Fact-Challenged Policy ~ or~ Bill Gates needs to shut up now

by Richard Rothstein
Research Associate, Economic Policy Institute

Last week, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates published an op-ed in the Washington Post, “How Teacher Development could Revolutionize our Schools,” proposing that American public schools should do a better job of evaluating the effectiveness of teachers, a goal with which none can disagree. But his specific prescriptions, and the urgency he attaches to them, are based on the misrepresentation of one fact, the misinterpretation of another and the demagogic presentation of a third. It is remarkable that someone associated with technology and progress should have such a careless disregard for accuracy when it comes to the education policy in which he is now so deeply involved.

Gates’ most important factual claim is that “over the past four decades, the per-student cost of running our K-12 schools has more than doubled, while our student achievement has remained virtually flat.” And, he adds, “spending has climbed, but our percentage of college graduates has dropped compared
with other countries.” Let’s examine these factual claims:

Bill Gates says: “Our student achievement has remained virtually flat”

The only longitudinal measure of student achievement that is available to Bill Gates or anyone else is the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). NAEP provides trends for 4th, 8th, and 12th graders, disaggregated by race, ethnicity, and poverty, since about 1980 in basic skills in math and reading (called the “Long Term Trend NAEP”) and since about 1990 for 4th and 8th graders in slightly more sophisticated math and reading skills (called the “Main NAEP”).<*>

On these exams, American students have improved substantially, in some cases phenomenally. In general, the improvements have been greatest for African-American students, and among these, for the most disadvantaged. The improvements have been greatest for both black and white 4th and 8th graders in math. Improvements have been less great but still substantial for black 4th and 8th graders in reading and for black 12th graders in both math and reading. Improvements have been modest for whites in 12th grade math and at all three grade levels in reading.
The following table summarizes these results, for the earliest and most recent years for which disaggregated data were collected.



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Bill Gates says: “The per-student cost of running our K-12 schools has more than doubled.”

Here, Bill Gates is nominally correct, but misleading. When properly adjusted for inflation, K-12 per pupil spending has about doubled over the last four decades, but less than half of this new money has gone to regular education (including compensatory education for disadvantaged children, programs for English-language learners, integration programs like magnet schools, and special schools for dropout recovery and prevention). The biggest single recipient of new money has been special education for children with disabilities. Four decades ago, special education consumed less than 4% of all K-12 spending. It now consumes 21%.<‡>

Detailed tables documenting these trends are available here: http://epi.3cdn.net/1726cc68ca1a71563a_o3m6bhrub.pdf

American public education can boast of remarkable accomplishments in special education over this period. Many young people can now function in society whereas, in the past, children with similar disabilities were institutionalized and discarded. But it is not reasonable to complain about the increase in spending on such children by insisting that it should have produced greater improvement in the achievement of regular children.

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Bill Gates says: “Spending has climbed, but our percentage of college graduates has dropped compared with other countries.”

This is the Bill Gates claim that can properly be called demagogic. It attempts to agitate readers by presenting a positive development in a negative light. A climb in spending should produce an increase in the percentage of college graduates. And it has. In the last four decades, the percentage of college graduates in the United States has nearly doubled. In 1970, 16% of young adults (ages 25 to 29) were college graduates. Today, it is 31%. The improvement has been across the board: the share of African-American young adults who are college graduates has gone from 10% to 19%; for whites it has gone from 17% to 37%. Somehow, Bill Gates saw fit to present this as an indictment.

more . . . http://education.nationaljournal.com/2011/03/focusing-on-teacher-effectiven.php#1903160

of time because there aren't enough jobs and those jobs won't stay around so long as corporate congress keeps dickin around and giving tax breaks while they move the jobs and even the industrial tools to manufacture overseas.

We need to co operate and start new businesses with American citizens as owners (not the state as in communism) I mean as in cooperative business to manufacture sustainable products to export or sell here.

And those countries, Mr. fuckwad Gates, don't make their college graduates start their earning careers off with thousands upon thousands of dollars of debt for that education and hang that debt around their necks FORFUCKINGEVER.

You're such an ignoramus, Mr. asswipe Gates, that you don't understand you can't compare outcomes without comparing what produces those outcomes. If you put an orange in the juicer, you're gonna get orange juice. But if you put a fig in the same juicer, you ain't gonna get orange juice. A teacher can only do so much with the material she/he is given. If the teacher gets a class full of disadvantaged youngsters who come to school without a decent breakfast, who couldn't sleep the night before because of the sirens, who hasn't got proper clothes for the weather, do you think that teacher is gonna crank out the same orange juice as the teacher whose class is made up entirely of kids from stable economic backgrounds, who have good breakfasts and no sirens and $300 sneakers?

