five classes. Just imagine
160 papers to grade every day, and you get a picture. It is not uncommon
for teachers to spend half of their weekends grading papers. The
quality of the attention we can give our students is diluted every time
you add to that number.
And if you are in a high poverty
school, the chances are pretty much 100% that in every class you will
have students who are currently experiencing traumatic events in their
lives. I am talking about domestic and neighborhood violence,
homelessness, eviction, parents incarcerated. As this report indicates,
as many as a third of students in our tough neighborhoods suffer from
post-traumatic stress disorder. These problems all seep into the
classroom, sometimes overtly, and sometimes through acting out
behaviors. And larger class sizes make these behaviors even more
difficult to handle.
This is not just my opinion. There is a large body of research
that supports a strong link between class size and student
achievement. And I would be very surprised if the private schools your
children attend have large class sizes. On average, private schools
attended by the children of the wealthy have class sizes roughly half
those in neighboring public schools.
As class sizes increase
across the board, as they are likely to do, we are going to see
turnover rates rise among teachers. I serve as a mentor for beginning
science teachers, and have built a program to try to support and retain them in Oakland.Sadly,
more than half of my own mentees are leaving this year, after working
only two or three years as teachers. If you ask them why, they will
tell you, that the stress and challenge of the job is simply
overwhelming. All of them are promising, bright young teachers. They all
have huge gifts to offer their students. But the challenges they face
leave them feeling defeated. Increasing their class size will only make
this worse.
You are one of the wealthiest men in our nation. Do you see the challenges our poor communities face due to inadequate resources? Are you aware that the top one percent of our people have more than a third of the net worth
of our nation? And they keep getting more and more tax breaks? The
best thing you could do for schools would be to launch a campaign aimed
at getting wealthy corporations and individuals to pay their fair
share of taxes, so that the public schools, which rely on tax dollars,
are not primarily funded by the middle class, which is hurting so badly
now.
And: I was thinking about the math involved in Mr. Gates'
proposal. Let's take a school staffed by 40 teachers. You identify 25%
as the "best," and give these ten teachers four students more each.
That means you have served an extra 40 students, allowing you to reduce
your staff by ONE teacher. That saves you approximately $75,000 a
year, in salary and benefits. But according to this proposal we need to
pay these teachers more, so if we pay them say $5,000 each, we have an
expense of $50,000. So our net savings is $25,000. This is a drop in
the proverbial bucket compared to the cuts our schools are facing.
Please check your math, Mr. Gates.
There are
serious problems with the US education system. It's failing a whole
generation of students. And things aren't better elsewhere. In the UK,
an increasing number of universities could be at risk of going "bust" because of funding cuts and higher tuition fees.
Finally,
the crisis in education is linked to another crisis, the jobs crisis.
There was an interesting roundtable discussion on ABC's This Week with
Christiane Amanpour on creating jobs in America. You can click here to watch it.
There are no real long-term solutions to job creation and with youth
unemployment at an all-time high in most developed countries, I worry
that we are heading down the wrong path which will exacerbate income
inequality. Without solid job creation, the discussion on pensions is
pointless. Below, I embedded Gates' speech.
»
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Why shut out the elderly? Who do you think worked and paid for your 'public' education? The elderly do vote. To shut them out you'd have to eliminate democracy. Are you ready to give up your vote at 65?
Because they are heinously expensive relative to what little they put in the kitty during their (shorter) careers since we can now spend ridiculous amounts of money to keep them pseudo-alive for much longer than any time in our history.
The only reason we can discuss screwing over kids is that they can't vote.
FWIW, I'll be working into my 90s, should I live that long, because my career doesn't involve manual labor and I love what I do.
Who cares what Bill Gates thinks about anything?
Is there a study that shows how the cost of basic education has evolved over the decades? Because like Moe (1st comment above) says one doesn't need much to teach the basics and not even that gets accomplished satisfactorily in government schools... [there are exceptions of course, but that is not an excuse to keep this failed system going]
After basic education, say up to 4 years, one should not be obligated to frequent any 'regular' school. Learn what you want or what you need when you need it. A teacher with a dozen self-selected and interested students will be a lot more productive than the same teacher with up to 40 distracted (and distracting) ones.
good luck with the "Friday Night Lights" lobby. The fact of the matter is "public education" is not about teaching you or your kid anything although it's a nice thought that your kid's teacher has the time for that. He/She is too busy trying to tell your kid to stop disrupting the place--just in time for the bell. it's a lifestyle thing of course. if you're saying "thank God for bailouts and oil shocks" because "it's now destroyed public education now, too"--why not just come out and say it?
