Gates: "Poverty is an excuse"

Billionaire corporate education reformer Bill Gates has become increasingly bizarre in his public proclamations. We reported a short while ago about his slip that sounded an awful lot like an admission he would like to privatize public education.Now he seems to think poverty is no obstacle, all we have to do is hand poor students over to a charter school

Microsoft founder Bill Gates told the National Urban League on Thursday that a child's success should not depend on the race or income of parents and that poverty cannot be an excuse for a poor education.
[...]
Gates, who now runs the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, cited his foundation's work with charter schools as an example.

At least he has enough self awareness to know he doesn't know what he is talking about

"Let me acknowledge that I don't understand in a personal way the challenges that poverty creates for families, and schools and teachers," the billionaire said at the civil rights group's annual convention.

You can further forgive Gates, because it's not like there is very much research showing the direct ties between poverty and educational achievement.

• Measuring poverty in education policy research
• CHILD POVERTY RESEARCH DATA & PUBLICATIONS
• Poverty Is Rooted In US Education System, Research Finds

All just excuses, right?

The Nation: Teachers Are Not The Enemy

It's hard to think of another field in which experience is considered a liability and those who know the least about the nuts and bolts of an enterprise are embraced as experts.

The attack has diverse roots, and comes not only from Republicans. Groups like Democrats for Education Reform have dedicated substantial resources to undermining teachers unions. With Race to the Top, the Obama administration has put its weight behind a reform agenda featuring charter schools, which employ mostly nonunion labor, as its centerpiece. A disturbing bipartisan consensus is emerging that favors a market model for public schools that would abandon America's historic commitment to providing education to all children as a civil right. This model would make opportunities available largely to those motivated and able to leave local schools; treat parents as consumers and children as disposable commodities that can be judged by their test scores; and unravel collective bargaining agreements so that experienced teachers can be replaced with fungible itinerant workers who have little training, less experience and no long-term commitment to the profession.

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