logo
    • Magazine
    • Membership
    • Donate
  • Racial Justice
  • Economic Justice
    • Collections
  • Climate Justice
  • Health Justice
  • Leadership
  • CONTENT TYPES
  • Subscribe
  • Webinars
    • Upcoming Webinars
    • Complimentary Webinars
    • Premium On-Demand Webinars
  • Membership
  • Submissions

Diane Ravitch Takes Down Gates Foundation Role in U.S. Education

Rick Cohen
July 10, 2012
Share
Tweet
Share
Email
Print

 

Ravitch

July 5, 2012; Source: Diane Ravitch’s Blog

If you don’t know who Diane Ravitch is, you should. Be assured that the die-hard advocates of privatized approaches to education reform know this brilliant New York University education professor, who was once seen as generally supportive of the conservative critique of public education, but has drifted to being equally critical of charter schools and school vouchers. (See her 2010 book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, and NPQ articles on her here, here, here, here, here, here, and here).

The July 5 entry in her personal blog is titled, “I Am Puzzled by the Gates Foundation,” a commentary on a guest column by “Chemtchr” in Anthony Cody’s column for Education Week discussing the “leveraged philanthropy” model of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Chemtchr takes off on the Foundation’s concept of leverage, which, in her mind, seems to be significantly focused on public-private partnerships in which the partner is a large corporate behemoth as interested in profits as it might be in social good, the latter suffering at the expense of maximum profits. She ticks off Gates Foundation partnerships Monsanto (on sustainable agriculture), GlaxoSmithKline (vaccination), Pearson Education (a British education services firm Gates has apparently recruited on U.S. school reform), and others. She also notes that Gates grants or investments that “are positioned to leverage control of policy analysis and news outlets,” such as the Foundation’s sponsorship of the Guardian’s coverage of global development issues and its partial funding of Education Week itself on education reform. It is a devastating critique, not that it suggests that Gates intentionally promotes corporate profits, but that the Foundation’s leveraged philanthropy takes it that way nonetheless.

Sign up for our free newsletters

Subscribe to NPQ's newsletters to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

By signing up, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of use, and to receive messages from NPQ and our partners.

Ravitch responds to Chemtchr by focusing on the Foundation’s education leverage. While she assumes correctly that the richest man in the world doesn’t need to pursue profits through his philanthropy, Ravitch takes on the Foundation’s education strategy and concludes, “I think their efforts to ‘reform’ education are woefully mistaken.” In three paragraphs, she lays out her own devastating critique of the Gates Foundation:

“I am puzzled by their funding of ‘astroturf’ groups of young teachers who insist that they don’t want any job protections, don’t want to be rewarded for their experience (of which they have little) or for any additional degrees, and certainly don’t want to be represented by a collective bargaining unit.

I am puzzled by their funding of groups that are promoting an anti-teacher, anti-public education agenda in state after state. And I am puzzled by the hundreds of millions they have poured into the quixotic search to guarantee that every single classroom has a teacher that knows how to raise test scores.

Sometimes I wonder if anyone at the Gates Foundation has any vision of what good education is, or whether they think that getting higher test scores is the same as getting a good education. I wonder if they ever think about their role in demoralizing and destabilizing the education profession.”

Addressing the influence of Gates’ discretionary grantmaking, Ravitch adds, “They want accountability for teachers, but who holds them accountable?… They may be well-meaning but they are misinformed, and they are inflicting incalculable damage on our public schools and on the education profession.”—Rick Cohen

Share
Tweet
Share
Email
Print
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rick Cohen

Rick joined NPQ in 2006, after almost eight years as the executive director of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP). Before that he played various roles as a community worker and advisor to others doing community work. He also worked in government. Cohen pursued investigative and analytical articles, advocated for increased philanthropic giving and access for disenfranchised constituencies, and promoted increased philanthropic and nonprofit accountability.

More about: EducationFoundation AccountabilityFoundationsNonprofit NewsPhilanthropy

Become a member

Support independent journalism and knowledge creation for civil society. Become a member of Nonprofit Quarterly.

Members receive unlimited access to our archived and upcoming digital content. NPQ is the leading journal in the nonprofit sector written by social change experts. Gain access to our exclusive library of online courses led by thought leaders and educators providing contextualized information to help nonprofit practitioners make sense of changing conditions and improve infra-structure in their organizations.

Join Today
logo logo logo logo logo
See comments

NPQ_Winter_2022Subscribe Today
You might also like
Finding Power in Community: Lessons from the Chicago Teachers’ Union
Sheri Davis
How Environmental Education Is Moving into High Schools
Ayana Albertini-Fleurant, Dr. Janelle M. Burke, Kari Fulton, Joe Hurst and Ariel Murphy Bedford
Why Social Change Films Matter
Cyndi Suarez and Saphia Suarez
Philanthropy Must Move from Charity to Solidarity
Son Chau
Eliminating Biphobia Through Breath, Brotherhood, and the Arts
H. “Herukhuti” Sharif Williams
Using a Data-Driven Strategy to Advance Racial Equity in Grantmaking
Heather Lenz, Ariel Jordan and Catherine Smith

Popular Webinars

Remaking the Economy

Black Food Sovereignty, Community Stories

Register Now

Combating Disinformation and Misinformation in 21st-Century Social Movements

Register Now

Remaking the Economy

Closing the Racial Wealth Gap

Register Now
You might also like
Finding Power in Community: Lessons from the Chicago...
Sheri Davis
How Environmental Education Is Moving into High Schools
Ayana Albertini-Fleurant, Dr. Janelle M. Burke, Kari Fulton, Joe Hurst and Ariel Murphy Bedford
Why Social Change Films Matter
Cyndi Suarez and Saphia Suarez

Like what you see?

Subscribe to the NPQ newsletter to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

See our newsletters

By signing up, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of use, and to receive messages from NPQ and our partners.

Independent & in your mailbox.

Subscribe today and get a full year of NPQ for just $59.

subscribe
  • About
  • Contact
  • Advertise
  • Copyright
  • Careers

We are using cookies to give you the best experience on our website.

 

Non Profit News | Nonprofit Quarterly
Powered by  GDPR Cookie Compliance
Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.