Bill Gates on State Budgets and Education

Via Pension Pulse.

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.

Comments

[OldTrooper]

Got it.  And I agree it's not a Right vs. Left issue.  However, anyone that expects good results from increasing centralization of education (with either the states or the feds) is likely to be severly disappointed.

[Bicycle Repairman]

We do not do a good job of delivering public goods.  At least not education and health care.  Why?  We're Americans, Leo. 

[Moe Howard]

Class size, a red herring. Money, a red herring. I have taught young people in the woods using a stick, the dirt, and my voice. Here is the real problem - instead of teaching the basics in the manner that works, the 'educators' at University level are constantly tinkering with the process of learning, and destroying it, either on purpose or through stupidity. If you don't believe me, think about the home school revolution sweeping America now. In a couple of hours around the kitchen table, a GED mother can teach her children to a higher standard than the PhD 'educator' can in a full day. The American education system has been destroyed, we are now paying for a government indoctrination system with our property taxes. Like most things the government does, we end up paying twice, once for the failed system, and again to get the job done to standard. Time to get the government out of education. It has failed, anything else or nothing else would be better. Since they are moving the US to over 50% of the adult population not part of the work force, it should not be a problem for parents to educate their children at home. Think of the gigantic cost savings to the taxpayer. In my area, 50% of property taxes are for education.  The cost to purchase books to educate a child at home would be a tiny fraction of that amount.

[Rastadamus]

Class size a red herring? Money a red herring?

Ignorance is a red herring Mr. Moe, and I've watched you on the three stooges enough to know better.

[A Nanny Moose]

I like some of what Khan Academy is doing. Unfortunately Bill Gates seems to be getting behind it. I tell parents, and educators, to sit their kids down in front of Khan Academy for math tutoring at least.

Government run, Brick and mortar schools are too slow to adapt to change, and at the lower grades, the cookie cutter approach will never fulfill educational needs of millions of families, all seeking to educate their kids to their liking.

Schooling as we know it, is on its way out. As with any cornered animal, it will scratch and claw for its very survival.

[ibjamming]

And will you also admit that education doesn't work on...the poor inner city kids?  We're fucking wasting time and money...lots of both...on people who will never amount to anything.  The day we admit the differences between peoplem the sooner we can fit education.  And that includes between boys and girls.  Segregate EVERYONE!

[IQ 145]

 The "money" is really, really, a red herring. Anyone who looks into this matter finds that out immediately; except I suppose for old Bill, there. Or maybe he just has some assumptions he got from the mass media propaganda, and didn't bother to look into it. It's a guilt triip; "we have to do it for the children"; do what for the children? $85,000 / year, assistant principals. etc. etc. it's enough to gag you. The only thing a quasi-governmental enterprise will ever be good for is shoveling money into a black hole.

[Temporalist]

Teachers are not educators anymore they are cat herders.

[kaiserhoff]

Becoming known as a good teacher can be death on an academic career.  Sad but true. 

[skipjack]

Spot on x +100 mllion

I have said for YEARS that the best way to increase education would be to 1-send the kids home and 2-make sure the basics (reading phonetically, grammar, and arithmetic) are well and truly learned.  After that, a kid can pretty much teach themselves anything they want/need to know, finding teachers/mentors for things like upper level math and hard science.  I'll point to a sayng that I think sums it all up - "Education is not the filling of a bucket but the lighting of a fire."  Yeats

[Moe Howard]

Thanks for the Yeats quote, spot on.

[A Nanny Moose]

+1

[Hulk]

Spot on Moe. I went to a poor school nestled deep in the appalachians until grade 7. Moved to the big city after that and could not believe how bad the expensive education was. Student behaviour was shocking. Things did not improve until college...

All your points are dead on.

[IQ 145]

 Absolutely; couldn't agree more.

[Zero Govt]

+1 Moe

The State turns everything they touch to crap. In this case education which has become a political football for every biggot and loony to bugger up the system and push their own agenda (propaganda) down the throats of other adults kids. The curiculum is academic dross at best and leftie spin at worst.
Let's school our own kids, pay private if needbe instead of everyone, even those without no kids, being forced to pay for State shit.

[Bicycle Repairman]

+1400 SAT

[Hulk]

Public, government sponsored, education is a criminal waste of our kids time. Had my kid reading at a second grade level by the time he entered kindergarten and he enjoyed the experience...

[Bicycle Repairman]

But will he follow orders, and not do too much of that 'thinking' stuff?

[Hulk]

Not so far...