I read this really interesting article from Newsweek regarding how the Bill and Melinda Gates’ Foundation worked with states on the Race to the Top grants.  The only state mentioned in the article was Tennessee, and how the Gates’ Foundation helped us write the grant, and gain our $500 Million dollars worth of grant money.  The Gates’ Foundation reportedly is planning on spending $3 Billion dollars on education nation-wide in the next 5-7 years.  One of the goals of the foundation is to improve our schools, but even with all of their money, their results have been mixed.

The first thing that the foundation reportedly did was to recommend and push forward the making of smaller schools, but that ended up providing the student with a lack of diversity and those smaller schools’ test scores ended up dropping significantly.  Although the Gates’ Foundation refuses to call that experiment a failure, the article does indeed infer that the smaller schools concept was less than stellar.

The next thing the Gate’s Foundation is reportedly very focused on is tying test scores to teacher retention.  In fact, the Race to the Top money our state gained required us to agree to tie test scores to teacher pay raises.  That is of course a highly controversial topic with educators nation-wide.  The article points out some interesting points with regards to test scores and teacher pay incentives.  For example, how does this promote teachers working together?  If one teacher helps another teacher to improve their students’ test scores, that helps one teacher gain a pay bonus, not both teachers.  Therefore, tying test scores and teacher pay raises actually could promote a lack of cooperation between educators and an “every teacher for themselves” mentality.  Another example cited was that teachers would “teach to the test” and not explore creativity.

Another interesting aspect of the Gates’ Foundation insertion into the education quandary is the video taping of classrooms.  Teachers are reportedly paid $1,500.00 a session for allowing their class to be video taped in other states.  Initially, other states were highly supportive of this video taping, as the Gates’ Foundation felt that the students’ reactions to educators could be an indicator of success or failure of that teacher.  However, there are privacy issues that arise from these video sessions, and other states have since backed off of their unilateral support of these measures.

The Race to the Top’s $500 Million dollars will undoubtedly provide our state with great opportunity for growth, and test scores will be used in evaluating teachers’ success or failure.  However, what tests do we use to evaluate our educators?  This test score issue will undoubtedly be a hot topic for years to come.