Feedback and data related to your actual goals is key to achieving anything, and of course education and health should be targeted, but a bigger underlying problem is the structural inequality causing a constant lack of resources for many countries and communities.
The fact that Mr. Gates ignores this leads me to believe that he thinks that the grossly unequal distribution of resources is the result of some process that has a sound basis. Our current 'economic' models, since they do not take into account equality, health, education, or any other important scientific data, are fundamentally unsound, and that is why we have the problems of gross inequality and inadequate distribution of resources.
We should frame this as less exploitation and more fairness rather than more charity.
For most of human history, equality and poverty were much greater. People were equally miserable.
It is only in modern times that we discovered the productive capability to escape the Malthusian trap and improve the human condition. Because this happened unevenly, "inequality" rose. But this was not a bad thing, it was a necessary step in progress.
Today, much of the developing world is catching up to the rich world. This is reducing inequality.
Inequality is neither good nor bad in itself. Focusing on this one variable creates a far too simple model to understand the world.
I'm inclined to believe that targeting education and health is actually the best way to fix inequality problems. I mean, it's not like he's sinking the money into SAT prep classes for lawrence academy students, he's attacking malaria.
Handouts don't fix underlying problems. Education and better health might.
I agree with what you say. What bothers me about the Gates Foundation is their education agenda. Their priorities reflect a naive reductionist worldview akin to Rudyard Kiplings' Just So Stories.
Make a list of all things wrong with public education in the USA (inequity, parental involvement, malnutrition, etc). Teacher performance isn't even in the top ten.
A friend works on some sort of in school room surveillance system at the Gates Foundation. It records the teacher. Which is then reviewed and the teacher graded. By what criteria, I can't imagine. Then the teacher's performance is graded and coaching in administered. For improvement. I asked if any teachers were advising the project. No. I asked who reviews the tapes. Non teachers.
Yea, that'll help.
Even more standardized testing is another aspect of Taylorism. As every QA/Test person knows, you cannot test your way to quality.
The only measure of teacher performance is student achievement. But with so many factors beyond the control any teacher or group of teachers, it's patently unfair to judge teachers. And yet ask any faculty, group of students, or parents, and they'll tell you who the great teachers are.
PRIVATIZATION
The outsourcing of education is just a way to divert money meant for the classroom towards cronies. Standardized testing, textbooks, misc contracts are some examples.
The rationalization for corporate charter schools is that somehow the free market will make schools more competitive. Alas, free market means monopoly, not more parental choice.
Further, how is a private entity more accountable than government? I can attend board meetings, vote on levies, submit public records requests. But corporations can easily hide their activities, that's what makes them private entities.
THE FIX
I believe what's needed is more transparency, more accountability, more democracy.
Every single profession struggles with their bad apples. What's needed is a way to hold individuals accountable and some means of either correcting the problem or firing them. This applies to cops, doctors, accountants, teachers, everyone.
It's always an open secret who the bad teachers are. But just try to fire one.
A second friend was a principle for a few years. Of the bad apples, one of his teachers was assaulting his students. For years. My friend wasted three years trying to fire this person. Opposed by the district, the union, the other teachers, etc. Couldn't get it done. Violent teacher was a few years away from retirement, hey buddy, don't rock the boat.
Another friend works in the local school district. He recently related that people within the district admin were quite pleased they only "had to fire" 5 teachers out of 2,000+ in the last year. That's astonishing. I know there's more than 5 bad apples in the district. The documentary The Rubber Room shows what happens to bad teachers in NYC that can't be fired. (Spoiler: They all sit in a room every work day, doing nothing.) I have it on good authority that happens in every district. Probably in every profession.
One example from my experience: I wasn't allowed to fire 4 developers on my team. Pushed onto my team by my VP, who was building an empire. Completely toxic individuals (eg one Lebanese and one Isreali who would go at each other). No other manager would deal with them. Complete drain on my team's morale and productivity. I had numbers, facts, personal reviews in my arsenal. I couldn't fire them. I can't imagine how much harder it is in a public context.
But in truth, I don't know a specific fix is for culling bad apples. I believe this governance issue is the central management challenge in our society.
Meanwhile, I advocate for gathering more data (transparency) so that we can at least know what's going on.
I don't necessarily disagree with much you wrote, but this piece about corporate charter schools,
Alas, free market means monopoly, not more parental choice.
seems like it came out of nowhere. Since charter schools entered my area, my kids have gone from two choices, the local high school and a gifted program for engineering students at a local college, to many choices, includes a performing arts school, a science and engineering school for the "non-gifted" and many others.
As a parent, I have concerns about how charter schools impact the local school budgets, but monopoly is the exact opposite of the word I'd use.
So I'm curious about what logic brought you to that statement. Your comment was well thought out, so I don't think you are just pulling statements out of nowhere.
Yea, that was quite the leap. I see privatization equated with competitiveness all the time. (As those the bidding process isn't an insider rigged game, but that's whole 'nother issue.)
I'm pleased that charter school led to greater diversity and choice in your district. Like they say, YMMV.
In the reports I've read, charter schools have been selectively admitting students, cherry picking, excluding the low potential, aptitude students. Reinforcing inequity.
Whereas public schools have to take all students. Different rules, same scoring system. Very unfair.
In my district, we've had short-lived "magnet" programs and schools. They're hugely popular with students and parents. Teachers seem like them too. District administrators hate them. Non standard. Must be closed down. Taylorism redux.
Two of our low income high schools have hugely popular magnet programs. My friends that teach at those schools say that it creates a class (caste) system, like two schools in one. The smart, rich, mostly white students in the gifted programs. The rest in the remedial programs. The two groups rarely commingle. (I used to volunteer in the classroom, I've seen this firsthand.)