Am I following this correctly? Are you saying we should teach kids to the fourth grade level and if they are interested then let them continue, otherwise send them off to work or something?
Are you kidding? WTF?
For a solid basic education 4 years is about right; some will need less some may need more.
You also should start when you are ready not because you have some calendar age.
Nope, I said 'up to 4 years'. No relation to the current grading system.
Read Summerhill by asneill, the entire book and experiment has surprising results for most...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._S._Neill
You're right!
It's far better to force people to continue at something they are not good at or have no interest in!
I'm a psychologist and i've been working in an inner city school for the past 11 years. What I see is children who are traumatized, overwhelmed, and lost, who believe that they have to take care of themselves because every adult in their life who was supposed to protect them failed miserably in the fundamental duty of a parent, primarily because they themselves have no clue how to parent a child. Add to this mix undereducated teachers who haven't got a clue about child development (the "quality" people see the hopelessness of the situation and pass on teaching as a career), and administrators who are self-selected power mad people (not unlike most politicians) and the result in chaos.
Vouchers are a joke, especially in this devolution currently under way. No, the only answer is to blow up the current model and develop micro-schools, with no more that 200 human beings per school, where human values of decency, love, and fair-mindedness and be transmitted in person-to-person manner, as was pointed out by Malcom Gladwell in Tipping Points. Is that impossible? only if you think it is...
Most parents these days are busy because they both have to work to make ends meet, so they are disconnected from their children in regards to education. Their responsibility as they see it is to make sure their kids go to school and the rest is left up to the teachers. The parents need to take an active role. The breakdown in family unity caused by the devaluation of the dollar IMO.
The teachers don't have the time to help the students that can't comprehend and the students are usually too embarrassed to ask for help. Even the successful students are usually memorizing rather than learning. The teachers have incentive to pass these kids on to the next grade due to budget and the amount of money they get from the governmnet according to performance.
The larger the school the larger the disconnect, students lost in the system. It has become an education factory much like the old style chicken farms have become chicken factories. The end product has less quality, and is mass produced with serious shortfalls.
Hey, I've got an idea... how about one of the parents, let's say Mom, works from home and homeschools.
The kids see firsthand what it takes Mom to earn a buck for gas and groceries.
They go to the store with her and learn about unit pricing... they see what it takes to make ends meet. They laugh with her as they WALK PAST the ever- shrinking cereal (sugar & sawdust) boxes that the public school kids whine and fight over.
The kids earn their spending money doing small jobs to help Mom while she works. The parents are not viewed as walking ATMS. The kids then learn how to stretch their own dollars.
The kids watch mom daytrade and call out the trading targets using their own 5th grade math. They watch mom laughing during the "Flash Crash" while the CNBC bimbos just stare at the ticker with their jaws dropped. Because it stuck to the math they already knew.
We are the homeschoolers of the world. We think for ourselves. We question authority. We don't need handouts because we don't spend what we don't have. We are thrifty. We laugh at the gadgets and the advertisements. We are the NEA's and Wall Street's worst nightmare, because we don't need or believe either one of them.
Our homeschool curriculum is published by a college and is far superior to the state curriculum. It costs less than $400 a year per student for new books for all subjects. (ABeka). We write in the books. We can learn anywhere... we vacation when we want to. We are done with our school year by April 30.
If you are a parent or a grandparent who really cares about your kids, join us. The system is hopelessly broken. Homeschooling works.
Be prepared for the "socialization" question. Supposedly, if you are homeschooled, you won't be properly socialized. Here's your answer: In no other time of your life except in school are you placed with 20-30 other agemates. In work, church, family events, you are with all ages. Public school therefore is the unsocialized portion of life.
So, have fun with the socialization question. Detach from the failed public education experiment, take back your kids (they are yours, right?) and open your eyes to learning with them. YOU WILL NEVER REGRET IT.
What a wonderful story, thank you for sharing. You are 100% correct, but of course you don't need me to tell you that.
The best thing for anyone's children is to remove them from public school. Second would be throwing the TV and video game out the window.
Best of luck to you and your children. They are our future.
My biggest regret is not home schooling the kids, won't make that mistake with the grandkids...
on this line of thinking and you being a psychologist...what are your thoughts on the over medication of American kids? For example, the US consumes 90% of the world's Ritalin...is it that we have the only children on earth with ADD? Or is it that we are the only county in the world that allows TV advertising for prescription medication? these are, after all, drugs. A kid sitting in a classroom on drugs is less likely to absorb the information that a child not on drugs...Or am I mistaken? Do you not think this has, at least in some manner, contributed to the poor performance of our children in the educational system?
