I had to laugh reading the Bill Gates op-ed about standardized tests that our charter school expert, Kay, mentioned yesterday, because it’s another instance of a politically naive, libertarian-leaning tech nerd getting buffaloed by the people he thinks are rubes. In Gates’ hyper-rational world view, you’d develop a holistic set of standardized tests and deploy them in a way that would shape the education system, guided by the latest research on teaching. Vouchers for charter schools, in his rationalist fairy tale, are a way to spur innovation by empowering parents to make choices in the educational market. It all sounds great when he’s giving a Powerpoint at TED, so I’m sure he’s genuinely shocked when all it amounts to in the real world is another cudgel for the God botherers.
State legislatures are full of Christianist Republicans who are sick of funding public schools with tax money that could be spent to pay for their kids’ K-12 Bible School. So when it comes time to develop standardized testing for schools, they make it as onerous, stupid and burdensome as possible for the public schools, so they will be “failing public schools”, and they exempt the “innovators'” at East Bumfuck Jesus Riding a Dinosaur Elementary School. They use the same voucher plan that Bill Gates would extol at an exclusive Aspen conclave, until one of the smarter deacons from their church points out that those vouchers would work at a Madrasa:
A pair of proposals rapidly moving through the Tennessee General Assembly could potentially divert tax dollars currently allocated to public schools to Islamic private schools, and two Rutherford County senators are raising concerns about the legislation. […]
State Sen. Bill Ketron (R-Murfreesboro) and [Sen. Jim] Tracy each expressed their concerns Friday over Senate Bill 0196, commonly called the “School Voucher Bill” and sponsored by fellow Sen. Mark Norris (R-Collierville), which would give parents of children attending failing public schools a voucher with which to enroll in a private school.
As Steven Benen notes, Bill Ketron is the same guy who thought that a new mop sink in the state capital was designed to be used by Muslims for foot-washing. So, yes, he is indeed a dumb bigot, but who’s the real fool here? Is it some backwoods mouth-breathing tribalist xenophobe Christian, or is it the billionaire whose money, time and effort is going to support a school movement that will spawn generation after generation of Bill Ketrons?
Dan
Did you really have to laugh?
c u n d gulag
Yeah, our American Taliban can’t have no Muslim schools gettin’ no Christian vouchers!
c u n d gulag
I wonder if Bill Ketron would believe me if I told him the urinals in the boys rooms were for Christian foot-washing?
And that those large things at the bottom were Jesus-breathmints that the righteous were free to chip a piece off of, and suck on all day to their hearts content?
MattF
Gates might reflect on the fact that the best large school systems in the US are public schools in wealthy liberal suburbs. It takes money, it takes a community willing to cough up the money for high-quality public institutions, it takes a squeaky-clean political class committed to secular egalitarian goals. Money matters, politics matters.
Just One More Canuck
East Bumfuck Jesus Riding a Dinosaur Elementary? I want to hear that school song
RSA
Isn’t Ketron a Japanese cartoon character?
So the religion-in-schools issue is being resolved by bigotry rather than rationality. Is that the best we can hope for? Aargh.
Villago Delenda Est
@MattF:
That’s a good point, and furthermore, one of the things that libertarian-leaning tech types do is to ignore history and precedent, because, after all, we’re in a brave new world and nothing that has ever happened before is relevant to it, except for everything.
Tech types are REALLY bad about all this, because they don’t quite get that the entire IT sector is the fruit of evil government spending tax money to fund projects that the Ferengi wouldn’t spend a dime on because there was no short-term payoff/ROI that could be immediately invested in hookers and blow.
the Conster
Thankfully Christianist Republicans are the dumbest fucking people on the planet, and apparently money can’t buy Bill Gates a clue. He should let Melinda do all the philanthropy.
Roger Moore
@Just One More Canuck:
Really? The Horst Wessel Lied isn’t very good, even when it’s sung by professionals.
ET
This is a textbook example of why government shouldn’t get involved with religion. Cause eventually the things they think are only going to benefit their favored religion are going to be used by a non-favored religion. And when it hits the course (you give money to that religion why not ours) they may actually be forced to give money to that un-favored religion or shut it all down to avoid doing that. What is sad is that it is all so predictable and for some reason they don’t see it.
