Billionaire Bill Gates Bumrushed the Common Core State Standards
How Bill Gates pulled off the swift Common Core revolution
Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates is taking heat from education
groups, which say the Gates Foundation’s philanthropic support comes
with strings attached. Here, he responds to his critics in an interview
with The Washington Post’s Lyndsey Layton.
Published: June 7-- washingtonpost.com
The pair of education advocates had a big idea, a new approach to
transform every public-school classroom in America. By early 2008, many
of the nation’s top politicians and education leaders had lined up in
support.
But that wasn’t enough. The duo needed money — tens of millions
of dollars, at least — and they needed a champion who could overcome the
politics that had thwarted every previous attempt to institute national
standards.
So they turned to the richest man in the world.
On a summer day in 2008, Gene Wilhoit, director of a national
group of state school chiefs, and David Coleman, an emerging evangelist
for the standards movement, spent hours in Bill Gates’s sleek
headquarters near Seattle, trying to persuade him and his wife, Melinda,
to turn their idea into reality.
Coleman and Wilhoit told the Gateses that academic standards
varied so wildly between states that high school diplomas had lost all
meaning, that as many as 40 percent of college freshmen needed remedial
classes and that U.S. students were falling behind their foreign
competitors.
The pair also argued that a fragmented education system stifled
innovation because textbook publishers and software developers were
catering to a large number of small markets instead of exploring
breakthrough products. That seemed to resonate with the man who led the
creation of the world’s dominant computer operating system.
“Can you do this?” Wilhoit recalled being asked. “Is there any
proof that states are serious about this, because they haven’t been in
the past?”
Wilhoit responded that he and Coleman could make no guarantees
but that “we were going to give it the best shot we could.”
After the meeting, weeks passed with no word. Then Wilhoit got a call: Gates was in.
What followed was one of the swiftest and most remarkable shifts in education policy in U.S. history.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation didn’t just bankroll the
development of what became known as the Common Core State Standards.
With more than $200 million, the foundation also built political support
across the country, persuading state governments to make systemic and
costly changes.
Bill Gates was de facto organizer, providing the money and
structure for states to work together on common standards in a way that
avoided the usual collision between states’ rights and national
interests that had undercut every previous effort, dating from the
Eisenhower administration.
The Gates Foundation spread money across the political spectrum,
to entities including the big teachers unions, the American Federation
of Teachers and the National Education Association, and business
organizations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — groups that have
clashed in the past but became vocal backers of the standards.
Money flowed to policy groups on the right and left, funding
research by scholars of varying political persuasions who promoted the
idea of common standards. Liberals at the Center for American Progress
and conservatives affiliated with the American Legislative Exchange
Council who routinely disagree on nearly every issue accepted Gates
money and found common ground on the Common Core.
One
2009 study,
conducted by the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute with a
$959,116 Gates grant, described the proposed standards as being “very,
very strong” and “clearly superior” to many existing state standards.
-------------------------------
Gates-funded Grants related to Common Core
Top recipients of grants related to Common Core education standards
| Grantee |
Grants |
Amount |
|---|
| Council of Chief State School Officers |
7 |
$27,952,409 |
| Colorado Legacy Foundation |
2 |
$11,455,547 |
| Kentucky Department of Education |
2 |
$10,800,877 |
| James B. Hunt, Jr. Institute for Educational Leadership and Policy Foundation |
4 |
$10,011,892 |
| New Venture Fund |
4 |
$8,771,893 |
| New Visions for Public Schools |
2 |
$8,399,935 |
| Council Of The Great City Schools |
3 |
$7,611,184 |
| Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors |
2 |
$7,468,652 |
| Louisiana Department of Education |
1 |
$7,351,708 |
| Khan Academy |
2 |
$5,544,028 |
| American Federation Of Teachers Educational Foundation |
2 |
$5,400,000 |
| The Aspen Institute |
3 |
$5,189,948 |
| The NEA Foundation for the Improvement of Education |
3 |
$4,484,177 |
| Scholastic |
1 |
$4,463,541 |
| Student Achievement Partners |
1 |
$4,042,920 |
| Charter Fund Inc dba Charter School Growth Fund |
1 |
$4,000,000 |
Notes: Also may include
grants to raise academic standards as a precursor to CC, and grants to
develop tests geared to Common Core. In 2010, Minnesota adopted the
reading standards but not the math standards.
