What’s Good for Bill Gates Turns Out To Be Bad For Public Schools
And, actually, bad for Microsoft too, as we learned recently
Schools have a lot to learn from business about how to improve performance, declared Bill Gates in an Op Ed in the Wall Street Journal in 2011. He pointed to his own company as a worthy model for public schools.
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,” Gatespromised 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
