The Billionaire Tech Boys Come to School

The Billionaire Tech Boys Come to School

One would think that those who hawk the slogan “trust the experts” would actually listen to the counsel of experts. Yet this clearly isn't the case when it comes to American education “reform,” which has been driven not by teachers and administrators but by billionaire dilettantes who think their success in technology qualifies them as experts on anything they please. Despite their lack of credentials or experience, men like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Reed Hastings have foisted their disruptive philosophies upon the schoolhouse, with disastrous consequences for students.

Several years ago, Mark Zuckerberg had grand designs for American schools. The Facebook founder and his wife, pediatrician Priscilla Chan, poured well over $100 million into an online platform known as Summit Learning that initially aspired to be in half of the nation's schools.

Of all the unaccredited pedagogues preaching the gospel of innovation, none have been more destructive than Gates, whose stunt as a “celebrity teacher” over a decade ago ought to have instantly disqualified him from any say on education policy. Instead, he has leveraged his wealth to effectively write legislation at both the state and federal level, with politicians asautomated as the Windows operating system doing his bidding. Through multimillion dollar donations to both political parties, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation commands the agenda on education just as surely as Microsoft once monopolized the market on personal computing.

What the ed tech evangelist from Seattle hath wrought is a retrograde regime of standardized testing, intensive data collection, curriculum tracking and teacher evaluation that subordinates learning to futile assessment. At a time when progressive education models were embracing concepts like project-based learning, differentiated instruction and constructivist pedagogy, Gates used his influence to push American schools in the exact opposite direction. The formulaic, fill-in-the-bubble exam bonanzas pioneered by Bush's No Child Left Behind have metastasized under Race to the Top, condemning a generation of American students to high-stakes testing drudgery. Spending on these tests has exploded from $423 million before NCLB to $1.7 billion as states vie for federal money attached to accountability schemes.

It gets worse; at least basic literacy and numeracy, though insufficient goals, were the nominal focus of NCLB. Yet Gates' next crusade, the Common Core State Standards, doesn't even pretend to promote real learning. Its stated aim of “college and career readiness” ignores the fact that student motivation, engagement and intellectual development require far more than the empty skills quantified on standardized assessments. And despite the Common Core's claims to being “rigorous” and “evidence-based,” its experimental curriculum mandates have never been tested or proven effective in any empirical sense. They were developed behind closed doors by committees of bureaucrats, not practicing teachers, and imposed by stealth upon the nation before their impact could be debated.

The Common Core's corporate boosters believed enforcing uniformity across district lines would provide economies of scale to textbook publishers. Now that the “align-and-buy” bonanza has proved illusory, students and teachers are left with shoddily written, confusing standards and curricular materials that laptop-based exams can supposedly assess better. Districts have coped by outrageously shifting instruction time toward test prep, with schools stealing time from social studies, science, art, music and even recess to plow through endless Common Core worksheets and drill cognitive skills in isolation.gateways to riches for education industry profiteers who have brand loyalty, not proven learning outcomes, driving their “disruptive” designs. That it corrodes classroom inquiry and imparts no transferable knowledge are features, not bugs, to edu-hucksters for whom the all-consuming test score is the only deliverable that matters.

This dehumanizing view of education serves the instrumentalism of high-tech capitalists all too well. They want pliable, compliant workers who have adapted to the routines of standardized testing, not citizens who can think critically, debate forcefully and lead independently. It's no surprise then that the Common Core's model of lockstep conformity and workforce behavioral conditioning has been imposed without any democratic process, over the objections of parents and educators nationwide. Gates could hire an army of lobbyists while Zuckerberg funded television ads attacking opponents of his agenda as fans of mediocrity. With no genuine grassroots base, these elitists resorted to astroturf concoctions like Educators 4 Excellence to create the facade of teacher support for policies that teachers almost uniformly consider detrimental to authentic instruction.

It's hardly speculative to suggest that the data-driven, do-what-works technocracy envisioned by billionaire ed reformers is meant to supply corporations with trainable proles who follow orders, not question authority and demonstrate the social-emotional intelligence required in high-trust professional environments. Indeed, the restiveness and original thinking needed for a vibrant republic is exactly what the Conformity Core is meant to stamp out. Is it any wonder these controls are concentrated in urban minority schools where Speak Truth to Power messages resonate?

This antidemocratic scheme will continue so long as lawmakers of both parties genuflect before billionaires writing campaign checks and funding advocacy groups like Democrats for Education Reform, whose Orwellian name deceives everyone except power brokers for whom politics is strictly business. DFER's Wall Street hedge fund managers, wealthy private equity executives and billionaire families happily finance the charter school industry as long as it's not their own heirs subjected to curricular strangulation. They want a return on investment that standardized testing provides through reams of data on student inputs and outputs. As for nurturing citizens who can sustain civilization? That's simply not part of the business model.

To be sure, America's tradition of local control in education has had its pitfalls, with resistance to integration a shameful example. But far from perfect, community self-governance has meant that schools could reflect the priorities of parents and citizens, not totalitarian efficiency or maxims of positive economics. Now, Gates has spent heavily to centralize curricular content and normalize pedagogy across districts, arrogating absolute power to technocrats inside organizations like the College Board and using carrots of federal funding - transformed into a blunt weapon under Obama - to coerce participation.

What the domineering billionaire never understood is that coercion and competition don't work inces of human development that cannot be quantified. Schools must be about humanity not machinery, art not accounting. True experts know learning is a cooperative endeavor requiring human bonds between teacher and student. But billionaires don't send their progeny to schools where they're reduced to data points; their privilege exempts them from the grim society they would impose on the rest of us.

Some elites have the noblesse oblige and wisdom to patronize the arts and humanities, not impose their circumscribed worldview on the masses. But today's high-tech aristocrats avoid broad learning like the plague, believing literature, music, philosophy and civics are irrelevant to technocratic control. We desperately need citizens who embrace common struggles across lines of difference and see through the divide-and-conquer tactics of exploitative billionaires. Gateses and Zuckerbergs, you will never shape the schools our students deserve. Your domesday devices cannot decode the complexities of the human spirit. Schools must be run democratically, by real experts - teachers, parents and communities - not according to the unto all pathways of human development that cannot be quantified. Schools must be about humanity not machinery, art not accounting. True experts know learning is a cooperative endeavor requiring human bonds between teacher and student. But billionaires don't send their progeny to schools where they're reduced to data points; their privilege exempts them from the grim society they would impose on the rest of us.

Some elites have the noblesse oblige and wisdom to patronize the arts and humanities, not impose their circumscribed worldview on the masses. But today's high-tech aristocrats avoid broad learning like the plague, believing literature, music, philosophy and civics are irrelevant to technocratic control. We desperately need citizens who embrace common struggles across lines of difference and see through the divide-and-conquer tactics of exploitative billionaires. Gateses and Zuckerbergs, you will never shape the schools our students deserve. Your domesday devices cannot decode the complexities of the human spirit. Schools must be run democratically, by real experts - teachers, parents and communities - not according to the unenlightened whims of software engineers. The bubble tests and apps you peddle cannot replace the judgments of citizens with moral autonomy. We will defeat your quest for hegemony and reclaim the promise of public education from your grasp.