Gates Foundation Considered Harmful

Independent assessment of the Gates Foundation's intervention in the last decade, to the tune of $575 million, shows it not just to be wasteful, but even actively damaging:

Laudable as the intention may have been, it didn’t work. As the independent assessment, produced by the Rand Corporation, put it: “The initiative did not achieve its goals for student achievement or graduation,” particularly for low-income minority students. The report, however, stops short of drawing what I see as the more important conclusion: The approach that the Gates program epitomizes has actually done damage. It has unfairly ruined careers, driving teachers out of the profession amid a nationwide shortage. And its flawed use of metrics has undermined science.

Cathy O'Neil at Bloomberg.