Gates Foundation invests more than $300 million in ed reform

[tonysam]

This is bad shit for every teacher in the country. We KNOW what Gates is up to, and it's no good:

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced Thursday a $335 million investment in teacher effectiveness, with major grants for experiments in tenure, evaluation, compensation, training and mentoring in three large school systems and a cluster of public charter schools.

Through the grants, which amount to one of the largest privately sponsored school improvement initiatives in recent years, the foundation aims to reshape how policymakers approach teaching. Its goal is to focus on performance rather than qualifications.

The winners, picked from 10 applicants, are: Hillsborough County (Fla.) schools, in the Tampa area, to receive $100 million; Memphis schools, $90 million; Pittsburgh schools, $40 million; and five charter networks in Los Angeles (Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, Aspire Public Schools, Green Dot Public Schools, Inner City Education Foundation and Partnerships to Uplift Communities Schools), $60 million.

More


These billionaire crooks won't give up until they completely destroy public education.

[Vincardog]

1. Education does not need "reformation" it needs FUNDING

[tonysam]

2. The privatizers need to quit trying to bribe school districts

in order to turn them into "businesses"; it will fail.

The real problem with public education has to do with the structure of the system, of the political culture of the institution.

[Vincardog]

3. Ms. Vincardog is going to an emergency union meeting at her school today. Probably to lay her off

because the a$$ hatters want to run her school like a business.

[tonysam]

4. Which district is this, may I ask?

n/t

[Vincardog]

5. A small rural IA district you have never heard of

[tonysam]

6. That's pretty bad if it's a rural district. I was expecting D.C. or a major

school district.

[Vincardog]

7. The locals are imploding and merging at a frightening pace around here. IA used to be PROUD of their

Schools and Education system.

[Dinger]

9. Damn tony, You Hit the Nail On The Head With That One

Absolutely spot on!

[angryfirelord]

8. Stop Bill Gates

Run Linux instead. :)

[tonysam]

10. From Susan Ohanian's website, her comments about this article

Ohanian Comment: For teacher "effectiveness," read "test scores." This is one more step in the Gates use of venture philanthropy, marching lockstep in the neoliberal agenda to corporatize schools. This agenda includes deprofessionalizing teachers. Under the neoliberals, control of schools shifts from teachers, parents, and communities to private foundations, corporations, and investors. Under neoliberals, public schools are a business, students are consumers. Teachers? They are lackeys operating at the will of the system stocked by principals who must become entrepreneurs.

This money is dirty, buying the soul of a school and eating it alive.

link


Note there is NOBODY in Congress who is doing anything to stop this wholesale privatization of public education.

[Hannah Bell]

11. gates is shit, but he's gotten away with it a long time under the pretty PR of

"philanthropy":

biggest pusher of GMOs in the world, marketization & destruction of families in africa under the politically-correct buzz words "empowering women".