Gates Foundation influence on NYC's adoption of Illustrative Math, despite lack of competitive bidding or backing in research

Susan Edelman of the NY Post has written extensively about Illustrative Math [IM], the curriculum mandated by DOE for NYC high schools for Algebra, as the first step in their $34 million initiative NYC Solves, in which they plan to standardize the teaching of math across all schools.  

According to the critiques of some math teachers, as well as an apparent decline in test scores  in the 265 schools that piloted the curriculum last year, IM Algebra and its implementation has been problematic,  though the DOE has resisted releasing comprehensive data. The curriculum has been shown to omit some key topics on the Math Algebra Regents exam.   

Yet in  June 2024, with great fanfare, the Mayor’s office announced that IM would be expanded to all high schools and more middle schools, describing it as a “visionary shift [that] revolutionizes and standardizes how math is taught in schools through high-quality, research-based curricula implemented across districts with intensive educator training and coaching.”

In July, I interviewed Bobson Wong, a math teacher at Bayside High School on our radio show Talk out of School, where he criticized the way in which DOE forbid teachers to use any of their own problem sets with the IM curriculum, and told them they would be evaluated on whether they kept to a very rigid schedule of component lessons and testing modules, which could prevent them from addressing the actual learning needs of their individual students.

More recently, Savvas Learning, a company which produces a competing curriculum called enVision Mathematics, sent a letter of protest to the NYC Comptroller, saying that  “It appears that DOE did not follow any procurement process before selecting Illustrative Mathematics”.  The letter, posted below, was first reported on by Politico and then written about more extensively by Sue Edelman at the NY Post .

Savvas Learning went on: “While multiple curricula companies would normally have had the opportunity to submit proposals, it appears the DOE selected Illustrative Mathematics with no competing bids or procurement process.”

The company also expressed concern that the “DOE is actively considering whether to expand the rollout of Illustrative Mathematics or other curricula in additional schools, many of which are K- 5 and middle schools,” without proper competitive bidding or vetting of alternative programs such as their own.

The reality is that the fix was in for Illustrative Math from the start.  The Gates Foundation has funded the development of IM by at least $25 million since 2012, a curriculum that was designed by Bill McCallum, who co-led the development of the Common Core math standards.  The Common Core standards were also funded by Gates Foundation to the tune of over $200 million. 

The Gates Foundation then spent nearly a million dollars for the group Educators for Excellence to push for the adoption of IM math.  They have also provided a  half million dollars to CenterPoint Education Solutions to develop digital assessments aligned with IM, five million to the Achievement Network to create a digital version of IM, and another $5 million to West Ed, to “understand the efficacy of Illustrative Math at improving student math outcomes.”

Proof of that efficacy is elusive.  WestEd appears to be still recruiting districts in a “nationwide” study of IM,  and when it is complete, one will have to closely evaluate their conclusions, given how WestEd itself receives much of its support from Gates.  When DOE officials were asked why the IM curriculum was chosen by DOE, Sue  wrote that “the DOE initially claimed on its website that Illustrative Math had the “endorsement” of a respected think tank, EdReports.”

Later the DOE was forced to remove this claim from their website, as EdReports responded to Sue that they do not endorse curriculums.  DOE also claimed that the program “has undergone a formal review  by a committee of NYC educators” but refused to identify the members of that committee or release their findings.

EdReports does indeed rate curriculums, though they describe this as providing "free reports that help you evaluate instructional materials because high-quality content matters to teachers, to kids, and to our collective future."  Unmentioned here is how they have received at least $37.4 million in Gates grants for these reports, including $12 million since last April, and how their their ratings are not based on any actual studies of student outcomes, but  according to how closely these programs adhere to the Common Core standards.  The Common Core standards in turn was criticized by many (including me) of having no backing in research, and have since been revised by NY State and are now called the Next Generation Learning Standards or the P12 Learning Standards, (though how fundamentally different they are from the Common Core is unclear.)  

The Gates support of IM math doesn’t end there.  In  Oct. 2023, shortly after DOE  introduced the curriculum in 265 high schools, the NYC Fund for Public Schools received $4.3 million from Gates "to support the implementation of high-quality instructional materials and practices for improving students' math experience and outcomes."

