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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."
Rich man donating large sums of cash to education system shocked to find systems flaws are of great complexity and cannot be solved by simply shitting large sums of money into education. When reached for comment, Rich man was found paralyzed by indecisiveness during elusive hunt for tasty caviar on weekend aboard mega yacht.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Throwing money at every problem doesn't make it go away. Who woulda thunk it?
While I appreciate the research potential of this experiment I just don't think people are looking at the human element when it comes to social problems like education and welfare. Our politicians don't seek a better answer because they don't care that people are wasting their lives on reality TV and booze as long as they get their pockets lined from it.
there was a time when they paid more taxes, and they were still rich (and also employed many others in this same country).
mfwright@batnet.com
If my inferior public school education is any guide, I believe that is technically known as "begging the question". There was no evidence beforehand that there are significant problems with US K-12 education on average, but there was and is absolutely zero evidence that the vast majority of teachers weren't already working hard 'to achieve results' before Grover Norquist and Michelle Rhee got involved to "improve" the situation. On the other hand, there is over 100 years of evidence as to why schools tend to evolve toward seniority systems (hint: not to protect "incompetent" teachers), all of which was ignored.
sPh
Try linking to the actual f**king article
http://www.newyorker.com/repor...
a multi-billionaire like Zuckerberg just didn't give enough.
a measly $100mil?? it should of course had been $500mil
THEN...the problems could really be solved!
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
> Next time hire me to handle it
Sounds like an example of the Dunning - Kruger effect.
"A fool and his money are soon parted."
(Zuck should have Googled it).
We spend more on public education in America than any other country. Money is clearly not the problem unless you are talking about controlling waste spending and corruption. Liberal idealists cannot come to terms with the ideas of hard discipline and failing students who disrupt other students' education. Social liberals are too afraid of the politically correct reality that some students need to be held back. Instead they will bankrupt society to try to find any solution that doesn't cause people to "track" students. Tracking being the process of putting some kids into an honors level classroom and then failing others and holding them back. It's more politically correct to throw money at schools with horrid student bodies than admit that the problems have little to do with money.
Conservatives are generally no better. They preach fiscal responsibility but then privately take taxpayers and citizens to the cleaners to advance their own personal agendas and businesses. Chris Christie had no problem duping some morons out of $100 million just to get himself a nice photo opportunity and some good press. Christie and Booker knew that any donated money was free from public oversight. A con in broad daylight.
In America we pay the highest cost per capita for public schools. Our rewards as taxpayers? Graduation rates in the 50-60% range for large cities. Illegal immigrants using public schools as nothing more than free daycare centers. Kids who graduate with no skill sets and are churned out just so a school can keep its funding. Abandoning of once good public schools by wealthy citizenry who can afford to take their kids into a neighboring school system in the suburbs that actually is an environment of learning. Detroit is the future of lots of cities. Newark is another corrupt murder capital with crumbling schools yet billions to spend on solutions that never materialize.
If Christie, Booker, Zuck, and ever other smug douchebag wanted to really find a solution....they'd send their kids to these schools. If rich asshole politicians had kids in these schools you'd see no problems. If these liberal do-gooders had kids in these schools there would be far less problems.
Personally, I'm of the opinion that the Department of Education should do studies on how to teach kids & how to motivate them to do better ... how public vs. private vs. charter schools affect them, etc.
And study what the long-term effects are of just paying the kids when they get good grades:
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com...
Because the short term seems to be that they do better ... and it's a hell of a lot cheaper than most other things that people come up with. (but then again, the money doesn't go to some corportation with a great 'solution' to the problem)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
The problem with the education system in this country are pretty strait forward. They stem directly from the completely inflexible teachers union (who should be ashamed of themselves) and management that does nothing more than attend endless meetings over and over that churn out bullet point after bullet point. My kids school actually has some pretty good teachers by some miracle, but the management issue is ridiculous. I try to be an involved parent but all the events they have are so ridiculous it borders on insanity. They always serve Pizza Pit, the champaign of pizza. Follow that up with great games or skits to entertain the crowd... then the principle gives a 30 to 45min speech about all the great plans she has (but will never implement) then they let the parents talk for about 10min and avoid answering all our questions like "When will you fill in the 6 foot sink hole in the middle of the playground?" and no, I'm not kidding, there really is a 6' sinkhole.
The last one I went to they sent out a questionnaire that asked:
What is most important to you in the education of your child?
a. Hands on learning
b. A diverse and equitable learning environment
c. An involved teaching staff
What the hell does that mean? I just circled them all and wrote "YES" underneath. And these people have 4 to 8 year degrees.
In other words, the way dedicated and capable public school teachers have been handling it in the United States for 275 years. Good plan.
sPh
We haven't HAD dedicated OR capable public school teachers in about 275 years.
San Diego schools got lots of money years ago for teachers and supplies, most of it was spent in consulting what to do with it, the result was one new fence, and there was nothing wrong with the old one. It was all over the news
If the money was wasted by upper management, then that should be a big red flag that the problem is most likely with upper management.