28 Percent
I thought it was a hoot. Read the vanity fair piece from last year (http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2012/08/microsoft-lost-mojo-steve-ballmer) and then come back and tell me what fuck-all Bill Gates really understands about incentive structures for long-term success.
Villago Delenda Est
@RSA:
Alas, in the christianist dominated states of the Old Confederacy, yes, that’s the best you can hope for. I live in a notoriously “unchurched” state, and while the christianists try to pull this shit, it very rarely gets to the point where the legal system is polluted by it. Not so in the Bible Belt areas of the country
The Golux
@c u n d gulag:
If someone pointed out that the urinals could be used for Muslim foot washing, they’d be busily ripping them out of all public buildings. Slopes being slippery and all.
SFAW
As is often the response, when someone asks “Stupid or evil?”:
why not both?
Mojotron
@ET: This is a textbook example of why government shouldn’t get involved with religion.
Which textbook: Coverdale or King James?
WereBear
Evil sows the seeds of its own destruction.
Like the weather, it sometimes works much better than if we were in charge of it.
Mike in NC
MSNBC had a good report this morning on Art Pope, the Tea Party billionaire and Koch ally who has Governor Pat McCrory in his vest pocket and calls the tune for the NC GOP.
Viva BrisVegas
@Roger Moore:
Play Wolfenstein 3D and then try and get the damn thing out of your head for the rest of your life.
It took me years to work out that that the reason the Nazis liked so him so much, wasn’t that Horst was a liar.
brettvk
I’ve thought that Gates’ interest in “school reform,” like the money the Walton family puts in it, is a long-term project to destroy public education, to dumb down the proles and promote the aristocracy. Funneling public money into private corporations to replace gummint teachers is either the first goal or gravy. Somebody convince me otherwise.
Derelict
@Viva BrisVegas: Yay, Wolfenstein!
On topic: Yes, these people are incredibly stupid and ignorant. But they’re also incredibly dogged. They simply will not give up on their mission to convert the world. The power of Crust compels them.
patrick II
If the free market actually worked by individuals making the best choices Gates would be a pauper and he would never have been able to see his original DOS machines to anyone but his own family.
greennotGreen
Bill Ketron is neither stupid nor a hick, although he plays one in the Tennessee state legislature. He is, however, very ambitious and willing to exploit xenophobia to make a statewide name for himself.
You know, I missed the part of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus said, “Blessed are those who stir up hatred against their fellow man, for they shall achieve a U.S. Congressional seat.”
Mnemosyne
I have no problem with making it very, very clear to Christianists that the laws and traditions of this country require that all religions be treated equally under the law, even the ones they don’t like. If they end up deciding against allowing their Christianist academies to be set up using public money out of bigoted fears of what the other religions will do, then that’s their decision.
IIRC, there’s some Christianist group out there trying to argue in court that Islam isn’t a real religion and shouldn’t be protected by the First Amendment, but I don’t think they’ve gotten very far with it. (Maybe it was in Tennessee where they were trying to block a mosque from being built?)
greennotGreen
I no more think people who didn’t graduate from high school should have unguided control of their children’s education than I think they should be required to evaluate the efficacy of various medical options without input from professionals. It is to the benefit of society at large that we have a good, functioning, well-funded public school system; anything that competes with that goal is suspect. For similar reasons I am very suspect of home-schooling. Home-enrichment is great, but I worry that a lot of home-schoolers are simply passing on their own biases and areas of ignorance.
Va Highlander
I take your point but you’re assuming facts not in evidence. Micro$oft and its products are not the child of a “hyper-rational world view”. The only game Gates knows how to play is monopoly. What he has to say about anything else is of no inherent value.
Mustang Bobby
This reminds me of the Louisiana state legislator who got her tail all puffed up when she found out that state vouchers for religious schools could possibly go to schools run by Muslims. Her argument was basically “But religious means Christian!”
WereBear
@Mnemosyne: It’s a striking tell that they are so frantic to stomp out other religions.