Though that grant was supposed to last 26 months, the Fund for Public Schools, which is the mechanism by which DOE receives grants, got another $4.5 million Gates grant in Nov. 2024  “to improve the capacity of its district and school-based professional learning staff and scale the implementation of math curricula and high-quality teaching across middle schools.”

If you put it all together, that suggests that one way or another, Gates has invested nearly $200 million in Illustrative Math or the standards on which the curriculum was based, and  this funding goes a long way in explaining its adoption by DOE.

A similar story could be told about the three Literacy programs that the city has mandated schools implement in their NYC Reads initiative: Wit & Wisdom, EL Education, and the most widely adopted of the three, HMH Into Reading.  The latter in particular has been criticized for its rigidity, for its time-consuming testing, and a lack of opportunity for students to read actual books.  To justify the selection of these curriculums, again DOE cited their ratings on EdReports, and though there is a page on the DOE website that summarizes a few research studies, those studies are extremely weak.

For example, the study that supposedly shows the efficacy of HMH Reading by Cobblestone Applied Research & Evaluation, Inc.,  looked at a few hundred 3^rd and 5^th grade students enrolled in a majority white, suburban school district.  After a few months, there was a growth in their reading scores,but the study neither compared that growth to previous years, nor to any control group.

Literacy experts have criticized EdReports for giving high ratings to ELA curriculums that are bloated and have no proof of results. Hundreds of literacy specialists, superintendents and teachers wrote an open letter to the governor of Massachusetts, criticizing the state’s approved list of “high quality” curricula for districts to adopt based on their EdReports ratings, adding that  "Teachers need various strategies to do what is best for the students in front of them, and there is no proven curriculum that addresses the needs of every child." 

One would think with all the rhetoric about “evidence-based” research, the hundreds of millions of dollars spent by the Gates Foundation and their influence with school districts in NYC and elsewhere given the amount of money they are able to throw around, the Foundation could have sponsored  at least a few randomized studies before pushing any curriculum into hundreds of schools enrolling hundreds of thousands of students.  You would hope that DOE would also insist on more actual evidence, before its widespread adoption. Yet for whatever reason, those in charge still apparently see entire districts as potential guinea pigs, and allow them to engage in large-scale experimentation, despite the risk that these efforts may spectacularly fail, as they so  often have in the past. 

The letter to the NYC Comptroller from Sean P. Mulcahy, Senior VP and General Counsel of Saavas is below.   

State & city budget update, and how you can help prevent further cuts to our schools

April 12, 2023

Dear all:

The state budget is now nearly two weeks overdue, with negotiations showing little evident progress so far. As a result, Gov. Hochul’s controversial proposal to raise the NYC charter cap is still up in the air, that the city says would cost another $1.3 billion, over and above $3 billion that charters already subtract from the DOE budget each year.

Charter co-locations also take up increasing space in our public schools, space that is desperately needed to lower class size, as pointed out by a new lawsuit filed on March 28 to block charter co-locations in Brooklyn and Queens. My affidavit in that case, as well as other legal papers are here. A court hearing is scheduled on May 12 before Judge Lyle Frank, who previously ruled for parents and against the DOE by ordering that that this year’s budget cuts to schools be restored, before the Appellate Court reversed his ruling in November.

Speaking of budget cuts, last week the Mayor announced his intention to cut the DOE’s budget by another 3% next year, amounting to more than $400 million . This is in addition to school budget cuts that DOE officials admitted they had already planned during Council hearings last month. Yet the City is expected to have a surplus of more than two billion dollars, and our schools are due to receive an additional $568 million in state Foundation Aid next year. The City Council released a preliminary budget response that allocates more funding for some important school-based programs such as arts and mental health services, but does not clearly oppose any more cuts to schools.

We have drafted a resolution against any further cuts to school budgets and the capital plan, and that urges the Council to restore the cuts already made; please consider forwarding it to your CEC, Presidents Council or other organization to consider.

We are also scheduling briefings for NYC Council Members on these issues and are looking for parents and other constituents who’d be willing to join us. If you’re able and interested, please sign up on this google doc today.

Thanks Leonie

PS The Gates Foundation recently revealed a grant of $6 million to the Fund for Public Schools, NYU, and Amplify, a for-profit ed tech company, “to develop R&D tools and related instructional strategies” in NYC schools.

