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The Answer Sheet: Gates Pours Millions in New Grants to Change Teaching Profession


(Andrew Harrer/BLOOMBERG)
Andrew Harrer/BLOOMBERG)

 

The Gates Foundation is spending millions of dollars in new grants that will further its already vast and controversial influence on public education. After spending hundreds of millions of dollars to to develop teacher assessment systems, it is putting many millions more into that issue, as well as into the creation of new online “adaptive” courses, the implementation of the Common Core standards, and more.

The foundation has plowed billions into K-12 reform in the last decade or so (first creating small schools and then teacher evaluation systems that used student test scores) but also in recent years has expanded into higher education. Recent articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education detailed the nearly half a billion dollars the foundation has spent to help remake the higher education into one that Gates prefers, which is focused on getting more students degrees faster through technology and what is called “competency-based learning,” and which is wrapped around an accountability system based on testing.

Foundation grants in July include those for teacher evaluation, development and the creation of new “standards” for the profession. Several school districts won multimillion-dollar grants, including one for $10 million to “support the Denver Public Schools in finding, growing and keeping talented educators in the district to ensure their students have an effective teacher in every classroom every year.” The National Education Association’s Foundation for the Improvement of Education won a total of more than $5 million grants.

Harvard University got $1.6 million to “test a new model of teacher evaluation that increases teacher ownership and buy-in, reduces administrative burden, and provides an auditable artifact to ensure and maintain reliable scoring.” The foundation has said it would explain this grant in more depth — especially the “reliable scoring piece.” (Is this a recognition that the “scoring” now being used to grade teachers is not reliable?) I’ll update this when I hear back.

After already spending hundreds of millions of dollars on the subject of teacher evaluation, it is interesting that the foundation seems to think teachers need to have more ownership and buy-in of the assessment process. Really now, it didn’t have to take hundreds of millions of dollars to learn that, of course, and it doesn’t take $1.6 million to Harvard either; the model has long existed in, for example, Montgomery County, Md., where teachers lead the successful evaluation system (without the high-stakes use of standardized test scores). Any good teacher in any school could have told the Gates folks that for free.

Harvard, incidentally, also won more than half a million dollars more in another grant to help advance Common Core standards and assessments, digital learning, teacher effectiveness, and charter schools.

There are also grants for higher education grants for Information Privacy And Security initiatives as well as for continued K-12 reform, including Common Core State Standard implementation. It is investing in the creation of online “adaptive” courses that can be individually tailored to students.

Here are some of the July grants, from the foundation website (you can see all of the July awards here):

National Board for Professional Teaching Standards Inc

Date: July 2013

Purpose: to support revision of the National Board certification process

Amount: $3,743,337

Term: 36

Topic: College-Ready

Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA

Program: United States

Grantee Location: Arlington, Virginia

Denver Public Schools

Date: July 2013

Purpose: to support the Denver Public Schools in finding, growing and keeping talented educators in the district to ensure their students have an effective teacher in every classroom every year

Amount: $10,000,000

Term: 36

Topic: College-Ready

Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA

Program: United States
Grantee
Location: Denver, Colorado

Jefferson County School District R-1
Date: July 2013

Purpose: to develop innovative professional development systems to create personalized learning systems for teachers
Amount: $5,197,878

Term: 36

Topic: College-Ready

Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA

Program: United States

Grantee Location: Golden, Colorado

Fresno Unified School District

Date: July 2013

Purpose: to develop innovative professional development systems to create personalized learning systems for teachers

Amount: $5,000,000

Term: 36

Topic: College-Ready

Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA

Program: United States
Grantee
Location: Fresno, California

Long Beach Unified School District

Date: July 2013

Purpose: to develop innovative professional development systems to create personalized learning systems for teachers

Amount: $5,000,000

Term: 36

Topic: College-Ready

Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA

Program: United States

Grantee Location: Long Beach, California

The NEA Foundation for the Improvement of Education
Date: July 2013

Purpose: to support a cohort of National Education Association Master Teachers in the development of Common Core-aligned lessons in K-5 mathematics and K-12 English Language Arts

Amount: $3,882,600

Term: 20

Topic: College-Ready

Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA

Program: United States

Grantee Location: Washington, District of Columbia

The NEA Foundation for the Improvement of Education

Date: July 2013

Purpose: to support the capacity of state NEA affiliates to advance teaching and learning issues and student success in collaboration with local affiliates

Amount: $2,426,500

Term: 26

Topic: College-Ready

Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA

Program: United States

Grantee Location: Washington, District of Columbia

Harvard University

Date: July 2013

Purpose: to test a new model of teacher evaluation that increases teacher ownership and buy-in, reduces administrative burden, and provides an auditable artifact to ensure and maintain reliable scoring

Amount: $1,602,380

Term: 26

Topic: College-Ready

Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA

Program: United States

Grantee Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts

Council of Chief State School Officers

Date: July 2013

Purpose: to CCSSO, on behalf of the PARCC and SBAC consortia to support the development of high quality assessments to measure the Common Core State Standards

Amount: $4,000,000

Term: 21

Topic: College-Ready

Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA

Program: United States

Grantee Location: Washington, District of Columbia

Educators for Excellence
Date: July 2013

Purpose: to support teachers to be leaders in policy development and implementation.

Amount: $3,000,695

Term: 36

Topic: College-Ready

Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA

Program: United States

Grantee Location: New York, New York

Stand for Children Leadership Center
Date: July 2013

Purpose: to organize supportive parents and teachers in Jefferson Parish, LA, to implement reforms that ensure that all children, regardless of their background, graduate from high school prepared for and with access to a college education

Amount: $249,939

Term: 18

Topic: College-Ready

Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA

Program: United States

Grantee Location: Portland, Oregon

The George Washington University

Date: July 2013

Purpose: to support the Center on Education Policy’s continuing efforts to survey, analyze, and report on state and school district efforts to implement the Common Core State Standards

Amount: $259,895

Term: 15

Topic: College-Ready

Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA

Program: United States

Grantee Location: Washington, District of Columbia

Harvard University

Date: July 2013

Purpose: to support Education Next’s work in four critical areas: Common Core standards and assessments, digital learning, teacher effectiveness, and charter schools

Amount: $557,168

Term: 23
Topic: College-Ready

Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA

Program: United States

Grantee Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts

Arizona State University
Date: July 2013

Purpose: to support the creation of the next generation of adaptive courses to enable student success

Amount: $330,000

Term: 24

Topic: Postsecondary Success
Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA

Program: United States

Grantee Location: Tempe, Arizona

Research Foundation of State University of New York
Date: July 2013

Purpose: to support the creation of the next generation of adaptive courses to enable student success

Amount: $99,970

Term: 24

Topic: Postsecondary Success
Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA

Program: United States

Grantee Location: Albany, New York

North Carolina State University
Date: July 2013

Purpose: to support the creation of the next generation of adaptive courses to enable student success

Amount: $100,000

Term: 25

Topic: Postsecondary Success

Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA

Program: United States

Grantee Location: Raleigh, North Carolina

Engaged Learning

Date: July 2013

Purpose: to facilitate dramatic increases in academic achievement for all US students by building and validating a proof of concept of 6th-grade digital math courseware based on the JUMP Math curriculum, a breakthrough curriculum for teacher-delivered instruction

Amount: $989,929

Term: 12

Topic: College-Ready

Regions Served: GLOBAL|NORTH AMERICA

Program: United States

Grantee Location: Seattle, Washington

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Valerie Strauss

Valerie Strauss is the Washington Post education writer.