Education

It’s the teachers, stupid!

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by David Safier

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I always keep an eye on what the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is doing in the education arena. They spend a hell of a lot of money, so they're real players, which makes their giving patterns important. But I also sense that they have no political agenda. Bill Gates wants his legacy to be, he changed the world for the better. He's not satisfied being the guy who made gazillions by selling computer software. Since the Foundation is trying to do good regardless of which education camp supports their efforts, and they have lots of money to get things done, what they say and do tells a lot about what might work in the real world.

The Gates Foundation has focused lots of money and effort on creating school environments that are more conducive to learning. It believed small schools are a big part of the answer. Now it's not so sure.

In remarks at last week’s gathering, Mr. Gates said the foundation had seen success with some of the small high schools it helped create through its emphasis on that school improvement strategy, but that much of that work did not deliver the academic gains the foundation had hoped for.

“To be successful, a redesign requires changing the roles and responsibilities of adults, and changing the school’s culture,” Mr. Gates said. “You can’t dramatically increase college readiness by changing only the size and structure of a school.

So now the Foundation plans to focus more of its energies on "teacher effectiveness." That means trying to identify what makes for effective teaching, but it also means finding ways to "retain and compensate teachers based on their effectiveness, and help ensure that high-quality teachers are place in schools that need them the most."

So teachers are more important than playing around with school size and structure, eh? What a surprise!

Turning kindergartens into sweat shops

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by David Safier This morning's Star has a letter by Ken and Yetta Goodman, professors emeritus and emeritra who live in Tucson.  (I had no idea "emeritus" had a feminine form: "emeritra." I'll add that to my store of who-cares-but-English-teachers word facts, like the singular of "data" is "datum," and the singular of "criteria" is … Read more

“Good money after bad”

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by David Safier Bush has some qualms about the $15-25 billion proposed to help out the auto industry. "These are important companies, but on the other hand, we just don't want to put good money after bad." Let's talk good money after bad. When you ship pallets piled with bricks of money to Iraq and … Read more

The Community Food Bank

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by David Safier Times are hard. Money is tight. Which is both a reason not to give money and a reason why giving money is even more important than usual. The need is greater than it's been in years. I mentioned the public school tax credit in an earlier post, where you can give money … Read more

Dr. Word: Impactful?

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by David Safier In a Star article this morning about Republicans wishing Napolitano would just go to D.C. already and quit acting like the Governor, Incoming House Speaker Kirk Adams (R-Mesa) said about the proposed budget Napolitano intends to submit: "It wouldn't mean much or be very impactful." Impactful? People who use the word "impactful" want … Read more