If they were happy and secure in their own, they wouldn’t act that way.
James E. Powell
@MattF:
It also helps if the students’ parents both graduated from college. It doesn’t solve everything, but it sure pumps up the standardized test scores.
Kay
@brettvk:
I don’t think Gates intended that.
This is a common alliance on the Right, religious and conservatives who privatize for profit.
He lost the school reform movement to them and he either doesn’t know it yet or won’t admit it. I don’t think that makes him “naive” though. I think it comes from ego and a kind of arrogance.
At base, I don’t think the well-intentioned reformers understand what public schools are. Replacing public schools with private schools is a really profound and radical act. They focus on the technical but they are missing the essential nature of the thing. It’s local. It’s personal. It has to do with community and a sense of place and self-government.
Joel (Macho Man Randy Savage)
@brettvk: Nah, Gates is (was) just naive. The Gates Foundation does lots of good stuff, like filling in research dollars in areas where the NIH doesn’t.
rda909
Probably the best response ever to these business people who think “measuring” is the answer to teaching kids from incredibly diverse backgrounds:
http://oneteachersperspective.blogspot.com/2013/02/along-with-learning-lets-measure-love.html
The hubris of these people is astounding…how they think because they’ve succeeded re-distributing tons of money to themselves, they are now experts on anything!
Kay
@Joel (Macho Man Randy Savage):
Okay, but the question then becomes how can he have not anticipated this?
What happens in the US when we deregulate? The entrenched powers he was supposedly fighting (teachers unions) were simply replaced by for-profit operators.
They had a committee vote in the FL legislature the other day on yet another legal mechanism to expand charter schools. 7 of the 9 had either or current or proposed financial interest in charter schools.
He didn’t see that coming? Maybe he should stick to software.
Joel (Macho Man Randy Savage)
@Kay: From my limited exposure to people with a vision, details just don’t matter. Gates thought he was backing a foolproof plan and that human behavior wasn’t going to get in the way, despite what thousands of years of history should have taught him. I mean, shortsighted utopianism has fooled very smart people before, like Voltaire, Upton Sinclair, Jack Parsons, etc.
Thlayli
@Mustang Bobby:
Fucking First Amendment, how does it work?
RSA
@Villago Delenda Est:
In my state, NC, the speaker of the house of representatives just shut down an effort to create an official state religion.
(Republicans control both chambers of the general assembly for the first time since 1896, and they won the governorship last year–they want to do as much damage as possible, as soon as possible.)
mellowjohn
@Just One More Canuck: i can visualize their mascot picture, but the name’s gonna be hard to fit on a t-shirt.
Kay
@Joel (Macho Man Randy Savage):
They try to keep it non profit but it doesn’t matter. I can set up a non profit charter and then outsource every service to a for profit company.
A non profit shell surrounding a creamy profit filling, is the way I picture it :)
They’re complying with state law! It says RIGHT THERE ” non profit”!
Va Highlander
@Kay: Well said.
Julia Grey
The reason suburban schools do better is not really the money spent on the schools themselves, although it probably contributes some catapult factor (which is really not even needed, given the inherent advantages the students have coming from their nice homes in the first place).
The real money problem in most “failing schools” is the lack of money in the HOMES of the students attending the schools.
This is the dirty little secret that NO ONE seems to want to openly discuss when this whole “we can fix our failing schools” bullshit comes up: the best predictor of the “success” of a school, bar none, is the socio-economic level of its student population. Period.
So if you want to try, you actually need to MASSIVELY and “unfairly” intensify spending on schools in those districts/areas/reservations with the poorest populations in an effort to get some catapult factor, but even then, it’s only going to go so far until you deal with the underlying economic problems and the cultural disfigurements that accompany poverty. The fact that — although it would be likely to help somewhat — you won’t get fast, large, measurable, and reliably permanent results from such an investment (see also, Head Start) is the source of conservatives’ tiresome “money isn’t the problem” mantra.
Money IS the problem, it’s just a matter of inefficient application.
It was ever thus.
rda909
@Julia Grey: Spot on.
