Microsoft founder Bill Gates says tougher standards and more testing have not helped American students get a better ranking against their peers in other developed countries.
South by Southwest edu wrapped up today with a keynote from Bill Gates. In his remarks, Gates encouraged the hundreds in attendance to invest in technology as way to improve education in the U.S., while retaining educational fundamentals.
“What’s really changed in the classroom isn’t really much at all,” he said. “We’ve gone from a blackboard to a white board.”
But Gates believes the next decade will truly revolutionize our whole perception and approach to education. He said that technology will be the catalyst for that change.
“The power of the digital platform is just going to keep getting better and better – whether it’s for the education software or for anything else,” he said. “So, that’s a great wind behind our back – that power.”
With that power, Gates also sees a huge market opening up for investors who want to capitalize on what’s to come in the world of education: his Gates Foundation is co-funding a student database “built to chart the academic paths of public school students from kindergarten through high school.”