According to the DOE website, there are 15 Amplify programs that students already use in our schools; and yet they have failed to disclose what personal data these programs collect, how the data is used or how it is protected, as required by law. More on this here, including a sample letter you can send DOE to demand this information for your child.

New $6M Gates grant to Amplify, DOE and NYU MetroCenter; time to ask what personal data Amplify holds for your child!

Last month, the Gates Foundation awarded a $6 million grant to the DOE’s Fund for Public Schools, Amplify, and the NYU MetroCenter “to develop R&D tools and related instructional strategies.”

I wonder why Amplify is involved; are they supposed help develop these R&D tools? And how much money are each of these organizations receiving? The grant notice does not say.

It is amazing how many different Amplify products are being used in NYC schools that collect and use personal student data – with little information made available at about which student personally identifiable information (PII) is being collected, how that data is being shared and how it will be protected.  

New York Ed Law 2-D and its authorizing regulations require rigorous transparency and disclosure to parents about the protection and use of their children’s personal data, through a Parent Bills of Rights for each vendor agreement; and each of these PBORs are mandated to be posted on the district’s website.

There is no mention of either Amplify or NYU MetroCenter on the page disclosing agreements with researchers that have access to personal data. On the vendor page, the requisite Amplify Parent Bill of Rights agreement says this about which types of personally identifiable information (PII) the company  is provided access to "Type of PII that the Entity will  receive/access: Student PII."   

Which says nothing.

As to which of Amplify’s products and programs access student PII, it says the following: “Amplify Education Inc. (“Amplify”) provides core curriculum and supplemental programs and services in ELA, math, and science, and formative assessment products in early reading and math….”

The page goes on to list at least 15 different Amplify products in every subject but social studies.  

One of them is described this way: Amplify Math for grades 6–8 and Algebra 1 is a 100% blended core program based on Illustrative Mathematics IM K–12 Math. Chalkbeat recently reported that DOE intends to roll out a "standardized algebra curriculum from Illustrative Mathematics in at least 150 high schools" next year.

Instead of describing how the data will be secured, instead the webpage says the following: 

Describe the administrative technical and/or physical safeguards to ensure PII will be protected and how the Entity will mitigate data privacy and security risks.  [DOE comment: In its agreement, Amplify outlines in detail how it meets the COSO principles. Please contact studentprivacy@schools.nyc.gov if you would like a copy of this information.]

FYI, COSO stands for “Committee of Sponsoring Organizations” which is not fully congruent, as far as I understand it, with the process and procedures required by the law.

I urge parents to ask DOE exactly how Amplify is protecting your child's data, as well as what data elements they currently hold for your child, which is also your right under the law, as the webpage says:

“In accordance with N.Y. Education Law 2-d, parents, students, eligible students, teachers, or principals may seek copies of their PII, or seek to challenge the accuracy of PII in the custody or control of the Entity. Typically, they can do so by contacting the NYC DOE using the email address or mailing address below.”  [studentprivacy@schools.nyc.gov]

We drafted a sample email you can send to DOE, which is below. According to Ed Law 2-D, parents have  the right to receive this information within a “reasonable period, but not more than 45 calendar days.”  So please keep track.

Once you receive the data from DOE and/or Amplify,  you also have the right to challenge it if you think its inaccurate. In any event, you should also ask that all the data that Amplify holds for your child be deleted at the end of the school year.  The posted Amplify Parent Bill of Rights says that the data will be deleted under the following conditions:

• whenever requested by the DOE
• whenever the entity no longer needs the PII to provide services to the DOE
• whenever a DOE school or office ceases use of a product or service of the entity, for the PII that pertains to that school or office
• no later than upon termination of this Agreement

The agreement, however, doesn’t say when it terminates, contrary to the law and the regs which require that  “the contract’s expiration date” be disclosed. 

The Amplify PBOR adds the following:  “to the extent practicable, it will not retain PII for more than one school year after the school year in which the data was received” without explaining what would make deletion practicable or not.

A little history regarding Gates Foundation’s decade-long involvement with Amplify, for those who may be interested:

Founded as Wireless Generation, Amplify was acquired by Rupert Murdoch for News Corporation for $360 million in cash in 2010.  At  the same time, he appointed former DOE Chancellor Joel Klein as  its CEO.  Murdoch invested $1 billion in the company, and in 2011, it was revealed that Wireless/Amplify was supposed to build the NY State student data system through a $27 million no-bid contract awarded by then- NYSED Commissioner John King. As part of its supposed qualifications to create this system,  NYSED wrote the NY State Comptroller that Wireless had created the $80 million NYC student data system called ARIS, which is rather funny because by that point, ARIS was widely acknowledged to have been an useless if expensive boondoggle.

