Bill Gates pouring billions into the "hunt for bad teachers"....demoralizing them.

[madfloridian]

Those are the words of Diane Ravitch in a recent post at the Daily Beast.

This is a powerful statement:

The main effect of Gates' policy has been to demoralize millions of teachers, who don't understand how they went from being respected members of the community to Public Enemy No. 1.

Here is more from her post:

Bill Gates..Selling Bad Advice to the Public Schools

As I showed in my recent book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, Gates is one of a small group of billionaires that is promoting privatization, de-professionalization, and high-stakes testing as fixes for American public schools. I called this group "the billionaire boys club," which includes Gates, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation.

The Times article documents how Gates has put almost everyone concerned with education policy in his debt: advocacy groups and think tanks of left and right, education journals, public television programs, leaders in academia, local school districts, and state education groups. In addition to what is reported in the Times, Gates has significantly influenced the policies of the U.S. Department of Education, especially its signature program "Race to the Top," which encourages more privately managed charter schools and recommends that states judge teacher quality by student test scores.

Gates appears to mean well, but he has obviously—and repeatedly—gotten bad advice.

And she is right about this very important paragraph. Why is there not someone at the national level speaking out saying this is the wrong thing to do to experienced, caring, dedicated teachers.

Now, he has thrown his support behind the idea that America has too many bad teachers, and he is pouring billions into the hunt for bad teachers. As the Times article shows, he has bought the support of a wide range of organizations, from conservative to liberal. He has even thrown a few million to the teachers' unions to gain their assent. Unmentioned is that Gates has gotten the federal government to join him in his current belief that what matters most is creating teacher evaluation systems tied to student test scores.

She's right with this question...WHY have we done this? Why have we allowed it to happen this way. She refers to the recent NYT article detailing his donations to advocacy groups.

What is most alarming about the Times article is that Bill Gates is using his vast resources to impose his will on the nation and to subvert the democratic process. Why have we decided to outsource public education to a well-meaning but ill-informed billionaire?

Here are many more details about the NYT article about Gates.

...The foundation spent $373 million on education in 2009, the latest year for which its tax returns are available, and devoted $78 million to advocacy — quadruple the amount spent on advocacy in 2005. Over the next five or six years, Mr. Golston said, the foundation expects to pour $3.5 billion more into education, up to 15 percent of it on advocacy.

Given the scale and scope of the largess, some worry that the foundation’s assertive philanthropy is squelching independent thought, while others express concerns about transparency. Few policy makers, reporters or members of the public who encounter advocates like Teach Plus or pundits like Frederick M. Hess of the American Enterprise Institute realize they are underwritten by the foundation.

That's the danger. Those making policy listen to those with the loudest voices with the most access. Billionaires can provide that to the advocacy groups.

A nationwide parents' blog asked a very good question.

The question I ask is why should Eli Broad and Bill Gates have more of a say as to what goes on in my child’s classroom than I do? – Sue Peters, Seattle parent.

Many more parents should be wondering that as well. And there should be national leaders ready and on hand to answer.