Gates Praises Teachers Union, Touts Tenure Reform

Written By: Ben Boychuk
Published In: School Reform News
Publication date: 07/12/2010
Publisher: The Heartland Institute

Tech billionaire-philanthropist Bill Gates met with a mostly warm reception from the nation’s second-largest teachers union on Saturday. His message to the American Federation of Teachers: Do not fear change, but embrace it.

“You are driving the changes that will accelerate student gains,” Gates told the audience of about 3,400 union delegates assembled at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle. “No other union is doing what you are to make this happen.”

“If reforms aren’t shaped by teachers’ knowledge and experience, they’re not going to succeed,” he said.

Teacher Training Funded

As president of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Gates has donated more than $4 billion over the past eight years to educational causes controversial with teachers unions, such as promoting charter schools and mayoral control of school districts.

More recently, however, Gates has put his philanthropic heft behind efforts such as the Measures of Effective Teaching project and Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching. Those initiatives were mostly all Gates wanted to discuss on Saturday.

“If we analyze the teachers whose students are making big gains, if we identify what they do, and if we find out how to transfer those skills to others—then every teacher can move closer to the top,” Gates explained. “It will elevate the whole profession.”

“We have to make sure that teachers get the evaluations, training, standards, curriculum, assessments, and the student data they need to improve their practice,” he said.

‘The Most Dangerous Man in America’

Gates received a standing ovation as he took the stage and his speech was interrupted with applause at several points. AFT President Randi Weingarten introduced Gates and praised him for “recognizing the need to help teachers and invest in teachers.”

Although Gates generally stayed clear of touchy topics, delegates sounded agitated at his discussion of tenure reform.

“You owe it to your profession and your students to make sure that tenure reflects more than the number of years spent in the classroom,” he said. “It should reflect the quality of the work in the classroom. And that means student achievement should be a factor in decisions about tenure.”

Despite what Education Week reporter Steven Sawchuk described as a “very carefully balanced” speech, some union members continue to regard the Microsoft founder with suspicion. A small group of delegates reportedly staged a walk out during the speech. And members of AFT’s “Peace and Justice Caucus” on Friday circulated fliers denouncing Gates’ speech and calling the billionaire “A Trojan Horse in the AFT House.”

Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters and a blogger for the left-leaning Huffington Post, called Gates “the most dangerous man in America” in a post appearing a few hours before his speech.

“Watch out, America!” Haimson wrote. “You have nothing to lose but your public school system, at the hands of the richest man in the country who, like a spoiled child carelessly playing with toys, breaks one after another.”

The American Federation of Teachers is the second-largest teachers union in the United States, with 1.5 million members. The theme of this year’s AFT conference was “Building Futures Together.”

Ben Boychuk (bboychuk@heartland.org) is managing editor of School Reform News.