It's Gates' company Microsoft that needs a good "turnaround"

Bill Gates is fond of blaming the schools for failing to produce enough highly-skilled workers to grow the economy or enough properly-trained workers for his company. As if that is truly the purpose of PUBLIC education. Gates claims it's easier to find cures for malaria and other diseases than to “fix” American education.

Now that the economy is growing and recovering from the global financial collapse of the passed decade, shouldn't Gates be crediting the schools for the upswing? Instead, we get the news today that Gates' company Microsoft, despite its huge profits and its spending of billions on new acquisitions, is preparing to fire 18,000 workers in order for the company to "become more agile and move faster." 

About 12,500 professional and factory jobs will be cut. FBR Capital Markets analyst Daniel Ives said the cuts were about double what Wall Street was expecting. But he said they were necessary to streamline operations and clean up a "bloated management structure".

"Under the Ballmer era, there were many layers of management and a plethora of expensive initiatives being funded that has thus hurt the strategic and financial position the company is in, especially in light of digesting the Nokia acquisition," says Ives

That's right, it's Gates' company -- not the schools -- that's in need of a turnaround. There's plenty of talent coming out of the public schools. Maybe Bill should give Microsoft a Gates grant to restructure itself.