Bill Gates Goes to School

Your article states <He's worried about a "negative feedback cycle" with lower production and unemployment feeding off each other.> When things feed off each other and continue to go in the same direction, it is called positive feedback. The term 'adverse feedback loop' is sometimes used to describe positive feedback when its outcome is adverse. If you Google "define:positive feedback" and "define:negative feedback" you will confirm my observations.

As a teacher, one of the things that American schools have to face is the fact that we are outnumbered where China and India are concerned. The top 10% of China's students total more than all the U.S. students combined. This means that all of our students, from the best and brightest to the student in the self-contained special education classroom, are in competition against the best of the best from other countries like China and India.

That said, of course our numbers look bad when you compare them to other countries. They test their best, we test everyone. Using that kind of scoring, American students are always going to look bad. This is not a reflection on the teachers, this is a reflection on the testing process.

Then, of course, there is the issue of at least some students not wanting to be educated. Again, that is not the teacher's fault, that is a lack of urgency within the student's themselves. Which leads to the splitting of hairs over who should light that fire under the student ... the parents, the teachers, society, and on and on.

I'm a good teacher. My students consistantly score in the 90% on my state's test. But as I look around, all I see is a society who thinks schools should be a catch all for every possible human issue, and I have to tell you, school's are failing because of it. It isn't lack of a goal, it's focus on too many goals at once. Putting out too many fires at once. Surely people in business can understand that a strong singular focus is 1000 times better than a million urgent focuses.

If you want schools to succeed in American, then you need to reduce schools to once focus, and one focus only: to educate. Everything else needs to be taken out of the picture. Set up other places for all the other issues.

My class can only move as fast as it's slowest student. That is the reality. So fill it full of students who are there to learn, have alternate areas for students who disrupt the process or have personal issues, and let me teach.

I'm really tired of the lack of parental involvement or bad teachers. That is a very circular argument I hear over and over again. Parents were less involved fifty years ago and yet children did better.
As far as teachers being not qualified, the certification process is actually the reason why. It wasn't done on accident either. The people in charge got exactly the kind of teachers they wanted, ones that would teach exactly the way they were told.

Let's all not forget how contaminated our food and water and medicine is and how it contributes to our children not thriving. Nothing is being done about that and I don't think Gates cares an ounce, in fact I would think he appreciates it, since it will lower the population. Cancer is exploding in children yet they play dumb.

Gates is yet another evil rich man trying to control populationsfor his own ends, like the way he supports Planned Parenthood. What else is new. His model isn't any different.
Children need less school, not more. The rage I feel hearing about Gates on the radio is indescribable. Just read The Underground History of American Education. John Taylor Gatto says it best., and he proves it.
Any home schooled child I know of has less school, not more and yet they do amazing things. It's called time, time to think, time to interact with family Gates wants easily controlled robots. He has no humanity.

When we compare our students scores on standardized tests to scores from other countries it is not taken into consideration that most countries do not test special needs children or those who are not on the university path. The government has lumped all our students into one big test pool and expects them all to succeed. What about individuality we so highly regard? The government has taken away music, art, drama, vocational education and in some instances sports. That might be fine in Mr. Gates world of business, but in reality we are dumbing down our society. I teach science and world history and I am amazed at what students don't know by the time they get to sixth grade. Elementary teachers are so focused on good test scores,other subjects have been denegrated to whenever "we" can fit it in. I am not accusing elementary teachers of not doing their jobs it's just government mandates that hurt the professsion. I have two masters degrees (curriculum & instruction and special education). I am also a National Board Certified teacher and Mr. Gate and Adler don't think I can be professional enough to do what is best for my students. I say we need to revamp the education system and get government out of it. Mr. Gates, Mr. Adler how did you get where you are today? Was it teachers that helped you be successful? In China the most revered occupation is teaching because "we" teach everyone else how to do their jobs.

Not a word, not one single word, in this column about the responsibility parents have in helping educate their child. Alter, sometimes you guys amaze me.

In the Stanford Teacher Education Program, as a student of the "union backed" candidate for secretary of education, Linda Darling-Hammond, I learned that one of the largest problems with the educational system right now is that teacher's are treated as if they are the problem rather than the solution. The problem with Alter, is that he looks to people like Bill Gates and congressmen to direct educational policy rather than the untapped resource of teachers as professionals who can adequately direct school reform. This is the problem with the Green Dot and Aspire Public School Charter organizations referenced in the article. They hire business executives and run their schools with business models when education is NOT a business. In spite of their "irrefutable" results, the students suffer. I taught at an Aspire Public School where "100%" of students went to four year colleges. The statistic is complete garbage. Do you know what happened to the students when they got there? We sent students to four year colleges where they crashed and burned. They weren't prepared for college, because while they were at our school, we only prepared them for the State Standardized multiple-choice tests. COLLEGES DO NOT ASSESS STUDENTS IN THIS WAY. Furthermore, charter schools cream. They take the best students and kick out the "problem children" thus further inflating their "irrefutable" success. Until teachers are treated as professionals, we look honestly at charter school data, and the student and teacher "accountability" mirrors the types of assessments students will see in college, American education will not move forward. Sadly, Jonathan Alters column and his infatuation with Bill Gates' corporate-based education policy is yet another step in the wrong direction.