GET REAL, you moron!

Why is this so difficult for this guy to understand? Oh, wait, it's not difficult at all. He DOES understand it. He's just blowin' sugar up all our asses 'cause he WANTS TO GUT PUBLIC EDUCATION.



Never mind.


Tansy Gold

:applause: :thumbsup: :kick: :thumbsup: :applause:

that is why he hates them so much. with all his wealth and success every teacher has something bill gates does not have, a college degree.
i suspect that he does not even know that he hates teachers (because on the surface it seems so ridiculous) but it is apparent in his actions.
he wants teachers out of the way so he can revolutionize education through software applications.
teachers are therefore, a problem.

I'm 62 years old. I can name, right now, virtually every teacher I ever had, kindergarten through 12th grade.

Helen Castor, Kindergarten
Katherine Flinspach
Sue Maurer
Norma Snap
Eileen Boos
My beloved 5th grade teacher Patricia Quast
Sixth Grade:
Vivian Miles, LASS & homeroom
Lois Fritsche, Math
Mr. Wangels, Science
Arthur Rebbec, Art
Mrs. Nealis, Home Ec
Mrs. Raasch, Music.
Seventh Grade:
William Kyger
Eighth Grade:
Joan Peterson
etc., etc., etc.

I didn't like all of them, but I respected them. Neither of my parents had college degrees, but they had hoped maybe I would go to college and graduate. It didn't work out that way, or at least not the first time. It took me three stints but finally, at age 52, I got that degree.

At no time, however, did I hate teachers because they had degrees and I didn't.

Bill Gates is just a mean-spirited, greedy little prick who thinks because he has billions and billions of dollars that he's "smarter" than everyone else. He's full of shit up to his eyebrows.

TG, TT

the chance like he and Gov. Scott do and then blow it for one reason or another it is questionable as to how much you value education!

Bill Gates finally gets (honorary) college degree
Published on 26th March 2007 by Brett Thomas

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/bits/2007/03/26/Bill_Gates_finally_gets_college_degree/1

Everybody knows that you'd better stay in school - after all, people who don't graduate from uni have been proven to earn less over their lifetimes. I wonder whether the people who conducted that study included the world's richest man, Bill Gates? The founder of Microsoft never did go back to earn his degree - but he'll have one now.

Mr. Gates will be presented his diploma from Harvard University on June 7, 2007. His trip will be two-fold - he's already scheduled to be at the university to give a commencement speech to this year's graduating class. This will be the 356th year for the university, the oldest in the United States.

Of course, Bill giving the commencement speech is a very ironic choice - he walked away from the exact same university 32 years earlier sans degree. He is still considered to be part of Harvard's graduating class of 1977, though it's doubtful the university thought so at the time. He had left as only a sophomore, to start a fledgling computer software corporation out of his garage in 1975.

Almost all of them trusted, respected leaders that I remember with gratitude.

My 3rd grade teacher: She kept track of our reading with "bookworms" made out of paper circles; one for each book. I had the longest bookworm in class, and I loved adding new segments. She started me on a lifelong love of gardening; the first thing I ever planted was an iris bulb, in her classroom, and it grew every year in our yard until we moved. While I moved on to all kinds of other plants, I still love iris. She hatched eggs in the classroom. Those eggs that didn't hatch were autopsied in our classroom garden to see what went wrong. The live chicks went home with us when they were done with the brooder. Mine turned out to be a rooster; Universal Studios took him, and a classmate's rooster, to live with the birds they had up on that hill, when they were a small operation. We raised silkworms and actually spun silk from the cocoons.

I've never forgotten her, or the way that she fed our curiosity.

I remember them all, and at no time did their degrees, their qualifications, or their knowledge offend me.

Neither of my parents had college degrees, either. It took me 12 years to get the AA, another 3 years to achieve a BA, and I've been adding to that ever since.

Mrs Keeling. Wonderful woman. Every time I see anything about the space program on TV I think of her.

She also wheeled in the TV and let us watch the World Series, which was played during the day back then.

I loved my 3rd grade teacher. I'd love to be able to tell her how many fond memories I have of that year.

My 3rd grade teacher was old...to a 3rd grader. She had gray hair. That was 44 years ago. I hope she knows, or knew, how much she meant to us.

I'm gonna indulge myself, and maybe we just need a whole thread on "my favorite teacher". . . .

