CT Blue

When Bill Gates decided to take his billions and go home, he also decided to inflict his philosophy, such as it is, on the rest of us. One target was our teachers.

Gates solution to our non-existent educational crisis was to inflict the same regimen on our teachers that he inflicted on workers at Microsoft, something called “stacked ranking”, which put Microsoft employees in constant competition with one another for continued employment. According to Gates it was the key to Microsoft's success. Some might argue that Microsoft's innovation peaked in the 80s, when Gates had the prescience to realize that it was the operating system that mattered (had IBM not outsourced its PC operating system to Microsoft, Gates might be teaching high school himself) and was well positioned to get Microsoft Office on the first crop of business PCs where, despite the fact that the software has gotten progressively shittier, it remains to this day. One might go on to argue that Microsoft has coasted ever since on the wings of antitrust violations and corporate resistance to change (no one ever got fired for buying Microsoft Office). One might observe that enthusiasm for Microsoft's recent offerings has been non-existent (ever spent time in one of those empty Microsoft stores while waiting for your turn at the Genius Bar?). Apparently, someone has noticed:

Bill Gates foisted a big business model of employee evaluation onto public school, which his own company has since abandoned.
“At Microsoft, we believed in giving our employees the best chance to succeed, and then we insisted on success. We measured excellence, rewarded those who achieved it and were candid with those who did not.”

Adopting the Microsoft model means public schools grading teachers, rewarding the best and being “candid”, that is, firing those who are deemed ineffective. “If you do that,” Gates promised Oprah Winfrey, “then we go from being basically at the bottom of the rich countries [in education performance] to being back at the top.”

The Microsoft model, called “stacked ranking” forced every work unit to declare a certain percentage of employees as top performers, a certain groups as good performers, then average, then below average, then poor.

Using hundred of millions of dollars in philanthropic largesse Bill Gates persuaded state and federal policymakers that what was good for Microsoft would be good for public schools (to be sure, he was pushing against an open door). To be eligible for large grants from President Obama’s Race to the Top program, for example, states had to adopt Gates’ Darwinian approach to improving public education. Today more than 36 states have altered their teacher evaluations systems with the aim of weeding out the worst and rewarding the best.

“So let me get this straight. The big business method of evaluation that now rules our schools is no longer the big business method of evaluation? And collaboration and teamwork, which have been abandoned by our schools in favor of the big business method of evaluation, is in?” Some states grade on a curve. Others do not. But all embrace the principle that continuing employment for teachers will depend on improvement in student test scores, and teachers who are graded “ineffective” two or three years in a row face termination.

Needless to say, the whole process of what has come to be called “high stakes testing” of both students and teachers has proven devastatingly dispiriting. According to the 2012 MetLife Survey of the American Teacher, over half of public school teachers say they experience great stress several days a week and are so demoralized that their level of satisfaction has plummeted from 62 percent in 2008 to 39 percent last year.

And now, just as public school systems have widely adopted the Microsoft model in order to win the Race to the Top, it turns out that Microsoft now realizes that this model has pushed Microsoft itself into a Race to the Bottom.

In a widely circulated 2012 article in Vanity Fair award-winning reporter Kurt Eichenwald concluded that stacked ranking “effectively crippled Microsoft’s ability to innovate. “Every current and former Microsoft employee I interviewed—every one—cited stack ranking as the most destructive process inside of Microsoft, something that drove out untold numbers of employees,” Eichenwald writes. “It leads to employees focusing on competing with each other rather than competing with other companies.”

This month Microsoft abandoned the hated system.

On November 12 all Microsoft employees received a memo from Lisa Brummel, Executive Vice President for Human Resources announcing the company will be adopting “a fundamentally new approach to performance and development designed to promote new levels of teamwork and agility for breakthrough business impact.”

Ms. Brummel listed four key elements in the company’s new policy.

•More emphasis on teamwork and collaboration.

•More emphasis on employee growth and development.

•No more use of a Bell curve for evaluating employees.

•No more ratings of employees.

via Common Dreams

If you think Gates, Congress, or Obama will change their prescription for our public schools, think again. It's far too convenient to blame teachers for conditions created by government policies that shovel money at the Bill Gateses of the world while impoverishing the rest of us. Just as it took the world about 30 years to realize that Microsoft was coasting on a couple of lucky breaks it got in the 80's combined with illegal behavior in the 90s (for which it got a slap on the wrist), it will take at least that long for the politicians to accept the fact that the “race to the top” is destroying the American public educational system. But that's the point, really, isn't it? Time for the for-profits to come to the rescue. Ultimately, the answer to every problem involves creating a few more billionaires and a lot more paupers.