Blog #11: Should Bill Gates be deciding where the money goes?

Some individuals, teachers, teacher unions, state educational boards and maybe even some within the Department of Education are wondering how his influence and more importantly his money will effect education. Of course Bill Gates won’t be the next Secretary of Education but his ideas, founded through The Gates Foundation, might push his agenda for a better educational system into the states that you teach. The Foundation has spent $200 million on elementary and secondary schools in the forms of grants already.


The co-founder of Microsoft, “Is taking unprecedented steps to spend millions to influence the way the federal government distributes $5 billion in grants to overhaul public schools” according to Libby Quaid and Donna Blankinship of the Associated Press.

How it works is state educational agencies can apply for the sum of $250,000 from Bill Gates to help them go after federal stimulus dollars set aside for education. The catch is that if your state is awarded federal money you will then follow guidelines setup by the Gates Foundation.

Don’t worry because the Obama Administration and the Gates agree on many similar strategies to improve education like, “Paying teachers based on student test scores, among other measures of achievement; charter schools that operate independently of local school boards; and a set of common academic standards adopted by every state”, the USA Today article said.

How do you feel about your pay being based on student test scores? Or charter schools? Or common academic standards?

Obviously many organizations and unions are questioning this agenda and many think that since two of Bill Gates former employees sit on the Sec. of Education inner circle there is some wrongdoing.

“It's no secret the U.S. education system is failing," Gates said. "We're doing all kinds of experiments that are different. The Race To The Top is going to do many different ones. There's no group-think,” was his response to these accusations.

If you’re unfamiliar “The Race to the Top” is the government program, not the Gates Foundation program.

Another issue is, “The foundation's rising profile comes as the recession has gutted state and local budgets, which spend more money on education — roughly 35% — than anything else. Many states and districts can't keep all their teachers on the payroll, let alone spend money on a high-stakes application for federal money that includes some 44 pages of rules.”

The most interesting part of this article for me was that when the Gates Foundation started this program it was only open to 15 states but other states found out and complained that they needed money also to apply for federal dollars so Gates opened it up to, “any state that meets eight criteria, including a commitment to the common standards effort and the ability to link student data to teachers.”

Finally, I think Bill Gates heart is in the right place for trying to help schools acquire more money and if he wants to set guidelines for it and the schools are willing to accept them so be it, but I worry about the schools that don’t want to follow his guidelines, they will be a huge disadvantage when the stimulus money is doled out. I am not sure what the solution is but why not try this and see what the results are.