Top Ten Scariest People in Education Reform: # 5 – Bill Gates

Top Ten Scariest People in Education Reform

Bill Gates: Scary Philanthropy

Countdown # 5

 This is the fifth in a countdown series of introductions, a list of the top ten scariest people leading education in America.  For numbers 6, 7, 8,  9 and 10,  click here.

The biggest philanthropist on earth comes across as the epitome of sincere, nerdy nice-guy.  And he probably is very nice and very sincere.  But does sincerity trump truth?

The truth is, Bill Gates’ herculean attempt to fund and market Common Core to Americans, and to circumvent the voting public on educational issues, is dangerously, dangerously misguided.

Thus,  not everybody is happy in philanthropy land.  The biggest philanthropist in the world got behind the unproven experiment  of Common Core and  –using money rather than the voice of the American voter– he pushed it into schools, circumventing any vetting  by legislative, educator or parent groups.

Gates’ astronomical wealth  has persuaded millions that Common Core is the solution to education problems,  the argument from everywhere,  approved (by him) and beyond debate.  But let me repeat the fact:  regardless of whether the standards are horrible or glorious, the truth remains that whenever unelected philanthropists are permitted to direct public policy, the voting public  gets cut out of the process.   It’s happening all over the U.S., but not just in the U.S.  The Gates-directing-world-education effect is happening everywhere.

Since Gates has no constituency he can’t be un-elected; so it’s not the the wisdom of experienced educators, but simply one man’s money that is directing implementation of  the controversial Common Core.  His  money has bought, besides technology, work groups, and a seat at the policy making table, extreme marketing success.

He’s got control of the education opinion factory.  When Common Core was debated at the Indiana State Capitol, who showed up to advocate for Common Core?  Stand for Children, which Bill Gates funds.  He also funds the League of Education Voters, the Center for Reinventing Public Education and the Partnership for Learning, all Common Core advocates;  Gates owns Editorial Projects in Education, parent of Education Week magazine.

No wonder, then, even educators don’t seem to know the full truth about Common Core.  They’re reading Education Week and  the Harvard Education Letter.  Translation: they are reading Gates’ dollar bills. (By the way: want to make some money selling out your fellow teachers?  Gates is searching for a grant recipient who will receive $250,000 to accelerate networking of teachers toward acceptance of Common Core. )

Wherever you see advocates for Common Core, you see Gates’ influence.  He gave a million dollars to the national PTA  to advocate to parents about Common Core.  He gave  Common Core developer NGA/CCSSO roughly $25 million to promote it.  (CCSSO: 2009–$9,961,842, 2009– $3,185,750, 2010–$743,331, 2011–$9,388,911 ; NGA Center: 2008–$2,259,780.)  He gave $15 million to Harvard for “education policy” research.  He gave $9 million to universities promoting “breakthrough learning models” and global education.  Gates paid inBloom 100 million dollars to collect and analyze schools’ data as part of a public-private collaborative that is building  “shared technology services.”  InBloom, formerly known as the Shared Learning Collaborative, includes districts, states, and the unelected Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO).  The list goes on and on and on.

It’s hard to know exactly how much money Gates has put toward the promotion of Common Core because of the chameleon-like wording of  educational granting areas.  For example, he gave $3 million  Stanford University and $3 million to Brown University   for “college and career readiness.” (The average person wouldn’t know that college and career readiness is a code phrase defined as  common core by the Department of Education.)  Sometimes he’s promoting “support activities around educational issues related to school reform” for the CCSSO (common core developer) and other times he’s “helping states build data interoperability” –which not everyone would recognize as Common assessments’  bed-making.

According to Gates himself, he’s spent five billion dollars to promote his vision of education since 2000.

He really,  reealllly believes in Common Core.  So it doesn’t matter that Common Core is an experiment on our children  that’s never been tested and has been rejected by countless  top education analysts.  It doesn’t matter that Common Core is an un-American, top-down, nonrepresentative system  that state legislatures didn’t even get to vet.  Bill Gates wants it.

And not just in America– he wants global education standards.

