
Bill Gates, Washington State, and the Nuisance of Democracy - chishaku
https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2016/04/11/charitable-plutocracy-bill-gates-washington-state-and-the-nuisance-of-democracy/
======
ksdale
I think this cuts both ways quite a lot more than the author admits. Bill
Gates may not represent "the will of the people" but he also doesn't stand to
benefit nearly as much from "winning" as say, teacher's unions. I'm not nearly
informed enough to have an opinion on the issue of charter schools, but these
horrible billionaires seem to be acting in good faith to improve educational
outcomes for everyone and that doesn't seem like that bad of a thing to me...
It's probably true that people will open up charter schools for the sole
purpose of making money and they will run some crappy schools, but it seems
disingenuous to speak as though the public school side doesn't have an
interest beyond protecting the children.

~~~
wavefunction
The problem with the charter school movement is that its effectiveness is
questionable. Often the charter schools attract the self-motivated or only
accept certain candidates while turning others away. So the student population
of these schools is generally predisposed towards educational performance.

Some of the supposedly "successful" charter schools are run at a loss,
subsidized by some outside institution or special interest. Without that
subsidy, their students would likely perform more poorly.

I think if you compared excellent charter schools to excellent public schools,
you wouldn't see much difference between the two.

~~~
darawk
You can't make the leap between "has subsidy" and "would likely perform more
poorly without subsidy".

In nearly all cases charter schools outperform public schools. It may be that
this is partially or entirely explained by the factors that you mentioned, but
to my knowledge, there is no actual evidence of that.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Here's some evidence:

[https://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2011/01/19/unspinning...](https://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2011/01/19/unspinning-
data-on-new-jersey-charter-schools/)

There's various other entries on that blog that cover the same topic with
graphs and numbers.

Basically, once you correct for disabled students, english as a second
language, and poverty, the charter schools don't do any better than standard
public schools.

An interesting question is whether people realise this, and are actually quite
happy to throw other kids under the bus to give their own children an
advantage.

------
blackhole
As a washingtonian who has been strongly in support of charter schools for
years without any knowledge of Gates' involvement, this story seems to be
choosing a very strange case-study for criticizing billionaire
philanthropists. Perhaps it has not occurred to the author that many people
support charter schools _because they 're actually a good idea?_

The fundamental problem with saying that this money should go to the public
school system in order to make it better is that _we don 't know how to make
the school system better_. It doesn't matter how much money is thrown at
anyone in education because everyone is doing it wrong. Throwing more money at
the public educational system will simply result in schools that are
exceedingly good at cranking out students that excel at taking tests and
memorizing useless facts instead of actually being good at something.

Every argument against Charter schools that I heard during the debate was
focused almost universally on money. It was always about money. Teachers seem
convinced that in order to make our school system work, they just need more
money, when in fact the entire public educational system has already driven
off a cliff.

Charter schools won't be better than public schools because of _money_ ,
they'll be better than public schools because they try _fundamentally
different ways of teaching kids_. Nobody can fix the educational system until
we find better ways to educate children. Until we can find a way to instill
creative problem solving and encourage innovative thinking instead of
violently shoving children's brains into boxes, nothing is going to change, no
matter how much money is thrown at the problem.

In a world where computers are better at following instructions than any human
being ever will be, creativity is the one single advantage we have, and the
regulations hovering over the public school system are doing their best to
utterly destroy any creative spirit our children might have had. Our society
is being shaped not by the kind of intelligence that is measured by a test,
but by the innovative spirit of people who think outside the box. It's time
the educational system started thinking outside the box, too.

~~~
SolarNet
This prequel to this saga - Bill Gates screwing around using private donations
to public schools - resulted in lots of horrendous education for kids in
Seattle, even those typically considered part of the middle class. Bill Gates
destroyed public education in Seattle for a generation most of my millennial
friends from the area hate his guts.

------
brwnll
Love when people call something undemocratic just because they are against the
goals of a group.

Wealthy individuals and groups have power to publish advertisements and
arguments for their ideas/proposals to try to change the mind of the voters.
Attempting to convince the voters your right is not undemocratic, it's the
core of democracy.

Additionally, anyone who believes that the plutocracy has more power in
America now than ever before is entirely ignorant of even general American
history. It wasn't that long ago where there was so little regulation on
business, political and police bribes so common, that the wealthy could ignore
any law they wanted without any fear of reprisal.

