The man without shame says shame is not the solution.
It is the very definition of irony.
This morning billionaire Bill Gates, the man whose deepest of deep pockets financed the current decade-long assault on teachers and teacher professionalism, decries the shaming of teachers in an opinion piece written for the NY Times.
As they say, it’s hard to make this stuff up.
The irony continues, since it is the NY Times that went to court so that it could print the personal professional performance reviews of each teacher.
This morning the teacher evaluation scores will be released.
Timing is everything.
Can we read the performance reviews of NY Times editors, please? Published in the Times, of course.
Writes Gates:
I am a strong proponent of measuring teachers’ effectiveness, and my foundation works with many schools to help make sure that such evaluations improve the overall quality of teaching. But publicly ranking teachers by name will not help them get better at their jobs or improve student learning.
In the wake of 9/11 some declared that irony was dead.
Gates has brought it back.
Or should we say bought it back?
Is this like Obama & Duncan telling us not to teach to the test?
At Gotham Schools, commenting, Reality Based Educator suggests VAM scores will be so wildly inaccurate and widely criticized that they will cast doubt on NY’s new evaluation scheme. This could explain Gates’ last minute statement. Only other explanation is his unwillingness to be “accountable” for the consequences of his own actions.
God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.
Blogs are speculating that the reformers are concerned that newly minted TFA and such will bomb. Senior teachers will do ok.
I can’t help but repeat that a teacher in Los Angeles committed suicide after seeing his VAM score in the newspaper. I hope that doesn’t happen in New York.
I am just as outraged about what Gates is telling the farmers on the African continent — another area over which he has no expertise but will give his opinion and ruin further the continent of Africa.
Money is an outrageous weapon in the hands of the uneducated and uninformed.
if Mr Gates goes back and finishes his degree i personally would
have more respect for him .His stars lined up perfectly he was at the
right place at the right time with the right product and the rest is
history. But if a man named Linux had been around then perhaps
Open Office and Gimp would be running on our PC’s.
If he really has a commitment to transparency he should release
the source code for windows so other brilliant people could improve
on its performance.Wasn’t Vista a masterpiece?