Gates Foundation failures show philanthropists shouldn’t be setting America’s public school agenda - LA Times
▻http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-gates-education-20160601-snap-story.html
Tucked away in a letter from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation last week, along with proud notes about the foundation’s efforts to fight smoking and tropical diseases and its other accomplishments, was a section on education. Its tone was unmistakably chastened.
“We’re facing the fact that it is a real struggle to make systemwide change,” wrote the foundation’s CEO, Sue Desmond-Hellman. And a few lines later: “It is really tough to create more great public schools.”
(...) 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 #education policy. Former foundation staff members ended up in high positions in the U.S. Department of Education — and, in the case of John Deasy, at the head of the Los Angeles Unified School District.