Educators from the US and beyond: please share your teaching stories with Mr. Bill Gates. How have the policies of the Gates Foundation influenced your classroom, your students, your teaching, your schools, and your commu. Bill Gates’ $100 million database to track students. Text smaller Text bigger By Michael F.
Haverluck Over the past 18 months, a massive $100 million public-school database spearheaded by the $36.4 billion-strong Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been in the making that freely shares student information with private companies. The system has been in operation for several months and already contains millions of K-12 students’ personal identification ‒ ranging from name, address, Social Security number, attendance, test scores, homework completion, career goals, learning disabilities, and even hobbies and attitudes about school.
Claiming that the national database will enhance education, the main funder of the project, the Gates Foundation, entered the joint venture with the Carnegie Corporation of New York and school officials from a number of states. School officials and private companies doing business with districts might have plenty to be happy about with this information-sharing system, but ParentalRights.org President Michael P. What’s Good for Bill Gates Turns Out To Be Bad For Public Schools. And, actually, bad for Microsoft too, as we learned recently Bill Gates foisted a big business model of employee evaluation onto public school, which his own company has since abandoned.
“So let me get this straight. The big business method of evaluation that now rules our schools is no longer the big business method of evaluation? And collaboration and teamwork, which have been abandoned by our schools in favor of the big business method of evaluation, is in?” Schools have a lot to learn from business about how to improve performance, declared Bill Gates in an Op Ed in the Wall Street Journal in 2011.
“At Microsoft, we believed in giving our employees the best chance to succeed, and then we insisted on success. Adopting the Microsoft model means public schools grading teachers, rewarding the best and being “candid”, that is, firing those who are deemed ineffective. Some states grade on a curve. This month Microsoft abandoned the hated system. Ms. Stay connected: Sign up! Bill Gates: A fairer way to evaluate teachers. In much the same way that sports teams identify and nurture talent, there is a window of opportunity in public education to create systems that encourage and develop fantastic teachers, leading to better results for students.
Efforts are being made to define effective teaching and give teachers the support they need to be as effective as possible. But as states and districts rush to implement new teacher development and evaluation systems, there is a risk they’ll use hastily contrived, unproven measures. One glaring example is the rush to develop new assessments in grades and subjects not currently covered by state tests. Some states and districts are talking about developing tests for all subjects, including choir and gym, just so they have something to measure.
This is one reason there is a backlash against standardized tests — in particular, using student test scores as the primary basis for making decisions about firing, promoting and compensating teachers. Accountability for Mr. Gates: The Billionaire Philanthropist Evaluation - Living in Dialogue. Bill Gates' TED Talk: Are Video Cameras the Missing Link? - Living in Dialogue. Responding to the Gates Foundation: How do we Consider Evidence of Learning in Teacher Evaluations? - Living in Dialogue. Follow me on Twitter at @AnthonyCody This post is the second round in a five-part exchange with the Gates Foundation.
This is a response to yesterday's post from Vicki Phillips, How do we Consider Evidence of Student Learning in Teacher Evaluations? This post can also be viewed and commented on over at the Gates Foundation's Impatient Optimists blog. Vicki Phillips opens her post with a complaint: Education debates are often characterized wrongly as two warring camps: blame teachers for everything that's not working in our schools or defend all teachers at all costs. This handwringing is hard to take seriously, because, as I wrote about two years ago, there has indeed been a war on the teaching profession, and the Gates Foundation continues to arm one side very heavily.
The Gates Foundation gave $2 million to promote Waiting For Superman, a movie rife with falsehoods about public education, which greatly promoted the hostile climate in which we find ourselves. Ms. Here is the problem.