Gates Pours Millions in New Grants to Change Teaching Profession
I'm glad that the way Gates money deforms public education is finally making its way into mainstream media, like the Washington Post commentary below. I've posted plenty of info on this site (www.susanohanian.org), and I've tried to get articles published in the so-called liberal press. No interest. As I keep repeating: The Gates Foundation funded the Common Core development and promotion. And now their project for massive data collection of data on public ed students is well under way.
I've pretty much ignored the Gates deformation of higher education.
So the fellow who attended neither public school nor college deforms both.
This is an important piece.
Washington Post Blog on Gates money
by Valerie Strauss The Gates Foundation is spending millions of dollars in new grants that will further its already vast and controversial influence on public education. After spending hundreds of millions of dollars to to develop teacher assessment systems, it is putting many millions more into that issue, as well as into the creation of new online "adaptive" courses, the implementation of the Common Core standards, and more. The foundation has plowed billions into K-12 reform in the last decade or so (first creating small schools and then teacher evaluation systems that used student test scores) but also in recent years has expanded into higher education. Recent articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education detailed the nearly half a billion dollars the foundation has spent to help remake the higher education into one that Gates prefers, which is focused on getting more students degrees faster through technology and what is called "competency-based learning," and which is wrapped around an accountability system based on testing. Foundation grants in July include those for teacher evaluation, development and the creation of new "standards" for the profession. Several school districts won multimillion-dollar grants, including one for $10 million to "support the Denver Public Schools in finding, growing and keeping talented educators in the district to ensure their students have an effective teacher in every classroom every year." The National Education Association's Foundation for the Improvement of Education won a total of more than $5 million grants. Harvard University got $1.6 million to "test a new model of teacher evaluation that increases teacher ownership and buy-in, reduces administrative burden, and provides an auditable artifact to ensure and maintain reliable scoring." The foundation has said it would explain this grant in more depth -- especially the "reliable scoring piece." (Is this a recognition that the "scoring" now being used to grade teachers is not reliable?) I'll update this when I hear back. After already spending hundreds of millions of dollars on the subject of teacher evaluation, it is interesting that the foundation seems to think teachers need to have more ownership and buy-in of the assessment process. Really now, it didn't have to take hundreds of millions of dollars to learn that, of course, and it doesn't take $1.6 million to Harvard either; the model has long existed in, for example, Montgomery County, Md., where teachers lead the successful evaluation system (without the high-stakes use of standardized test scores). Any good teacher in any school could have told the Gates folks that for free. Harvard, incidentally, also won more than half a million dollars more in another grant to help advance Common Core standards and assessments, digital learning, teacher effectiveness, and charter schools. There are also grants for higher education grants for Information Privacy And Security initiatives as well as for continued K-12 reform, including Common Core State Standard implementation. It is investing in the creation of online "adaptive" courses that can be individually tailored to students. Here are some of the July grants, from the foundation website (you can see all of the July awards here): National Board for Professional Teaching Standards Inc Date: July 2013 Purpose: to support revision of the National Board certification process Amount: $3,743,337 Term: 36 Topic: College-Ready Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA Program: United States Grantee Location: Arlington, Virginia Denver Public Schools Date: July 2013 Purpose: to support the Denver Public Schools in finding, growing and keeping talented educators in the district to ensure their students have an effective teacher in every classroom every year Amount: $10,000,000 Term: 36 Topic: College-Ready Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA Program: United States Grantee Location: Denver, Colorado Jefferson County School District R-1 Date: July 2013 Purpose: to develop innovative professional development systems to create personalized learning systems for teachers Amount: $5,197,878 Term: 36 Topic: College-Ready Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA Program: United States Grantee Location: Golden, Colorado Fresno Unified School District Date: July 2013 Purpose: to develop innovative professional development systems to create personalized learning systems for teachers Amount: $5,000,000 Term: 36 Topic: College-Ready Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA Program: United States Grantee Location: Fresno, California Long Beach Unified School District Date: July 2013 Purpose: to develop innovative professional development systems to create personalized learning systems for teachers Amount: $5,000,000 Term: 36 Topic: College-Ready Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA Program: United States Grantee Location: Long Beach, California
The NEA Foundation for the Improvement of Education Date: July 2013 Purpose: to support a cohort of National Education Association Master Teachers in the development of Common Core-aligned lessons in K-5 mathematics and K-12 English Language Arts Amount: $3,882,600 Term: 20 Topic: College-Ready Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA Program: United States Grantee Location: Washington, District of Columbia The NEA Foundation for the Improvement of Education Date: July 2013 Purpose: to support the capacity of state NEA affiliates to advance teaching and learning issues and student success in collaboration with local affiliates Amount: $2,426,500 Term: 26 Topic: College-Ready Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA Program: United States Grantee Location: Washington, District of Columbia Harvard University Date: July 2013 Purpose: to test a new model of teacher evaluation that increases teacher ownership and buy-in, reduces administrative burden, and provides an auditable artifact to ensure and maintain reliable scoring Amount: $1,602,380 Term: 26 Topic: College-Ready Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA Program: United States Grantee Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts Council of Chief State School Officers Date: July 2013 Purpose: to CCSSO, on behalf of the PARCC and SBAC consortia to support the development of high quality assessments to measure the Common Core State Standards Amount: $4,000,000 Term: 21 Topic: College-Ready Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA Program: United States Grantee Location: Washington, District of Columbia Educators for Excellence Date: July 2013 Purpose: to support teachers to be leaders in policy development and implementation. Amount: $3,000,695 Term: 36 Topic: College-Ready Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA Program: United States Grantee Location: New York, New York Stand for Children Leadership Center Date: July 2013 Purpose: to organize supportive parents and teachers in Jefferson Parish, LA, to implement reforms that ensure that all children, regardless of their background, graduate from high school prepared for and with access to a college education Amount: $249,939 Term: 18 Topic: College-Ready Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA Program: United States Grantee Location: Portland, Oregon The George Washington University Date: July 2013 Purpose: to support the Center on Education Policy’s continuing efforts to survey, analyze, and report on state and school district efforts to implement the Common Core State Standards Amount: $259,895 Term: 15 Topic: College-Ready Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA Program: United States Grantee Location: Washington, District of Columbia Harvard University Date: July 2013 Purpose: to support Education Next’s work in four critical areas: Common Core standards and assessments, digital learning, teacher effectiveness, and charter schools Amount: $557,168 Term: 23 Topic: College-Ready Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA Program: United States Grantee Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts Arizona State University Date: July 2013 Purpose: to support the creation of the next generation of adaptive courses to enable student success Amount: $330,000 Term: 24 Topic: Postsecondary Success Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA Program: United States Grantee Location: Tempe, Arizona Research Foundation of State University of New York Date: July 2013 Purpose: to support the creation of the next generation of adaptive courses to enable student success Amount: $99,970 Term: 24 Topic: Postsecondary Success Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA Program: United States Grantee Location: Albany, New York North Carolina State University Date: July 2013 Purpose: to support the creation of the next generation of adaptive courses to enable student success Amount: $100,000 Term: 25 Topic: Postsecondary Success Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA Program: United States Grantee Location: Raleigh, North Carolina
Engaged Learning Date: July 2013 Purpose: to facilitate dramatic increases in academic achievement for all US students by building and validating a proof of concept of 6th-grade digital math courseware based on the JUMP Math curriculum, a breakthrough curriculum for teacher-delivered instruction Amount: $989,929 Term: 12 Topic: College-Ready Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA Program: United States Grantee Location: Seattle, Washington
— Valerie Strauss
Washington Post Answer Sheet
August 08, 2013
