The Problem with Billionaires

For 10 years, I worked as an executive director of an educational non-profit committed to improving public schools through leadership practices and classroom outcomes. Part of my work was raising money from private foundations to supplement the fee for service payments from our partner school districts. Even though some private philanthropists have made a difference in public education outcomes because of their gifts, too many haven’t.

Just because you have a lot of money doesn’t mean you know how to make young learners smarter and stronger.

Take Bill Gates. There’s no doubt the Microsoft founder and his ex-wife Melinda have done good things for the world in many ways – most notably with their work in global health care. But public education has been a struggle for Bill and Melinda, and for the Gates Foundation, the organization responsible for making huge money gifts over the past 40 years to improve our public schools.

Most recently, The 74 online reported that,

“Bill Gates wants Americans to stop hating math.”

“Our struggles teaching the subject – whether evidenced by our middling performance against peer nations or the striking ‘math anxiety’ reported even by young children – are a stumbling block preventing kids from reaching their goals, he has argued. And the obstacle has only grown since the generational setback of COVID-19, which triggered the greatest learning crisis in history. Scores on the latest iteration of the National Assessment of Educational Progress sank to levels last seen in the early 2000s.”

“That’s part of the reason why the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced last fall that it would make math ‘the cornerstone of our K-12 education program strategy’ over the next decade. Powered by $1.1 billion in new investments, the philanthropic giant will work with its partners to devise better curricular materials, improve teacher training and professional development, and fund research and development breakthroughs that hold the potential to transform the classroom experience.”

“The agenda partially reflects Gates’s personal fascination with mathematics, which dates back to his years as a student. Before embarking on perhaps the most consequential career in the history of software, the future Microsoft founder blazed through Harvard’s legendarily rigorous Math 55 sequence, only focusing exclusively on computer science because he considered it unlikely that he would become one of the world’s greatest mathematicians. Distinguishing himself even in the rare air of tech founders, he co-authored a paper that settled the delicious-sounding question of ‘pancake sorting’ for decades.”

“In a broader sense, the huge bet on math also builds on the Foundation’s existing work in the K-12 sphere. Gates has proven one of the most influential actors in American education over the first part of this century, fostering a movement toward small schools and promoting the adoption of the Common Core Standards. Even when some efforts didn’t bear fruit, such as a failed seven-year campaign to strengthen teacher evaluation – Gates’s deep pockets and commitment to experimentation have helped make the weather in education policy for the last two decades.”

15 years ago now, The New York Times Magazine ran an article titled “How Many Billionaires Does It Take to Fix a School System?” The article presented interviewer Paul Tough, famous for his book title “Whatever It Takes” (an expose on Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone), along with a host of educational reformers from the early part of this century. Tough presented a scenario to the group of reformers. In the scenario, a high-tech entrepreneur has promised to give $2 billion to primary and secondary education in the United States. Tough then asked this question: “What kind of impact will this gift have? Is $2 billion suddenly being injected into the realm of K-12 education a big deal?”

To me, the best answer came from Frederick Hess, then and still with the American Enterprise Institute. Hess summed up the problem with thinking billionaires like Gates are going to solve America’s public school woes by saying this,

“Not on its face; it’s just a ripple. Each year, nationwide, about $500 billion [today it’s $800 billion] is spent on K-12 education, and almost all of it comes from taxpayers. By that measure, this gift is a fraction of 1 percent of total expenditures.”

And folks, that is the problem with billionaires trying to fix our public schools. Bill Gates and others are trying to fix something that isn’t theirs to fix. It’s ours to fix.

So Gates can invest in small schools, Common Core, teacher evaluation, math, reading, career technology, fine arts, physical education, and I guess basket-weaving, but if we as a nation can’t decide how we want our young learners to be smarter and stronger, then we might as well be singing “money for nothin”.

But, if Mr. Gates is in the mood to give away money, I’ve got a new learning system in mind.

Til tomorrow. SVB