The cut-throat competitor that Bill Gates once was has morphed into the genial, sweater-wearing philanthropist we now see on TV fighting Third-World diseases and handing out educational grants.

But Microsoft’s founder launched an uncharacteristic rant last week aimed at state governments and the education establishment.

Addressing the 2011 Technology, Education and Design Conference, Gates blasted states for tolerating waste and incompetence in U.S. education.

“The guys at Enron never would have done this!” he said. “I mean, this is so blatant, so extreme that, is anybody paying attention to what these guys do?”

OK, that’s a little over the top, but even billionaires occasionally lose their cool.

Outburst over, Gates laid out some reasonable challenges to American education assumptions.

Gates said some states are making the wrong choices in an effort to balance their budgets by cutting education funding.

Maine Gov. Paul LePage has actually promised to slightly increase state aid for local education.

While Gates urged states to sustain education funding, he challenged some long-held assumptions about how school funding is spent.

He said the U.S. spends $50 billion a year on automatic raises for teachers based upon seniority. Yet, he said, “Seniority seems to have no effect on student achievement.”

Gates also challenged why the country spends $15 billion a year on raises for teachers who get advanced degrees. “Such raises have almost no impact on achievement,” he said.

Indeed, a review of studies on both subjects, seniority and advanced degrees, by the Center for Educator Compensation Reform, reaches the same conclusion.

“The current method by which most teachers are paid assumes that teachers who have graduate degrees and more teaching experience are more effective — and therefore should automatically be paid more — than teachers with no advanced degrees and less teaching experience.

“Evidence suggests, however, that these factors are not consistently related with student performance, with the exception of initial levels of experience and the possible exception of some advanced degrees at the secondary level, particularly subject-specific degrees in mathematics and science.”

Gates does not, however, suggest we spend less on teaching, only that monetary rewards be linked with more relevant criteria, like student achievement.

If a teacher improves from year to year, that teacher should earn more than another who does not. If a teacher’s performance improves after receiving a master’s degree, their pay should reflect that as well.

There are more than 3 million teachers in the U.S. and more than 60 percent of the money at the K-12 level goes to teacher salaries and benefits.

Many studies show, meanwhile, that there is wide variation between excellent teachers and poor ones.

What we need now are more educators, school boards and legislators willing to review the research and challenge the status quo.

rrhoades@sunjournal.com

The opinions expressed in this column reflect the views of the ownership and editorial board.

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