Billionaires and American Public Schools

It’s not everyday you see billionaires get involved in improving America’s public school education, so naturally when I saw this article in the New York Times I was immediately intrigued.

As it turns out, Bill Gates is now getting involved in the presidential campaigns for the issue of education. The campaign would be called “Strong American Schools” and will be shown in all the key battleground states – I’ll post a link to the project once it’s available.

Eli Broad, another billionaire, is also getting involved in the campaign. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the campaign is that it will not endorse any particular candidates, but will instead focus on non-partisan issues such as more consistent curriculums, longer school days, and improving teacher quality.

It’s amazing more billionaires haven’t taken the time to focus more on the education system in the U.S. With all the other things going on in the world, education issues might be taking a backseat – let’s hope initiatives such as these can bring improving education to the forefront of American politics.

As they say in the article: “If we are talking about efforts in presidential campaigns to promote discussion or debate of an issue, there has been nothing like this. This would be off the charts.”