I find that so weird. So much wasted potential.
Whatever the current situation, there's huge money being poured into our local pro-charter school campaigns. So whereas our district foolish tried to culled diversity, maybe we'll eventually get it with new charter schools. That'd be ironic.
The application process is one of those interesting ones. I completely agree that having a different ruleset but same grading process is completely wrong, but I think that says more about having involvement from too high of a governmental level.
Personally, I think our best option would be to do away with the notion of age-based grades. Make progression based on competency (at least for the core curricula), so if you are highly competent in math, you may be with students several years older than you but if your writing stinks, you may be with younger kids. Instead of trying to force kids into a mold that very few fit comfortably in, let them grow in their own ways.
I would love to have my kids attend a school like that. My daughter, who is a gifted writer and artist but struggles non-stop with math (and there are physiological reasons for that) would be able to be comfortable in school and, as a result, better able to focus on her strengths instead of trying to shore up weaknesses that only matter for testing programs.
If the charter system allows more experimentation, then that alone justifies its existence; but the transition of more than 100 years of "prepare them for the factory" type of education to "prepare them for knowledge work" will not painful, especially since we still need some of the "prepare them for the factory" and many more "prepare them for a trade".
Personally, I think our best option would be to do away with the notion of age-based grades.
Agreed.
I've been chewing on two ideas.
Assess student achievement with actual achievements. Just like achievement badges in the Boy Scouts. My son is an Eagle Scout. After meeting the minimum requirements, and completing his project, he was able to assemble whatever achievements tickled his fancy. Promotes self direction and working at one's own rate.
Have students teach each other, work more collaboratively, grade each other. Versus lectures, rote memorization, and testing. I've experienced this first hand (as the student). Peer pressure and expectations work wonders. Hardest, most rewarding 'A' grade I ever earned. (I was otherwise a terrible student.)
Alas, to date, there's very little research on these two reforms. Some places have tried the achievement system, results inconclusive. I haven't looked to see if the peer support system has been tried else where.
...hugely popular magnet programs...creates a class (caste) system, like two schools in one. The smart, rich, mostly white students in the gifted programs. The rest in the remedial programs...So much wasted potential.
How so? It sounds as if the students capable of handling high level work are receiving it. Similarly, the students needing remedial help are also receiving it.
Would it be better if students who can't do long division were dropped in a calculus class, or students who are capable of doing calculus were bored re-learning long division?
On the firing, my first real job almost didn't happen. It was for a government contractor and another group was trying to slot its bad apple into the position. She was minority woman who was often found sleeping on the job, hanging out for hours in the women's restroom, etc. As a minority woman in a government job, she was impossible to fire. It wasn't until the politics settled that I could be hired.
The real question is whether this is worse than the alternative[1]. The alternative was women and minorities unable to get jobs or stuck in their current job. I think in many areas our society has moved past that, but not in all. It is certainly worth looking at the regulations to see if we can improve the situation.
1. Unions are a completely different piece of the equation, especially when it comes to teachers. I don't know how you break that stranglehold, short of increasing completion by including schools that don't hire unionized teachers, but that's if you can even hire a non-unionized teacher.
I'm personally quite content to pay people to stay home.
I got to layoff the under performers on my team. Productivity soared. The whole time, it would have been cheaper for me to pay them to go away.
More seriously...
Humans are hard wired to punish cheaters. It can go wrong. But preventing it is also counter productive. My hope (optimism) is that with greater transparency, we'll have better feedback loops, to better identify and mitigate the cheaters.
The only measure of teacher performance is student achievement. But with so many factors beyond the control any teacher or group of teachers, it's patently unfair to judge teachers.
This is why you use VAM rather than simple test scores. You build a statistical predictor of how a given group of students should perform, measure how they actually perform, and the teacher's score is (actual - predicted).
The outsourcing of education is just a way to divert money meant for the classroom towards cronies.
Employees of public education system are the cronies you speak of. Consider the recent presidential election - the education industry funneled $21M to the candidate who wanted to spend more money on public education.
Monopolies are bad. Public monopolies are worse. Public monopolies whose unionized workers have a lock on the electoral system are even worse. All of these are progressively further removed from the incentive to serve their customers - the students.
I feel like giving more power to school principals and trusting them to make non-standardized-test-based judgment calls is a solution but unions are terrified of it for whatever reason.
On the one hand, the teacher's unions are the only people who stand up for teachers, a job that would otherwise be whittled away in pay and benefits until only an idiot would take the job. On the other hand, union leadership's primary concern seems to be protecting bad teachers and retirement benefits.
My mother fought both the district and the union. Her specialty was learning disabled kids. Non standard everything. In a world that demands standardization.
I'm very pro labor, pro teacher, but have many grievances with the teachers unions. Like every other self-preserving group (cops, gangs), they can't show weakness.
I get it. I have many union friends. They're assaulted from every side. All sorts of contradictory demands, without any concessions or compromises offered.
I believe in my heart the only way for teaching to be reformed is for the teacher unions to get out in front of the reform issue, instead of digging in. Like the french cliche, Do or be done.
Unfortunately, there are few professions more susceptible to fads than education. "Reform" for most teachers is "Been there, done that, it sucked. Just let me get back to teaching."
Meaning there'd be near zero consensus on a reform platform.
The fact that Mr. Gates ignores this leads me to believe that he thinks that the grossly unequal distribution of resources is the result of some process that has a sound basis. Our current 'economic' models, since they do not take into account equality, health, education, or any other important scientific data, are fundamentally unsound, and that is why we have the problems of gross inequality and inadequate distribution of resources.
We should frame this as less exploitation and more fairness rather than more charity.