Bill Gates and the Hijacking of Texas Education
HB 4, HB 2, and the MAP Takeover: The Gates-Backed Plan to Data-Mine Texas Students"
The ongoing transformation of Texas public education reflects a carefully orchestrated convergence of philanthropic influence, state power, and corporate interests—none more prominent than the role of Bill Gates and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. For over two decades, Gates has invested heavily in reshaping education systems across the nation through Common Core-aligned standards, digital data systems, and global partnerships.
Although Texas officially rejected Common Core, the foundational principles of that system were quietly adopted under different branding, such as the College and Career Readiness Standards (CCRS) and Next Generation Assessments. These were pushed through by state bureaucrats and policymakers under the guise of innovation. Today, a majority of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) align with Common Core Standards—even if by another name.
A Timeline of Transformation: From Local Control to Global Compliance
2000 – The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation awarded a $6.3 million grant to the Texas Association of School Administrators (TASA) through the Texas Leadership Center. The grant was designed to support "technology integration and whole systems change" for superintendents and principals. The goal was not to improve local governance—but to replace it with centralized, systems-based models of reform.
2002 – The federal government launched the Statewide Longitudinal Data System (SLDS) grant program (20 U.S.C. § 9501 et seq), incentivizing states to adopt federal data tracking frameworks that would follow students from preschool through the workforce. These data systems became the backbone of the emerging workforce development model now seen in Texas.
2004 – Microsoft signed a 26-page Cooperation Agreement with UNESCO to co-develop a “master curriculum” for global teacher training. This framework would include standardized content, benchmarks, and assessments designed to reflect “UNESCO values.”
2006 – TASA’s New Mission to Transform Public Education officially began. According to its own records, public school superintendents from across Texas launched the Public Education Visioning Institute—a two-year initiative to rethink and “transform” Texas public education to meet the demands of 21st-century learners. This was the ideological foundation for what would later become TASA’s “Visioning Document,” which directly influenced the curriculum redesigns, digital learning mandates, and competency-based education models now appearing in legislation.
2007 – The Texas Education Agency (TEA) received a $7 million grant from the Gates Foundation. The stated purpose was to fund a longitudinal evaluation of the Texas High School Project—which later evolved into Educate Texas, housed under the Communities Foundation of Texas. This grant laid the groundwork for embedding private evaluation metrics and corporate-aligned performance measures into Texas education policy.
🔗 Gates Grant to TEA – 2007
The Gates Foundation's Fingerprints on HB 4 and the Elimination of STAAR
In the 89th Texas Legislative Session, House Bill 4 was passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. Marketed as a response to growing frustration with STAAR testing, HB 4 quietly does more than replace a test—it embeds a Gates-funded framework into the Texas assessment system.
HB 4 transitions Texas away from the state-mandated STAAR exam and replaces it with NWEA MAP Growth assessments—a norm-referenced test system originally designed for screening, not high-stakes accountability. The NWEA (Northwest Evaluation Association) is directly funded by the Gates Foundation, which awarded it $3.2 million in 2015 to support data-driven instructional tools and personalized learning systems.
🔗 Gates Foundation Grant to NWEA – 2015
This move effectively places student assessment and school accountability into the hands of a private testing vendor with deep philanthropic ties—bypassing elected state authority and transparency. The NWEA MAP is not designed to assess mastery of Texas standards; it aligns with national—and increasingly global—benchmarking models that prioritize student profiling and longitudinal data tracking over academic content knowledge.
MAP is a computer-adaptive assessment, meaning the test dynamically adjusts in real time based on a student’s responses. While this may sound innovative, it introduces serious concerns about transparency, fairness, and educational value. Each student receives a unique set of questions, eliminating any standardized baseline for comparison. Teachers are not permitted to view the actual test items or student responses, which undermines their ability to provide targeted instruction or support. Moreover, MAP assessments generate a single numerical score—often devoid of the context necessary to understand a student’s true academic needs. Adding to these concerns, NWEA has incorporated social-emotional learning (SEL) indicators into its assessments, meaning student behaviors and dispositions are being measured alongside academic performance, often without explicit parental consent. This approach reframes testing as a tool for behavioral analysis and data collection rather than as a measure of academic mastery. As such, MAP functions less as a learning assessment and more as a gateway to lifelong data profiling—where children are evaluated not just on what they know, but on how they think, feel, and behave, all in service of a workforce-aligned education model.
HB 2: Finance Reform or Trojan Horse?
Even more alarming is the passage of House Bill 2 (HB 2)—a sweeping school finance overhaul that codifies the shift toward workforce-aligned education. HB 2 carries the distinct imprint of Todd Williams, a former Goldman Sachs investor and founder of The Commit Partnership, which operates as a joint initiative with Educate Texas. Both are recipients of Gates Foundation funding and serve as key drivers behind the Texas Impact Network.
🔗 Gates Foundation Grant to Commit Partnership – 2023
“We support pioneering school systems to develop, implement, and evaluate evidence-based strategies funded and incentivized by Texas state legislation.”
— Texas Impact Network
Todd Williams has been appointed four times by Governor Greg Abbott, and is widely understood to have played a key role in drafting HB 2. His organization financially supports Public Education Committee Chairs Rep. Brad Buckley and Sen. Brandon Creighton, and has promoted policies that include:
Expansion of charter schools
Workforce development pipelines
College and career readiness tracking systems
Outcome-based funding formulas tied to predictive analytics
HB 2 reflects the Gates-Williams agenda of remaking Texas education into a charter-centric, data-tracked, performance-funded system that puts state-defined “readiness” over true academic mastery or local parental control.
With HB 4 and HB 2, Texas is now aligning itself with the global education model long envisioned by Gates and international entities. From the Next Generation High School model (promoted under the Obama administration) to Next Generation Assessments now entering Texas classrooms, the shift is clear: academic knowledge is being replaced with digital skills tracking, social-emotional conditioning, and global workforce preparation.
We have been warning this was coming.
Conclusion: Who Controls Texas Education?
The passage of HB 4 and HB 2, along with the centralization of educational power into the hands of unelected actors, demands scrutiny. Texas lawmakers—both Republicans and Democrats—have unknowingly (or willingly) allowed Gates-funded experiments and international models of control to take root in Texas schools.
This is not local control. This is not educational freedom. This is the conversion of Texas education into a public-private laboratory, where corporations, philanthropists, and state agencies co-manage the lives, minds, and futures of our children.
Demand a full Sunset review of the Texas Education Agency (TEA)
Call for an immediate audit of all Gates-funded initiatives embedded in Texas law
Urge lawmakers to oppose HB 4 and HB 2 in final negotiations
Stop the expansion of data-driven, workforce-aligned education models
Protect the sovereignty of Texas education and the rights of parents and local communities
Children made to be robots without critical thinking or emotions/feelings. Terrible.