Bill Gates on School Reform
Kenneth R. "Ken" Plum
 
         When Bill Gates of Microsoft fame spoke to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) nearly ten years ago he talked about his concerns about public education and his support of reforms.  Last month he returned to the annual NCSL conference to talk once again about schools.  In between times, his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has spent more than two billion dollars on school reform.  The expectations were that he would have some strong recommendations to make to state legislators based on his reform efforts.
 
        I attended both speeches.  On this second appearance he seemed much more subdued.  Maybe he was not having a good day.  Maybe it is the effects of just getting older.  Or maybe with all his genius and resources, the public school challenge was more than he had bargained for.  As typical of reforms of schools in the political arena, Gates called for the establishment of standards.  As an administrator in Fairfax County Public Schools I helped put together curriculum standards more than 25 years ago.  As a state legislator I witnessed Virginia's attempt over more than a decade to put together standards it called Standards of Learning (SOL's) that would be as relevant in Fairfax as in Halifax, in Virginia Beach as well as the mountains of Southwest Virginia.  Now, Bill Gates proposes national standards.  His standards are necessary because his next proposal is for a nationwide testing program to follow individual progress of students.  Price tag - not mentioned.  Practicality - not apparent.  He contends that without measurement there is no pressure for improvement.  If you do not like No Child Left Behind, you are less likely to support Gates' proposal for national standards and national testing.
 
        Improvements he proposed might include closing low performing schools and replacing them with charter schools.  In all his discussions, Gates never mentioned that alternative schools within the regular public school management with carefully selected teachers and low pupil-teacher ratios get as good if not better performance than charter schools.
 
        Gates' concerns extend to the colleges and universities whose completion rates have been flat since the 1970's.  He wants a financial incentive system for colleges based on performance to be put in place as well.  There were not many new ideas offered from his ten years of investment in public school reform.  Most of his speech was filled with anecdotes even though he calls for performance measures.  Maybe in the end Bill Gates has come to recognize as most of us who have studied this issue for many years that the entire challenge is to place an excellent, well-trained teacher in a classroom with the parental and system support he or she needs to get the job done.  No amount of standards and testing can do what excellent teachers do every day.