James E. Powell
@Kay:
I don’t think the well-intentioned reformers understand what public schools are.
Can you give me some idea who these well-intentioned reformers are? I don’t see anyone in the “reform” movement who isn’t a spokes-creature for the ruling class. Maybe I’m missing something, but in my lifetime “reform” pretty much means “screw the working class” and little else.
Also too, I am pretty sure that the ruling class understands exactly what public schools are. That’s why they want to destroy them.
Redshift
@Julia Grey: Hear, hear!
It’s hard to imagine a funding system more perverse than taking the students with the least support and preparation at home (because their families don’t have the money and can’t afford the time to give it to them), and giving their schools the least resources to make up for that lack, but that’s what we have.
WereBear
I’ve never been impressed with Bill Gates.
Scion of a well-off family, early exposure to computers, buying someone else’s software, and ruthlessly exterminating competition… gee, it’s not even an original story!
Kay
@James E. Powell:
Okay, I’m not talking about leaders or the media hounds.
We had a case in OH where parents started a charter. They couldn’t run it because (surprise!) running a school is an actual JOB, you can’t do it in your spare time.
They hired a scumbag charter operator (who is hugely successful, BTW, despite the fact the schools suck) and they ended up suing in a county court to see the books.
I think they thought “public” meant PUBLIC, but it doesn’t.
Public schools have jurisdictions and elected boards and a whole host or regulations that are a pain in the ass, sure, but they’re also PROCESS. Process gets in your way when you’re well-intentioned and want change but, damned, it also PROTECTS powerless people and entities.
All they had was a court. The last resort! How could they throw all those protections away for a contract with a private party?
NonyNony
@Kay:
You find that most of them went to private schools themselves and send their kids to private school. So yeah – most of them don’t have a clue as to what a public school is or why anyone would want to send their kids to one.
Tokyokie
Can anybody point to any sphere in which privatization of traditionally publicly provided services hasn’t resulted in graft and egregiously ineffective and/or inefficient delivery of services? It’s a really simple formula: Privatization = Theft. Almost exclusively by Republicans, I might add.
gocart mozart
@RSA:
YES
YellowJournalism
@Julia Grey: And anyone who understands those factors should be seeing red with rage when they hear about lawmakers trying to tie welfare benefits and food stamps to children’s school performance.
Kay
@NonyNony:
When we’re fighting in this town over a school levy, which we do every two years, we’re doing more than “choosing” a school.
We’re self-governing.
I just think it would be a huge loss if our “system” was replaced by a disparate group of individuals “choosing” a chain charter or a religious school.
Well-off people don’t really need a community. Michelle Thee can work in CA and have her kids go to school in TN. They’re going to be fine and they’re well-cared for and they’ll “choose” a high school and then a college and probably be wildly successful. But giving a regular person a voucher doesn’t replicate her situation. That’s a false promise. It’s a bad trade.
gene108
@Tokyokie:
Example1: Obama, Barack: President.
Example2: Duncan, Arne: Sec. of Education
I remember reading about charter schools, when they started popping up back when I was in high school in the late 1980’s.
They were never meant to replace public schools, but were designed to be places where new education methods could be tried to see if education outcomes could be improved and then applied across an entire school district.
How it went from that to what has become requires a lot of creativity on the part of business people to see an opportunity to suck up public money, where none actually existed before.
Kay
@gene108:
That’s what drives me crazy about them. When people in Chicago are CRYING at meetings trying to keep their school obviously we are talking about something bigger than test scores.
To just pretend that this is a fight over “quality” is, I think, an indication that you should LISTEN to them. They know something you are MISSING.
Kay
@gene108:
I know I’m nuts on this but I have another example!
When the charter operators were lobbying Fro Wayne IN they brought in kids from Indy to sell the schools.
The response? “We’re not IPS!”
Well, duh. They’re a city. They have an identity. If you don’t know that, should you be “reforming” their schools?
