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Office Space

July 14, 2010

Garrulous Mr. Gates

by Arthur Goldstein, at 12:28 pm

It’s been a busy week for Bill Gates. While the NEA featured brilliant Diane Ravitch as its most prominent guest, AFT President Randi Weingarten and company chose Gates, who’s done many remarkable things.

I’m not an education expert like Gates, so I’ll comment only on a TED talk he gave last year that’s available online. My experience is limited to teaching 25 years in New York City. Still, several of Gates’ comments did not sit well with me.

How does that [KIPP charter school] compare to a normal school? Well, in a normal school teachers aren’t told how good they are. The data isn’t gathered. In the teacher’s contract, it will limit the number of times the principal can come into the classroom — sometimes to once per year. And they need advanced notice to do that.

My principal can and does visit my classroom whenever he golly goshdarn feels like it. He offers no advanced notice, and walks around the building visiting my colleagues in exactly the same fashion. Gates’s version of what happens in a “normal school” sounds more like a crass stereotype than any contract I’ve ever heard of.

So imagine running a factory where you’ve got these workers, some of them just making crap and the management is told, “Hey, you can only come down here once a year, but you need to let us know, because we might actually fool you, and try and do a good job in that one brief moment.”

I’m having trouble imagining a teacher who lights up only once every year. If you can’t teach, you don’t give a sterling lesson on command. If you hate kids, you don’t instantly learn to love them when the principal walks in.

Gates claims a top quartile teacher will increase the test scores of students by over 10 percent in a single year. Thus, he reasons, if all students had this teacher, we’d be doing fabulously. I don’t know if I’m in the top quartile, but I raise scores when I have to. Yet when I do, I’m not as effective a teacher.

I try to inspire kids. I try to trick them, for example, into loving any book I teach, with high hopes they’ll love not only that book, but another, and then another. Will those kids get higher test scores? Maybe. But isn’t it possible a love of reading might pay off in some as-yet undetermined future? Isn’t it possible they might make career choices, pivotal decisions, based on something gleaned in my classroom?

Gates suggests teachers lack motivation, perhaps because we’re not getting merit pay, or because too few administrators tell us how wonderful we are. Why, then, do we write glowing recommendations for kids, pushing for them to be admitted to universities, special programs, or new careers?

Teachers have intrinsic motivation Gates can neither measure nor (apparently) conceive of.  I appreciate money, and I’ll say thanks to praise from almost anyone. But I especially treasure it from kids. Last month I told my class I’d miss them. They shouted, “We’ll miss you too!” They asked me if I’d teach them next year. I was honored, far more than by anything Gates could do or say.

But Gates proves things with charts, one of which says:

Once somebody has taught for three years, their teaching quality does not improve thereafter.

That’s preposterous. Many societies value wisdom and experience, but if they don’t drive test scores, Gates’s charts are unaffected.

But charts don’t face 34 teenagers at a time. I do. You never know what can, what will happen next. Live kids do unimaginable things, things that constantly perplexed me in year three. Even now, I steal any trick, any tip, anything from anyone if it sounds practical.  My bag of tricks is considerably larger now than it was 22 years ago, and I learn new things every day.

Says Gates’s chart:

A master’s degree doesn’t raise scores.

But if I hadn’t studied bilingualism, language acquisition, and the structures of English (that we all know instinctively but have likely as not never thought about), I’d be unqualified to teach ESL. I’d also never have passed the grueling Board of Examiners test the city required back in the day.

For my kid (and yours), I want a teacher with the deepest possible subject knowledge. Teachers compete with cell phones, iPods, and Microsoft’s own Xbox 360 (on which teenagers play some of the most sordid and vulgar war games I’ve ever seen), and need all the help they can get.

Maybe you don’t need a master’s to move kids from 55 on one test to 65 on the next test. A more worthy challenge is developing a kid who derives joy from class, one who eagerly participates and will continue studying it even when force is not involved. I will give that kid a better grade than test scores indicate, even if charts disapprove.

Anybody who has access to a DVD player could have the very best teachers.

That’s because he wants to film what he considers to be good teachers, and amass a video library. But doing that would mean only that anyone with a DVD player would be able to watch the best teachers.

