+ - Did Bill Gates "Buy" the SAT?
Submitted
by
theodp
theodp writes ""The Common Core State Standards [CCSS] exist because the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation wanted them," Susan Ohanian wrote in 2011. Last August, education activist Mercedes Schneider took a look at Bill Gates' spending on the controversial CCSS Initiative — $147.9 million to the four organizations primarily responsible for CCSS by her reckoning — and worried, "Can Bill Gates buy a foundational democratic institution? Will America allow it?" A commenter added that "David Coleman, 'Architect' of the Common Core and founder of Student Achievement Partners that received $6.5 million from Gates, was also mysteriously appointed as head of the College Board and is aligning the SAT to Common Core." Last week at SXSWedu 2014, Coleman announced a dramatic overhaul of the SAT that includes a new emphasis on evidence-based reading and writing and evidence analysis, which AJC reporter Maureen Downey calls "reflective of the approach of the Common Core State Standards". And over at The Atlantic, Lindsey Tepe reports that The Common Core Is Driving the Changes to the SAT. "Neither Coleman nor the national media," writes Tepe, "have really honed in on how the standards are driving the College Board-as well as the ACT-to change their product." In conjunction with the redesigned SAT, The College Board (no stranger to Gates Grants itself) also announced it would team with Khan Academy (KA) to make comprehensive, best-in-class SAT prep materials open and free. In a conversation with KA founder Sal Khan — aka Bill Gates' favorite teacher and a beneficiary of $10+ million in Gates Foundation grants (much earmarked for Common Core) — College Board CEO Coleman stresses that, apart from the one with KA, "there will be no other such partnerships" that are "focused on the core math and literacy that matters most". Game, set, and match, Gates? Or could the SAT changes actually spell trouble for Common Core?"