Newark Public Schools To Get 100mm Donation.. Courtesy of Zuckerberg

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/23/education/23newark.html?hp

by zackattack • 16 years ago

60 62 16 years ago

zackattack• 16 years ago

If you don't know about Cory Booker, I can't recommend the documentary Street Fight enough. It's available on Netflix streaming.

johnndege• 16 years ago

Seconded - an awesome documentary - trailer - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8jtAASYdLw

pmorici• 16 years ago

Is it on iTunes or Hulu? I can't seem to find it, don't have Netflix.

krschultz4• 16 years ago

He did the graduation speech for my brother's college (NJIT, which is in Newark) a few years back and I was sold then, he will be a president in 10-15 years. He has done a lot for Newark, my brother started college there in 2002, and the difference between when we helped move him in and today is striking. Hopefully it will get back to the place it was in the early 20th century.

smoody• 16 years ago

wow...amazing coincidence -- he makes a generous donation and appears on oprah one week before "The Social Network" opens. I applaud him for his generosity, but question him on his timing. If this is about spin control, then it's sort-of ironic that "The Social Network" might do more for the public education system than "Waiting for Superman".

rewind• 16 years ago

Some people will question him no matter what he does, when it happens, or what else is going on at the time. Same thing happened (and continues to happen) with Gates. How do you know he's not just being generous? If you don't, then why the negative speculation by default?

loewenskind2• 16 years ago

For one thing, always just assuming the best intentions allows people to be as slimy as they dare and just buy back karma with the money they made/stole.

temphn• 16 years ago

Zuck, like Gates before him, has realized that the only way to gain the respect of polite society is by wasting millions on hopeless progressive projects. Vietnamese students with a fraction of the educational budget easily outscore Newark's pupils on international assessments. Who really thinks Newark will be changed by this?

htsh5• 16 years ago

This is a pretty cynical take on things. Newark has improved considerably over the last decade and hopefully things like this will speed up the process.

The Ironbound district is coming along nicely, with restaurants and art galleries popping up around large corporate offices, many escaping nyc's high rent. I'd recommend visiting if you haven't been recently.

And yes, a lot of work is still necessary. It doesn't mean we should give up on it. If anything, I'd argue we should pay more attention to it if things are as bad as you think they are.

itg• 16 years ago

"Vietnamese students with a fraction of the educational budget"

I agree with you that pouring more money doesn't mean thing will get better, but costs are different for people living in America vs Vietnam. This is an unfair and dishonest comparison.

Alex39175• 16 years ago

The thing is though that in the U.S. the research has shown that increased spending doesn't mean improved outcomes, whereas in other countries this isn't necessarily true. I'm all for improving outcomes in schooling, but if you want to do that by putting money into it then you have to do so in a country where more money buys better outcomes, and that isn't the case here.

loewenskind2• 16 years ago

I disagree on Gates wasting money. If you put enough money at nearly any problem you can solve it. The question is just how much will it take. If anyone has a chance in Africa it's Gates.

krschultz4• 16 years ago

Corey Booker, the mayor of Newark, has changed things considerably. If ever there was a time that money could change Newark, now is the time.

guelo• 16 years ago

Wow I didn't realize Zuckerberg was that liquid.

markbao2• 16 years ago

Seriously. Now I'm curious. Salary and bonuses? SecondMarket?

sdurkin3• 16 years ago

Either he's sold off quite a bit in the secondary market, or this donation represents almost all of his liquid assets.

quellhorst• 16 years ago

The donation is in stock, not cash.

joezydeco2• 16 years ago

So (just out of curiosity) how does the school actually use this stock to do anything? Do they sell it off to interested individuals? Does the SEC allow that?

Can they use the stock as a collateral to a loan? What happens when they pull a $50 million loan to build schools and the stock is suddenly worth $25 million?

sdurkin3• 16 years ago

I applaud the motivation, but the United States public school system is as dysfunctional as your average third world government. Pouring more money into this broken system simply does not help.

As an example, consider the Washington D.C. public school system, which spends more per capita than almost any other city in the nation, yet consistently scores among the lowest in all performance metrics. There is something wrong with the existing culture of American public education. Introducing more funding might temporarily alleviate some of the symptoms, but it cannot cure the underlying disease.

A $100 million dollar fund to found charter schools in the Newark area would most likely be more effective, and would certainly be more interesting.

htsh5• 16 years ago

Founding charter schools is only part of the solution. You still have to get parents to send their kids to the schools, and you have to get the kids to want to go, and those are tough hurdles to overcome in a place like Newark.

Like it or not, the public school system is what many kids in Newark are stuck with, and it's hard to see how something like this will not help considerably.

And I'm not sure if I agree with your blanket statement re: our public school system, as much of it is functioning just fine. Parts of it are broken and corrupt, yes, but I don't think I'd go as far as comparing them to third world governments.

