Education Week - November 6, 2013 - 1

EDUCATIONWEEK
Gates Foundation Places Big Bet on Its Teacher Agenda
VOL. 33, NO. 11 * NOVEMBER 6, 2013
AMERICAN EDUCATION'S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD * © 2013 Editorial Projects in Education * $4
Critics Fear Outsized Influence of Philanthropy
By Stephen Sawchuk
When Harvard professor Thomas Kane co-wrote a paper in 2006
on teacher quality, he did not expect that it would carry an import
far beyond the insular world of Washington policy wonks.
Mr. Kane later got a big surprise: a summons to meet with one of
the richest men in the world to talk about the paper, which showed
that teachers' on-the-job performance varied widely and had little to
do with their credentials. At that 2007 meeting in New York City's
posh Pierre Hotel, he got still another surprise: Almost every inch of
Bill Gates' copy was covered with handwritten notes.
"Bill got really excited," Mr. Kane said. "He was really interested
in figuring out what these great teachers were doing, and in the idea
that one of the most powerful things he could do would be to provide
school districts with better ways of identifying their best teachers."
It would prove a decisive moment for the $38 billion private
philanthropy that bears the Gates name. Six years later, the Bill
& Melinda Gates Foundation has spent nearly $700 million on its
teacher-quality agenda, according to an Education Week analysis.
The foundation is widely seen as the most influential independent
actor in a period of nationwide-and deeply contested-experimentation
with the fundamentals of the teaching profession.
What its spending has wrought, however, and whether it will have
the desired effect, remain the subject of heated debate.
"It concerns me when one foundation has so much money,"
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Since 2008, the
philanthropy has
spent $2 billion
on education,
including
a large slice
for teacher-related
programs.
edweek.org: BREAKING NEWS DAILY
$696 million
Teacher
quality
Common-Core Hurdle:
Calming Jittery Districts
By Andrew Ujifusa
State education leaders are
moving to calm political tempests
over the Common Core
State Standards by adopting or
reaffirming policies aimed at asserting
local control over data,
curriculum, and materials. But
the classroom-level impact of
those moves could be negligible
as states forge ahead on commoncore
implementation.
On the one hand, officials' actions
in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana,
and Michigan highlight
anxieties over the privacy of
information about individual
students and what some see as
state and federal intrusion into
classrooms. At the same time, the
specific steps, all in states run by
Republicans, largely emphasize
existing policy or practice.
"That might turn down the
heat on a lot of these criticisms,
... but I don't think this stuff addresses
the real issues with the
implementation and actually
making the common core work,"
said Michael Q. McShane, a research
fellow at the American
Enterprise Institute who tracks
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Freshman Catherine Brakel, 18, studies nursing at the University of Alabama in Mobile on
a full scholarship, but was homeless for much of her last two years of high school.
Homeless Student Population Still Rising
By Sarah D. Sparks
In the year after Hurricane Katrina buffeted
the Gulf Coast, Denise Riemer and Larissa Dickinson,
both homeless education liaisons for their school
district, saw more than 2,000 homeless students and
their families in the public schools in Mobile, Ala.
This year, in the wake of an ongoing and far broader
economic storm, the two women have seen 5,302
homeless students in the 59,000-student district.
"This is pretty amazing because we're not even
halfway through the year and we're already up,"
Ms. Riemer said. "I can't believe the number of
food-stamp applications I've processed so far for
unaccompanied youth. We have new students we
find out about every day."
The Great Recession caused by the 2008 eco-
nomic and housing crisis has technically ended,
but the number of homeless students nationwide
continues to swell, as school districts' capacity to
help them shrinks.
If added together, homeless students now would
make up the largest school district in the country-at
nearly 1.17 million, considerably more than the entire
INDUSTRY & INNOVATION
student population of New York City public schools.
Their numbers have grown 24 percent in the last three
years, and 10 percent in the last year alone, according
to a new federal analysis released by the National Center
for Homeless Education, part of the University of
North Carolina at Greensboro. Forty states have seen
a rise in their homeless-student populations in 201112,
and 10 of those faced a jump of 20 percent or more.
"It's not a surprise; we've been seeing these increases
year after year," said Barbara Duffield,
the policy director of the National Association for
the Education of Homeless Children and Youth
in Washington. "Homeless education has stopped
being just a few programs in shelters and has become
part of the fabric of school systems."
No Shelter
Federal law defines as homeless any child who
doesn't have a "fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime
residence." The number of children living in shelters
has remained relatively flat, the study found, but the
numbers doubling-up with friends or family, living in
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The Role of the
>>A COMMENTARY
SPECIAL SECTION
K-12 PARENT
This special Commentary section offers
perspectives on the changing nature of
parent empowerment and the role that
family engagement can play in student
achievement. See Pages 24-28, 32.
MULTIMEDIA www.edweek.org/go/parents-commentary
Tech Alliances
Fuel Startups
By Benjamin Herold
Nearpod, an ed-tech startup
that offers teachers a digital
platform for designing interactive
lessons and delivering them
to students on their tablet computers,
has generated 250,000
users in 18 months.
Now, the Miami-based company
hopes to serve entire
schools rather than just their
most tech-savvy teachers, and to
actually turn a profit instead of
burning through investor cash.
Key to making that leap, said
Emiliano Abramzon, Nearpod's
co-founder, will be partnerships
with publishers offering readyto-use
lessons.
"Type-A teachers are creating
their own content, but the
mainstream would like to get
content created for them," Mr.
Abramzon said.
Nearpod's approach reflects
an emerging trend: In the
crowded field of ed-tech startups
seeking to go to scale, companies
with distribution platforms
and those that develop
instructional materials are joining
forces.
"There's a lot of great content
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Jeff and Meggan Haller/Keyhole for Education Week
http://www.edweek.org http://www.edweek.org/go/parents-commentary
Education Week - November 6, 2013

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