When advocates like CSM, along with NYSUT and many others,  protested this agreement because of privacy concerns, amplified by reports of News Corp involvement in the UK phone hacking scandal, NYS Comptroller DiNapoli announced he was cancelling the contract on August 27, 2011.

A few weeks earlier,  Vicki Phillips, then director of education for the Gates Foundation, had announced on the Gates website the creation of an "amazing" new software program that resembled a "huge app store … with the Netflix and Facebook capabilities we love the most."  She revealed that Wireless Generation was the vendor chosen for this Gates project, which at the time was called the Shared Learning Collaborative.  She wrote that Wireless  would “build the open software that will allow states to access a shared, performance-driven marketplace of free and premium tools and content.”

Shortly after this, I wrote the first blog post criticizing this venture, pointing out the controversy then raging concerning the proposed Wireless contract  to build NY student data system.

In the months that followed, the Gates Foundation invested $100 million in the massive data project, called the Shared Learning Collaborative (SLC), and boasted that nine states and districts had agreed to share their personal student data with them, including NY State and NYC, with more to come.  

 In February 2013, the SLC was spun off into a separate corporation called InBloom Inc., with Amplify as its prime contractor, which would collect, sort and systematize a massive amount of personally identifiable student data, so that inBloom could deliver it in an easily digestible form to companies, to help them build their tools  around the data and accelerate the expansion and development of the ed tech market.  

Yet within a year, nearly every state and district that had planned to share data with Gates and inBloom had pulled out, after parents rebelled against the whole notion of a private company holding so much of their children's personal data.  Their anger was especially provoked by the provision in the Gates-drafted agreements that neither the Gates Foundation nor inBloom would have any legal responsibility if the data was breached either in storage or transmission. 

 NY State was the last state to pull out of inBloom, and it took an act of the State Legislature to do so, which finally happened as part of the state budget agreement in March 2014.  At the same time,  the Legislature passed the comprehensive student privacy bill, Education Law 2-d.  As NY State was its last customer, inBloom shut its doors in April 2014. A more detailed timeline of these events is here.

As to Amplify, the company kept losing money. In 2013, I had an amusing interchange with Murdoch on Twitter when it was reported that the company had already lost $80 million.  I pointed this fact out to him and said it was certain to lose more, to which he responded, saying  “@amplify not losing money. Not even in business yet.”   

Yet in 2015, it was revealed that Amplify lost an additional $371M.  That year, Murdoch sold it at a huge loss to a “team of 11 Amplify executives” that included Joel Klein.  This group later sold the business to Laurene Powell Jobs at an undisclosed price, though “the company’s top management...picked up a minority position in the Brooklyn-based company as part of the deal.” So, it’s possible that Klein still owns a piece of the business.

How much Amplify was counting on inBloom to keep it solvent one can only guess, but it suffered other disasters over this period as well. With great fanfare, the company produced an educational tablet to be used in schools, preloaded with various curriculum and programs that were supposed to revolutionize education.  Instead, the tablets’ screens easily cracked and their chargers overheated and melted.

Here is a sample letter to you can send to DOE, asking what data Amplify holds for your child, and how it is being protected.  Please let me know if you do, and if you get a response by emailing me at info@studentprivacymatters.org thanks!  Leonie .

________________________

To: studentprivacy@schools.nyc.gov

To whom it may concern,

My name is [name], and I am the parent of [name] who attends [x grade] in [what school], at this address [address].

As stated on the DOE webpage concerning the agreement with Amplify, and in accordance with Ed Law 2-D, I am requesting information on which “administrative, technical and/or physical safeguards to ensure PII will be protected” are being employed by the company for each of its products, and how Amplify will “mitigate data privacy and security risks.”

I also demand that you provide me with copies of all of the personal information that Amplify holds for my child through the use of any of its products, as is also my right under Ed Law 2-D and its regulations. According to §121.12 (e),  “Educational agencies shall comply with a request for access to records within a reasonable period, but not more than 45 calendar days after receipt of a request.”

