I’m sure the teachers unions are bristling at the thought of Bill Gates telling them about what’s wrong with American education. After all, what has he done with his life to talk down to them? Heck, he didn’t even graduate college.

That said, I guess being the world’s richest man tends to get his views heard. Among them Gates points out that the U.S. has one of the highest high school drop-out rates in the industrialized world. (Note to those Independent Sources readers who are considering dropping out of high school, you will be completing for an ever shrinking number of jobs that don’t require at least some college, let alone a high school degree). Even today, only 40% of high school drop outs have jobs and it’s hard to imagine this # going up.

Gates correctly identifies this as unsustainable in our changing world. In the old days, a drop-out could learn how to work a metal press and make enough money to raise a family. Today that job is going to China and the new jobs here are those people who can, among other things, manage manufacturing relationships, design processes, handle the marketing and so forth. Not the sort of thing that can be easily done by someone with limited grammar, typing, and math skills.

To fix this problem, Gates proposes a number of changes; almost all of them will raise the hackles of teachers unions. First, publish data on how schools are doing and make changes in the failing schools including a strong state-level intervention strategy. Second, insure that all students are given a challenging curriculum that prepares them for college or work and that they are surrounded by adults who push them to achieve. (The implication is that teachers who merely babysit for one period at a time either out of laziness or the belief that the kids can’t do better will need to undergo attitude changes or be moved out). Kansas City did this in a district that was heavy in minorities living below the poverty line and the district was able to push through reforms that among other things increased the graduation rate more than 30 percentage points. If it worked in Kansas City, why can’t it work in other school districts (teachers union obstructions notwithstanding)?

Of course with all of this talk about Bill Gates and education, one is tempted to ask Bill why he can’t seem to educate his staff about making programs that don’t have gaping security holes requiring consumers to spend time and money plugging. But we’ll leave the low blows for the teachers unions who will no doubt be fighting to protect their turf from interloping billionaires.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 19th, 2005 at 4:09 pm by Insider and is filed under Brilliant, but uncategorizable, (Un)education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.