Two points: the hideously counterproductive NCLB went into effect in 2002, and there has been enormous amounts of work done on testing and reporting numerically consistent results since that date. In some lower-performing school districts children now spend very large amounts of time per year taking tests (I've heard up to 20% of total school time, although that's probably an exaggeration). So whether those systems are good or bad, well-designed and managed or not, the one good result is that it is not possible in 2014 to argue that there are no standardized standards or reported numerical "metrics" for public education (many categories of private schools and of course homeschoolers being exempt from this testing, natch). If you have a better standardized evaluation system by all means form a company or nonprofit and start selling it, but let's not pretend that evaluation isn't occurring.
Second point: the entire job of a teacher, particularly a K-8 teacher, is to evaluate students and set good progression goals for that student. That's what they do all day, every day. I'm sorry if you personally had some K-12 teachers who missed that mark (I'm not saying there aren't some at the lower end of the capability distribution - stats says there will be), but the vast majority of teachers I've met work very hard to do just that and are quite good at it.
sPh
- - - - - We haven't HAD dedicated OR capable public school teachers in about 275 years. - - - - -
An brief examination of the list of Americans who have graduated from New York City public schools alone belies that sweeping statement. The United States has an overall very good public schools with - unfortunately - a few very bad spots. And there are hundreds of thousands of dedicated and very good public school teachers in the US to match. Your statement is the sort of baloney that makes glibertarians look utterly foolish.
sPH
We could hook the printers to all the "One laptop per child" laptops.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
MSN is still around? That should be a news story in itself.
Sounds like the problem with Newark schools are the folks that -HAD- a great opportunity to make things better, but diverted it into each others pockets rather than into programs that actually increased the chances that the students would prosper? Is this a small scale version of municipal budgets and quest for opinion and appearance rather than results? I mean .. publicity and appearance over real change?
Time for a new Political party in the US (or two!) One is off the rails Other cant pony up a leader.
I would add in art and music. Part of the trick is to find something that excites students and engages them in schools. Not everyone wants to work in a cube, some might like customizing cars. Others like acting or band. If you give the right rewards in the right way then things may improve. There's always the old "keep your grades up your you might get dropped from the { team | lead role in the play | field trip to the museum}" approach that does seem to work.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Throwing money at a problem does not result in a solution, it results in a well-funded problem.
I agree with you - the vast majority of teachers are very good and almost all work very hard. But just like any occupation, you have a few outliers. My beef with the public school system is that these outliers are protected as if they are just as valuable as the others. The teachers unions would earn a lot more respect from me if they thinned the herd a bit.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
You can't blame this on overall funding levels - the US spends more than just about any other nation on public education. Funding is uneven, however.
We have very serious structural problems with our education system that more money will not solve.
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
Zuckerberg spends $100 million to prove that throwing money at broken public schools does not fix them.
Zuckerberg spent $100 million in a botched attempt to funnel selected students into for-profit charter schools. Helping to break the public school system for those left behind.
Post office is model of efficiency, and studies show private and charter schools spend more on administrative costs (read:profit for the owners) that public schools. But hey, keep repeating a lie often enough and it's bound to become true sooner or later, right?
Or could it be that good education is really, really expensive, and that $100 million dollars isn't really a lot of money on the scale of a State of American. Could it also be that a lot of that $100 million was spent on trying to make the school district turn out cheap employees for facebook?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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 first half of that (very common) statement is unproven and in most cases demonstrably false. The second half, also very common hard right wing propaganda, is an issue on which there can be reasonable disagreement but is not in any form a "given truth" and even at best ignores the history of teacher unionization from 1920. So, not very good marks to your (presumably private school?) history and political science teachers.
sPh
Vint Cerf - Vinton F'ing Cerf - was not allowed to fill in for his kids schools CS teacher for a couple of months while the teacher was unable to teach.
The reason for this was that Vinton F'ing Cerf did not have a California teacher certification to prove he knew how to teach computer science. Clearly unqualified, after having invented the F'ing Internet.
That's kind of not allowing Edison to teach a introductory science class about electricity.
There is a hell of a lot more to working as a K-12 teacher and successfully and safely managing multiple classrooms of students than just technical/domain knowledge. Try volunteering at your local middle school for a few weeks and tell me how "inventing the f'ing Internet" [not technically accurate, but we'll let that go] is of any value at all in handling a classroom full of kids who act like young adults one minute, wild toddlers the next minute, and insane hormone-crazed preteens the third. Also tell me about how "inventing the f'ing Internet" gives one an understanding of the legal requirements of being a school employee in your state and county (e.g. sexual harassment regulations and reporting requirements, counseling students who approach you to report abuse at home, the 8347 reporting requirements of NCLB, etc).
