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Zuckerberg's $100 Million Education Gift Solved Little
An anonymous reader writes "In 2010 the state of public education in Newark, New Jersey was dire. The city's school system was a disaster, replete with violence, run-down buildings, and a high-school graduation rate of only 54%. Newark's mayor at the time, Cory Booker, teamed up with governor Chris Christie to turn the schools around. At the same time, Mark Zuckerberg was looking to get his feet wet in big-time philanthropy. The three hatched a plan, and Zuckerberg committed $100 million to reforming the schools. Four years later, most of the money is gone, and Newark's children are still struggling. Tens of millions were spent on consulting groups, and yet more went to union negotiations. Plans to change how teacher seniority affected staffing decisions — in order to reward results rather than persistence — were dashed by political maneuvering. The New Yorker provides a detailed account in a lengthy piece of investigative journalism, and MSN provides a summary."
So you just repeat what the media tells you? well done.
in 1969, the average spending was $4,221 per student, per year.
the $27,176.91 in today's dollars. We spend about 40% of that.
Spending on kids has gone down.
Why? becasue the tax decrease since then. Look at all the data, the only reason not to go back to 1968 tax rates(adj. for inflation) is pure and simple greed for the top 1%.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
When I went to school we had shop as well as math, art as well as science, and PE as well as literature. Boondoggles such as "No Child Left Behind" changed that.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Bullshit lies. I can cite facts. Can you?
"Charter schools" were specifically designed by an alliance of hard right wing radicals and religionists of one religion to destroy not only the concept of universal free public schooling but the very infrastructure of the schools, the buildings, and the systems that support them. So no, "charter schools" are not public schools.
Nice try though.
sPh
In my district, the charter schools directly take the money for a student that would have gone to the public school. It's public money, not private money. You may or may not be right about the ambitions of the people who created charters, but they are definitely not private schools.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
John Taylor Gatto covers it pretty well in "The Underground History of American Education". It' available for online reading here:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm
The ones which say "Constant Dollars".
The Newark School District gets more money per pupil than the suburban school districts surrounding it. And its outcomes are far worse. It's not the money.
Dear Geekoid, Do you really think Mark didn't have that sort of thing in mind? That he didn't pay the consultants to come up with such things? I'm afraid teachers are a large part of the problem. Their unions consistently thwart attempts to address teacher performance or rather the lack thereof. Do a search on the various attempts to deal with bad teachers and you will find attempts that have nearly all failed by the hands of the teacher's unions.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
According to the parent page, the chart for per-pupil spending is already adjusted for inflation. As such, the $4,221 per student figure in 1969 looks to be close to the truth, except that it's *already* adjusted for inflation at that value.
As much as I would like to have a simple explanation like "spending is less than half what it used to be", the numbers don't lie.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
You can't just throw a bunch of money at a problem and expect a solution to come out. You have to decide on a solution and then throw a bunch of money at it.
It sounds like there were a ton of problems in New Jersey. Crumbling schools? Spend the $100 million fixing infrastructure. Kids have trouble at home? Spend the money on councillors and after-school programs. Poor teachers? Spend it on recruiting.
It seems like they went in with a lot of money and a grand poorly defined plan, a huge institution isn't just going to jump in and implement someone's poorly defined scheme, so instead of spend everybody was busy fighting over details and figuring out where the money should go. The result is the money is wasted in paperwork and of the stuff that got spent no one knows what actually worked.
I stole this Sig
Oh, here it is, not the Turkofile I remember but the same story. See "Why this fence?" http://www.utsandiego.com/unio...
No, I'm not wrong. Total funding has gone up, up, up for US schools. Measure it in constant dollars, % of GDP, any way you like. Compare us to other countries, and there are perhaps two who beat us per-pupil. We spend enough money - the solution lies elsewhere.
And while schools still are highly dependent on local funding, that too has been changing steadily to the point where it is no longer the largest source.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The U.S. spends just shy of $15k/yr on education per student, which is more than any other developed nation on earth. A quick google search shows that your $4221 figure is already in 2010 dollars. So spending per student has actually almost quadrupled since 1969.