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Bill Gates' New Education Plan

Where are the media headlines
that Gates plan #1 didn't work?

Put "Vicki Phillips" into a search on this site
for a look at the rough times schools face.


by Chester E. Finn Jr.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation summoned
130 or so education heavies (many of them
grantees) to Seattle this week to attend the
foundation's gala unveiling of its long-awaited
education strategy, the culmination of an
intense rethinking process spearheaded by the
new education director, Vicki Phillips. Bill
and Melinda took part themselves--and
graciously treated attendees to a well-fed
evening at their fabulous home.

There's much to like in the new plan, beginning
with the foundation's confession that version
1.0, focused on creation of small high schools,
didn't turn out very well, save for several
networks of high-performance charters such as
KIPP, Yes-Prep and Achievement First.

Version 2.0 continues the Gates emphasis on
successful high-school completion and college-
readiness for disadvantaged young people and
adds a parallel thrust toward college
completion. It features laudable--and
measurable--targets for both.

It includes welcome attention to developing
national standards and tests, markedly
strengthening education data (stay tuned for
the Fordham Institute's own contribution on
that front next week), enhancing research into
"what works," accelerating the development and
use of education technology and strengthening
teachers across multiple fronts. Incorporated
therein is piloting of performance-related pay
and tenure systems.

Two cheers are surely deserved. It's too early
to know, however, whether a third is warranted.
For what was emphasized in Seattle, and in the
materials released so far, is mostly an
educator's (and student's) version of education
reform, not a parent's, taxpayer's or
policymaker's version. Indeed, the word
"parent" scarcely appears, nor "choice,"
"charter" or "governance," nor much by way of
politics, policy or finance.

Though Version 2.0 includes a few controversial
items--national standards and performance pay
foremost among them--it's generally non-
confrontational and educator-pleasing, even
teacher-centric. (It seemed particularly odd,
given the praise lavished on KIPP et al, to
find no mention in the documents of building
more high-quality charter networks or the
policy surroundings and human-capital
arrangements in which these can flourish.)

True, not even mega-bucks Gates can attend to
everything that aches in the K-12 (and now also
postsecondary) sphere, and focus is a good
thing. Yet surely the foundation could move
more swiftly toward its ambitious goals if it
also paid close attention to the political and
policy environments within which they are
plausible--and if it made shrewd use of public
pressure, competitive forces, alternative
delivery systems and its own financial clout.

Comment On This Story
Why not, for example, stipulate that future
grants will only be made in states that permit
student results to be linked to teacher
evaluations--now barred by New York and
California, among others--and that give kids
the right to exit dreadful schools for better
ones? Why not insist on longitudinal data
systems and the embrace of common standards and
tests before anybody gets another Gates penny?
That says: You want our money? You create the
policy conditions within which we believe
success is likely.

Any such hardball moves would lead to grousing-
-and it's the rare philanthropist who doesn't
prefer to be thanked rather than denounced--but
deploying a few sticks along with the carrots
produces faster and more durable results.
American K-12 education has an infinite
capacity to absorb money, even to go through
the motions of doing what the donor wants--so
long as the outside funding lasts.

Building lasting change into the system,
however, is a very different proposition. It
only happens when laws, policies and ingrained
practices change. Unlike other foundations,
Gates is spending enough in this area--several
top staffers will have grant budgets in the
hundreds of millions--to induce policy shifts
if it's forceful with requirements; yet not
even Gates has enough money to bring about
large and lasting changes just by being
generous. That's one lesson to be drawn from
the Annenberg precedent and from parts of Gates
1.0 itself. There were signs, though, that
foundation leaders may be drawing a more
questionable conclusion from their earlier
experience.

"To be successful, a redesign requires changing
the roles and responsibilities of adults, and
changing the school's culture," Bill Gates said
on Tuesday. "It's clear that you can't
dramatically increase college readiness by
changing only the size and structure of the
school."

He was, of course, admitting that the
foundation's high-profile "small schools"
initiative hadn't paid off in terms of changed
outcomes--and he and his team deserve plaudits
for acknowledging this. But if that realization
is leading his team to shun "structural"
reforms in favor of classroom-level changes
only--merely reconstructing "the learning
partnership between teacher and student" as
their new materials put it--they're apt to end
up disappointed once again.

It's true that "changing only the size and
structure of the school" doesn't get the job
done. But neither does changing only what
teachers do. The "partnership" that Gates wants
to alter operates within a dense, tight web of
rules, laws, contracts, bureaucratic
structures, habits, licensure requirements,
training regimens, HR systems and a hundred
other factors best described as policy and
structure.

The new Gates strategy seems to presuppose that
they'll continue working on that stuff, too.
But they don't say how--or how much money or
elbow grease it will get. And I wonder if
they're prepared for the conflict and pushback
that invariably accompanies any effort to
disrupt the established regime.

The teacher union chieftains in Seattle were
polite but they won't stay that way if the
foundation does battle with their interests.
Neither, for that matter, will affluent parents
and others well-served by the present system.
Does Gates have the intestinal fortitude for
such conflict?

Yes, the strategy contains an "advocacy" strand
(and some very able people in charge of it),
and it was said from the podium that "we will
continue to support structural change." But
you'll find scant mention of this in their
documents, and it appears that their internal
budget allocations will treat the "helpers"
more generously than the "disrupters."

Disruption, per se, isn't the point, of course.
Durable change in outcomes is the point.
Achieving "transformational results for
students" is the foundation's stated and
thoroughly laudable goal.

But Gates seems to be wagering most of its
domestic K-12 billions on improving the
teacher-student "learning partnership." That's
a mighty risky road to transformation--a
slippery, muddy cliff-side passage prone to
rockslides and earthquakes, which vehicles
slide right off unless the engineering is very
smart and the guardrails very sturdy.

Nobody should doubt the smarts of those leading
the Gates education program. But you may want
to withhold your third cheer for their new
strategy until it becomes clear whether the
policy guardrails are strong enough this time
to keep their hopes from tumbling down.

Chester E. Finn Jr. is a senior fellow at
Stanford's Hoover Institution and president of
the Washington-based Thomas B. Fordham
Institute.



— Chester E. Finn Jr
Forbes.com
2008-11-13
http://www.forbes.com/2008/11/13/bill-gates-education-oped-cx_cef_1113finn.html?partner=email

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