WarDekar• 16 years ago

In case you haven't noticed, charter schools have far more interest from parents than there are spots open, that's why they have lotteries to get in. In fact there is a documentary specifically about this, called simply [1] The Lottery.

Also New Jersey schools are some of the most corrupt in the nation, which there is also a documentary about called [2] The Cartel. In The Cartel they actually have a scene from one of the charter lotteries, which is one of the saddest scenes I've ever seen in a film as it literally brought tears to my eyes watching parents and kids celebrate when they were chosen, and brought to tears of anguish when they were not.

Also it would be nice if you could show us where the public school system is supposedly "functioning just fine," as I'd love to see the evidence for that. In fact, there is a movie being released this Friday called [3] Waiting for "Superman" that argues the opposite, along with former NY state educator of the year [4] John Taylor Gatto that argues in his books that the entire system should be abolished and started over from scratch. Sure, there are the very rare few teachers that are actually doing good work, but the system is flawed from the top down starting with the goals (essentially to produce factory workers with no individual thought [5,6]).

[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1515935/

[2] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1433001/

[3] http://www.waitingforsuperman.com/

[4] http://johntaylorgatto.com/

[5] http://johntaylorgatto.com/underground/index.htm

[6] http://www.amazon.com/Weapons-Mass-Instruction-Schoolteacher...

desigooner2• 16 years ago

2 points to be noted:

1) NJ is very notorious when it comes to unions. this extends to public schools. not many people care about actually teaching as much as they care about the 3 month vacation and a very steady paycheck + a very healthy pension.

2) Up until this point, the NJ state controlled Newark public schools. Now, the gov has agreed to hand over the control of the public schools in Newark to the mayor, Corey Booker (who's the best thing to happen to Newark in recent history).

Recently, Gov. Christie cut higher ed funding to divert it to the public school systems. Now this doesn't help public universities like Rutgers in the state. Being a recent alum, I know the first hand effect of the state's constant budget cuts to the university since 2006-07 (about 61 million $ then through about 20 mill in 2010) ..

all in all, it's pretty much a cluster%^

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elblanco• 16 years ago

You forgot that the Mayor of D.C. and his School Czar, after spending years actually making progress in improving D.C.'s school and cutting costs, just lost the election to a new guy who swears he's going to fire the school Czar because she's mean.

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siculars• 16 years ago

My take on charter schools vs. public schools is quite simple really. I firmly believe that all the hype surrounding better test scores (better outcomes) can be solely attributed to the fact that the population is self selecting. As it turns out, public schools are the lowest common denominator when it comes to education. In order to attend a charter school the parent must do something. The fact that the parent must do something in and of itself is testament to the fact that the parent is involved. Any educator, anywhere in the world, will tell you that an involved parent makes all the difference.

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SamReidHughes2• 16 years ago

Okay. But charter schools can induce involvement among the parents. I have seen no evidence about this effect so I'll just put it out there. Really, the argument of whether charter schools are effective or not should not be important. The environment the child spends his time in is more important than the number of facts crammed into his head. The idea that parents should have their children forcibly relocated and locked inside a building and just pray that it's competently enough run so as not to be filled with poorly supervised violent hoodlums with no alternative cost-effective choices, is evil.

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edanm• 16 years ago

You're right.

Have you ever heard of "Simpson's Paradox"? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpsons_paradox

It says that often, things that look like overall trends can be split into sub-groups, in which the effect is gone. For example, take the "Public Schools perform worse than Private Schools" idea. If you split both school populations into the children from wealthy parents vs children without wealthy parents (ending up with 4 groups), you'll find that the test scores are the same for the "wealthy" kids, whether they go to private or public schools.

In other words, it doesn't matter whether kids are going to private or public schools, what matters is whether they have wealthy parents or not. It just so happens that more kids with wealthy parents go to private schools.

More details about the paradox, and a link to a study on private vs public schools, can be found in the Wikipedia article.

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equark• 16 years ago

You underestimate researchers. Recent research on charter schools uses randomized assignment, induced by oversubscribed schools. They often find large positive effects:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1517008

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1550609

Not surprisingly, the results depend on the school type and some charter schools don't work or only help specific groups:

http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/newsroom/releases/2010/Charte...

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slay2k2• 16 years ago

Wow, random. Would love to hear from someone on the economics of this.

Where does the money come from ? Facebook's taxes that would otherwise have been paid to the government ?

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slay2k2• 16 years ago

Would love to know why this is downvoted. Thought I was asking a legitimate question ?

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krschultz4• 16 years ago

Stock options apparently, not cash.

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sahaj• 16 years ago

we're talking big company PR tactics here...

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ataggart2• 16 years ago

This is a district with 40,500 students in K-12, spending $27,961 per student[1]. Compare that "free" education to the cost of tuition of any of the private schools in Newark. A quick googling revealed rates varying from $4000 to $17,000.

