The battle is IMO largely won and lost in years 0-5, before kids even reach 1st grade. That's why programs like "Baby College" in Harlem are so important.
Head Start was designed precisely to solve this problem. It has existed for 40 years and hasn't solved it, for the kinds of reasons that are described here: http://epa.sagepub.com/content/17/1/62.abstract and here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=226111 . People have been trying to show that Head Start leads to longitudinal improvements for the entirety of Head Start's existence, and they've failed. I work in my family's business as a grant writing consultant, and we've had a bunch of clients running Head Start programs and Head Start clones. They don't work.
In short, you're advocating for an approach here that has already (mostly) failed. Gates is at least saying that we shouldn't keep rewarding teachers for things (seniority, degrees) that don't actually impact student achievement.
No, what I'm talking about is absolutely not Head Start.
The students of Head Start are preschool children.
The students of Baby College are parents. It's about teaching people how to be parents.
When the problem is that bad parenting sabotages structured education, the answer isn't to start the education earlier. The answer (well, at least part of it) is to improvetheparents.
Head Start was designed precisely to solve this problem. It has existed for 40 years and hasn't solved it, for the kinds of reasons that are described here: http://epa.sagepub.com/content/17/1/62.abstract and here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=226111 . People have been trying to show that Head Start leads to longitudinal improvements for the entirety of Head Start's existence, and they've failed. I work in my family's business as a grant writing consultant, and we've had a bunch of clients running Head Start programs and Head Start clones. They don't work.
In short, you're advocating for an approach here that has already (mostly) failed. Gates is at least saying that we shouldn't keep rewarding teachers for things (seniority, degrees) that don't actually impact student achievement.