Why is Bill Gates so concerned about those that have taken on Achieve’s Common Core State Standards?
The answer is that the Gates Foundation has invested about $2.3 billion into the Common Standards and related efforts. Please read ahead.
In public speeches, Gates has called out those who try to interfere with the implementation of the Common Standards. When Gates first used his billions to reach out to eduction, there was some glimmer of hope. The Gates Foundation idea of funding smaller high schools appeared to be a plausible conception. But things changed, and as we’ve seen, someone with a lot of money can influence organizations in ways that ordinary classroom educators can not.
Soon the Gates Foundation began to fund efforts that, in my view, undermined the work of professional teachers. Gates own simple conception of “measuring” student learning, has been accepted by many politicians and state education bureaucrats. Test the students when they come into your class. Test them when they go out to summer play. Subtract the scores, and there you have it. A measure of what student learned.
He continues:
College-Ready Grants: $2.3 Billion
But the truth is that the Gates Foundation has provided much more money than the $204,350,462. This figure is based on only 161 of the grants from the College-Ready category of grants. The Gates Foundation awarded more than 1800 projects in the group of College-Ready grants, which is one of the main goals of the Common Core. I’ve not downloaded the data from the 1800 grants into Excel. You might want to go to the Gates website and take a look at the data for these grants. But we can do a rough estimate based on the 161 grants that were analyzed.
If we use the average grant of $1,269,258., then the estimated amount funded to support Common Standards and related education programs by Gates is $2,306,241,786 (that $2.3 billion).
Some may balk at that figure, but it’s reasonable to make the connection. I think we can all agree at least that Gates has invested a boatload of money into the Common Core.
Related
Gates, Not the States, Driving Education Policy?
Further evidence that the Common Core is special-interest driven and led, not state-led. Joy Pullman writing for the Heartland Institute’s School Reform News pointed out how the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is driving education policy through its funding. Some excerpts: A recent example was a January legislative hearing on…
In "Common Core State Standards"
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