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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."
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.
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.
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.
I don't, no. Compared to other large-scale human endeavors decently funded universal public school districts receiving strong societal support are among the most efficient institutions known to man.
But compared to for-profit charter "schools"? Public schools - even the really bad ones - are havens of efficiency and good results.
sPh
Anyone who is a parent with a kid in public education can see that there are flaws. The whole system is setup to reward CYA behavior. Don't get me wrong, the vast majority of educators are well meaning and pretty hard-working. But the system itself thwarts them. There is no reward for going above and beyond. There is no reward for reaching out to parents - quite the opposite, since this will make more work for you and increase your risks with absolutely no benefit to your own situation. Problem kids are kept in the system. The system is set up to assume that budgets will always increase - even a mild decrease results in mass hysteria. Construction is shoddy government lowest bidder crap, and maintenance is nonexistent.
I have my kids in public school to expose them to a diversity of classes and cultures... I feel that being able to relate to people not entirely like oneself is an important life skill. But there is definitely an allure to private schools, where the vast majority of the students are there to learn, most of the parents care enough to spend inordinate amounts of money on education, and the entire system is geared towards keeping your business and keeping those Ivy League acceptance rates up instead of ass-covering.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Although I'm generally a strong supporter of public schools and public school teachers, I will concede that your spelling teacher needs a bit of remedial classwork himself.
sPh
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+
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.
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
Just for another perspective: In the Netherlands, a constitutional deadlock between religious and liberal parties in the early 1900s resulted in a compromise with financing of religious schools and universal suffrage both constitutionally enshrined in 1917/1918.
The result is that anyone can start a school, and if it matches minimum quality requirements it has to be funded on the same (relatively generous) level as public schools. This lead to a lot of catholic and orthodox protestant schools being established, but also to Montessori, Jena and similar alternative schooling methods. The schools are under scrutiny of the government and they do need to teach a basic curriculum, but are free in teaching religion, values etc. and also in approaching the teaching the way they want it. Most bigger villages have a public primary school as well as one or more religious schools, and the religious ones are usually not very fundamentalist, many atheists have no problem sending their kid to a religious school if it is better or more convenient.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
Of course, this system has some serious problems as well. People are now choosing religious schools sometimes mainly because they are more "white", there are clashes with e.g. christian schools trying to block gay or non-christian teachers, and there were some issues of low quality teaching on Islamic schools.
See e.g. http://vorige.nrc.nl/internati...
How on earth do you spend tens of millions on consulting groups? Let's say its 20 million, in 4 years, that's 5 million per year or 416 thousand per month. You can pay a hundred people 4000 dollars a month to work full time (!) for 4 years and still have money left over. It boggles the mind...
And union negotiations? How much money does it cost to have a meeting with the unions? Do the unions actually charge money for this?
Unbelievable.
How about just talking to the school directors, asking them what they need most, and then giving it to them? You could repair a lot of run down buildings with 100 million.
Consulting groups are for governments looking for ways to waste money. If you're doing philantropy, it's your own money so you just go out there and decide "this is what I'm going to do with MY money to help these people". Screw the consulting groups.