~~~
pessimizer
The point of the article is that they didn't convince on the merits, they
convinced by completely saturating all forms of media with a single point of
view, losing repeatedly (still), until they eventually eked out a win. Then
when that win was found to be unconstitutional, they paid politicians
directly. If that's the core of democracy, I don't understand what was so bad
about _Pravda_.

------
Bedon292
"A substantial portion of every tax-exempt foundation’s wealth—39.6 percent at
the top tax bracket for filing in 2016—is diverted each year from the public
treasury, where voters would have determined its use." Is this really true?
Did Bill Gates actually have any 'Income' last year at all? Sure he has
capital gains, and dividends, but none of that is going to be taxed at 39.6%.
Which is a completely different topic. But it seems completely misleading to
say that taxpayers are funding the philanthropy. Also, did Bill not fund the
foundation with shares, rather than taking a tax break on cash income? Either
way, it seems like that money that is funding the philanthropy would not have
been entering the public coffers if it were not used for philanthropy.

~~~
rlucas
The main problem with this bit is that is reveals that the authors (and
editors, if they bothered) are completely financially illiterate.

We do not tax "wealth" in the US; we tax net income. This fundamental flub --
in an article ostensibly about money (!) -- tells me we can't take any of the
numbers or financial mechanics it presents seriously.

------
clumsysmurf
"Multibillionaire philanthropists use their personal wealth, their tax-exempt
private foundations, and their high-profile identities as philanthropists to
mold public policy to a degree not possible for other citizens. They exert
this excessive influence without public input or accountability."

"The New Prophets of Capital" by Nicole Aschoff explores these themes

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00N6PCK4U](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00N6PCK4U)

------
trashtoss
College dropout has unrealistic ideas to improve education.

I kid but only a little.

If the man had directly funded a school and gotten unquestionably superior
outcomes the conversation would be rather different.

Instead, all he has to show are policy successes, often at great expense, but
for such an ostensibly data-driven program where are the successful
educational outcomes?

------
bobwaycott
I think, in addition to the varied issues this article highlights, it also
points out that we perhaps need to rethink what we call philanthropy, and
strongly divorce it from being used as an automatic honorific because a
wealthy individual starts a non-profit.

------
bobwaycott
This is bad citizenship, plain and simple, and a gross abuse of the political
system rooted in the ability to abuse it in proportion to one's ability to pay
for that abuse. We cannot hope to have local/state/national government by and
for the People, and even hope to have a chance of it being above reproach, if
we do not immediately take steps to actually prioritize and protect the
People's will.

I get that handling this on the national level is a much more difficult
problem to find an amicable solution that appeals to everyone's ideological
sensibilities. But, at the state and local level, the abuse that money brings
to the equation should be--nay, _is_ \--much easier to solve. It requires but
a few sensible rules that permit the greatest possible latitude for citizens
to participate in, guide, and organize their local governments to their
notions of what constitutes good government and social policy, while
protecting their local and state governments from outside influence. That
state legislatures do not enact these rules is, in my opinion, but a
reflection of the corrosive and perverting effect of money--and the desire for
it--on all political activity.

\- For all local and state-wide policies--especially coercive public policies
--one must be a resident of the local/state entity to participate in any way,
be that financial, putting one's boots on the ground, or having any other
recognized part in the process.

\- Make it illegal to _hire_ an out-of-state company who brings in out-of-
state _workers_ to collect signatures for your desired proposal. Need to
collect signatures? You must only use residents of the state in which the
proposed policy will take effect. Require that they must be unpaid volunteers.
Interrogate the signature-collection process, and invalidate all signatures
collected by anyone who is not a resident of the local/state entity that will
be affected by the policy.

\- No more allowing wealthy citizens, who are not residents of the local/state
entity affected by the proposed policy, to donate to the cause. Completely
