Back to School for the Billionaires

They hoped their cash could transform failing classrooms. They were wrong. NEWSWEEK investigates what their money bought.

The richest man in America stepped to the podium and declared war on the nation’s school systems. High schools had become “obsolete” and were “limiting—even ruining—the lives of millions of Americans every year.” The situation had become “almost shameful.” Bill Gates, prep-school grad and college dropout, had come before the National Governors Association seeking converts to his plan to do something about it—a plan he would back with $2 billion of his own cash.

Gates’s speech, in February 2005, was a signature moment in what has become a decade-long campaign to improve test scores and graduation rates, waged by a loose alliance of wealthy CEOs who arrived with no particular background in education policy—a fact that has led critics to dismiss them as “the billionaire boys’ club.” Their bets on poor urban schools have been as big as their egos and their bank accounts. Microsoft chairman Gates, computer magnate Michael Dell, investor Eli Broad, and the Walton family of Walmart fame have collectively poured some $4.4 billion into school reform in the past decade through their private foundations.

Has this big money made the big impact that they—as well as teachers, administrators, parents, and students—hoped for? In the first-of-its-kind analysis of the billionaires’ efforts, NEWSWEEK and the Center for Public Integrity crunched the numbers on graduation rates and test scores in 10 major urban districts—from New York City to Oakland—which got windfalls from these four top philanthropists.

more . . . http://www.newsweek.com/2011/05/01/back-to-school-for-the-billionaires.print.html

I think the school performance was secondary to the desire for Gates to dislodge Apple from public schools.

If thats right then the best measure of Gates "impact" wont be seen in test scores, they'll be seen in the comparative usage rates between Apple and Microsoft in school districts.

the real world uses PC's and apple only has 5% market share. So teaching kids for a real world existence using apples was doing kids a disservice.
Apple is now a phone company of course, so its computers and OS are not all that relevant anymore.

What a silly statement.

Cost of software might be another issue. Some software makers give software away to schools hoping kids will use them at home, and they are statistically more likely to have a PC at home. Maybe that has something to do with the school's decision.

and are more user friendly for kids.

Most schools I am aware of have both.

Maybe. In a recent newspaper article about our local district's budget, I was startled to learn that they paid something like $17,000 a year in licensing fees to Microsoft.

Plus the cost of Macs?

They probably uses PCs because they're cheaper

They were so focused on toying with the schools with their myopically fashioned designs, that they didn't even factor solving the deeply ingrained social and economic issues of the communities where the schools are.

The were thinking that it was just the schools that were the problem, instead of how poverty and our dysfunctional society impacts the quality of education.

A child who's hungry and scared of getting shot is not going to be focused on his schoolwork, no matter how much money you throw at the problem.

The funny thing though, that as billionaires, they are benefitting from many of the policies that are tacitly responsible for causing the economic inequality which create much of the deterioration in the education process.


But you couldn't tell these fools that, in order to fix the schools, you have to fix the communities that they're in.