With almost $40 billion in assets, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation possesses incredible influence, and is unafraid to use it. As one staffer put it, the foundation’s greatest strength is “setting agendas, framing debates, advocating the foundation’s point of view and taking action … an unchecked way of getting things done,” although some might find this worrying given the propensity of free peoples to hold checks and balances rather dearly.
Of late, the foundation has devoted enormous resources to school reform, even though some teachers and parents remain skeptical of Gates’ experimental schools and of the Common Core, to which many retain a visceral antipathy.
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