We recently ran a 3 part series, taking a look at the Gates Foundations corrosive impact on public education, which you can read here:
Part I
Part II
Part III
The Wall Street Journal had an interview with Bill Gates over the weekend, confirming many of the facts we brought to your attention

One of the foundation's main initial interests was schools with fewer students. In 2004 it announced that it would spend $100 million to open 20 small high schools in San Diego, Denver, New York City and elsewhere. Such schools, says Mr. Gates, were designed to—and did—promote less acting up in the classroom, better attendance and closer interaction with adults.

"But the overall impact of the intervention, particularly the measure we care most about—whether you go to college—it didn't move the needle much," he says.

What follows in this article is deeply disturbing. Mr. Gates, seemingly from watching some fictional movies about teaching, now believes he should experiment with teachers careers and students learnging

"I watched the movies. I saw 'To Sir, With Love,'" he chuckles, recounting the 1967 classic in which Sidney Poitier plays an idealistic teacher who wins over students at a roughhouse London school. "But they didn't really explain what he was doing right. I can't create a personnel system where I say, 'Go watch this movie and be like him.'"

The article goes on to discuss his various classroom experiements, and denigrates teachers associations as standing for "the status quo" - which apperently means opposing Bill Gates movie based reforms. Most corporate eduction reformers come to the table with the same resume. Little or no education experience or expertise, a business background, an unwillingness to listen to anyone else, and to attack experts in the field as supporting the status quo. Bill Gates is no different, but what is different is his ability to wield hundreds of millions of dollars to get his way.

It's a pity Gates didn't get inspired by "Armageddon" or some other Sci-Fi movie, becuase then, instead of wrecking public education, he could be spending his money helping to build a replacement for the now retired Space Shuttle.