I've known some very good college professors who fled the high school classroom in terror when invited on site to teach AP classes, and who weren't afraid to admit they couldn't do what their HS counterparts do. Yes, there is a reason for teacher certification requirements.
sPh
Perhaps the issue isnt funding at all. Take a look at the US from the outside and you have a number of wealthy people that can buy and earn a good education. Youve also got a huge prison population with children that look up to that lifestyle. For those children graduating school isnt on the radar. Throwing money at schools wont help them.
Some years ago, when fantasizing about being a billionaire, I gave thought to how I would improve upon education.
The solution I came up with was to found my own network of private schools and colleges, which I could hold to a high standard due to them being under my control.
The private schools and colleges wouldn't be free to attend, per se, but I'd make it sort-of-trivially-easy for an ambitious student to gain admittance to the private high school without paying tuition (say, the student must participate in on-campus work, organized charity volunteer work, or extracurricular research work, or simply be gifted, etc).
Exceptional students at the private schools would be given scholarships to the colleges, and billionaire-money would attract top-tier professors and researchers. I fantasized about eventually running the top private research institution in the world.
In essence, you create a brand. Use the money to create top-tier colleges under a brand name, then 'franchise' private high schools under the brand, and funnel kids from those schools to the colleges.
Punctuate the concept with aggressive job placement assistance, complimentary career counseling and even therapy for all graduates that extends for for a lifetime beyond graduation. (I think this point is a huge idea in itself, to be honest, and is something that universities should do anyway).
Being a graduate doesn't just mean you got a degree there - it means you're part of a lifetime club, a member of a 'living network' (as opposed to 'social network') with high ideals in mind. Graduates would be encouraged to serve as mentors to students in their spare time in exchange for their lifelong benefits.
Above all, this all could exist without being exclusionary toward non-'members'. For instance, tuition credits could be earned for students who agree to tutor public school students in the community and 'take them under their wing'.
Basically, in the end, you have what a real society should be - a nurturing network of educators, counselors, mentors, and just plain *people* helping each other out for their entire lives. A community, you know? Rising tide, lifting boats.
I actually think this sort of thing could be profitable, and not an expense, in the long run. Once you are established as a top-tier educator, your 'product' will become desirable and those with money will gladly pay for their child's enrollment. Build a solid reputation for producing high-quality, well-rounded, well-adjusted, successful graduates, and marry that to the benefits of being part of this fantastic 'life support group', and you've got one hell of a desirable thing, here.
In short, if you want to do something right, do it yourself. Throwing money at a flawed system isn't going to fix anything. It's like trying to fix a leaky bucket by pouring more water in it.
Slashdot-reading billionaires, feel free to run away with my ideas and do something great with them. Also feel free to contact me if you need help in the implementation. :)
While $100 million sounds like a lot of money it isn't and while a lot of these posts are doing a Nelson on Zuck "Ha! Ha!" I'd say that at least he put up some money to try and make a difference. Are we that jaded nowadays that when somebody makes an honest effort that we mock the effort? I mean sure it was naive given the circumstances but at least he tried. How many other billionaires out there are willing to pony up their checkbooks and contribute? We should at least applaud the effort and work towards fixing the system so that the next time somebody ponies up some much needed funds, it goes to the kids and not to a bunch of consultants and union reps looking to milk the situation.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Realistically, at the high school level you want a teacher who can manage a classroom, and knows how to work with kids; being a genius is not required or even really a huge benefit. He's not going to be teaching them about his latest research in ad-hoc networks with hour packet delays, he's going to be teaching them about printf().
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The question is, are you actually spending it evenly on all schools? Or are some schools eating up the lion's share of that funding, while others have virtually none?
Second point: the entire job of a teacher, particularly a K-8 teacher, is to evaluate students and set good progression goals for that student. That's what they do all day, every day. I'm sorry if you personally had some K-12 teachers who missed that mark (I'm not saying there aren't some at the lower end of the capability distribution - stats says there will be), but the vast majority of teachers I've met work very hard to do just that and are quite good at it.
sPh
While I agree many teachers try to do that, the reality is standardized test force them to teach to passing a test; because if students fail to score high enough the school gets penalized. As a result, test performance, rather than real learning, becomes paramount. Teachers hate it but have to play along in order to succeed.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
If 100M yields no results, call the FBI.
All those advisors and union officials need to go to jail now.
And kids, lesson of the day, all school work was a waste of time to graduate, just become a union official or politician, no qualififications, easy money, and your above the law.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
In our county, the library system used to do outreach to the schools, where they'd go and try to get kids interested in reading ... but then the county went and fired all of the branch managers, and they didn't have staffing to keep it up.
Librarians require Master degrees in most areas (and may require a specialization if they work in a school library), but regularly make the 'lowest paid graduate degree' lists. .... but the schools and governments would rather appear 'cutting edge' or 'high tech' and give an iPad or Kindle to every student.
(disclaimer : I'm a member of our local Friends of the Library, and some of the best customers at our book sales are school teachers stocking their classrooms)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.