Step up to the plate Mr. Gates and use your billions to fund the under-funded schools.
That should solve the problem.
A thousand time's Gate money would do nothing to improve the schools. Public education is a cancer on the mind. The public schools exists for the main purpose of making obedient citizens, not critical thinkers. The public schools are working as intended. If Gates had any true insight in this matter who would bluntly point out that "education is far to important to leave in the hands of government beaurcates. The fact he doesn't recognige this is because he is a liberal and can't see that government is THE problem. I am a big fan of President Bush, but the fact he greatly increased the Dept of Education budget shows he is blind on this matter too. It is a sin against our children that leaders can't speak the truth about education. It is disgusting.
I saw this in looking for the text of the speech after seeing it on C-SPAN:
"To address the problem, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation said it would give 15 million US dollars to the National Governors Association, to be disbursed to states that take significant steps to improve their high schools. The Gates foundation said it had invested 733 million dollars in more than 1,500 high schools - about 8 percent of all public high schools - in the past five years."
source: http://english1.people.com.cn/200502/28/eng20050228_174927.html
The public school system in California get $60 billion a year. That is one half of the California state budget. To say schools are underfunded it a complete misstatement of the facts.
Giving money to schools that are implementing the federal curriculum through the no child left behind act, and through state education programs that are nothing more that social engineering, will not improve anyones education.
Moronic response. It's the same as me asking you to use your money to do it.
Gates is saying that neither money or teachers will do it. The system design has failed and needs to be rebuilt, and that a blind man can see it in a minute if you doing a little international traveling.
He's right, of course. My wife teaches high school math, and broken doesn't begin to describe the situation. Between the parents and the teachers, the system is FUBAR.
Asking parents to design the school system of tomorrow is like asking a chimp to operate on your liver. The teachers involuntarily pay $900/year in WA state to the union, who is looking to increase that number this year.
Many administrators are failed teachers who have found a home administrating other teachers. We can't ask them for the school system of tomorrow.
Anyway, it's a problem bigger than social security in my opinion.
I know for a fact that he has given millions to charter schools.....Why would he give money to the existing public school system which should be overhauled. The money hasn't improved anything in the publik schools.