Thank you,

Your name, address, phone no., and email.

NY Times columnists still financially benefitting from Bill Gates largesse -without acknowledgement from the Times

8/27/21: I've updated this with more recommendation for what Solutions Journalism should do to avoid these conflicts of interest in the future.

Timothy Schwab has written a series of must-read pieces about the overriding influence of the Gates Foundation on public policy, and how the Foundation influences the reporting of the issues they are involved in, in part by helping to bankroll the media .

His latest analysis, published in Columbia Journalism Review, recounts how in 2016, I emailed the NY Times twice to ask why several “Fixes” columns written by their reporters Tina Rosenberg and David Bornstein hyping various Gates Foundation education projects and investments had no acknowledgements that they themselves received salaries from the non-profit they co-founded called Solutions Journalism Network, which is heavily subsidized by the Foundation.  

My second email to the Times, quoted by Schwab, pointed out how “Having a NYT columnist who is funded by Gates who regularly hypes controversial Gates-funded projects without any disclosure of conflict of interest could be compared to running columns on the environment by someone who runs an organization funded by Exxon/Mobil.”

Yet I received no response of any kind. The 2016 blog post that I linked to in my emails pointed out how the columns by Rosenberg and Bornstein on Gates grantees were biased, with few if any quotes from critics, nor any mention of readily available studies showing that the Gates-funded programs they were promoting had been shown to be ineffective or had a negative impact on educational quality.  

The Gates Foundation provides millions of dollars to many journalistic enterprises, which Schwab argued in an earlier 2020 piece helps to explain the kid glove treatment the Foundation has received over the last twenty years. The media outlets that get funding from Gates and regularly cover his education projects and investments include Chalkbeat, Hechinger Report, The 74, and Education Post, as well as K12 school reporting by NPR, Seattle Times, and others.  The Foundation also helps to fund the Education Writers Association, which frequently features speakers friendly to various policies favored by Gates.

Gates' support of Solutions Journalism Network started in 2011, when Bornstein and Rosenberg  won a $100,000 Gates Foundation “challenge” competition  “to build the first Wiki-style platform that packages solutions-journalism (specifically NYTimes Fixes columns) into mini-case-studies for educators around the world to embed in, and across, the curriculum,” in collaboration with Marquette University. 

In 2012, Tom Paulson, a former Seattle Times reporter with called Humanosphere questioned this arrangement.  As explained by a colleague, “Paulson’s fear was that Solutions Journalism was just a fancy way to disguise the desire (by donors, NGOs and others) for success stories, for promoting particular products or agendas.”

In response, Bornstein insisted to Paulson that neither he nor Rosenberg had received any financial benefit from this grant, as “NY Times prohibits them from accepting grant money (for work done at NYTimes) and they are unpaid collaborators with Marquette, allowing them to repurpose their columns and to help them think through the process."

Yet whatever reservations the NY Times may have had about allowing them to receive money from Gates seems to have quickly disappeared. In 2013, Bornstein and Rosenberg incorporated Solutions Journalism Network (SJN), and the next year, the organization received $600,000 from the Gates Foundation, from which they paid themselves  salaries of $75,000 each.  At the same time, they continued their regular "Fixes" columns for the NY Times/

The SJN 990 for that year reports that Bornstein worked 55 hours per week for the organization as its Chair, Treasurer and CEO, and Rosenberg 40 hours a week as its Vice President, which one would think left them little time to work as  NY Times reporters, though together they published at least twelve NY Times “Fixes” columns that year.

Since that time, the organization has raised $7.3 million in total from Gates Foundation.  Their most recent Gates grant was $1.7 million in August 2020, and Bornstein and Rosenberg now receive six-figure salaries from the organization, according to its latest 990.  

In an  August 2020 piece, Tim Schwab noted that he found at least 15  NY Times columns where  Bornstein or Rosenberg had written about  Bill and Melinda Gates, the Gates Foundation, or Gates-funded organizations, without any mention they were being paid on the side by the Foundation through SJN.  He recounted how he contacted Bornstein, Rosenberg, and their NYT editors, to inquire why there were no conflict-of- interest disclosures attached to these pieces.  