SOURCE: Washington Post analysis
of Gates Foundation data. GRAPHIC: Darla Cameron, Ted Mellnik and
Cristina Rivero - The Washington Post. Published Saturday, June 7, 2014.
--------------------------------------
Gates money went to state and local groups, as well, to help
influence policymakers and civic leaders. And the idea found a major
booster in President Obama, whose new administration was populated by
former Gates Foundation staffers and associates. The administration
designed a special contest using economic stimulus funds to reward
states that accepted the standards.
The result was astounding: Within just two years of the 2008
Seattle meeting, 45 states and the District of Columbia had fully
adopted the Common Core State Standards.
The math standards require students to learn multiple ways to
solve problems and explain how they got their answers, while the English
standards emphasize nonfiction and expect students to use evidence to
back up oral and written arguments. The standards are not a curriculum
but skills that students should acquire at each grade. How they are
taught and materials used are decisions left to states and school
districts.
The standards have become so pervasive that they also quickly
spread through private Catholic schools. About 100 of 176 Catholic
dioceses have adopted the standards because it is increasingly difficult
to buy classroom materials and send teachers to professional
development programs that are not influenced by the Common Core,
Catholic educators said.
And yet, because of the way education policy is generally
decided, the Common Core was instituted in many states without a single
vote taken by an elected lawmaker. Kentucky even adopted the standards
before the final draft had been made public.
States were responding to a “common belief system supported by
widespread investments,” according to one former Gates employee who
spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid antagonizing the
foundation.
The movement grew so quickly and with so little public notice
that opposition was initially almost nonexistent. That started to change
last summer, when local tea party groups began protesting what they
viewed as the latest intrusion by an overreaching federal government —
even though the impetus had come from the states. In some circles,
Common Core became known derisively as “Obamacore.”
Since then, anti-Common Core sentiment has intensified, to the
extent that it has become a litmus test in the Republican Party ahead of
the GOP’s 2016 presidential nomination process. Former Florida governor
Jeb Bush, whose nonprofit Foundation for Excellence in Education has
received about $5.2 million from the Gates Foundation since 2010, is one
of the Common Core’s most vocal supporters. Indiana Gov. Mike Pence,
who, like Bush, is a potential Republican presidential candidate, led a
repeal of the standards in his state. In the past week, Oklahoma Gov.
Mary Fallin (R), a former advocate of the standards,
signed a law pulling her state out, days after South Carolina’s Republican governor, Nikki Haley, did the same.
Some liberals are angry, too, with a few teacher groups
questioning Gates’s influence and motives. Critics say Microsoft stands
to benefit from the Common Core’s embrace of technology and data — a
charge Gates vehemently rejects.
A group calling itself the “Badass Teachers Association,” citing
opposition to what it considers market-based education reform, plans a
June 26 protest outside the Gates Foundation’s headquarters in Seattle.
In an interview, Gates said his role is to fund the research and
development of new tools, such as the Common Core, and offer them to
decision-makers who are trying to improve education for millions of
Americans. It’s up to the government to decide which tools to use, but
someone has to invest in their creation, he said.
“The country as a whole has a huge problem that low-income kids
get less good education than suburban kids get,” Gates said. “And that
is a huge challenge. . . . Education can get better. Some people may not
believe that. Education can change. We can do better.”
“There’s a lot of work that’s gone into making these [standards]
good,” Gates continued. “I wish there was a lot of competition, in terms
of [other] people who put tens of millions of dollars into how reading
and writing could be improved, how math could be improved.”
Referring to opinion polls, he noted that most teachers like the
Common Core standards and that those who are most familiar with them are
the most positive.
Gates grew irritated in the interview when the political backlash against the standards was mentioned.
“These are not political things,” he said. “These are where
people are trying to apply expertise to say, ‘Is this a way of making
education better?’ ”
“At the end of the day, I don’t think wanting education to be
better is a right-wing or left-wing thing,” Gates said. “We fund people
to look into things. We don’t fund people to say, ‘Okay, we’ll pay you
this if you say you like the Common Core.’ ”
Whether the Common Core will deliver on its promise is an open question.
Tom Loveless, a former Harvard professor who is an education
policy expert at the Brookings Institution, said the Common Core was
“built on a shaky theory.” He said he has found no correlation between
quality standards and higher student achievement.