Ultra-conservatism, like the ???trickle down??? concept, has much the same characteristics as found in illegal pyramid schemes. They are equal in that only a few people really benefit, that they are driven by self-interests, are infected with greed and dishonesty, are sold with attraction to people???s self-interests and greed, and depend on taking advantage of the majority. The fraud they can perpetrate results in the collapse of the infected systems (i.e., corporate corruption, Wall Street, mortgage industry, auto industry, religious extremism,,,) and can eventually even bring down the total economy (what we are close to today). Without the regulations, enforcement, controls, checks and balances needed to keep conservative methodology from being the run-away service of the powerful few, greed, dishonesty and self-indulgence naturally take over. As long as the focus is on total deregulation, completely open and fair-trade markets and on the unchecked pursuit of benefit for Special Interests and a select few, without real protection, consideration and concern for the majority, the natural result will be what we are experiencing today. This criticism is not liberal thinking advocating a large ???tax and spend??? government giving to a dependent population or advocating protectionism but rather is pragmatism, is simply reality demanding moderation and a centrist thinking that actually benefits everyone. The other choice is to continue down the road we have been on, with only very costly temporary delays.

Biased alignment v objective discernment: Can pre-committed voters make rational decisions? There is real value in the conservative philosophies of ???the least amount of government is the best government??? and that ???government should only do for the people that which they can???t do for themselves??? however, as we are currently experiencing most everywhere (corporate corruption, Wall Street failures, housing foreclosures, auto industry meltdown, religious extremists,,,), there is responsibility inherent in all of that which demands that there is liberal protection against the exploitation of the many by the few and for equitable and fair treatment providing real opportunity for everyone. Those who think smart, work hard and take the risk deserve to reap the rewards, however there needs to be real regulation, control and enforcement to insure that greed, dishonesty and/or self-indulgence doesn???t take over and allow the powerful few to take advantage ??? simply, balance is required to prevent ultra-conservatism, which promotes advantage to the few, and also to prevent extreme liberalism from creating a large ???tax & spend??? government, which inhibits real growth. Ultra-conservatism without the checks and controls provided by reasonable liberalism is like the pyramid schemes which advocate something that can???t work and will only benefit a few while victimizing the majority. We are currently being required to reactively address the failures occurring in many areas, with more to come, that are caused by an imbalance and a failure to be objectively proactive. Continuing as is, without responsibly and objectively recognizing the need for balance, could just be condemning the whole system to a catastrophe. As Collin Powell has intelligently articulated, (paraphrased) we really need more moderate, centrist and independent thinking to insure that the cancer doesn???t continue to infect and grow.

Teachers are everybody's favorite scapegoat as to why schools and students are failing, but I've see it otherwise. Incompetent administrators unfamiliar with teaching, children who know they can act with impunity, and parents of said children who think their offspring can do no wrong are the real problems facing our education. Teachers do need to be effective, but this should be a review conducted by teachers from other schools on a board that is regularly replaced. Teacher's do not go into education for the money (because it isn't there). They go into because they want to educate children, so to blame them for all the problems associated with out education system is horribly cruel.

First, I must apologize if I repeat previous comments. As a teacher with grading to get to tonight, I haven't read the other comments. However, I feel the need to comment on Mr. Alter's article. I completely supported moving toward a system of greater accountability for teachers....until I got into the classroom. Once I got a full-time teaching job I started to think about exactly how a teacher would be evaluated, and I realized I didn't have the answer. At least not for my school. I teach in an urban neighborhood school. We have over 2,000 students. We have 1 principal and 4 assistant principals, and I would never consider going to any of the 5 members of the administrative team for advice about teaching because they each have little or no actual teaching experience. I would have no problem having my pay or even my job being contingent upon a good evaluation of my classroom performance as long as I trusted the evaluation system. The problem I face is that I have absolutely no respect for the ability of the administrators in my school to be able to effectively evaluate a teacher. Many commentators, including Mr. Alter, fail to consider principal quality and competency when they discuss proposals to improve teacher quality through greater accountability. Obviously, there are other ways to evaluate a teacher besides having a principal observe in the classroom. Standardized testing scores are the obvious other choice though that option is problematic as well. At the same time, I can assure if you I had to choose between my principal observing me or using the test scores of my students to evaluate me I would not hesitate to choose the latter despite all of the problems I have with standardized testing.