There’d be no interaction, and certainly no assessment of the kid’s work by these best teachers. It’s not the same as having someone in your face. Gates seems to know that when it suits his purposes. When he describes his experiences at KIPP, he becomes giddy with excitement:

The teacher was running around, and the energy level is high … and the teacher was constantly scanning to see which kids weren’t paying attention, which kids were bored and calling on kids rapidly, putting things up on the board …

… keeping people engaged and setting the tone that everyone in the classroom needs to pay attention.

Here, I agree with Gates. But in my school, these things happen every day. And of course everyone needs to pay attention. Were someone to make a statement like that to my 14-year-old, it would merit an unhesitating, “Well, DUH!”

96 percent of KIPP’s high school graduates go to four year colleges.

That may be true. Or it may not. KIPP hasn’t been around that long, and mostly runs junior high schools, so KIPP students in college represent a very small sample. More to the point, the 96 percent figure, if true on any level, doesn’t include kids who don’t finish the program — which at some schools could run to more than half. Who teaches the kids who fail KIPP, and who does Gates blame for that? (I’m thinking me.)

Why not give the high schools the kids attend after KIPP some credit? Are they the “normal” public schools, the schools in which Gates claims administrators are contractually forbidden to observe teachers? Maybe Gates should sponsor that contract.

Charts don’t show underlying problems with poor performers. What if the kid has interrupted formal education, shuffled back and forth from one country to another, and by high school cannot read or write? What if there is abuse, neglect, or who knows what waiting for the kid at home? Gates seems to think if only we could raise that kid’s test score by 10 percent, all would be well.

Gates’s employees can’t be bothered with rudimentary fact-checking, nor can American print reporters. They’re all too busy fawning over him.

It broke my heart to see 3,400 teachers in Seattle doing precisely the same thing.

Thanks to Caroline Grannan for her sage counsel and invaluable advice.

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  • http://www.elfrank.net jelfrank

    Leave it to the AFT to choose someone who is anything but forward thinking. I’m surprised they didn’t choose Steve Jobs. That hypocrite blames teachers unions for the fall of civilization with distorted notions that tenure gives us “cradle to grave” security. But, he had no problem exploiting Einstein’s image in the “Think Different” (which should say, Think Differently) campaign. Obviously, Jobs didn’t know Einstein was a founding member of the AFT Princeton Chapter, and staunch union man and socialist. 

  • asdfi

    do you really believe what you’re writing? I have a hard time believing that you do. Say what you want about Gates, but the man does care about education as well as many other noble causes. These sort of mean spirited attacks don’t get us anywhere. 

    As to your 2nd point. I’m glad to hear money is not a motivator for you. Perhaps you’d consider taking a pay cut to fill some of NYC’s impending budget cuts.

  • Michael Fiorillo

    Notwithstanding his success as an entrepreneur (and monopolist), in regard to education the man is an idiot, or takes his audience to be composed of idiots.

    His factory analogy is a case in point, and is revealing of both his intellectual dishonesty and his contempt for the public schools and their students. First of all, in a factory, who is responsible for the workers “making crap (which, according to the analogy, is the students)? ” Do the workers design the product? Do they select the inventory? Do they control the production process? In other words, and typical of ed deformers, there is no accountability for management in this narrative, only workers.

    It was also revealing that he uses a factory analogy for the schools. Corporate ed deformers and their UFT collaborators are always yapping about the death of the factory model of education. According to them, we are all now liberated from the material world, and part of the information and knowledge-based economy. That’s another of their falsehoods: in fact, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, seven of the top ten fastest-growing job categories in the next ten years require little or no education or training (home health aides, customer service reps, food preparation, personal and home care aides, retail salespersons, office clerks, truck drivers).

    Oh, sorry, I forgot: a landscape of McJobs must also be the fault of teachers, who, using their dark arts, apparently make the decisions regarding investment and employment in this country.

    And also don’t forget, kiddies, our pensions have suddenly become the cause of the financial crisis facing localities, and are the reason school budgets are being cut.

    Nevertheless, our students are still being prepared for factory work, although the factory, with its regimentation, tedium and lack of autonomy, is now everywhere: the office, the hospital, the restaurant, the school. It’s a data-driven factory with bytes instead of drill bits, but still in the harsh grip of The Boss, people like Bill Gates, people with infinite greed.

