The following article indicates more control by the corporations. Only the experienced academic teachers will legitimately complain, to no avail, waiting to retire. And no one asks key question: Why are the corporations so interested in America’s children? I know. Do you?
Another reader responded: “Gates is making millions from Common Core and this is just another tactic to embed it. He’s already admitted he made a mess of it, but instead of allowing free exchange of curricula and methods that are traditional and researched based he demands control. We simply must take back our schools.”
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation plans to invest about $10 million to improve how teachers are taught to use and modify curricula that are well aligned to state learning standards.
“The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation plans to invest in professional development providers who will train teachers on “high quality” curricula, the philanthropy announced this afternoon.
The announcement fleshes out the curricular prong of the education improvement strategy the influential foundation laid out in late 2017, a major pivot away from its prior focus on teacher performance.
The investment, at around $10 million, is a tiny portion of the approximately $1.7 billion the philanthropy expects to put into K-12 education by 2022. Nevertheless, it’s likely to attract attention for inching closer to the perennially touchy issue of what students learn every day at school.”
Among teachers, “there’s still a huge resentment and backlash to the [common-core] standards, so if we’re saying this is specific PD around a curriculum that’s standards-aligned, there could be some reaction to that,” Anderson said. “But my sense with teachers is that there’s those vocal few online who kind of dominate, but on the ground most teachers, if you give them something that’s going to help their work, they’re pretty appreciative and don’t care where it comes from.”
Who Else Has Gates Funded on Curriculum?
Apart from its newly announced grant competition, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has long supported some curriculum providers and quality-control groups. Here’s a look at what it funded in that category in 2018.
RAND Corp.
$349,000
To support curriculum
Open Up Resources
$667,000
To support capacity-building
Pivot Learning Partners
$1.23 million
To support instructional materials
Illustrative Mathematics
$2.85 million
To support student learning and teacher development
EdReports.org, Inc.
$7 million
To provide general support
PowerMyLearning, Inc.
$500,000
To explore connections between tier one and supplemental instructional resources
Achieve, Inc.
$999,548
To increase availability of high-quality science materials
State Educational Technology Directors Association
$299,752
To support state education leaders in their selection of evidence-based professional development and quality instructional materials
Source: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grants database
Access the full article at EdWeek.