Near the end of a public letter issued today, the CEO of the Gates Foundation included a quasi-apology for how they’ve handled their support of the Common Core Standards:
Of course, perhaps they should have also talked to us all about if, on a list of needs, did we all think a new set of standards was really that high?
You can read more about it in Ed Week’s article, Gates Chief Acknowledges Common-Core Missteps.
I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning About The Role Of Private Foundations In Education Policy.
The big problem is that they still support the Common Core, and only think that their big miscue was a failure to communicate its putative benefits. This means that they still haven’t grasped the inadequacy of those standards, six years after they were released and began to be put into effect. When rich part-time amateurs get behind an education policy, it’s a crapshoot as to whether the public will win or lose. Poor children in America have been losing for so long that their families are somewhat inured to it; but when the mainstream reformer policies moved out of the ghettos and into middle class neighborhoods, the resistance grew pretty fierce, and the Gateses guess the problem has been one of messaging rather than the real one, a continuing lack of competitiveness inside standards drawn up with too little attention and understanding about what America’s competitors have been doing successfully.