“Everyone who developed standards in the past has had a theory
that standards will raise achievement, and that’s not happened,”
Loveless said.
Jay P. Greene, head of the Department of Education Reform at the
University of Arkansas, says the Gates Foundation’s overall dominance in
education policy has subtly muffled dissent.
“Really rich guys can come up with ideas that they think are
great, but there is a danger that everyone will tell them they’re great,
even if they’re not,” Greene said.
Common Core’s first win
The first victory for Common Core advocates came on a snowy
evening in Kentucky in February 2010, when the state’s top education
officials voted unanimously to accept the standards.
“There was no dissent,” said Terry Holliday, Kentucky’s education commissioner. “We had punch and cookies to celebrate.”
It was not by chance that Kentucky went first.
The state enjoyed a direct connection to the Common Core backers —
Wilhoit, who had made the personal appeal to Bill and Melinda Gates
during that pivotal 2008 meeting, is a former Kentucky education
commissioner.
Kentucky was also in the market for new standards. Alarmed that
as many as 80 percent of community college students were taking remedial
classes, lawmakers had recently passed a bill that required Kentucky to
write new, better K-12 standards and tests.
“All of our consultants and our college professors had reviewed
the Common Core standards, and they really liked them,” Holliday said.
“And there was no cost. We didn’t have any money to do this work, and
here we were, able to tap into this national work and get the benefits
of the best minds in the country.”
“Without the Gates money,” Holliday added, “we wouldn’t have been able to do this.”
Over time, at least $15 million in Gates money was directed both
to the state — to train teachers in Common Core practices and purchase
classroom materials — and to on-the-ground advocacy and business groups
to help build public support.
Armed with $476,553 from Gates, the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce’s foundation produced a seven-minute
video
about the value and impact of the Common Core, a tool kit to guide
employers in how to talk about its benefits with their employees, a list
of key facts that could be stuffed into paycheck envelopes, and other
promotional materials written by consultants.
The
tool kit
provided a sample e-mail that could be sent to workers describing “some
exciting new developments underway in our schools” that “hold great
promise for creating a more highly skilled workforce and for giving our
students, community and state a better foundation on which to build a
strong economic future.”
The chamber also recruited a prominent Louisville stockbroker to
head a coalition of 75 company executives across the state who lent
their names to ads placed in business publications that supported the
Common Core.
“The notion that the business community was behind this, those
seeds were planted across the state, and that reaped a nice harvest in
terms of public opinion,” said David Adkisson, president and chief
executive of the Kentucky chamber.
The foundation run by the National Education Association received
$501,580 in 2013 to help put the Common Core in place in Kentucky.
Gates-backed groups built such strong support for the Common Core that critics, few and far between, were overwhelmed.
“They have so much money to throw around, they can impact the
Kentucky Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Education, they
can impact both the AFT and the NEA,” said Brent McKim, president of
the teachers union in Jefferson County, Ky., whose early complaint that
the standards were too numerous to be taught well earned him a rebuke by
Holliday.
The foundation’s backing was crucial in other states, as well.
Starting in 2009, it had begun ramping up its grant-giving to local
nonprofit organizations and other Common Core advocates.
The foundation, for instance, gave more than $5 million to the
University of North Carolina-affiliated Hunt Institute, led by the
state’s former four-term Democratic governor, Jim Hunt, to advocate for
the Common Core in statehouses around the country.
The grant was the institute’s largest source of income in 2009, more than 10 times the size of its next largest donation.
Bill Gates sat down with The Post’s Lyndsey Layton in March to
defend the Gates Foundation’s pervasive presence in education and its
support of the Common Core. Here is the full, sometimes tense,
interview: http://wapo.st/1hGqByl
With the Gates money, the Hunt Institute coordinated more than a
dozen organizations — many of them also Gates grantees — including the
Thomas B. Fordham Institute, National Council of La Raza, the Council of
Chief State School Officers, National Governors Association, Achieve
and the two national teachers unions.
The Hunt Institute held weekly conference calls between the
players that were directed by Stefanie Sanford, who was in charge of
policy and advocacy at the Gates Foundation. They talked about which
states needed shoring up, the best person to respond to questions or
criticisms and who needed to travel to which state capital to testify,
according to those familiar with the conversations.