    Maybe that’s the real message Gates was giving those Unity Caucus lemmings at the AFT convention: that there is no alternative, that the people charged with representing and defending you have instead turned you over to me, and that you must cooperate with your own destruction.

  • Paul Rubin

    Somebody is going to have to explain to me why those who found success in other fields suddenly have found the magic bullet to what’s wrong with public education. Klein (lawyer who tried and failed to make Microsoft toe the line), Gates (Harvard dropout but pulled the wool over IBM’s eyes to build Microsoft which now finds itself in trouble from all directions), Bloomberg (financial industry titan who bought consecutive elections), George Bush (bumbling doofus who used his family connections and money to succeed in politics). At least people like Arne Duncan and Michelle Rhee have a little time in the classroom if not a whole lot of common sense.

    This isn’t rocket science folks. Teachers need smaller class size with the hardest students requiring the smallest class sizes. They need ongoing training in classroom management, technology integration, and a wide variety of teaching methods. Teachers need scheduling flexibility, support from administration when interacting with parents and students. They need to be using a curriculum that makes senses beyond ELA and Math standardized test scores. And salaries should be high enough to not require second jobs ($70K to $150K in the tri-state area which is pretty expensive to live in; $60K to $125K average nationwide) so they can concentrate on their solo jobs. Salaries need to cover the entire spectrum up past 40 years so that veteran teachers have no urgent need to retire (that would help bring pension costs under control) OR allow retired teachers to continue their careers at a starting teacher’s salary which would maintain current salary structure but you’d have schools able to pick and choose from both new and veteran teachers without regard to money.

    I could come up with another 25 common sense ideas for improving American education. Some would save money. Some would cost. But the ideas would be growing FROM actual classroom experience, not some unrelated field. I have the highest respect for a great legal mind or the latest engineering design of a consumer device or proven financial acumen. None of those fields are education and it makes no more sense for a lawyer to dictate teaching methodology than it does for a banker to dictate the next consumer device’s user interface or a 6th grade social studies teacher to tell dentists how to deal with teeth.

    That’s the biggest problem these days. Too many people without working classroom and school building knowledge making decisions. And even when they have some knowledge, it’s often not varied enough to apply across grade levels OR varied student body makeups OR subject areas.

  • Michael Fiorillo

    Paul Rubin,

    A quibble: Arne Duncan has no classroom experience. He trots out the time he says he spent tutoring in his mother’s after-school program as the basis of his concern for education.

  • http://gothamschools.org/author/arthur-goldstein/ Arthur Goldstein

    John,

    Steve Jobs shares Gates’ attitudes about teachers, but doesn’t play nearly as active a role in “reform.” at least as far as I know.

    ASDF,

    Thank you so much for reading my column.  I’m glad you enjoyed it.

    Michael,

    The “making crap” remark is indeed interesting.  I hadn’t thought of it like that.  I hate to think my kids are being prepared for only factory work.   I believe there was a judge at one level of the CFE lawsuits who said something very similar–if the kids can be prepared for minimum wage labor, that should be good enough for anyone.  

    I didn’t realize Duncan had that valuable experience.  So that’s where his expertise comes from.

    Paul,

    I couldn’t agree more with every word you write.  None of the “reformers” seem to care about class size, and here in the reform capital of the country Tweed took hundreds of millions to reduce it, it went up, and there was no consequence whatsoever.  

  • CarolineSF

    Steve Jobs (and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak) both attended California public schools, just south of me in Silicon Valley, before it was Silicon Valley. U.S. News & World Report did an interesting piece in the late ’90s that I cut out and kept for years, comparing the California public schools in their (and my) pre-Prop. 13 era to today’s — and also to the exclusive private Lakeside School in Seattle that Gates and fellow Microsoft mogul Paul Allen attended.

    So that’s how I know that Jobs is a product of public education. I hadn’t heard his opinion of teachers, but at least public schools aren’t a total foreign country to him as they are to Gates.

  • Michael Fiorillo

    Caroline,

    His public school background notwithstanding, Jobs has said a lot of nasty things about public school teachers and unions. Thankfully for us, he has yet to put his money where his mouth is.