Ritalin should be outlawed before cocaine, ecstasy ...
CA has 6M students or so at present in ~8k schools...do you have the money to build the other 22,000 schools for them?
In essence, no amount of money or even attention thrown at these kids can make up for the deficits in their parenting. You can show them decency and love while they're in school, but they still go home to drunks, morons, and skinheads every night. The point at which these children could have been saved from a life of poverty and ignorance was already passed and in some cases that tragic mistake was very explicitly engineered by abstinence-only religious idiots and well-meaning social programs designed to help single mothers instead of preventing single motherhood.
I agree that vouchers are nothing more than an entitlement for (religious) private school attendees and will sacrifice many to benefit those who most likely don't need the help in the first place. You want to send your kid to Brainwash High? Then dip into your own pocket or homeschool them into whatever mould the lord has told you is necessary, but stop pretending that coupons will do jack shit for kids in the inner city who's "parents" will never be able to put up the difference.
welcome to westchester county, ny. average spent per pupil: $24,000. average starting teacher salary $52,000; top scale teacher salary: $138,000 (that doesn't count pension and health benefits)
http://www.westchestermagazine.com/Westchester-Magazine/June-2010/Why-Ar...
50% of the failure can be laid on the parents and their hellspawn
50% can be blamed on the school administrations and unions that push wacky curriculum that stresses feel-good, PC over learning the basics
What cannot be blamed is the funding. Countries like Japan and Finland spend half as much money per student, yet they blow away our test scores. Washington DC schools spend the most per student and consistently rank near the bottom in national test scores
Yes. Washington DC is statistically a ghetto; full of Darwinian mistakes. If you're born with an IQ of 90, you ain't gonna be educated, dude. No way.
Neither will you get an education with IQ 140 unless you learn it for your self, but yes you definitely should segregate children by IQ otherwise your only cause pain and frustration to both low and hight IQ
I remember how frustrating it was to wait for the 'slow learners' to grasp basic concepts at school and how days where waisted to explain it to them, this was neither fun for those who understood nor for those that didn't
Bill Gates: Kill granny and you have the money to save 10 teacher jobs.
You think I made that up? Here ya go:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrJBY2l1MQQ
Bingo.
People that care about what Gates has to say regarding pensions, state budgets, or whatever, considering this cat's eugenics agenda, are embarrassing themselves.
Social darwinism is real. People that can't face this and who want to focus on other things are inadvertently validating the concept of social darwinism. But I guess it always had to be inadvertent for it to work.
He means kill somebody else's parents, not his own.
There is only 1 way of saving education privatize it give a voucher to every parent and give them the possibility to send their child to any school they can afford, of course the schools would set their prices but the voucher would be transferable to any private or public school plus the parent would pay the difference for more expensive private schools
PS. don't let the government set the curriculum let the parents/schools and the market decide what the children should learn
Vouchers? You are fucking retarded.
So we can all be even better corporate slaves, beholden to their employment needs for the next quarter.
Who's more likely to become a 'corporate slave' a person who can't think and act for him self with no usable skills or some1 trained in practical matters ? Working 5 years on a farm tending cows gives you a better education than what most children get at school
Yeah privatize everything, that's the solution! Geez, some of you desperately need a course in public economics!!! If you think privatization is the cure-all for health and education, you're totally out to lunch!
"public economics" - what's that? is like like Cognitive dissonance? You can't have it both ways you either go for quality or quantity(whatever that means in this context)
Well maybe you should follow the Finish model, the country seems to be doing a lot of things right
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/05/finland-schools-curriculum-t...
Even though I dissagree because it's 100% public but it seems to be an improvement on the US system
LMAO. Leo, that's the funniest thing you've ever said!
Funnier still is your apparent belief that you can reason with them . . . until the world is free of government socialism, they're just gonna blame government socialism. It's easy. Twisted, true, but supremely effortless.
you are obviously far more enamored of the idea of a world run by corporate tyranny.
how can that possibly go wrong?
Corps are legal constructs to limit liability. It is government which sets the rules under which they operate. In a perfect world, I would have neither, but would rather have a choice of corp masters, than a coercive govt monopoly that writes the laws and has all the guns, and is going to get in bed with the corporations anyway.
I say cut out the middle man.
My meaning isn't that subtle! Read again.
Or are you suggesting that public schools lead to corporate tyranny?? I've heard that argument before, too . . .
If you think that socialization of public education and healthcare has worked, you're totally out to lunch!