The Hunt Institute spent $437,000 to hire GMMB, a strategic
communications firm owned by Jim Margolis, a top Democratic strategist
and veteran of both of Obama’s presidential campaigns. GMMB conducted
polling around standards, developed fact sheets, identified language
that would be effective in winning support and prepared talking points,
among other efforts.
The groups organized by Hunt developed a “
messaging tool kit”
that included sample letters to the editor, op-ed pieces that could be
tailored to individuals depending on whether they were teachers,
parents, business executives or civil rights leaders.
Later in the process, Gates and other foundations would pay for
mock legislative hearings for classroom teachers, training educators on
how to respond to questions from lawmakers.
The speed of adoption by the states was staggering by normal
standards. A process that typically can take five years was collapsed
into a matter of months.
“You had dozens of states adopting before the standards even
existed, with little or no discussion, coverage or controversy,” said
Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute, which has received
$4 million from the Gates Foundation since 2007 to study education
policy, including the Common Core. “People weren’t paying attention. We
were in the middle of an economic meltdown and the health-care fight,
and states saw a chance to have a crack at a couple of million bucks if
they made some promises.”
The decision by the Gates Foundation to simultaneously pay for
the standards and their promotion is a departure from the way
philanthropies typically operate, said Sarah Reckhow, an expert in
philanthropy and education policy at Michigan State University.
“Usually, there’s a pilot test — something is tried on a small
scale, outside researchers see if it works, and then it’s promoted on a
broader scale,” Reckhow said. “That didn’t happen with the Common Core.
Instead, they aligned the research with the advocacy. . . . At the end
of the day, it’s going to be the states and local districts that pay for
this.”
Working hand in hand
While the Gates Foundation created the burst of momentum behind
the Common Core, the Obama administration picked up the cause and helped
push states to act quickly.
There was so much cross-pollination between the foundation and
the administration, it is difficult to determine the degree to which one
may have influenced the other.
Several top players in Obama’s Education Department who shaped the
administration’s policies came either straight from the Gates Foundation in 2009 or from organizations that received heavy funding from the foundation.
Before becoming education secretary in 2009, Arne Duncan was
chief executive of the Chicago Public Schools, which received
$20 million from Gates to break up several large high schools and create
smaller versions, a move aimed at stemming the dropout rate.
As secretary, Duncan named as his chief of staff Margot Rogers, a
top Gates official he got to know through that grant. He also hired
James Shelton, a program officer at the foundation, to serve first as
his head of innovation and most recently as the deputy secretary,
responsible for a wide array of federal policy decisions.
Duncan and his team leveraged stimulus money to reward states that adopted common standards.
They created Race to the Top, a $4.3 billion contest for
education grants. Under the contest rules, states that adopted high
standards stood the best chance of winning. It was a clever way around
federal laws that prohibit Washington from interfering in what takes
place in classrooms. It was also a tantalizing incentive for
cash-strapped states.
Heading the effort for Duncan was Joanne Weiss, previously the
chief operating officer of the Gates-backed NewSchools Venture Fund.
As Race to the Top was being drafted, the administration and the Gates-led effort were in close coordination.
An early version highlighted the Common Core standards by name,
saying that states that embraced those specific standards would be
better positioned to win federal money. That worried Wilhoit, who feared
that some states would consider that unwanted — and possibly illegal —
interference from Washington. He took up the matter with Weiss.
“I told her to take it out, that we didn’t want the federal
government involvement,” said Wilhoit, who was executive director of the
Council of Chief State School Officers. “Those kinds of things cause
people to be real suspicious.”
The words “Common Core” were deleted.
The administration said states could develop their own “college
and career ready” standards, as long as their public universities
verified that those standards would prepare high school graduates for
college-level work.
Still, most states eyeing Race to the Top money opted for the easiest route and signed onto the Common Core.
The Gates Foundation gave $2.7 million to help 24 states write
their Race to the Top application, which ran an average of 300 pages,
with as much as 500 pages for an appendix that included Gates-funded
research.
Applications for the first round of Race to the Top were due in
January 2010, even though the final draft of the Common Core wasn’t
released until six months later. To get around this, the U.S. Department
of Education told states they could apply as long as they promised they
would officially adopt standards by August.
On the defensive
Now six years into his quest, Gates finds himself in an
uncomfortable place — countering critics on the left and right who
question whether the Common Core will have any impact or negative
effects, whether it represents government intrusion, and whether the new
policy will benefit technology firms such as Microsoft.
