Education Week (11/6, Sawchuk) profiles the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which “has spent nearly $700 million on its teacher-quality agenda,” including “the development of teacher-evaluation systems, district initiatives experimenting with new ways of training and paying teachers, and related research projects,” as well as advocacy groups backing increasing instructional quality as “the key to erasing achievement gaps.” The foundation is “widely seen as the most influential independent actor in a period of nationwide—and deeply contested—experimentation with the fundamentals of the teaching profession,” and many of the ideas it backs, “such as the use of test-score algorithms as part of teachers’ ratings, have become a mainstream part of K-12 education policy.”