    And thank you for mentioning Proposition 13, which, like the bankruptcy of NYC in 1975, set in motion the ongoing crises in the public schools, and helped create the dynamics for the attacks against them.

  • Steve

    Great posting! I couldn’t agree more with your distinguishing between test scores and inspiring and preparing students for their futures, a distinction Mr. Gates will never appreciate or acknowledge. I used to teach AP Calculus, and I welcomed all students who wanted to take the class as long as I believed their underlying math skills were at least passable. As a result, I always ended up with a good handful of kids who scores a 1 or 2 on the year-end AP exam, but that never bothered me (or, thankfully, my principal). The reward came — invariably — the following year when those 1′s and 2′s, now college freshman, came back to visit and informed me, with the most gleeful of smiles, that they were getting A’s and/or 100′s in their college Calculus classes, and that they thought it was easy!! As far as I was concerned, I had done my job, benefiting not just the mathematical ‘haves’ but a good many of the ‘could haves’ as well. As you’ve suggested, it’s not always just about the scores, it’s about helping prepare kids for their future paths.

  • Smith

    Please tell me you made up the line about DVD’s.

  • http://gothamschools.org/author/arthur-goldstein/ Arthur Goldstein

    Caroline,

    The fact that Jobs went to public school redeems him at least marginally, and makes me feel at least a little better about being a Mac user.

    Steve,

    Thanks for your kind words.  It’s very gratifying when kids come to you like that.  Sometimes they come to me and thank me for having forced them to read their first book in English, so I know how you feel.

    Smith,

    I’m afraid not.  There’s a link to the video, if you want to see for yourself.  Perhaps we’ll all be replaced by DVDs.  I’ve no doubt Arne Duncan would approve, and the New York Post would write an editorial about the wisdom of doing so.

  • Retired Teacher

    I cannot understand why the AFT/UFT would invite and welcome such a speaker knowing that his agenda is to break unions as well as public education. I applaud those delegates who stood their ground and walked out.

  • Paul Rubin

    My mistake. I saw that he had been involved with education before being put in charge of Chicago schools. I didn’t notice that it was as director of some tutoring program, appointed by a childhood friend. Note: not a tutor within that program necessarily. Another expert education reformer without classroom experience. The list is endless.

  • CarolineSF

    As I understand it, Duncan’s childhood friend gave him a job running some nonprofit — not anything where he actually spent time in a classroom with real live kids. His actual experience teaching was limited to helping in an afterschool program that his mother ran.

  • http://www.queensteacher2.blogspot.com Queens Teacher

    Great post Arthur!!!!

    What I want to know is when did Gates decide that public education was to be his focus? Are his billions not keeping him busy enough?

  • http://incongressional.com Esteban Rodriguez

    Hubris, Queens Teacher. 

    Once again it is good to know some people are spreading the truth about this perverse reform movement. Nice work, Arthur.

  • http://gothamschools.org/author/arthur-goldstein/ Arthur Goldstein

    Retired Teacher,

    I think they would answer you by saying they are part of the conversation.  Unfortunately their strategy of appeasement seems to result only in further appeasement.

    Paul and Caroline,

    I am constantly amazed at the volume of education experts who have taught for months, weeks, or not at all yet tell me in great detail how schools should be run.

    Queens Teacher,

    There’s no denying Gates is an exceptional person.  That’s why it’s OK he dropped out of college.  However, I certainly wouldn’t hold that up as a model for my kid or my students.  And unfortunately, what makes him an educational expert is strictly the size of his wallet.

    Esteban,

    Thanks for the kind words.  I know you’re doing your part too.

  • Akademos

    Hubris, I like that answer. Maybe a mixture of philanthropy-for-show and business, controlled use of software for education, next frontier of software and hardware, the great online educational video-gaming system to replace public ed?

    I still think he’s missing his calling: Bill Gates Pie-in-the-face Online Clown College, to debut in Albany, but soon available anywhere that serves cream or custard.

    As to Gates’ talk with the placards in Arthur’s post: How painfully and infuriatingly stupid. I honestly don’t have the stomach to entertain any debate on those sub-moronic points and examples. Bravo for you Arthur. I can’t even look twice at that crap.