Gates is disdainful of the rhetoric from opponents. He sees
himself as a technocrat trying to foster solutions to a profound social
problem — gaping inequalities in U.S. public education — by investing
in promising new ideas.
Education lacks research and development, compared with other
areas such as medicine and computer science. As a result, there is a
paucity of information about methods of instruction that work.
“The guys who search for oil, they spend a lot of money
researching new tools,” Gates said.
“Medicine — they spend a lot of
money finding new tools. Software is a very R and D-oriented industry.
The funding, in general, of what works in education . . . is tiny. It’s
the lowest in this field than any field of human endeavor. Yet you could
argue it should be the highest.”
Gates is devoting some of his fortune to correct that. Since
1999, the Gates Foundation has spent approximately $3.4 billion on an
array of measures to try to improve K-12 public education, with mixed
results.
It spent about $650 million on a program to replace large urban
high schools with smaller schools, on the theory that students at risk
of dropping out would be more likely to stay in schools where they
forged closer bonds with teachers and other students. That led to a
modest increase in graduation rates, an outcome that underwhelmed Gates
and prompted the foundation to pull the plug.
Gates has said that one of the benefits of common standards would
be to open the classroom to digital learning, making it easier for
software developers — including Microsoft — to develop new products for
the country’s 15,000 school districts.
In February, Microsoft announced that it was joining Pearson, the
world’s largest educational publisher, to load Pearson’s Common Core
classroom materials on Microsoft’s tablet, the Surface. That product
allows Microsoft to compete for school district spending with Apple,
whose iPad is the dominant tablet in classrooms.
Gates dismissed any suggestion that he is motivated by self-interest.
“I believe in the Common Core because of its substance and what
it will do to improve education,” he said. “And that’s the only reason I
believe in the Common Core.”
Bill and Melinda Gates, Obama and Arne Duncan are parents of
school-age children, although none of those children attend schools that
use the Common Core standards. The Gates and Obama children attend
private schools, while Duncan’s children go to public school in
Virginia, one of four states that never adopted the Common Core.
Still, Gates said he wants his children to know a “superset” of
the Common Core standards — everything in the standards and beyond.
“This is about giving money away,” he said of his support for the
standards. “This is philanthropy.
This is trying to make sure students
have the kind of opportunity I had . . . and it’s almost outrageous to
say otherwise, in my view.”
=====================================================
The people behind the Common Core State Standards
By Lyndsey Layton, Published: June 7, 2014
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
bankrolled the effort to create and spread the Common Core State
Standards across the country with astounding speed. While the idea of
common academic K-12 standards came from governors and state education
officials around the country, the work to turn it into reality was
orchestrated by a tight-knit group of influential people, who circulated
among the Gates Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education and
non-profit education organizations. Here are some of those key players.
Bill Gates
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Co-chairman
Bill Gates, the billionaire founder of
Microsoft, is co-chairman of the world’s wealthiest charity, with a $40
billion endowment. With the help of the foundation's money and influence
in education, the Common Core State Standards spread across the country
with astounding speed.
Melinda Gates
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Co-chairman
Melinda Gates, Bill Gates's wife, is co-chairman of the Gates Foundation.
Vicki Phillips
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Director of the U.S. education program
Vicki Phillips has been director of the U.S. education program at the Gates
Foundation since 2007. She was secretary of education in Pennsylvania and ran
the Portland Public Schools in Portland, Ore.
Gene Wilhoit
Student Achievement Partners
Partner
Gene Wilhoit, was executive director of the
Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) from 2006 to 2012. He was
Kentucky’s education commissioner from 2000 to 2006. CSSO has received
about $28 million from the Gates Foundation since 2009 to help it
advance the Common Core State Standards. In 2013, Wilhoit became a
partner in Student Achievement Partners, replacing David Coleman.
Michael Cohen
Achieve, Inc.
President
Michael Cohen is president of Achieve Inc., a
non-profit created by the National Governors’ Association and the
business community to push for higher common standards and better
college preparation. Achieve, a major beneficiary of the Gates
Foundation, oversaw the writing of the Common Core State Standards and
then formed one of the two consortia of states that is now crafting
standardized tests aligned to the Common Core.