As for the course in public economics, is that what our government leaders and fed reserve geniuses took in college?
we socialize the cost of war and imperialist aggressions throughout the world that causes the deaths of millions of innocent people...with this you don't seem to raise your voice to complain...but when the idea of socializing the cost of providing heathcare and education to our most needy you are up in arms about it. In this regard, you are very much like our politicians who were perfectly describe in the following:
"Those in power are blind devotees to private enterprise. They accept that degree of socialism implicit in the vast subsidies to the military-industrial-complex, but not that type of socialism which maintains public projects for the disemployed and the unemployed alike."
William O. Douglas, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice
Two wrongs make a right? That's all you can come up with?
Where in America are K-12 grades private enterprise? Nowhere. In fact, the vast majority of secondary education is taxpayer funded as well, and the so-called poor receive grants, scholarships and free tuition at taxpayer expense.
Now tell me all about private enterprise heath care in the United States. Before the take over of the health care system, the government [read taxpayer] accounted for 50%. I would hardly call that private enterprise.
But you want to compare to war and 'imperialist aggressions'. Well, I am not for that. So try to stay on topic and talk about reality. You know, the real world, where the TAXPAYER pays for public education for all, and if he or she want a real education for their children, they have to pay again for private school or home schooling.
But never mind, alien-IQ, keep your fantasy that the education system is free market private enterprise in the USA.
By the way, the most needy in the United States are either imported from another country, or raised in government created ghettos and taught from birth to be dependent on the taxpayer. Poverty isn't an illness, it isn't genetic, it is a condition that can be changed through hard work and discipline. If you don't understand that, then you must have a public school education.
Moe Howard in 2012!
alien-IQ,
Thank you for your eloquent comment. I find it dismaying how some are irate over welfare even if it's legitimate and yet they blindly accept corporate welfarism that is so rampant in the US economy. Giving billions in handouts to Wall Street and corporations is okay but don't you dare give money to the poor struggling to make ends meet. And it's not just the poor, the so-called middle class is struggling to make ends meet. They're part of the working poor.
Hating the master is dangerous. Beating the dog you can get away with. Especially if it makes mastah happy.
thanks Leo.
While I may not always see eye to eye with your opinions on the market, on this issue we are clearly on the same side.
how and when people began to love corporations and hate people is a phenomenon that has escaped me.
I think that education and health are public goods, meaning that everyone should have access to affordable services regardless of their income. Privatization will only exacerbate income inequality. Anyways, this is all ideological bullshit. The US has the best and the brightest in the world but the top 1% cannot cary the bottom 99% in perpetuity. Ask yourself why other countries that do provide affordable public education have done better on average on basic reading and math skills compared to the US. On average, the US education system is an abysmal failure and so is your healthcare system which leaves millions scrambling to gain access to mediocre services.
I know a thing or two about education.
Economic status is the single largest predictor of "achievement," regardless of how you define it. Take a look at comparisons across nations controlled for SES, the U.S. does fine. Surprised? Our rich kids do as well as Finland's rich kids. Our poor kids do as well as Finland's poor kids. Shit, we have so much more poverty than Finland! Can you dig it? Wouldn't it be nice if poverty in the U.S. was a result of poor education? Sorry, but the vector points the other direction.
Public education is IMMENSELY expensive and 60% plus of all that money goes to teacher salaries and benefits. You could cut EVERYTHING else in half and only realize a 15% savings! Want to really cut costs? FIRE A SHITLOAD OF TEACHERS. In fact why not fire 75% of them. Pay the remaining 25% a bonus for being master teachers. Hire a bunch of day care providers to babysit at minimum wage while the kiddies learn on computers with lessons prepared by the remaining master teachers who don't even need to be in the schools! Think that's far fetched? Watch it happen.
Oh, and those with the means will still send their kids to good old fashionedprivate schools and that poverty-education vector won't budge.
--------->
Public school education in America is bad and unfixable. Let's just agree that the education of our children is just too important to be left up to government, who does a bad job of everything. Admit defeat and move on. Sorry, we tried. Shut down the public schools, sell off the real-estate, liquidate the pensions, and return the money to the taxpayers. Government should not be in the education business.
Sure...ONLY based on achievement...none of this affirmitive action bullshit...you get the grades...you go to college free. If you're a fuckup...start digging holes.
How true. Yet you then demand more of the same.
Had a typo in there that I can't edit (carry). I don't demand anything but realize it's futile trying to change a system that is so ingrained into feeding the top 1%. I have to give it to America's elites, they managed to incite the regular working stiffs to fight between them on dumb ideological Right vs. Left topics when they're the ones orchestrating the biggest theft in US history. A masterful job of mass deception.