Former Intel CEO Drives Education Reform in Arizona

By Wolfgang Gruener
published

Intel has been among the most critical tech companies in the U.S. that have consistently and strongly criticized the U.S. education system.

The company has immersed itself into the discussion by privately funding specific education branches, institutions and projects for more than a decade.

Craig Barrett, former chief executive offer and chairman of the board, has long led the charge to impact education and continues even after his retirement to change the existing education structure. Barrett, who stepped down from his career at Intel in 2009, was appointed chairman of the Arizona Ready Education Council.

During a recent discussion, Barrett discussed the recently implemented Common Core Standards for math and English, which he described as "the biggest transformation of K-12 education" in Arizona history. The approach is based on an international benchmark system to find out how U.S. kids have to perform to be competitive and integrate those findings in the curriculum. According to Barrett, U.S. kids are "kind of mediocre in reading, [and] below average in mathematics and science."

Barrett also believes that a portion of salary increases for teachers needs to be performance-based. To accomplish that he suggested a performance monitoring system that tracks kids and how their performance increases over a certain period.

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Wolfgang Gruener
14 Comments Comment from the forums
  • audiophillia
    why is he on the floor?
    Reply
  • buckcm
    This article floored me.
    Reply
  • sykozis
    audiophilliawhy is he on the floor?He passed out after seeing how bad the US education system has become.....
    Reply
  • cmcghee358
    Performance based raises for teachers is inherently flawed.

    A teacher can teach very well, but if a kid has a learning disability, a behavioral problem, or in some cases just plain stupid; the teacher is going to have lower pay?

    Furthermore, look at the recent standardized testing scandals. When pay is factored into student performance, invariably teachers will "teach the test" without giving any thought or care to the quality of the instruction, as long as the kids do well on the test.

    I think too much emphasis is placed on the initial school system. I remember jack squat from school. I think the benefit of school is less academic and a lot more social in nature. But rest assured, the smart kids are curious. The kids good at math, actually enjoy it. Everyone in HS is finding their place, be it physically, socially or academically.

    I think the U.S. just has more dumb kids loaded up on high fructose corn syrup and they all get gold stars for participation. We as a society are literally breeding a failure of a generation because we're failures as parents.
    Reply
  • cmcghee358
    No you're missing the point.

    I have been an instructor for going on 3 years.

    When I stomp my foot, that means what I'm teaching is on the test. Memorize this one minute part of my entire lesson plan as this part matters to me.

    In fact you obviously didnt hear about the scandal in Atlanta. So here's a quick link:

    http://news.yahoo.com/americas-biggest-teacher-principal-cheating-scandal-unfolds-atlanta-213734183.html

    The teachers/principal were actually CHANGING test answers after the test so the students would do better, and their school would get more money.

    And standardized tests aren't about "improvement" they are about raw score data. So a good teacher can improve a learning disabled child, sure, but they still will score worse than Student A on the test thereby lowering the teachers pay.

    Even if the tests were a measurement of improvement, the baseline could be skewed(sandbagged) to show a massive improvement, and in-turn an increase in teacher pay.

    Reply
  • The_Trutherizer
    Performance based incentives for teachers have a dismal track record in many places. Many teachers end up cheating to get by. As long as it is based on the results of examinations the teacher will not personally mark there should be no problem though.
    Reply
  • cmcghee358
    In Atlanta there were over 180 teachers, principals and administrators involved in standardize testing cheating. It's just a flawed system.
    Reply
  • JamesSneed
    Good ideas. We have had a huge brain drain of teachers over the last 50 years. The US used to hold back women from same pay as men so it was extremely difficult for women to become doctors, lawyers, scientists but in today's era women all have equality. So now a huge part of the highly intelligent women do not teach like in our prior history and education sadly never became competitive enough to attract that type of talent.

    With that said rating performance should be done at the district level to help prevent corruption at the school level. Also, I never see it mentioned but good teachers do things that many times are not taken into account like teaching other teachers on technology, helping other teachers develop lessons, differentiated instruction, reaching out to parents to make them be involved when otherwise they may not be. So like in business you have the part of your review that is doing your job, i.e. kids improvement, but also going beyond should be accounted for as its those teachers that are the true leaders that lift entire schools up and its those teachers we need to attract and retain.
    Reply
  • thecolorblue
    translation... large Corporation wants a placated workforce that is conditioned as memory bots and not thinkers.

    this shit is pure evil... unfortunately it will come to pass because the us media does not really cover the issue other than to propagandize, and americans dont bother to question anything... except for the fringe
    Reply
  • thecolorblue
    TheCapuletYour logic is inherently flawed. If a teacher can teach very well, then a student with a learning disability or behavioral problem will still continue to improve because a skilled teacher knows how to teach different kinds of kids, even if they can't fundamentally make them excel at being scholars. Furthermore, when teachers invariably "teach the test", then they're invariably teaching the material. Know how to read a question and input the right answer in a test environment? Then there's a good chance you know the damn material. lol. In the US, we just have more incessantly stupid adults that continue to breed a hotbed of ignorance in this country because most refuse to educate themselves concerning the bullshit they let spill out of their mouths.sadly you are advocating a future populated by adults who will not have the ability to educate themselves because their only exposure to education will be to memorize memorize memorize without ever experiencing this thing called thinking.

    what's hilarious is you are advocating the idiotic standards systems which enrich testing corporations and produce placated non-tjinking memory bots who are all too willing to be spoon fed the answers to everything in life. these people will have no ability to do the thing you want at the end of your post called "educate themselves".

    your ignorance of this seems to imply that you yourself are just mindlessly regurgitating propaganda handed down to you from your corporate media masters... pathetic.
    Reply