This doesn't compute to me. What Woz is doing sounds similar to what the Gates' are doing. They are both working to improve the world in their own way. You haven't given any real reasons why one approach (teaching 5th graders) is better than the other (running a multi-billion dollar foundation). I'm not arguing that one is better than the other-just that they are different. Also, as you pointed out, they are both "throwing their money at it"-the only difference is the destination.
As a side note, you speak as if it's obvious that a smaller student body (and class size) doesn't equate to higher achievement. This knowledge may be more commonplace now, but the premise that smaller student bodies do equate to higher achievement has been one of the basics of school reform and school funding for some time now. Finding out the fact that this is actually a flawed assumption has a huge effect on public policy and spending on schools in the future. Maybe it's just me, but I'm glad the Gates foundation "wasted" their money finding this out because it's better than the US state and local governments continually spending (in aggregate) billions of dollars in taxpayer money on an improvement based on a flawed theory. Ideally the government would have realized this on its own much earlier, but you know how that goes....
As a side note, you speak as if it's obvious that a smaller student body (and class size) doesn't equate to higher achievement. This knowledge may be more commonplace now, but the premise that smaller student bodies do equate to higher achievement has been one of the basics of school reform and school funding for some time now. Finding out the fact that this is actually a flawed assumption has a huge effect on public policy and spending on schools in the future. Maybe it's just me, but I'm glad the Gates foundation "wasted" their money finding this out because it's better than the US state and local governments continually spending (in aggregate) billions of dollars in taxpayer money on an improvement based on a flawed theory. Ideally the government would have realized this on its own much earlier, but you know how that goes....