Gates Foundation Has Right Priorities

After much research and deliberation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has just announced new educational initiatives that will continue and build upon its previous efforts. The philanthropic organization hopes to double the number of low-income students who graduate from post–high school programs (including college), help create national standards for high school learning, and increase teacher quality and efficacy.

Although some critics might argue that this philanthropy would be better directed at such problems as poverty, health care, and housing, education remains the best vehicle for upward mobility—the long-term solution for low-income students to obtain good jobs and, ultimately, improve not only their own economic circumstances but also those of their families and the nation as a whole. It's analogous to the old Chinese proverb by Lao Tzu: "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime."

One controversial goal of the foundation's new initiatives involves paying teachers based upon their performance rather than according to how much education they have or how long they've been teaching. Many who oppose such a goal argue that teacher efficacy would likely be measured by students' test scores, which are not necessarily reflective of teachers' skill levels or performance.

Although finding fair and accurate ways of measuring teachers' effectiveness would be challenging, rewarding high-performing teachers—just as we reward high performers in other professions—makes sense. Every teacher has the potential to affect, for better or for worse, the achievement levels of thousands of students. Finding ways to increase teacher quality could thus have an enormous effect not just on individual students' lives but on the educational competitiveness of the country as a whole—a worthwhile goal indeed.