I'm throwing down the gauntlet to Alder, Bill Gates, or any of the crew of so-called "educational reformers." Quit your job. and actually man a classroom in one of the worst public high schools in the country. Then the street-wise adolescents in your classroom three compelling reasons that they should do well on the plethora of boring, divorced-from -life standardized tests that we administer every spring. Remember the reasons have to "sell" to the students. Remember to "keep it real." And remember, the tests that you put so much faith in, actually have as much relevance to the lives of inner city students as a war of *** roaches on one of the moons of Uranus.
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Actually, as a recently retired teacher in one of those horrible inner city high schools Alder and Bill Gates so love to hate, I've done my share of experimenting with assessment exams. Our school constantly had one form of in-house assessment or another which we as teachers could score ourselves and get results within 24 hours. Under those circumstances, I could tell my students "If you fail this test, you get a BIG FAT F!" Since my students needed to pass my class in order to graduate, I could usually get results ranging from very good to phenomenal. Unfortunately the "BIG-FAT-F" approach does NOT work with standardized tests, since the test results don't get back to the students until the following year - long after my students have left my class, and long after the tests have faded from the typical student's memory.
It's amazing that in an age of computers and iPods our means of assessing education have not changed since the time I was in 7th grade back in 1958. Yet this is the measure that educational reformers use to praise or damn the stupid idiots foolish to teach in an inner city public high school. For adhering to this antiquated means of student assessment, Alder, Gates, and educational reformers deserve a BIG FAT F.
P.S. Although I actually have used the F-approach on the numerous, varied in-house test preps and assessments our schools gave to prepare for the real thing, I did offer alternatives to the Big, Fat F. Students who failed the assessment tests had to come in after school for remedial tutoring and they could "pass" the test that way. In many of the remedial sessions, students would tell me that they could have gotten the answer correct if they had only read the instructions or the passage. These confessions speak volumes about the way students regard the yearly assessment tests that the educational community accepts as The Holy Grail. I might also add that I taught in a magnet school, and that most of my classes were honors or AP - That also is one of the reasons for my test results.

Neither Bill Gates nor Jonathan Alder understand the Miller corollary regarding private and schools, including Bill Gates' KIPP schools: the success of a charter school is directly proportional to the number of students the charter school rejects and the length of the school's waiting list. The higher the rejection rate and the longer the waiting list - the more prestigious and the successful the school. A highly successful charter school preselect students on their ability to score high on the sacrosanct assessment tests and/or de-select students whose test scores make the school look bad. A highly successful charter school can, of course, include hard-core, hard-to-educate students with the understanding that it's my-way-or-the-highway This is the major reason that Bill Gates' KIPP schools succeed where other ordinary public schools fail.
I should know. I taught in a magnet program in an inner city school. In addition, I got honors and AP classes. I could always tell my students, "You chose to be in my class." That was a luxury many of my colleagues did not have. I usually, but not always, had a stable class from day one - so that I could hit the ground running, unlike many of my colleagues who had 50 students show up the first day with only 33 seats on hand.
The best way to improve public schools is to give them the same dumping rights that charter schools, including Gates' KIPP schools enjoy. Let them limit the enrollment of students. Give them the right to exclude less-desirable students and set up waiting lists. Let them send all the unwanted students to charter schools, Green Dot Schools, or Gates KIPP schools. Force charter schools to admit anyone who shows up whether there is room for them or not.
Is this the sort of public education system that Alder, Gates, or the much touted educational reformers really want? If not, then Alder should stop dumping on public schools for accepting the rejects. Perhaps so-called educational reformers should work with teachers' unions, rather than abolish them, and give teachers in inner city public schools the tools, the financing, and the empowerment they need to do their jobs.

Another article by Alter (who attended private schools himself) criticizing public education and blaming all of its ills on teachers and their unions. For heaven's sake, at least interview some successful teachers to get their opinions. Is Gates a product of public education? Does he understand that a school district's success may depend upon the financial support of its community, or the crime rate, or the number of students from single-parent homes, or the poverty level of the community? And how are the teachers in those schools to overcome all of these odds to succeed with students? These aren't Kipp schools with low class size and the right to cast out any student who does not perform. These are schools where the teacher is responsible for every learner, regardless of whether the student has any interest in learning or cooperating. This is not the first article of its kind from Mr. Alter. He hammers on this theme like those nuts who thought school choice was something other than public money going to private schools.How about a little objectivity. Or evidence to back up your claims that includes discussion with all the parties responsible for students?

Bill Gates for President!!!