Gates’ company, Microsoft, signed a cooperative agreement with the United Nations’ education branch, UNESCO.  In it, Gates said, “Microsoft supports the objectives of UNESCO as stipulated in UNESCO’s constitution and intends to contribute to UNESCO’s programme priorities.” UNESCO’s  “Education For All” key document is called “The Dakar Framework for Action: Education For All: Meeting Our Collective Commitments.”  Read the full text here:  http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001211/121147e.pdf

So Gates partners with the U.N.’s educational and other goals via UNESCO’s  “Education for All”  which seeks to teach the same standards to all children (and adults) on a global scale.  Why is this a problem?  It supercedes local control over what is taught to students, and dismisses the validity of the U.S. Constitution, all in the name of inclusivity and education and tolerance for all nations.

At this link, you can learn about how Education For All works: “Prior to the reform of the global EFA coordination architecture in 2011-2012, the Education for All High-Level Group brought together high-level representatives from national governments, development agencies, UN agencies, civil society and the private sector. Its role was to generate political momentum and mobilize financial, technical and political support towards the achievement of the EFA goals and the education-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). From 2001-2011 the High-Level Group met annually.”

The six goals of “Education For All” are claimed to be internationally agreed-upon. On the linked Education and Awareness page of the U.N. website, we learn:

“Education, Public  Awareness and Training is the focus of Chapter 36 of Agenda 21. This is a cross-sectoral theme both relevant to the implementation of the whole of Agenda 21 and indispensable”   http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/susdevtopics/sdt_educawar.shtml

Did you get that?  Education is indispensable for the U.N. to get its agenda pushed onto every citizen worldwide.  They just admitted it out loud.  They want a strong hand in determining what is taught worldwide.

So then we click on Chapter 36.  In 36.2 it says we should “reorient” worldwide education toward sustainable development.  (No discussion, no vote, no input needed on this reorientation plan, apparently.)  36.3 says:  “Both formal and non-formal education are indispensable to changing people’s attitudes…. It is also critical for achieving environmental and ethical awareness, values and attitudes, skills and behaviour consistent with sustainable development…  To be effective, environment and development education should deal with the dynamics of both the physical/biological and socio-economic environment and human (which may include spiritual) development, should be integrated in all disciplines, and should employ formal and non-formal methods”

The take-away?  What does Bill Gates agree to in his Microsoft – UNESCO partnership?

• Environmental education will be incorporated in formal education.
• Any value or attitude held by anyone globally that stands independent to that of the United Nations’ definition of “sustainable education” must change.  Current attitudes are unacceptable.
• Education will be belief-and-spirituality based as defined by the global collective.
• Environmental education will be integrated into every subject, not just science.

The stated objectives (36.4) include endorsing “Education for All,” and “giving special emphasis to the further training of decision makers at all levels.”

Hence the need for people like Gates to influence the training of decision makers.  When asked what matters most to him, Gates said: education.  His version of education. The Huffington Post reported:

“I’d pick education, if I was thinking broadly about America,” Gates responded. “It’s our tool of equality.”  Is it coincidence that equality and redistribution are also concepts that Linda Darling-Hammond, Chaka Fattah and Arne Duncan are promoting in the federal Equity and Excellence Commission?

How committed is Bill Gates to the United Nations having a say in American education?

In his annual letter, Gates emphasized the importance of  following the United Nations’ Millennial Goals and measuring teachers more closely.  One of those UN Millennial goals is to achieve universal education.  Also, Gates helped create Strong American Schools (a successor to the STAND UP campaign launched in 2006, which was an outgrowth of UNESCO’s Millennium Campaign Goals for Universal Education). It called for U.S. national education standards. (link 1) (link 2)

Also,  Gates’ Foundation funded the International Benchmarking Advisory Group report for Common Core Standards on behalf of the National Governors Association, Council of Chief State School Officers, and ACHIEVE, Inc. titled, “Benchmarking for Success: Ensuring U.S. Students Receive a World-Class Education.” This report showed the United Nations is a member of the International Benchmarking Advisory Group for Common Core Standards. (link)

It appears that Bill Gates is more than a common core philanthopist; he is a promoter of global sameness of education as defined by UNESCO and the U.N.

That’s scary.