The Wrongologist

What’s Wrong
Today:

Many will remember
the feel-good story of 2010 in which Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced his
plan to make a $100 million challenge grant/investment in the Newark, NJ public
schools.

Well, the initial
returns are now in, and it appears that Zuckerberg’s $100 million was a lost
opportunity for Newark. Although none of what has transpired is Zuckerberg’s fault, instead of reform, the district is awash with civic
disunity, union resistance and school district cost overruns.

Zuckerberg had responded
to New Jersey Governor Christie’s and Newark Major Corey Booker’s appeal to
help reform the Newark schools and make them into a model for the rest of
America. Zuck wanted to use Silicon Valley-style bonuses to incent Newark’s best
teachers. He talked about paying 50% bonuses, a routine event at Facebook.

Instead, according to
a long piece in The
New Yorker by Dale Russakoff, his funds have either been spent or are
fully committed, and that much of Zuckerberg’s money funded controversial
charter schools, union contracts, and possibly, some went into the pockets of politically-connected
education reform activists. How did it all go wrong? Was the hoodied
billionaire hoodwinked, (h/t The Baffler) or was this just the natural consequence of naïve money meeting smart
bureaucrats?

The Newark schools
had been run by the state since 1994, when a judge ended local control, citing
corruption and neglect. A state investigation had concluded:

There was no question
that the Newark school district needed reform. For generations, it had been a
source of patronage jobs and sweetheart deals for the connected and the lucky. The
New Yorker quotes Ross Danis, of the nonprofit Newark Trust for Education:

By 2010, the state
had produced no real improvement. So, New Jersey Governor Christie and Newark Major
Corey Booker decided to work together. Booker warned that they would face a brutal battle with unions and
machine politicians. With seven thousand people on the payroll, the school
district was the biggest public employer in a city of 270,000. Russakoff
reports that Christie replied: “Heck, I got maybe six votes in Newark. Why not
do the right thing?” So began the effort to recruit Zuckerberg. From the New Yorker:

Booker said: “We know
what works”. He (and others) blamed vested interests for using poverty as an
excuse for failure, and dismissed competing approaches as incrementalism.
Education needed “transformational change.” Mr. Zuckerberg agreed, and he
pledged his $100 million to Booker’s and Christie’s cause. From Russakoff:

Yet, the school
district is running in the red. Residents recently learned that the overhaul
would require thousands of students to change schools. The community is up in
arms at Christie and Booker, now a US Senator. They want input and local
control restored. In mid-April, 77 members of the clergy signed a letter to
Christie requesting a moratorium on the plan, citing “venomous” public anger
and “the moral imperative” that people need to control their own destiny.

Speaking of people
controlling their own destiny, Helaine Olen writes in The
Baffler of the irony that on the same day The New Yorker
published the Zuckerberg story, the Robin Hood Foundation,
a charity founded by NY hedgie Paul Tudor Jones, held its annual fundraising
dinner in New York City. The event, headlined by John Oliver and Bruno Mars,
raised $60 million for various New York City social services. According to Bloomberg,
attendees at the fundraiser were told that a $250,000 Robin Hood table would pay
for preschool for 2,500 NYC children.

Who in the 1% would say
no to the little children?

Olen reports that New
York City Mayor Bill de Blasio was among the listeners to the private Bruno
Mars concert. Ironically, he had lost the support of these same millionaires
and billionaires earlier this year when he proposed increasing the New York
City income tax on those earning more
than $500,000 annually to pay for free pre-kindergarten for every New York
City child. De Blasio’s plan would have raised an estimated
$532 million. That plan went nowhere.

You see the point:
The amount that would have been raised by the de Blasio tax would be more than eight times the amount
voluntarily raised by the Robin Hood dinner AND from the same people!

No reason to ask us
to pay more taxes, we will just give a little to the little people.

In the previous
decade, billionaires like Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the Walton family, and others had
embraced charitable giving to education. They were hoping to create sweeping
changes to public schooling. In addition to financing the expansion of charter
schools, they helped finance Teach for America and the development of the
Common Core State Standards. But, is this approach effective? Peter Buffett,
the musician son of the fabled investor, became involved in charitable giving
after his father announced in 2006 that he would give away much of his fortune.
Peter Buffett now calls this form of giving “philanthropic colonialism”, showing a nuanced view in a NYT op-ed:

It seems likely
Newark residents already knew that. In May, Ras Baraka, a fierce opponent of
the Zuckerberg-Booker-Christie inspired reforms was elected to serve as Newark’s
next
mayor. The new mayor was a Newark city council member and principal of one
of the city’s high schools. His campaign slogan was “When I become mayor, we
become mayor”, implying a return to local control and business as usual in
Newark’s schools. He won by 2,000 votes.

Zuck? He still has
more than $1 billion unspent in his charitable foundation. The tuition he paid
in philanthropy 101 was costly, but we all know that a good education is
expensive.