    Ditto on the rest of Esteban’s comment above. And everyone should read Leonie Haimson’s piece on the damage Gates actually done to schools at NYC Public School Parents blog.

  • http://theeducationstandard.wordpress.com Ari F.

    Arthur, as a teacher, shouldn’t you be giving suggestions of what should be done, rather than complaining about someone trying to do something? Bill Gates is not evil. He doesn’t want to destroy people. Obviously, he thinks teachers are important if he went to AFT to talk.

    I also wonder whether you actually believe some of the statements you make or if you are angry so you want to find something. Yes, your administrator can walk into your classroom anytime he wants. There are certainly contracts that do limit whether unannounced visits are allowed to be used in evaluation. Does your contention with his statement mean that when Gates says teachers aren’t usually given meaningful feedback that you disagree? At the schools I’ve worked at and visited, I know plenty of examples of administrators who pop their heads in once or twice in a semester, give the teacher some check marks on a piece of paper as their “evaluation” and that’s it.

    What about your anger at his use of charts to show that teaching effectiveness plateaus fairly quickly or that a masters degree isn’t a reliable way to show effectiveness? Can you tell me in all honesty that all the teachers who got Masters went through rigorous, credible programs? When I taught at a high school in Arizona, most of the teachers going for their Masters were getting online degrees from schools with open admissions policies that have you complete some activities and send them back. I am sure that you are a great teacher who cares and works his butt off to improve his instruction. That doesn’t mean all teachers or even most teachers are constantly improving. The data of plateauing isn’t a lie. You can see a study here: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/news-events/news/press-releases/pepg-study-june-2010

    Essentially, his point is that the education of lots of students is horrendous. You can’t argue with that. There are lots and lots of terrible teachers who shouldn’t have jobs or at the very least, shouldn’t be paid more than teachers who are doing better than them. Do you think it’s fair to you that you are making as much as a teacher who sits and twiddles his thumbs all day?

    Now, I don’t want you to think that I believe teachers are THE problem in schools. There are plenty of other problems. There are many things that teachers are simply not equipped to handle. But Gates isn’t putting $35 billion out there to destroy teachers. You are lucky to teach in a school system with some accountability or at least one that’s working its way toward that. Is it really a problem that Gates is funding districts that move away from seniority-based pay scales? Or research into universal standards? Or innovative teacher training systems?

    People are fawning over him not because he has the answer or even because everything he’s doing is productive. People are awed by him because he is setting an example that few are courageous enough to follow. He literally spends all of his time giving away his money and convincing other rich people to do the same. Is that a reason to hate him because he isn’t the world’s foremost expert? No, it’s a reason to offer advice, which can only start when we reach out, rather than act divisive.

  • http://gothamschools.org/author/arthur-goldstein/ Arthur Goldstein

    I’m afraid I’ve limited myself to addressing only what Gates said, not what he thought.  

    I would not be surprised if studies bore out Gates’ statements about test scores.  On the other hand, I wouldn’t be surprised if other studies suggested other things entirely.  I’ve seen studies on both sides of the class size issue, and I’ve seen people argue both sides passionately.  I can tell you 25 years of teaching classes of widely varying sizes informs me that I want my kid in the smallest class possible, and I want your kid in that class too.  Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein wanted their kids in classes like that, and I don’t blame them at all. 

    I write what I see.  Perhaps you can produce a study that says I don’t see these things.  However, until you can, and unless you’re certain there are no contradictory studies,  there’s really no ground for your questioning what I believe.   Maybe you can read Bill Gates’ mind but I assure you you cannot read mine.  Don’t worry about what I think you believe.  I have no idea what you believe and wouldn’t presume to tell you.

    I’m very interested in the contracts to which you refer.  Could you please provide links?  I looked and was unable to find them. 

  • ASTRAKA

    Ari_f. If Gates believes “that the education of lots of students is horrendous” let him spend his money and effort in reducing class size. He should let educators with experience to reform education or evaluate teachers’ performance. He is a very successful, college drop out, billionaire. That does not make him an expert in education.

  • Pogue

    Ari, you state… 
    “Can you tell me in all honesty that all the teachers who got Masters went through rigorous, credible programs? When I taught at a high school in Arizona, most of the teachers going for their Masters were getting online degrees from schools with open admissions policies that have you complete some activities and send them back.”