Tokyokie
@Kay: Kay, A school is an intricate part of a community’s identity. And when that identity’s diminished, the community is more easily marginallized. In every city I’ve ever lived, the African-American community has been fiercely loyal to the town’s traditionally black high school, even though those schools were the product of desegregation. Outside of dopes who are for reasons I can’t fathom fiercely loyal to car manufacturers, nobody owes allegiance to a brand. One might, say, prefer Wendy’s to McDonald’s, but if the counter jockeys at Wendy’s kept dropping that customer’s order on the floor then putting it in a sack and handing it to him, he’d be buying his burgers elsewhere.
@gene108: Yeah, I’m also leery of pols who’ve only entered public schools during campaign stops professing expertise about them.
Chris
@Joel (Macho Man Randy Savage):
“Vision;” the belief that the unruly world at your doors can somehow be made to conform to your view of how it ought to be just because you wish it.
@Kay:
Remarkable how that kind of job performance has become routine.
The rationale for American style capitalism as explained to me as simply as possible years and years ago was that people go out into the market, provide a good or service, and if it’s not good, the market will punish you and you’ll have learned your lesson and have an incentive to provide a better good or service next time…
… Ignoring all the reasons why the simplified version isn’t even close to the whole story… It’s worth noting that everywhere you look, you see businessmen not failing with their businesses and actually doing very well for themselves even as the company they commanded sinks. Golden parachutes on Wall Street, this, etc. And yet I’m supposed to believe that people who’ve pretty much insured themselves against any repercussions for their failures have an incentive to behave responsibly…
Kay
@Tokyokie:
Right. I agree with the “brand loyalty” idea.
I watched this great little video of this Chicago school slated for closure. So what they HAVE, what they pride themselves on, is an orchestra. They raise money for it, attend shows, it’s the positive defining element of THAT school in THAT neighborhood.
The Mayor is going to give the kids a laptop to replace that? WTF? What could he be thinking?
His school director is babbling about “amenities”? Does she think schools are resorts children visit? They LIVE there.
fuckwit
It is always amusing to watch naive ideologues like the libertarians and the Christian Taliban re-discover from first principles the reasons why liberal , secular government coercion is necessary and valuable.
Yeah, there’s a REASON WHY we have separation of church and state: so that we don’t have to fight over WHICH church gets to be in control, and so you don’t have to have some church you DON’T want to worship, shoved down your throat at gunpoint.
And, there’s a reason why we have public-funded education and welfare and public infrastructure, it’s so the churches don’t become all-powerful by controlling all the means of caring for the people.
These dumb fuckers all need to re-read the history of medieval catholic Europe. Because, I can tell you for a fact, the Framers of the Constitution most certainly did, and some of it (Cromwell, the Hugeunots, the Inquisition) was rather fresh in their minds.
Linnaeus
@fuckwit:
I wouldn’t say libertarians are naive. They know exactly what the consequences of their preferred policies are. And that’s the way they want it.
phil
Gates never attended a public school and is a college drop out.
Linda
@Villago Delenda Est:
And Gates is only the last in a long line of techies that got rich and think they know shit about a lot of shit they don’t know. My fellow Michigander, Henry Ford, fancied himself a sharp social engineer, because he made a fortune exploiting the economy of the assembly line. Read Fordlandia, a terrific book about his doomed experiment to set up an ideal all-American town in the middle of the Amazon rainforest.
mai naem
Bill Gates went to Lakeside School in Seattle. Current tuition is $27,000/yr(that’s a day school not a boarding school.) Avg class size is 16. They have admissions tests i.e you don’t just get in because you have the $$$ to send Biff and Tiffany.
I am going to ask my teacher friend who happens to teach in an urban Phoenix school with a heavy low income, first generation Hispanic(English not primary language in home) immigrant population, how her schools performance would be given Lakeside’s advantages – high income parents, you get to choose the kids that you take, the kids speak english, your average class size is 16 and you have excellent lab and library facilities.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
“East Bumfuck Jesus Riding A Dinosaur Elementary School”
Winner.
Publius39
There’s so much win in this name.
Hunter
“. . . or is it the billionaire whose money, time and effort is going to support a school movement that will spawn generation after generation of Bill Ketrons?”
The billionaire is getting exactly what he wants. That’s why he’s paying for it.