By Paul Horton. It is clear to most critics and economic commentators that digital technology is displacing work and cheapening much of the work that remains. Amazon is likely to replace many warehouse jobs with robots once robots are created that can grasp packages. The consulting firm McKinsey predicts that …
By Anthony Cody. Follow me on Twitter at @anthonycody A video of Betsy DeVos responding to questions from Lucille Roybal-Allard of the House Appropriations Committee hearing has gone viral, and has been watched now by many thousands of people. I appear in the background, shaking my head as DeVos asserts that …
By John Thompson. David Callahan’s The Givers begins with the first politicized think tanks of the 1960s and 1970s, such as the American Enterprise Institute. At least these rightwing organizations were open about their desire to maximize profits. But as Callahan shows, they led the way to neo-liberal …
By John Thompson. As explained in this previous post, I began David Callahan’s The Givers with a commitment to avoid confirmation biases. As he notes, plenty of teachers (like me) detest corporate school reform. But, even if Callahan had concluded that education philanthropists produced significant gains in …
By John Thompson. I began David Callahan’s The Givers with a commitment to avoid three types of confirmation bias. As Callahan observes, plenty of teachers (like me) detest corporate school reform, but if he turned out to be supportive of accountability-driven, competition-driven policies, I shouldn’t let …
By Anthony Cody. Here is where we stand with the revived controversy over the Los Angeles Times’ 2010 “investigation” into teacher effectiveness. In 2009, Teachers College, which sponsors The Hechinger Report, received a grant from the Gates Foundation in the amount of $652,493 in order “to support the …
By Anthony Cody. A fresh debate has emerged in the aftermath of the Los Angeles Times’ critique of the Gates Foundation’s education reform project. As I noted here, they seem to have forgotten their own role in promoting the Gates Foundation’s efforts – namely, their “Teachers investigation,” in which …
By Anthony Cody. This week the Los Angeles Times published an editorial chastising the Gates Foundation for their role in education reform. The editors wrote: …the Gates Foundation has spent so much money — more than $3 billion since 1999 — that it took on an unhealthy amount of power in the setting of …
By Anthony Cody. Sue Desmond-Hellmann, the CEO of the Gates Foundation, has released her first annual letter, describing the foundation’s work in a number of arenas around the world. In the US, their focus has been K-12 education, so here we have their appraisal of their own work. This summary is notable more …
By Anthony Cody. As the corporate reform project begins to fray around the edges, one of the main sponsors is resorting to more overtly political tactics. The Gates Foundation is ostensibly a charitable enterprise, and enjoys significant tax benefits as a result of this status. Bill Gates himself described the …