    So, I’ll agree with you, I too am wary of the push for online schooling, whether for teachers or students.  Thus, I consider you a comrade in our distrust and disapproval of the Gates Foundation and their love of online schooling.

    “Online Learning Gets High Praise From Bill Gates”, U.S. News and World Report, January 28, 2010.

    Got Microsoft stock?

  • Akademos

    Ari F.

    The whole plateauing debate is old news. What’s been demonstrated is a strong suggestion that given silly constraints people on average find their bearings and comply to the extent that student scores on silly assessments are achieved and maintained within about 3 or 4 years time. This doesn’t necessarily mean anything regarding real teaching or real learning; it doesn’t take into consideration burnout or stress from waves of failed reforms or insane school administrations; nor does it factor in any differentials between newbies vying for tenure (and perhaps starting out — 1st year — with the worst classes possible) and veterans starting families and/or falling into the grips of school cultures, conflicts, extra responsibilities, helping out newbies or other colleagues in a jam.

    Now, granted, it’s not a total waste of time to do these studies, but to go from their results to making the categorical statement that teachers don’t improve, that their jobs on the whole are of such limited skill and creativity that they all flatline after three years, is a highly provocative and revealing spectacle. (We’re talking about using human minds to work with and shape other human minds! Incredible. To compare that to menial labor or tinkering with a product . . . ) And if you believe Gates has any real sense at all regarding education, you have to conclude that it’s a willful misconstruction.

    As far as making suggestions goes, Ravitch has been doing so over and over and over. The suggestions of many commenters at Gotham Schools parallel hers. I won’t get into it here. But when SO MUCH is being swept under the rug, and SO MANY voices (and suggestions) studiously ignored and steamrolled over, mere suggestions don’t seem to get very far. (Though, like I said, they’ve been made, over and over and over.) Timely exposure of gross misrepresentation is critical, and responsible.

  • http://incongressional.com Esteban Rodriguez

    This article was picked up at democratic underground.

    http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/6476

  • Top

    In reading the comments concerning the plateauing of teachers I recalled an old axiom referred to as the “Peter Principle.” This axiom states “Sooner or later every person in a corporation will rise to or exceed the level of his or her own incompetence. Or as an old Marine Corps Master Sergeant read from Murphy’s Law: Book 1: Corporations are like cesspools, the larger chunks tend to rise towards the top. So if these teachers weren’t all that great at teaching with a Bachelors degree, getting a Masters may not necessarily help. What would help is to do something like they do in Norway, which does require all teacher to have a Masters to even start teaching. Norway puts new teachers IN the same class as their mentor teacher for five years. Students get two teachers, not one; everyone finds out if that new teacher is going to do a great job; and it allows new teachers to get experience guided by someone with practical knowledge so that if a mistake is made it will caught and corrected immediately, e.g. a student is “scarred for life” by someone’s inexperience (not incompetence).

  • Top

    Oh, I forgot. We have seen a decline in the customer service offered by corporations because they routinely get rid of their (higher paid) more experience workers for the lower wage inexperienced person we get to deal with. Works great for the bottom line of the company, but is not good for the people side of things….which is what schools work with. The “Blueberry Story” comes to mind (http://www.jamievollmer.com/blue_story.html).

  • http://gothamschools.org/author/arthur-goldstein/ Arthur Goldstein

    Top,

    Don’t you think student teaching is at least somewhat akin to what you describe in Norway?

    Also, I distinctly recall Circuit City following the model you described, getting rid of everyone who knew what a gigabyte was, and going out of business the following year.

  • Jim Mothersbaugh

    First off, I am a parent, a teacher, a citizen, AND a student; I don’t like having to select just one!
    Just one comment: Gates says teachers don’t improve after three years. So that means HE’S not improved in the fourth-present years that he has run Microsoft? Oh, wait; I see. Business is different…

  • I noticed that…

    With some slight changes: Once somebody has [been a mayor or chancellor] for three years, their [leadership] quality does not improve thereafter.

    Jim,

    I guess Bloomberg and Klein have not improved in their 9th year in office. Gates should inform them that they reached a plateau.

