Who is Dumber?: Bill Gates or the American People

So Bill Gates, the multi-billionaire, who has NO training in education and NO experience in education other than being a student, is now THE expert at how to solve this country's problems in education.  It is truly ironic that the American people are so in love with the rich that they will believe anything they say because they have money.

Let’s look at the facts. Yes, Bill Gates is an innovator in technology and, now that he is a billionair­e, he is giving some of his money to education. That should be commended. He is trying to improve education and make it better for all students. The problem that I have is that he has focused the issue in the media, once again, on teachers, particular­ly senior, experienced, well-educa­ted teachers, as the problem with failing schools and failing students. Nowhere does he discuss the real issues that plague schools that score poorly on state and national tests and that are mostly located in the low economic communitie­s: crime, malnutriti­on, transiency­, family stability, and healthcare­. Rather, he claims that a “great teacher” will make up for all these problems, even though there is a plethora of research that shows that all these detrimenta­l factors significantly influence kids’ ability to do well in school.

And, there is also plenty of research showing that new teachers, which he claims are better than experienced ones, are NOT more effective. In fact, if new teachers were the solution to the problem then why don’t schools with high rates of teacher turnover, such as schools in poor urban communitie­s, score better on state assessments? I have no problem with finding new and equitable ways to measure teacher effectiven­ess to improve practice, but hiring all new teachers and putting them in schools with large class sizes certainly isn’t the solution.

Now he has written an article in the Huffington Post that argues that spending is the problem in education, and he provides the public with a pretty little graph that shows the dollars spent per student annually from 1975-2007 (see www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-gates/bill-gates-school-performance_b_829771.html).  For example, the graph shows that we spent $5000/student in 1975 and approximately $10,000/student in 2007, a large increase in funding.  Alongside these data, the graph shows that over the same time span the reading and math scores of our students haven't significantly increased, the line is essentially flat.  Gates uses this simple source of data to support the favored Republican argument that we shouldn't "throw money at the problem."  What these data fail to show are the real-life issues that schools in poor urban communities have to understand, assist, and overcome so that their students succeed in school.  School success is not the same and should NOT be correlated with scoring well on a state or national standardized assessment that is invariably culturally, ethnically, and linguistically biased and that really doesn't measure more than how well a student can bubble-in the correct answer.  When poor students are worried about crime, food, shelter, and financial security, scoring well on state and national tests become meaningless, an after-thought.  Get real.

Please be critical readers and don't always accept the statistics represente­d on pretty graphs when they are used for political purposes.  Don't be dumb, think beyond what is stated, and believe in what you already know:  that if you are wealthy you will be fine, and if you are poor...I hope your bootstraps help you because Gates's policy won't.