This contribution amounts to about $2,500 per student, an amount that very well might make the difference in allowing a family to afford to send their kid to a school that isn't at the bottom of the barrel[2]. It'd make even more of a beneficial difference if it was apportioned based on actual need.

[1] http://nces.ed.gov/ccd/districtsearch/district_detail.asp?Se...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newark_Public_Schools

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sprout2• 16 years ago

1. How much of those schools' budgets are met through donations? 2. Could those schools actually operate at scale?

Much of those schools' success is really due to network effects. You throw a bunch of low-income kids into that setting, and they will crash and burn. Also, when you look at religious schools, the positions are truly considered callings, so compensation is less of an issue.

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ataggart2• 16 years ago

I'm not proposing to shutter the public schools. This type of beneficence isn't really useful for any substantive, long-term change. It's a PR stunt. My point is only that this $100M would, on the margins, help far more kids if it were directed towards helping individual families escape the public school system.

For example, if I had $100M to blow, I might accept applications from families and then rank them by amount needed to convert out of public schools (from smallest to largest), and donate the money in that order for those amounts. This would have the effect of helping the most kids. It would also counter the problems with self-reporting; ask for more than you really need and risk not getting anything.

>You throw a bunch of low-income kids into that setting, and they will crash and burn.

This strikes me as classism. While there is a correlation between economic strata and educational achievement, I'm not so sure about the causality implied in your claim. Instead, perhaps being financially relegated to the tender mercies of the Newark public school system contributes to such underperformance.

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luckyland• 16 years ago

The #1 problem with public schools today are parents. Specifically, American parents (point made to differentiate immigrant families).

Even the most challenged or unmotivated kids can be turned into achievers.

But the kids that never respond to education are the ones who have parents that don't care if they don't.

Throw all the money you want at Newark public schools. Their output will be little different a couple decades from now.

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Alex39175• 16 years ago

"Specifically, American parents (point made to differentiate immigrant families)."

Well, mostly involuntary minorities and low-SES groups. (To use John Ogbu's words.)

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forkandwait• 16 years ago

Know how they get to be low SES? THEY DON'T STUDY!!

In the US, IF you work the educational system, you can pull yourself into the middle class with as much in student debt as a high end toyota. Today. With no money. Bust your ass in school, take out a loan, and go to a 2nd tier college in engineering or accounting, and voila -- you are middle class. This is the worst case -- if you are actually talented, you should be able to get scholarships and/ or go to a top tier university -- voila, you are UPPER middle class.

HOWEVER, if you are born to a rural working class family, your mom and dad tell you school is a waste of time, that you can't afford it, your teachers assume you are doomed to failure, and you can hit a local maximum in prestige by being a smart aleck and a decent football player and working early. Nobody is going to encourage you do anything else -- not your teachers, parents, or age group friends.

And you are screwed, before you even showed up in kindergarten... It has nothing to do with race or money, just culture. The classic guy on the interaction of culture with education with class is Pierre Bourdieu -- look him up.

I know about these white families some -- I imagine it is a little worse for black and hispanic kids. But the working class whites prove my point about culutre better, since they are supposedly the power group. (Well, in terms of race, sure, but what matters is class -- go Karl!)

(With asian kids, there is a reverse "Pygmalion Effect"; I knew a girl who got through a second tier UC NEVER doing any homework -- if she were black, she would have failed out early because every little thing she did wrong would have been fodder for preconceptions. Or if she was working class "country" white.)

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moondistance• 16 years ago

It would be very cool if even a tenth of this was put towards online education systems. $10M could go a long way towards improving online education, esp. with Facebook as a partner!

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anonmmyeahuhuh• 16 years ago

mm interesting that this comes about knowing that movie about him was going to be released around this time of the year... and then you got all those nasty articles about him in the press lately...

...

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wheels• 16 years ago

The cynic in me finds it convenient that Zuckerberg's first major act of philanthropy is announced just a couple weeks before a major film portraying him as a jackass is released.

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parallax7d• 16 years ago

I doubt he will actually cough up the money. It's not based on any assumptions about his character based on that movie, just my sense of how much of a paper tiger his and facebook's financials are.

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Eddk• 16 years ago

Recently I penned down a rant against the social hypocrisy of so many startups (http://colabopad.blogspot.com/2010/08/on-early-stage-hiring-...)

I did take a dig at Facebook at the end of that post, I must say now that I am more than happy to eat my words!! Kudos to you Marky Mark, as a Newark residence this is very much appreciated:)

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serichsen• 16 years ago

Sorry for being off topic, but is "mm" really an abbreviation for "million $"? I only know it for "millimetre".

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Newark Public Schools To Get 100mm Donation.. Courtesy of Zuckerberg

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