    Oh wait a minute, Jim, you’re right. Business is totally different…

  • http://gothamschools.org/author/arthur-goldstein/ Arthur Goldstein

    Actually, I believe a mayor or chancellor gets three terms, not years, to improve.  If they fail to do so, they have to change laws and spend another 150 million bucks to get a fourth term.

    No transformation models or closings for them. Business is completely different.

  • Akademos

    Right, and on the 17th year they come out of the ground like a cicada and start all over again, oddly repackaged in any old political party, yet seemingly middle-of-the-road and sincere at first blush.

  • http://MoreThoughtful.blogspot.com Alexander Hoffman

    Gates was exited when he spoke of KIPP because, “The teacher was running around, and the energy level is high … and the teacher was constantly scanning to see which kids weren’t paying attention, which kids were bored and calling on kids rapidly, putting things up on the board…keeping people engaged and setting the tone that everyone in the classroom needs to pay attention.”

    And Gates thinks that watching a recording of a great teacher is the same thing as being taught.

    We don’t need to convince him that he’s wrong. We just need to convince him that he is right. That is, he was right the first time.

    ****************************

    But this is a basic mistake that a lot of people make, especially people in very technical fields (law, IT, etc.). There is a difference between explaining and teaching. Explaining is a part of teaching, but not close to the most important part. 

    Diagnosing and inspiring are much harder. Even Gates can realize how important they are when he sees them, but for some reason he forgets when he tries to come up with prescriptive solutions. 

  • http://gothamschools.org/author/arthur-goldstein/ Arthur Goldstein

    I couldn’t agree more.  Another question is whether or not Gates is aware of the contradiction.  If so, he’s disingenuous.  If not, he’s quite careless, even reckless for someone with such self-granted and wide-ranging influence.

  • http://MoreThoughtful.blogspot.com Alexander Hoffman

    To me, that’s the key.

    He by dint of his money and willingness to spend it enormously influential in areas in which he has no practical experience or formal course of study. Thus, he is in no position to evaluate the truth of what he told, or even the plausibility. Instead, he must go by his own “common sense,” and then find people who agree with that “common sense.”

    This is no different than our elected leaders, but we — as a society — have the option to remove those leaders. We do not have that option with Mr. Gates, and nor do the people of other countries. 

    The reason why I am committed to education, and why I believe even our best schools have a long way to go, is that so many people make this sort of mistake. They are not thoughtful enough even to realize when their own example and reasoning undermine their conclusion. Obviously, as human beings are perfectly capable of — and prone to — reformulating our reasoning to match our desired conclusions, but Mr. Gates — a college drop out — is not even doing that.

    One again, so-called reformers cannot even put together a coherent argument to support their desired programs. That’s no surprise. The shocking thing is that this particular guy not only get people who need his money to listen to him, but that he gets others to give him greater and greater platforms.

  • http://gothamschools.org/author/arthur-goldstein/ Arthur Goldstein

    “…so-called reformers cannot even put together a coherent argument to support their desired programs.”

    That’s a remarkably simple statement, and seems to say it all.  I’m still waiting for one solitary example of the contract to which Gates referred, which he claimed reflected a “normal” school.  And even if one is found, in some distant universe, how on earth can it be construed as “normal?”

    One of the good things about having billions of dollars is no one bothers you with such troublesome questions.  I’m reminded of the song in Fiddler on the Roof, where Tevye the milkman confides, “When you’re rich, they think you really know…”

    Still, one would hope union leaders and members would know better.  

  • CarolineSF

    Oh,boy, does that beg for a parody, Arthur. But yes, even the real words work pretty well — time for a flash mob at the next Bill Gates appearance? I’m bringing my accordion.

    The most important men in town will come to fawn on me/They will ask me to advise them/Like a Solomon the wise/If you please, Reb Bill Gates/Pardon me, Reb Bill Gates/Posing problems that would cross a teacher’s eyes/And it won’t make one bit of difference if I answer right or wrong/When you’re rich they think you really know.

  • http://gothamschools.org/author/arthur-goldstein/ Arthur Goldstein

    Somehow I keep hearing, “If I were a hedge fund..”  It doesn’t make much sense, but what does these days?   

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