In a 5,000-word article, the New York Times (9/7, Sorkin, Subscription Publication) details how the idea for the controversial “Common Core Standards Initiative” originated in 2008 after Bill Gates watched the Teaching Company’s “Big History” course while working out in his private gym. The course, taught by Australian professor David Christian, “wove together... a unifying narrative of life on earth.” In 2011, Gates and Christian collaborated and launched the Big History Project in five high schools. Since that inaugural effort, “Gates and Christian — along with a team of educational consultants, executives and teachers, mostly based in Seattle — have quietly accelerated its growth.” The article notes that, “this fall, the project will be offered free to more than 15,000 students in some 1,200 schools.”
Gates Urges Teachers To Help Explain Common Core
The Washington Post (3/15, Layton) reports Bill Gates “called on teachers Friday to help parents understand the new Common Core academic standards in an effort to beat back ‘false claims’ lobbed by critics of the standards.” Addressing the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, Gates said, “There are many voices in this debate but none are more important or trusted than yours.” The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation “has spent more than $170 million to develop and promote” the standards.
Gates Foundation Considering California Common Core Grant Program
EdSource Today (1/10) reports that though it has “largely steered clear of making education grants in California over the past half-decade,” the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is considering a series of grants to help with Common Core-related professional development in the state. The article notes that the foundation has given the Fresno and Long Beach USDs $5 million grants “for innovative ways to pursue training in the new math and English language arts standards.” The piece says that the foundation is “impressed with Fresno’s and Long Beach’s proposals” and “will decide by late spring whether to expand that initiative to networks of districts that may affect 25 percent to 30 percent of California’s 6 million students.”
Concerns Over Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Influence On Education Policy
Education Week (11/6, McNeil, Sawchuk) reports that there are growing concerns about the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s influence on education policy partly “because so many policy actors,” including the US Department of Education, “have amplified ideas it espouses.” The Race to the Top competition “and federal waivers conditioned on similar principles are credited with influencing most of the states to revamp their teacher-evaluation policies, often in ways that mirror the Gates agenda.” Additionally, several top ED officials came from the foundation, and Education Secretary Arnie Duncan “lured many to work for him from other private-sector organizations that receive significant funding from Gates. “Brad Jupp, a senior program adviser on teacher initiatives at the Education Department, said the foundation should be credited “for influencing us, but there were many other factors that influenced us,” adding, “We share common goals and share some theories of action.” The article also says Jupp “praised the foundation’s teacher-quality focus, saying its work built a logical argument for focusing on teacher effectiveness.”
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Profiled
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.”
Survey: Most Teachers “Enthusiastic” About Common Core
Liana Heitin writes at the Education Week (10/8) “Teaching Now” blog that according to a new survey from Scholastic and the Gates Foundation, 97% of US teachers are aware of the Common Core Standards, and “73 percent of math, English, science, and social studies teachers” in Common Core states “say they are enthusiastic about” implementing them.