Tina Rosenberg responded that “We do disclose our relationship with SJN in every column, and SJN’s funders are listed on our website. But you are correct that when we write about projects that get Gates funding, we should specifically say that SJN receives Gates funding as well…Our policy going forward with the NY Times will be clearer and will ensure disclosures.”

Though Bornstein and Rosenberg told Schwab they had asked their editors at the Times to add disclosures to their columns, their editors apparently felt less reason to do so.

Months went by without any such acknowledgements, and when Schwab asked the Times why nothing had happened,   “Marc Charney, a senior editor at the Times, said he wasn’t sure if or when the paper would add the disclosures, citing technical difficulties and other newsroom priorities.”

Technical difficulties to update the Times website?  Really?

Tina Rosenberg also told Schwab that there were six columns that related to Gates-connected projects that in her mind did not need any disclosure, including her 2016 profile of Bridge International Academies, as “Bill Gates personally helps fund the project”  and “ SJN’s ties are to the Gates Foundation, not to Bill Gates himself, so no disclosure is needed.”

Bridge International is a for-profit chain of private schools in India and Africa, run by two Harvard graduates. Rosenberg praised the chain in a column in May 2013 and again in June 2016.  I have previously written how their schools feature shoddy facilities, a scripted curriculum, large classes, uncertified teachers, and tuition that is relatively expensive, especially considering the income levels in the developing countries in which they are located. 

Rosenberg’s second column, published in June 14, 2016,  came at an opportune time for the company – when the Liberian government was considering whether to hire BIA to run many of its public schools.  It also closely followed news that BIA had asked the Uganda government to arrest an independent journalist on trumped up charges who was investigating the quality of their schools .  This incident was covered extensively in the media including in the Washington Post just eight days before Rosenberg published her piece in the NY Times, though she left it out of her laudatory column. 

Absent from Rosenberg’s second piece was also any mention of the January 2016 letter by Kishore Singh, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education  to the Liberian president, stating that if the government  outsourced its educational system to a for-profit company, the country would be committing a “gross violation” of its education obligations under the Sustainable Development Goal number four, which holds that by 2030, the nation would “ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and effective learning outcomes.”

However, Rosenberg did make sure to add that among several reasons that the Liberian government should go ahead with their plans to hire BIA, she argued, was that the company had garnered substantial  financial resources from investors who included “Bill Gates (personally), Khosla Ventures, the Omidyar Network, the Zuckerberg Education Venture and Learn Capital, which counts Pearson as a limited partner.” 

Her subsequent claim to Schwab that her favorable reporting on BIA did not involve a conflict of interest because she was receiving funding from the Gates Foundation rather than Bill Gates himself is bizarre, in my view.

As  Bill Gates’ personal investments in companies are largely secret it would be difficult to assess what other columns these two may have written that might have benefitted his business interests.  The Gates Foundation also uses several pass through organizations such as New Profit, the New Schools Venture Fund, the Silicon Valley Education Foundation,  and the New Venture Fund to support their favored educational enterprises, without disclosing where the funding is actually going. Together these organizations have received an astonishing $553 million from Gates since 2007.

Contrary to the editors' apparent laissez faire attitude to Rosenberg, Bornstein, and SJN, Schwab relates how this past July, the NY Times had suspended a sports reporter when it was revealed that she was co-authoring a book with former Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps while covering Phelps for the paper. And after BuzzFeed News reported in March that NY Times columnist David Brooks had received a salary from the Aspen Institute, the Times added disclosures to six of his columns  about the work of the Institute, and made him resign his paid position with the Institute.  

After that occurred, Tim once more went back to the NY Times, to ask them why they hadn’t at the very least added any disclosures to the columns by Bornstein and Rosenberg that hyped Gates grantees:

I contacted Kathleen Kingsbury, the editor of the opinion section. I had previously contacted Kingsbury in 2019 and got no response. Kingsbury told me that the Times was finally adding belated financial disclosures to Bornstein and Rosenberg’s previously published columns. She noted in March that new disclosures had been appended to four columns, and the Times was working through a technical hurdle to correct two additional columns.

Again, the notion that “technical hurdles” prevented them to adding disclosures to their website is literally incredible.  

In March 2021, the NY Times did add a disclosure to a 2018 Bornstein column that praised the online program, PowerMyLearning, which has received $11.3M from the Gates Foundation.  The column now ends with the following note:

Editors’ Notes: March 18, 2021

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funds some of the work profiled in this article. The foundation is also one of the funders of the Solutions Journalism Network, which employs Mr. Bornstein. The story selection process for Fixes is independent and is not influenced by S.J.N. funding. 