Judith Rizzo
Hunt Institute
Executive director
Judith Rizzo is executive director of the
Hunt Institute, founded by former North Carolina Gov. Jim Hunt, a major
proponent of common academic standards. The Gates Foundation has heavily
invested in the Hunt Institute, which in turn hired pollsters and
strategists, including former Obama strategist Jim Margolis’ firm, to
craft talking points and other communication to be used by proponents of
the Common Core. The institute has convened regular conference calls
among groups advocating for the standards, which were led early on by
Stefanie Sanford of the Gates Foundation.
David Coleman
College Board
President
David Coleman worked at McKinsey, and with
his fellow Rhodes scholar, Jason Zimba, founded Grow Network, a
consulting firm that analyzed test data for school districts and states.
While at Grow Network, Coleman did work for Vicki Phillips while she
was education commissioner of Pennsylvania. The company also worked for
the Chicago Public Schools while Arne Duncan was chief executive. After
selling Grow Network to McGraw Hill, Coleman and Zimba founded Student
Achievement Partners, a non-profit devoted to creating higher academic
standards. Along with Sue Pimentel, also of Student Achievement
Partners, was a lead writer of the Common Core standards in English
language arts. In 2012, Coleman became the ninth president of the
College Board, a non-profit that oversees the SAT college entrance exam.
Student Achievement Partners has received $6.4 million from the Gates
Foundation.
Jason Zimba
Student Achievement Partners
Founding partner
Jason Zimba, is a physicist and
mathematician who met David Coleman when both were at Oxford University
as Rhodes scholars. Later, he founded Grow Network and Student
Achievement Partners with Coleman. He was the lead writer of the Common
Core standards in math.
Susan Pimentel
Student Achievement Partners
Founding partner
Susan Pimentel was a consultant to the
American Diploma Project, a project of Achieve Inc., which was heavily
funded by the Gates Foundation. She became a co-founder of Student
Achievement Partners, along with David Coleman and Jason Zimba. She and
Coleman were the lead writers for the Common Core standards in English
language arts.
Stefanie Sanford
College Board
Chief, Global Policy Advocacy
Stefanie Sanford was director of advocacy at
the Gates Foundation under Vicki Phillips and oversaw the foundation's
strategy to build political support for adoption of the Common Core
standards. In 2013, Sanford left the foundation to perform similar work
at the College Board under David Coleman.
Arne Duncan
U.S. Department of Education
Secretary
Arne Duncan received Gates Foundation
funding while he was chief executive officer of the Chicago Public
Schools, where he got to know Margot Rogers, the program officer for
Chicago from the Gates Foundation. He was appointed U.S. Education
Secretary under President Obama in 2009.
Margot Rogers
Parthenon Group
Vice Chairman and Senior Advisor
Margot Rogers was a special assistant to
Vicki Phillips at the Gates Foundation and moved to the U.S. Department
of Education in 2009 to become Arne Duncan's chief of staff. She left
the department in 2010 to work at Parthenon Group, a consulting firm
that helped Tennessee and other states with their applications for Race
to the Top, efforts that has been funded by grants from the Gates
Foundation.
James Shelton
U.S. Department of Education
Deputy Secretary
James Shelton was a program director for the
education division of the Gates Foundation and moved to the U.S.
Department of Education in 2009, where he is now the deputy secretary
under Arne Duncan. Prior to working at the Gates Foundation, Shelton was
a partner at the New Schools Venture Fund, a venture philanthropy group
that invests in charter schools and educational technology. New Schools
Venture Fund receives heavy support for the Gates Foundation.
Joanne Weiss
Weiss Associates
Independent Consultant
Joanne Weiss was a partner and chief
operating officer at New Schools Venture Fund, which is heavily
supported by the Gates Foundation. She moved to the U.S. Department of
Education in 2009 to oversee the Race to the Top competition. She later
became chief of staff to Arne Duncan before leaving the department in
2013 to run her own consulting firm.
Matt Gandal
Education Strategy Group
President
Matt Gandal was the executive vice president
at Achieve, Inc., where he led the American Diploma Project, which was
largely funded by grants from the Gates Foundation. Achieve was involved
in writing the Common Core standards. In 2011, Gandal went to work for
Arne Duncan at the U.S. Department of Education, where he oversaw
implementation of Race to the Top. He left the department in 2012 to
work as a consultant; among his clients have been foundations, including
Gates, which want to coordinate their financial support for the Common
Core.
