The Gates Foundation, for the first time in many years, is making a major move in California by funding substantial professional development efforts in two school districts and suggesting that they’ll making similar grants in the coming months.
According to the post in Ed Source by John Fensterwald, Gates is giving several million to the Fresno and Long Beach districts to develop this professional development around Common Core Standards.
Here are a couple of important excerpts from John’s article (and it’s also important to read the piece in its entirety):
[Gates is]impressed with how Fresno and Long Beach have worked with unions and teacher leaders to personalize professional development. One concept is to allot money to teachers for them to choose their method of training. Long Beach is launching what it’s calling iPD Challenge, using software that will enable teachers to create their own electronic portfolios of their training and subject matter needs, then schedule online collaborations and face-to-face meetings with colleagues with similar interests….
The Gates Foundation has been criticized for being too prescriptive in pushing a reform agenda. Districts and charter schools receiving money to develop an earlier teacher effectiveness model, for example, had to commit to count test scores as at least 30 percent of a teacher’s evaluation. But Shalvey said that in implementing Common Core, Gates believes that “you make investments in people and organizations and you must have give and take.”
At the end of the grant period, he said, Gates might be looking to see that a third of students had a “rigorous and robust learning experience with the experience of Common Core, and principals and teachers felt confident and competent they were teaching it well.” Results on the Smarter Balanced assessments, the new computer-based tests aligned to Common Core, would not be the only measure of success, he said.
Earlier this year, I wrote a post titled Gates Foundation Discovers It’s Important To Listen To Teachers — Better Late Than Never, where I commented on new efforts by Gates to engage with teachers, and ended it by saying:
I don’t really care if their motives are solely pragmatic or a genuine rethinking of their policies themselves. It’s also not important to me if they acknowledge their past mistakes.
There is only one thing that’s key, and it’s what they do now and in the future.
I also suggested recently in The Washington Post that the new Gates CEO might move them in a similar direction.
Of course, there are many reasons to be very, very wary of any private foundation trying to involve itself in schools (see The Best Resources For Learning About The Role Of Private Foundations In Education Policy) and Gates is the one we should be most wary of — see Arrogance, The Gates Foundation & The “Remembering Self”; Gates Foundation Minimizing Great Tools For Helping Teachers Improve Their Craft and Videotaping teachers the right way (not the Gates way). Those are just a few of many posts I’ve written about their countless negative impacts on schools.
And, speaking of destructive effects on schools, the article gives the impression that Gates might also try to funnel some of their money through the organization created by several districts in California (including the one where I teach) that received a federal waiver from NCLB regulations (see The Best Posts & Articles On The NCLB Waiver Given To Eight California School Districts (Including Ours) ).
Who knows how genuine of an effort this might be by Gates towards true conversation and engagement with teachers? And who knows if some districts have so “poisoned the well” with teachers by that decision to seek the waiver that there’s not enough trust left to make some kind of arrangement that would benefit teachers and their students?
Nevertheless, it’s a very smart move by Gates and, at the very least, offers some intriguing possibilities….
This is ok as far as it goes, but it still helps teachers standardize kids. Not a good time to sell out for a few bucks. It’s lie helping the lemmings go into the sea. try this http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2013/12/is-stumbling-and-bumbling-good-thing.html
I’ve certainly been a critic of the Common Core Standards. However, as I’ve shared before, based on my community organizing experience, I feel a need to live in the world as it is, not as I’d like it to be. Given that the CCSS are, unquestionably, the reality — in California, at least — I feel a need to figure out how to implement them in the most useful and least destructive way possible with my students:
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/classroom_qa_with_larry_ferlazzo/2013/01/response_honoring_struggle_in_common_core_for_language_arts.html
Larry
It’s my opinion that when we settle for living in the ‘reality’ of the world ‘as it is”, then we’re never, ever, going to get to the world as we would wish it to be… it’s endless sell-out and compromise… and maybe adults can justify it to themselves, but it’s kids who are being hurt and are having their life trajectories shaped by these sell-outs…. and they dont get a second chance….
I agree that we need to recognize the tension between the world as is and the world as we’d like it to be — if we don’t, then we risk either becoming unprincipled opportunists or hopeless sentimentalists. So I’m all for continuing to work towards creating the world as we’d like it to be. But I also think compromise and picking one’s battles are critical to being an effective teacher and an effective citizen.
Larry
“compromise” – funny word really…. implies two or more parties working out a way for each to get some of what they want…. giving up something to get something…
in real life, especially when dealing with people who hold massive amounts of power and money, it seems to me that the ‘little people’ are the ones who end up giving up A LOT, in return for very little….
and so far, in the ed reform going on around the country, I’ve not seen the powerful give up ANYTHING…. and the little people have been losing ground inch by inch, if not giving things up in spades…
I believe the whole point of organizing is to get to the negotiating table in order to make a deal — a compromise. As I said in the post, the jury is clearly out on how serious Gates is about what they’re saying. I’m saying that it’s worth exploring and, if they are genuinely open to changing (of course, that’s a big “if”), we might need to be prepared to accept “yes” as an answer.
Larry
Larry, as an education blogger in Seattle, I say good luck with that. Gates giveth and taketh and if you don’t go with his party line, watch that money go bye, bye.