Bill Gates pours $173 million into Common Core Standards

A guest article in today's Washington Post by Principal Carol Burris of South Side High School in New York details the money that billionaire Bill Gates has poured into Common Core Standards- more than $173 million.

As Ms. Burris notes, Common Core is not a movement driven by concerned parents and educators but strictly a creation of business interests.

The Gates Foundation has given in excess of $173.5 million to promote the Common Core standards to an astounding number of organizations. In New York, the Gates Foundation has contributed $3.3 million to the Regents Research Fund to support a think tank known as the Regents Fellows. A recent story by Jim Odato of the Albany Times Union, entitled, “Education Reform Backed by the Wealthy,” documents how foundations have contributed over $19 million to fund two dozen “research” fellows, who are pushing out the implementation of the Common Core and other reforms in New York. Odato observes that “the arrangement is stirring concern in some quarters that deep-pocketed pedagogues are forcing their reform philosophies on an unwitting populace, and making an end run around government officers.”
Ms. Burris concludes with this statement:

It is clear that these reforms are not arising from parental and community concerns. They are hard-driven, top-down changes backed by those who are willing to spend a fortune to reshape our public schools. That any philanthropic foundation would view our nation’s children as ‘output’ for which businesses are the natural consumers is, in a word, horrifying.