National Pulse – Bill Gates Education Experiment Fails Again, Taxpayers Foot $300 Million Bill

In this article, Dr. Effrem highlights a teacher evaluation program set up by the Gates foundation and its flaws.

A new report by the Rand Corporation evaluating yet another Bill Gates education debacle — this time for teacher evaluation — was discussed recently in both Forbes by Rick Hess and Bloombergby Cathy O’Neil. Shane Vander Hart at Truth in American Education also analyzed the Bloombergpiece. This Gates boondoggle spent $575 million (of which only $212 million came from the Gates Foundation) on three public school districts and four charter management organizations…

…The effort, starting in 2009 and going through 2015, was to develop a new formula for teacher evaluation. This formula was based on student test scores, principal observation, and parent surveys, the data from which was fed into a secret, big-data algorithm called the value added model. The intent was to reward good teachers and root out bad teachers, all in service of the overall goal of improving student achievement, especially for low income and minority (LIM) students. The results affected hiring decisions for teachers and offered small bonuses to effective teachers to move into districts with higher proportions of LIM students.

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