
Newark Public Schools To Get 100mm Donation.. Courtesy of Zuckerberg - zackattack
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/23/education/23newark.html?hp
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sdurkin
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.

~~~
siculars
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.

~~~
SamReidHughes
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.

~~~
yardie
Charter schools can induce nothing. If the parent wasn't already interested
enough to take time out of their day to sign their child up there is nothing
the charter school can do about it.

On the other hand, if you have a kid and he isn't registered somewhere in the
school district (public, private, or home) someone from DCW knocks on your
door and "induces" you to send your child to school.

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SamReidHughes
Maybe in your axiomatic dreamworld where people don't respond to stimuli.

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temphn
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?

~~~
itg
"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.

~~~
Alex3917
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.

~~~
Retric
Under the current system, the worst students cost far more to educate than the
best students. Because of this you can slice the numbers to say everything
from money is harmful, meaningless, or beneficial. The simple truth is in
education resources matter but like all things there are significant
diminishing returns after a while.

~~~
Alex3917
"Under the current system, the worst students cost far more to educate than
the best students."

This is an excellent argument against the current system. The reason why the
worst students cost more to educate using the Gary Plan is largely because of
expensive pull-outs, which isn't a problem under, say, Open Systems
Instruction.[1] Under the current system they actually talk about Total
Adjusted Pupil Units rather than students, which shows just how pervasive the
problem is.

[1] C.f. Public Schools Should Learn to Ski

~~~
Retric
The ROI from educating poor students is actually fairly high. The cost gap
between someone at minimum wage vs. welfare vs. prison is huge. It's generally
speaking much easier and more cost effective to avoid a single teen pregnancy
that to fund enrichment programs.

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ataggart
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...](http://nces.ed.gov/ccd/districtsearch/district_detail.asp?Search=2&ID2=3411340&DistrictID=3411340)

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

~~~
sprout
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.

~~~
ataggart
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.

~~~
sprout
>This strikes me as classism

Sorry. What I mean to say is that the kids who are in the existing private
schools have some sort of a support structure that has obtained the money for
them to go to a private school, and it is that support structure more than the
school that increases their academic output.

If I had that money to spend I would put it towards programs like Trio which
don't throw money at schools, but instead put money into support structures
like tutoring, counseling, and outright paying students money if they excel.

Putting kids in private schools is a somewhat blunt instrument to create
network effects.

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guelo
Wow I didn't realize Zuckerberg was that liquid.

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

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

~~~
markbao
I don't feel like those two are mutually exclusive. Nor that $100M could be
all his liquid assets—if he does indeed have $100M to donate, then chances are
good that he has more.

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peterzakin
"Mr. Zuckerberg is setting up a foundation with $100 million of Facebook stock
to be used to improve education in America, with the primary goal of helping
Newark."

From the WSJ article:
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870386010457550...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703860104575508472745513134.html?mod=WSJ_hps_MIDDLETopStories)

~~~
xelipe
Anytime someone announces that they will invest X million into a public
charity, always ask, over what period and under what conditions? This reminds
me of how BP pledged $20 billion to help the Gulf states affected by the oil
spill, but they didn't mention the tax break they got out it and how it was
actually placed in an escrow account with conditions favorable to them.

I applaud his actions but question his timing and motivations.

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wheels
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.

~~~
parallax7d
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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luckyland
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.

~~~
Alex3917
"Specifically, American parents (point made to differentiate immigrant
families)."

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

~~~
forkandwait
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.)

~~~
krschultz
I can't upvote this enough.

In my public high school, we had kids go to Ivy's, and we had kids go to jail.
I went to a decent state school on a scholarship - I was only 20th out of my
class of 400. That wasn't that hard to do. Sure I didn't go to Harvard, but I
got an engineering degree for basically the cost of living expenses which is
not too bad. My total expense on education lifetime has been less than my
first year salary.

Meanwhile, I found out one of the kids I grew up with in elementary school
just got arrested for murder (of another girl from our HS). One of the kids I
did stagecraft with in HS is in jail for 10 years for killing someone while
DUI. I know a bunch of kids who did nothing at all with their lives and are
still working local retail jobs.

We all went to the same public school. We all had the same teachers. It isn't
even the parents, some of best in my class had 1 parent or bad parents (hell
even my parents were AGAINST me doing honors classes, I hate to fight them
about it). The outcome is entirely dependent on what the student himself put
in.

But like one line is that "being poor" blog that is always passed around, _you
are responsible for decisions you made at 14_ whether you like it or not.

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smoody
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
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?

~~~
loewenskind
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.

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slay2k
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 ?

~~~
slay2k
Would love to know why this is downvoted. Thought I was asking a legitimate
question ?

~~~
krschultz
Stock options apparently, not cash.

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

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

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

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

