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Can Bill Gates Fix Our Failing Schools?
Better late than never in posting these Gates gems about standards and phonics. Beware of billionaires who think they know what schools need.
Lyric Wallwork Winik
Two years ago, Bill Gates told the nation’s governors that he was appalled by America’s school system and feared for the future. Today, he tells PARADE, education is a priority for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Citing one example of failure in our current system, Gates notes that many black males drop out of high schools in the U.S. “It’s horrific that we tolerate that,” he declares.
The Microsoft mogul says the 20% of Americans who take honors classes and go on to college get an education "as good or better than anywhere else in the world. It’s the other 80% where the U.S. is weak." While educators debate the value of standardized tests, Gates is adamant that we need such tests and that ours should be tougher and more uniform. "Testing is the only objective measurement of our students," he contends. "It’s incredible that we have no national standard." As for those who say this will stifle creativity and lead to dull classrooms that only teach students how to pass tests, he replies: "If you don’t know how to read, it doesn’t matter how creative you are. More than a third of the people with high school diplomas have no employable skills."
How would he fix education? Surprisingly, Gates isn’t just pushing technology—although he’d like to help teachers via the Web, such as by putting exemplary lectures online. Instead, he thinks we’re flunking the basics, and they need to be fixed. He argues for using phonics to teach reading. "When we gave up phonics," he says, "we destroyed the reading ability of those kids." Other top needs: rewarding quality teachers and ending the disparities between urban and suburban schools. Gates also believes in small high schools, where students won’t get sucked into cliques. (He has given $130 million to New York City alone to create smaller high schools with new curricula.) "It all sounds minimal on paper," he says, "but the results are quite stunning."
— Lyric Wallwork Winik
Parade
2007-09-23
http://www.parade.com/articles/editions/2007/edition_09-23-2007/Intelligence_Report
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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