Behind the Gates money, a new ed reform strategy

TAMPA -- As we reported today and last August in the St. Petersburg Times, the Hillsborough County schools may be holding a $100 million lottery ticket from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

If it won, the district would use the money to revamp its teacher evaluation system; add a corps of 200 peer evaluators to help rate colleagues; bolster its teacher induction and mentoring system; and create a cutting-edge pay system that would allow high performing teachers to jump ahead on the salary scale.

So who are these Gates people, and what are they up to?

As it happens, the foundation has been much in the news lately, due in part to the lagging economy and the Obama administration's decision to invest $5 billion into innovative and reform-minded education programs.

The Associated Press reports that the foundation has offered $250,000 to each state that wants help crafting a Gates-friendly application for federal "Race to the Top" funds. While a few pundits have complained, cash-strapped states have jumped at the chance to get an edge in the aforementioned race for federal dollars.

It's only been a year since the foundation stepped back into the fray of education reform, after a pause to reflect on the $4 billion-worth of spending it made on small schools and other innovations during the previous eight years.

In announcing the foundation's latest efforts, Microsoft founder and co-chairman Bill Gates conceded that its previous investments had largely fallen short.

"In some districts, we got tacit agreement to move forward, but then the schools weren't willing to do the hard things -- like removing ineffective staff or significantly increasing the rigor of the curriculum," he told a national audience in late 2008.

"It's clear that you can't dramatically increase college readiness by changing only the size and structure of a school," Gates said. "The schools that made dramatic gains in achievement did the changes in design and also emphasized changes inside the classroom."

The foundation's lesson, officials said, was to focus on the critical importance of developing effective teachers and getting them into more classrooms. It announced plans to spend $1 billion on new reforms, with the long-term goal of making 80 percent of America's high school graduates ready for college.

Half the money would go toward improved data-gathering, analysis, and the development of common national standards and assessments. The other half would fund teacher effectiveness studies in three to five school districts. Those "deep-dive" sites -- potentially including Hillsborough -- would serve as the foundation's laboratory for identifying, training and rewarding effective teachers, said education program director Vicki Phillips at the 2008 gathering.

Being a private foundation, Gates gets to put money behind the things it believes in, like performance pay, incentives for working in high-needs schools, and tough standards for awarding tenure to teachers.

It also gets to say what it thinks, sometimes in unvarnished terms.

Speaking to a crowd filled with luminaries from the ed policy world -- including then-Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings and the man who would soon fill her shoes, Arne Duncan -- Phillips said that many teachers and parents were a bit fed up with student testing. Collecting data on student performance is important, she said, but it can easily be misused.

"Let's be honest, one of the main things we do with data is make ourselves look good," said Phillips, the former superintendent of the Portland (Ore.) Public Schools. "We have a big problem when kids are looking great on state tests and then can't get into college."

By the time it was all over, education historian Diane Ravitch told the Gotham Schools blog, it was clear who was the most important education policymaker in the room.

"In a way, being Secretary of Education is less significant than being Bill Gates," she said, referring to the historically paltry federal sums available for discretionary spending. "I'd rather be Bill Gates."

-- Tom Marshall, Times Staff Writer
tmarshall@sptimes.com
http://twitter.com/tomsptimes

Comments

[CM]

There is the termie method to improve the schools . . . no wait. He doesn't have a plan. He can only critisize any (every) leader who tries to improve the system.

I am not a big fan of the "Gates" agenda, but a $100 million increase for just Hillsborough would reflect the kind of multi-billion dollar increase statewide that the Legislature is unwilling to invest. I am more concerned that the DOE will get $1 billion from the feds and waste it on developing a huge technology project for themselves in Tallahassee. They did this with FAIR, and how did that work out for the students?

[Janet Clark for Super!]

Where is the money for performance pay coming from, our $290 paycuts? At least Tampa is receiving outside funds from a huge grant. This is insane to expect Florida teachers to give up their contracted pay and give it to performance pay. Dr. J and these state lawmakers need to go.

