Education Week - October 14, 2015 - 11

scores. "They think there are too many
things for them to work on, too many
components," Marolla-Turner said.
"I'm concerned. ... Teachers are wanting to move away from [the model]."
Linking test scores to evaluations has been especially problematic in New York, according to
Burris. "There's a reason that over
220,000 students opted out of the
common-core exams," she said. "If
you talk to parents in the opt-out
movement ... what they say universally is they do not want their
teachers evaluated by test scores
because they understand that
when they are, there's a hyper-focus on teaching to the test."
Gates is living in "an echo chamber,"
Melissa Westbrook, a public education
advocate in Washington state, said in
an email. "He says he was surprised
at the pushback and outcry over common core and testing and yet seems to
want to forge on in that direction. Yet,
all around the country, the dominoes
are falling in a line against a focus on
those two issues."
The kinds of changes the Gates
Foundation has pushed over the
years are still subject to swings in
public perception, Gates acknowledged in a discussion with Gwen Ifill,
co-anchor of the PBS NewsHour. The
most disappointing part of working
on U.S. education is that "the work
can go backwards," he said. "Nobody
votes to un-invent our malaria vaccine," he added, in reference to the
group's global health work.

of Effective Teaching, or MET, headed
by Thomas Kane, an economist and
professor of education at Harvard
University, to help districts pinpoint
their best educators through student
outcomes, observations, student surveys, and other indicators.
But the new Obama administration moved the ball forward even
faster, working first through the
$4 billion Race to the Top competition, funded under the economic-recovery legislation, which rewarded
states that committed to high standards and new evaluation methods.
Those policies later became the centerpiece of waivers granted to states
from mandates of the No Child Left
Behind Act.
Early on, the federal muscle
"seemed like a huge accelerant,"
said Christine Tebben, a consultant specializing in education philanthropy and a former executive
director of Grantmakers for Education, whose members include the
Gates Foundation.
"There was this whole ecosystem
growing fast, and everyone got overzealous," Tebben said. The federal
involvement, she said, "became a
double-edged sword."
The dizzying pace of change
meant that key ingredients to give
the agenda staying power-educator-evaluation systems that were
truly ready for prime time, wellcrafted curricular materials, buy-in
from classroom teachers and principals-weren't in place in time to
meet aggressive timetables.
So the Gates Foundation, whose
highest-profile teacher-quality efforts
first focused on measurement and

The foundation's investments
in teacher effectiveness will continue to fall into several categories,
Phillips said. Those include professional learning, teacher tools and
supports, increased time for planning and collaboration, and teacher
voice. "The No. 1 thing teachers tell
us they need is time. We're figuring
out how they can get more time to
collaborate," she said.
Phillips declined to offer financial details on future grantmaking,
except to say, "We set our priorities
and invest around that. ... We're still
investing healthy numbers as we
have been doing." She did say that
the foundation is waiting on the re-

sults from a RAND study on personalized learning, due in November,
that could affect funding priorities.

Common Core
As for the common-core standards,
which the foundation has backed
since conception, Gates praised them
again in his speech. "It's unfortunate
that many of the attacks about the
common core have drowned out the
facts-and the fact is, the standards
are starting to work for students
and teachers." He said the standards
have made it easier for teachers to
find materials online that meet
their needs, and have given educa-

tors a common taxonomy.
Overall, the event made clear that
teacher effectiveness will remain a
priority for the foundation for many
years to come. Thelma Jackson,
co-founder of the Black Education
Strategy Roundtable in Washington,
which has received about $350,000
in grant funding from Gates, said
that's a good thing.
Bill & Melinda Gates "are portrayed ... as having a sinister agenda,"
said Jackson. "But their agenda is my
agenda. ... They're working for equity
and ridding the system of disproportionality. They're deliberate about it."
Teachers' unions are among those
concerned that the focus on teacher

performance could distract from factors like poverty and opportunity.
Andrea Prejean, director of
teacher quality for the National Education Foundation, said in a statement, "Mr. Gates' comments center
on in-school factors, but we believe
that we must discuss these issues as
part of a system where all students
have what they need both inside
and outside the school building."
The group has received Gates funding in the past but does not now.
The other national teachers' union,
the American Federation of Teachers,
which stopped taking Gates money
for its innovation fund in 2013, declined to comment on the speech.

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Education Week - October 14, 2015

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