Bill Gates has doubts about Common Core

As the Washington Post reported on Sept. 27, 2013, the man who poured billions into Common Core education reform revealed during a Sept. 21 interview at Harvard, “It would be great if our education stuff worked, but that we won’t know for probably a decade.” He repeated it soon afterwards during a Clinton Global Initiative panel discussion.

So here we are, one of many states who signed on to Common Core without a clear picture of its outcome, spending large amounts of taxpayer money for it in our public schools, set to implement this latest education theory based on questionable research, no record of success, and a wealthy philanthropist’s latest agenda, which even he now questions.

Parents and grandparents should be worried; many teachers already are. Pilot schools around the country in which Common Core has been implemented show poor results, and it affects teacher assessments.

Gates has funded other education theories of his before. They didn’t work out as he hoped. One wonders if it has occurred to him that the system which educated him without Common Core Standards actually worked well enough to prepare him for his stellar working life.

ANITA PERRY

Sandpoint