[FloridaTeacher]

Perhaps the "powerful" teacher's union might want to look at the peer evaluation scheme- are the cafeteria works and other non-instructional personnel also to be be "peer-evaluated" ? If not, I see a lawsuit
in the future.

And just what would these 200+ peer evaluators be paid for this additional task- and if they are hauled out of the classroom to evaluate, who will educate their students while they are gone?

More grandiose schemes from a "stupor-intendent" !!!!!!!

I sincerely hope we do NOT get that Gates grant if all the money will go to making my job harder!

[teacher-mom]

Um, we're forgetting something here. The students.We COULD use that money to tutor those being "left behind".OR--we COULD use that money to expand our vocation trining schools/programs and enable students to graduate with a way to earn as living. They are NOT all going to college! We need to stop lying to them and teach them what they NEED to know for the REAL world. Oh, yeah--we can use some help with mentoring teachers, and paying them better, too. My school sure could use some updated technology.Someone with some sense needs to be involved in this thing.

[ISEEDUMBPEOPLE]

"It is nice to know that Hillsborough County schools are going to use the huge amount for the betterment of teachers."

Did you read the part of this article that said the school district would create "a corps of 200 peer evaluaters to help rate colleagues". Please explain to me how these two hundred people are going to help educate students....they would be bette off being used as tutors for students, not teachers.

RICAEXAM needs to look closely at the pressure they are putting on some of the hardest working, most educated people in our country (teachers) and then take a look at how much these people make. They are trying to take away job security. They are taking away our feeling of professionalism. They are taking away our autonomy to do wehat we were educated to do...etc. etc.

Then RICAEXAM needs to go and look up what the average SANITATION WORKER makes in Pinellas County.

After doing this, RICAEXAM should be asking....how could these PFP advocates seriously be talking about teacher quality out of one side of their mouths, asking them to burden even more pressure, when they could make more driving a garbage truck (and saved a whole lot in student loans too).

PFP advocates are NOT really looking out for what is best in education for teachers or students...they want to create a situation where they can take all the credit and have a fall guy if things dont work out.

Teachers and the Public need to stand up against this nonsense.

[RICA exam]

Thanks for sharing the information. It is nice to know that Hillsborough County schools are going to use the huge amount for the betterment of teachers. To uplift the education level, to think for the betterment of teachers is must. There are many other institutions also that may come forward or this noble cause.

[terminator]

the Gates strategy is really quite simple.
It's merely an extension of the Jeb Bush agenda:
constantly smear teachers and make them scapegoats for all that is wrong with public education.
convince right wing legislators/greedy school districts they can go cheap by eliminating annual raises for all teachers and instituting performance based pay which only 10 of the teacher force will receive (and that will be the guys with brown stuff dripping off their noses).
then with the money they save on drastically underpaying teachers and support staff, they can spend on more bureaucracy and creating cushy no show jobs for friends of a friend, buy more shiny new bells and whistles, roll out more unproven snake oil programs, force teachers to pay more out of pocket for health insurance adding more cushion to their bloat, eliminate teacher tenure and be able to fire people at will.
Gates and Jeb are eduNazis out to commit a holocaust against Florida students, teachers and taxpayers.
Who's making all the money off testing and what stake do Gates and Jeb have in it?

[Educator]

Schools in LaPorte, Indiana have been successfully doing peer evaluations for many years. It probably would be very cost-effective to network with the LaPorte school system and capitalize on their success.

[Educator]

Schools in LaPorte, Indiana have been successfully doing peer evaluations for many years. It probably would be very cost-effective to network with the LaPorte school system and capitalize on their success.

[redisni]

I love this quote: "'Let's be honest, one of the main things we do with data is make ourselves look good,' said Phillips, the former superintendent of the Portland (Ore.) Public Schools."
It only confirms that any research presented to the public is manipulated to favor a political/social agenda. It is very difficult to quantify what makes an effective teacher, but greed is a great motivator for districts to swear they can find a way to measure it.

Regarding performance pay, MAP is a failure that only frustrates great educators in low-performing schools that see their peers trenched in AP or other high level courses in high-performing schools enjoy the majority of the bonuses without having contributed to raise the bottom quartile of those schools students (read a previous report in this blog).