(Bill Gates') Incentive program fails to help students or teachers

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Incentive program fails to help students or teachers
June 27, 2018
World Magazine


New analysis of an expensive teacher incentive program backed by the Gates Foundation found startlingly disappointing results.

Bill and Melinda Gates poured $212 million into the Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching initiative. It had a simple premise: Give teachers incentives to do a better job and they will. And they might have, but the analysis found it didn’t make a difference to student outcomes, which is always the end goal in education. The seven public school districts and charter groups that participated spent $575 million on the project and about $73 million per year on evaluating the outcomes, bringing the total cost to about $1 billion, a whopping investment with little to no return.  ...

The schools saw no improvement in students’ math and reading scores, or in their graduation rates. But that’s putting it mildly, wrote Jay P. Greene, a professor of education reform at the University of Arkansas. Not only did the scores not improve, they actually got worse in a majority of grades

“It is pretty clear that the Gates effective teaching reform effort failed pretty badly,” Greene wrote. “It cost a fortune. It produced significant political turmoil and distracted from other, more promising efforts. And it appears to have generally done more harm than good with respect to student achievement and attainment outcomes.”  ...  Full story