THE INFLUENCE GAME: Bill Gates' sway on ed policy

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has spent around $200 million a year on grants to elementary and secondary education.

Now the foundation is taking unprecedented steps to spend millions to influence the way the federal government distributes $5 billion in grants to overhaul public schools.

The federal dollars are unprecedented, too.

President Barack Obama persuaded Congress to give him the money as part of the economic stimulus so he could try new ideas to fix an education system that most agree is failing. The foundation is offering $250,000 apiece to help states apply, so long as they agree with the foundation's approach.

Obama and the Gates Foundation share some goals that not everyone embraces: paying teachers based on student test scores, among other measures of achievement; charter schools that operate independently of local school boards; and a set of common academic standards adopted by every state.

Some argue that a private foundation like Gates shouldn't partner with the government.

"When you team up with the government, you compromise your ability to be critical of the government, and sometimes you compromise your ability to do controversial and maybe unpopular things with your money," said Chester E. Finn Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education think tank. The institute is among the many that have received money from the Gates Foundation.

Another concern is that as a private foundation, Gates doesn't have to disclose the details of its spending like the government does.

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