But as long as we spend the time and money to get each element right; as long as we don’t let politics block the common core; as long as we let teachers use new technology in the classroom, this could be the educational equivalent of the Big Bang – creating a new universe of learning and discovery for our teachers and students. -- Bill Gates, master of the "new universe."Bill Gates hasn't made up his mind quite yet about merit pay. Even though the world's second richest man (behind Mexico's Carlos Slim) considers himself to be an education expert, he and his gaggle of consultants are having a difficult time figuring out exactly how teachers should be paid. All this, while Gates-funded school districts, teacher unions, anxious teacher families, and Arne Duncan's DOE await his decision with bated breath.
At a recent speech to the Education Commission of the States conference in Atlanta, Gates, employed the wisdom of Solomon, to solve his dilemma.
Now, let me just say that at this time, we don’t have a point of view on the right approach to teacher compensation. We’re leaving that for later. In my view, if you pay more for better performance before you have a proven system to measure and improve performance, that pay system won’t be fair – and it will trigger a lot of mistrust. So before we get into that, we want to make sure teachers get the feedback they need to keep getting better.How thoughtful. How wise.
Every time I see this arrogant little man pontificate about education, teacher evaluations, "good" teaching and the like, all I can think is: Why doesn't somebody tell him to turn his energy and thoughts to his own company and fix the problems that his evaluation system and core philosophies have brought there rather than try and bring his dysfunctional world view to the rest of us?
ReplyDeleteI think the core pushback to this nonsense spouted by Gates and promoted by his foundation minions is to point out how destructive these ideas have been to Microsoft and other businesses and systems that have employed them (Enron, the financial system) and ask why we would want to take something so destructive and bring it to public education? It hasn't worked there (and I think we can pretty definitely say that the bonus system set up in the financial world, the real estate industry, and the business world DIRECTLY led to the financial mess of '07/'08 and may STILL bring about collapse, as the fellows at JP Morgan Chase and elsewhere have not seemed to learned any lessons from the last mess.)
Why would this system work in public education?
Why would anybody listen to Gates about teacher evaluations when he has done such a poor job on that in his own company?
Unfortunately so many in power do...