“frustration has flared up over the Common Core initiative, involving the implementation of national reading and maths standards for primary and secondary school children. The Gates Foundation played a central role in bringing the standards to fruition. Spending over $233 million to back the standards, the foundation dispersed money liberally to both conservative and progressive interest groups. The two major teachers' unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, each received large donations, as did the US Chamber of Commerce. Gates himself suggested that a benefit of the standards is that they open avenues towards increasing digital learning. In 2014, Microsoft announced it was partnering with Pearson to load Pearson's Common Core classroom material onto Microsoft's Surface tablet. Previously, the iPad was the classroom frontrunner; the Pearson partnership helps to make Microsoft more competitive.” EducationPhilanthropyCommon CoreGates Foundation Author:Linsey McGoey
“What's the best way to make sure that the poor have a share in a country's growing wealth: Regulation? Taxes? Philanthropy?” WealthPoorRegulationPhilanthropyDistributionTaxation Book:No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy Source: No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy
“Quite ironically, the answer to ineffective philanthropy is more of it: the failure of philanthropy is its own success. The perceived necessity — even the indispensability — of a donor like the Gates Foundation grows in proportion to its own inability to achieve the unachievable: mitigating the very inequalities that its own presence might be inadvertently compounding.” PhilanthropyIneffective Book:No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy Source: No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy