ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how Bill Gates, Arne Duncan, and Pearson share five assumptions about reform based on the neoliberal imaginary, whether it is about education or, in the case of the Gates Foundation, also about global health and food security. The Gates Foundation views teachers as a group to be controlled rather than consulted. In Chicago, a Foundation representative, in response to a question of whether teachers would be part of a Gates-funded board that governed the public schools, declared that teachers could not be part of the board because that would be a conflict of interest, like having the workers running the factory. Gates argues that in Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) schools, teachers improve because they look at the data and conclude that their teaching is the cause of increased learning. Gates uses his fortune to fund the corporate education reform focusing on the Common Core standards, curriculum, and assessment and on privatizing education through charter schools.