But strangely, there is no such disclosure on  another column Bornstein wrote about PowerMyLearning in 2012, even though the company had received $5M from the Gates Foundation the year before. 

Nor are there any disclosures on two different columns by Tina Rosenberg in 2013, both in support of “flipped classrooms,” in which students are assigned to watch instructional videos at home and then spend class time doing problem solving.

Rosenberg’s second column focused specifically on the videos of the Khan Academy, which received $5.5 million from the Gates Foundation in 2010 & 2011. “Flipped classrooms” at the time was Bill Gates’ favorite education reform; in the same year, he gave a speech calling it the “biggest untold story of education technology”.  

Moreover, there is still no acknowledgement of any kind in a 2015 Rosenberg column praising the online/hybrid math program called School of One, now run by a company called New Classrooms and first developed in New York City schools,  even though the company had raised $11 million from the Gates Foundation by that point.  Nor is there any mention in her column of several published research studies showing that its program had yielded null or negative results.

Yet even so, mere disclosures should not be enough.  No journalist who has a regular column in the NY Times should be allowed to report on the investments of either Bill Gates or his Foundation, while continuing to benefit financially from his wealth. This should be true for the other billionaire venture philanthropists who help finance Solutions Journalism as well, including Chan Zuckerberg, Laurene Powell Jobs, and others. 

Another red flag is how even as the organization has expanded, its reliance on a very few donors has appeared to worsen over time.  According to Solutions Journalism’ audited financial statements, in 2017, 55% of their grant revenue was provided by three donors.  By 2019, one donor was responsible for  53% of their grants. Who this donor is remains a secret.

If Solutions Journalism reporters are going to continue hyping the projects of their funders, to avoid the appearance and reality of conflicts of interest in the future as much as possible, they should do the following: 

1- Disclose how much funding they receive from each of their donors on their website.

2- When writing about the investments or favorite policies of their donors, disclose this within the text of their columns, and explain why this does not represent an insuperable conflict of interest.  

3- Make sure that they include in their reporting any of the contradictory pieces of evidence that exist which suggest that these policies or companies do not work as well as their promoters/investors claim.

4-Write up a guide to other journalists, including those they train, on how to avoid such conflicts of interest in the future, or at the least, maintain maximum transparency by disclosing them in the text of their articles and ensure that their reporting is as clear-headed and bias-free as possible.

In any case, it is quite astonishing that the NY Times has continued to refuse to address the conflicted issues of Bornstein’s and Rosenberg’s columns, given how they so quickly made David Brooks resign his position at the Aspen Institute.  Indeed, their  own published  ethical standards  say the following:  

"… it is essential that we preserve a professional detachment, free of any whiff of bias. …Staff members may not accept gifts, tickets, discounts, reimbursements or other inducements from any individuals or organizations covered by The Times or likely to be covered by The Times. …staff members may not accept employment or compensation of any sort from individuals or organizations who figure or are likely to figure in coverage they provide, edit, package or supervise….”

Solutions Journalism also needs to adhere to its own principles –especially as it is engaged in “training”  reporters throughout the country in how to write about social and educational policies in a credible and objective fashion.  As I pointed out in 2016, the following claim is posted on their website:

The Solutions Journalism Network is a nonpartisan organization committed to transparency and editorial independence. We do not support or advocate for any particular idea, model, organization, or agenda….

We believe that it would be a disservice to society to exclude critical reporting on social innovations funded by these sources. On the other hand, it is critically important that such relationships not conflict with the principles of independent journalism. ..We require that our grant recipients remain completely transparent about any potential conflicts of interest that could arise in the context of reporting on an issue of interest to a Solutions Journalism Network funder. 

A separate page on their website, called Ethics code,  proclaims:  Journalists should… Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived. Disclose unavoidable conflicts. 

Independent, transparent, unbiased reporting is especially important in this time of growing skepticism towards the mainstream media and attacks on reporters as purveying “fake news.” As Lita Tirak, “Knowledge Curator” of Solutions Journalism proclaimed in a recent blog post, “Trust between the public and the news media is an indispensable part of a healthy democracy”.