Mark Zuckerberg Gave New Jersey $100 Million To Fix Newark's Schools, And It Looks Like A Waste

Business Insider ^ | 05/13/2014 | Caroline Moss

[SeekAndFind]

In the fall of 2010, Mark Zuckerberg announced on Oprah that he'd be making a generous gift to Newark, New Jersey. As Oprah said in her Oprah way, "one ... hundred ... million ... dollars" would be given to Newark Mayor Cory Booker and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie as the three began the Startup:Education foundation.

The plan was to turn Newark into what Zuckerberg called "a symbol of educational excellence for the whole nation," spent on retaining the best teachers, and creating environments that would produce successful students and, one day, graduates.

Newark is a city wrought with crime. Its graduation rate is about 67%. It needed the help, and Booker's vision sounded promising.

Between 2010 and 2012, The New Yorker reports that "more than twenty million dollars of Zuckerberg’s gift and matching donations went to consulting firms with various specialties: public relations, human resources, communications, data analysis, [and] teacher evaluation." Many of the consultants were being paid upwards of $1,000 a day.

“Everybody’s getting paid but Raheem still can’t read," Vivian Cox Fraser, president of the Urban League of Essex County, was quoted saying.

Today, the money is pretty much gone, and Newark has hardly become that symbol of excellence.

[TurboZamboni]

Reality ran into a Sucker-berg.

[lormand]

Of course it’s a waste. Money will not change the rotten culture that exists there.

[lormand]

"Any move that stops short of sacking nearly every teacher and ‘administrator’ is futile."

The teachers and administrators are part of the community that uses the schools. It's the culture that is rotten, and sacking teachers and administrators does nothing to change the culture. Any new teacher will have the same rotten students and baby mommas as did the previous teacher.

[liberalh8ter]

A Suckerberg and his money are soon parted.

[Noamie]

Money doesn’t equal good education any more than money equals good taste.

I’m glad they wasted it because that’s $100M less that commie NSA-bot can use to screw up other lives.

[Pearls Before Swine]

Mark learns “you can’t fix stupid.” /S

[PieterCasparzen]

Regarding some more detail on the “how and the why”...

“How To Give Like Mark Zuckerberg”

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3155568/posts

[kearnyirish2]

“Newark New Jersey is a lost cause - and it has been for about 40 years.”

The Newark Bears just went out of business (who could have seen that coming? /s); the Nets escaped to Brooklyn rather than be coerced into Newark like the Devils (whose owner has subsequently stated publicly that he would never have moved the team there if he knew how the city intended to squeeze him for money). These pathetic attempts to keep these welfare reservations viable with public/private combinations are tiresome and fruitless; they desperately want white people to stay after 5 pm and spend money there, but won’t address the primary reason for the daily late afternoon exodus. Jersey City, on the otherhand, has basically expelled The Problem from whole areas leading to a renaissance along the “Gold Coast” on the Hudson River.

[Amagi]

Zuckerberg the Knucklehead.
When I first started listening to Rush in the very early 1990s he told the story (as I recall) of a $50 million project to fund an attempt to raise test scores for minorities in an upper midwest major school district. (Maybe Minneapolis?)
Five years later the results showed it had absolutely no affect on minority test scores.
Moreover, an accounting afterward could not find how the money had been used or to where it had disappeared.
Lack of money has never been the problem causing the decline and failure of the American public school system.
I could have saved the Knucklehead a chunk of change on this one had he just asked.

[goldi]

Beverly Hall was the superintendent of Newark schools. She was involved in the Atlanta test cheating. When she left Newark, millions of dollars were missing, so I’m told.

[Smokin' Joe]

Zukerberg is free to wast his money however he chooses. However, if he actually wants to make a difference, he might consider contributing toward alternatives to the public school system. The competition would help the public schools, which are under-performing, as any monopoly tends to do.

Agreed. The endowment of a private, tuition assisted school for those meeting entry requirements (as adjudged by a panel who only sees grades and accomplishments, not names, addresses, or any other data) for students who wish to excel might accomplish far more than funneling funds into the broken public school system, provided social inertia did not undermine that goal to succeed.

I will give him this much credit: He spent his money instead of calling for other funding.

[PapaBear3625]

He would have gotten better results by having a scholarship which allowed the smarter, hard-working students out of the public school system and into Catholic schools, or other well-performing private schools.