Most people would be too greedy to do so.
There are so many factors that effect eduation these days, from peer pressure to ADHD, to home life. Some children learn by reading and some by hearing. Some have to it before it sinks in. NOT an easy task no matter how you slice it!!! Let’s face it, Teachers make all of the difference in the world. God Bless you Bill and Melinda Gates!!!!! Again, Thank you for your efforts! Rick Carter

not because the previous one was successful,

not because these people have a track record of success with education,

not because stakeholders in education met, discussed, argued, and put something forward,

but only because they have money to back it.

The best democracy money can buy?

The rest of us are left to vote for people who might carry out policies we agree with. They just buy the policy.

In the evaluations throughout the country of the Gates-sponsored small schools, done by independent researchers but funded by the Gates foundations. many of the interviews with teachers and students revolved around the fact that the aspect of their schools they most valued were their small classes, though in other schools, it is clear from the interviews and descriptions that some other of these schools didn’t have small classes, and thus teachers and students felt cheated. of what they had expected. Yet another set of schools had started off with small classes but lost them over time.

when I followed up with some of the authors of these reports to ask them if they had studied whether class size might be a factor that could account for some of the differential outcomes between schools — with some evident successes and some failures, they told me they hadn’t been allowed to study this factor in a systematic fashion by the rigid requirements set out by the Gates foundation. Instead, they had been told to analyze the degree to which more more amorphous factors, like “rigor” or “community partnerships,” had been evidenced, and their relationship to the academic outcomes at their schools.

Earlier, the Gates Foundation had commissioned national surveys that showed that teachers (and parents) thought that class size was more important than school size — but in their initiative, they apparently sought to bury this distinction and ignore the importance of this factor in their analyses.

It is ironic that now they bemoan the “poor quality of information on what happens in schools” since the way they designed their own studies suffered tremendously from this failing. And though they now say they intend to focus on the classroom instead, I rather doubt that class size will be among the factors that they examine when they analyze teacher effectiveness. Though I would love to be proven wrong.