remove the ability for wealth to escape its local boundaries. There is no
reason a wealthy resident of Oklahoma should be able to involve themselves in
the local and state issues happening in New York. This requires a real,
sensible definition of being a resident—not, say, owning a home in a place you
do not actually spend your time living. Want to weigh in on a local issue?
Better be a resident of the city limits.

There are plenty of reasonable ways we could protect states and cities from
being overwhelmed by the unbalanced competition for mind- and vote-share that
comes from allowing moneyed interests stepping into local/state political and
social issues.

Perhaps once we tackle protecting government by and for the People at the
local and state levels, we could then work together to tackle the same issues
at the national level.

------
RodericDay
[https://gfbrandenburg.wordpress.com/2011/07/25/interview-
wit...](https://gfbrandenburg.wordpress.com/2011/07/25/interview-with-bill-
gates-almost-admitting-that-hes-fallible/)

> It’s interesting how Gates seems to give every excuse in the book for why he
> “failed” to drastically improve academic achievement despite the time and
> money spent on his mission.

> His first excuse is that compared to the cumulative 600 billion dollars in
> government spending on public schools, he only had 5 billion to spend. Of
> course, he is talking as if that 5 billion was equally scattered among all
> the public schools in the United States. We know that his small school
> models had enough funding and opportunity to test whether his experiment
> would work, which by his own admission, did not meet his standards.

> Then he and the writer of the article suggest that it was the powerful
> teacher unions that thwarted the success of Gates foundation initiatives.
> But later on, even Gates admits there seems to be no correlation between
> student achievement and the strength of unions in particular states.
> Although suprisingly, the two states he mentioned as being strong union
> states , Massachusetts and New York, are ranked # 2 and #5, respectively by
> NAEP results in student performance.

> If it sounds like a man who is grabbing at straws, he is. He admits as much
> when talking about measuring teacher effectiveness. I was slightly
> embarassed for him, when he mentioned the movie, “To Sir, With Love” as an
> inspiration for his new initiative in taping teachers in real classroom
> settings. You don’t see the president of the United States saying,” I
> watched the movie Saving Private Ryan”, and then proceed to discuss how the
> war in Afganistan can be won. What presidents usually do is to talk with
> military experts, diplomatic advisers, academics, political advisers, etc.

> But not this guy – he wants to watch hours and hours of tape on military
> engagements in the mountains of Afganistan and write a report on how soldier
> effectiveness can be rated. The thing is, if he were really a scientist, I’d
> say fine – but he isn’t one really. What he is – is a businessman.
> Unfortunately, what business knows about computer chips and factory output
> doesn’t translate into the complex lives of human beings.

Plus an anonymous confessional from an actual student:

> I attended a high school funded by the Gates Grant from 2003-2007, and let
> me tell you, it was a giant, flaming, trashcan fire of poor management, lack
> of consistency, and almost entirely unsupported beyond the initial
> investment in creating it. The original Principal bailed before the end of
> the first year (and isn't even in education anymore, if I hear correctly),
> about 2/3rds of the staff had been replaced by my second year.

> At start, it was two grades of 160 kids, 9th and 10th; when the 10th
> graders, the folks who graduated one year before, finally graduated, their
> class consisted of 13 kids. My class, that original 9th grade, graduated 50
> people. I almost didn't graduate, since we had no gym and no way to earn the
> appropriate PE credit until they introduced Yoga in my senior year. We also
> began with no "D's", only A, B, C, and Fail, but since they did an absolute
> shit job at explaining this to prospective students and their families, we
> ended up getting a lot of kids that wouldn't have cut it in the "normal"
> high school, and ended up a de-facto alternative, with D's introduced in the
> second year.

> Other initiatives that sprung up from his "philanthropy" include the
> creation of separate "schools" at a lot of the local high schools;
> basically, it was kind of treated like in college, where if you wanted to,
> say, go into Medicine, you picked "Biomed Academy," and took a certain set
> of classes with that in mind. So, y'know, pick your future at the end of
> Junior High.