Fall, 1958. Fifth grade, but it was a hand-picked combination class of 12 fifth graders and 10 fourth graders in our still-expanding suburban school. We couldn't have TV for the World Series, but Mrs. Quast brought in a radio, so while we listened to the Yankees (boo, hiss) and the Milwaukee Braves with Lew Burdette and Warren Spahn and Hank Aaron, we worked on homework or art projects. I remember this all so clearly, making tiny baseball players out of modeling clay and putting them on a field. I loved baseball even then.


That was my last year at Ridge School; I went on to junior high and high school and life in general. But over the years I continued to keep in touch with Mrs. Quast, visiting her and her family every once in a while even though I'd moved away. I remembered that class with crystal clarity, right down to where everyone sat, in our four rows of five students, 10 fifth and 10 fourth graders.


Summer, 1985. My first novel had been published and we were getting ready to leave the midwest for Arizona. I knew Mrs. Quast loved the southwest; she used to bring copies of Arizona Highways magazine to class for us to look at during free time when our homework was done. I knew that she had been undergoing treatment for breast cancer. So I went to visit her one evening, even met her parents, about whom she had told us stories back in that marvelous fourth/fifth combination class. We laughed and told jokes and when I said I never thought of myself as having any artistic or creative ability, it was Mrs. Quast who reminded me of the clay baseball "action figures," no more than two inches high at most. "You were the most creative one in that class," she told me.

She passed away in early 1986. My mother called to tell me.


Fall, 2000. I was temping at Arizona Highways, doing the mindless data entry to renew subscriptions and process holiday gift orders during their busy season. The mail room brought us batches of 100 subscription forms at a time. Sometimes we'd get a subscription from an unexpected address, like Nairobi, Kenya, and some of us even kept a tally of how many different countries and states we processed. And sometimes we got them from familiar names and wondered if it really was "Walter Cronkite" who was renewing a subscription. And then one afternoon, it was just after lunchtime as I recall, I got the renewal notice for a familiar name and address. Mr. Quast still had a subscription to Arizona Highways. I burst into tears.


Today, 8 March 2011 -- He is still listed at the same address.



Tansy Gold, storyteller

a TRUST with the world around the age of 2 to 3, it's one big uphill battle. I don't know how teachers became responsible for bad parents.

Any woman who wants an abortion should have one. It's that simple. Of course, that reduces cannon fodder and $$$ for the private prisons. So be it.

An unwanted child....now that's a sin.

Unless a woman has an extremely strong calling to be a mother, she should think very seriously about becoming one. Motherhood is the most important responsibility a woman can assume.

Fatherhood has somehow been forgotten in this society unless of course there is some lone dude who doesn't want 'his' fetus aborted. Bummer. That's biology. Get a pet.

Why should people pursue degrees when people like YOU outsource the f out of careers that cost a fortune to obtain training for now? Try putting THAT in to you equation. Then there's something that YOU and Jerry Balmer can help do something about, eh?

Which is a bunch of BS.

Thanks for all the documented info. Bookmarking it.

Recommended.

We've hit the mother lode. :)

She says that she wasn't any good at it at first.

She was the best teacher in her school when she finished.

Gates simply needs to go back to his hole in Seattle, do something new in his own field and leave the rest of us alone.

Gates seems to forget what this country did for him! Gates is a user of workers from India who will work for less money on h1b visas. Maybe that is what he is going to go for, teachers from India and China? Just asking.

Gates Asks Senate For Infinite Number Of H 1B Visas

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg0wCam2oDc&NR=1

...he is NOT an authority on education. Someone should tell him to get back to the computer lab.

cannot be taken seriously as any kind of informed, unbiased authority on our education system.

.. in an upscale community, and then to Lakeside School - an exclusive private school in Seattle. His parents.. very nice people, incidentally.. are rich.

I don't think he hates teachers, I just think he has any idea what school is like for anybody who isn't gifted, rich, and lucky. In school, he was all three of those.

Like too many of his gifted, rich, and lucky compatriots, he can't possibly imagine what it's like to be a kid who has hit the shit-lottery.... no gifts that this kind of society will use, poor, and unlucky. Bad parents, bad community, bad economic times.... not a fucking clue.

i work in one of the schools he tried to destroy.
i know the attitude he sends his minions into schools with. every suggestion that a teacher might make is seen as obstructionist as teacher concerns are rarely the same as a businessman's.
they believe that teachers are the problem, not the solution.
just like reagan and the government.
gates is about privatization. he wants to own everything.

I've been out of the teaching game since 1998. I have some idea about what is happening from friends still in it, and I cannot believe what's going on!

"Scripts" fercrissakes! Teachers are supposed to use "scripts"!

I haven't followed Gates, but I will take your word for it.