Zuckerberg's $100 Million Education Gift Solved Little 335
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."
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Breaking news (Score:5, Interesting)
Imagine that! Giving the same folks more money above and beyond taxes didn't improve things even marginally.
Not to take anything away from what I believe is a magnanimous gesture by Zuck, but perhaps a college scholarship program would better serve the needs of inner city youths.
Re:Breaking news (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:Breaking news (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that even *decadently* funded universal government schools that don't have the ability to discipline or expel problem behavior students suffer from the tragedy of the commons in the worst way - a small set of bad apples ruins the whole damn bunch.
When children succeed in schools, it has much less to do with the school than with the child's family and it's attitude towards education. Asserting that success stories are due to money, and failures are due to the lack of money, is to ignore the first order terms in the equation.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
"Charter schools" were specifically designed by an alliance of hard right wing radicals and religionists of one religion to destroy not only the concept of universal free public schooling but the very infrastructure of the schools, the buildings, and the systems that support them. So no, "charter schools" are not public schools.
Nice try though.
sPh
Re:Breaking news (Score:4, Informative)
In my district, the charter schools directly take the money for a student that would have gone to the public school. It's public money, not private money. You may or may not be right about the ambitions of the people who created charters, but they are definitely not private schools.
Re:Breaking news (Score:5, Insightful)
Technically, some states do give charter funds directly to what were historically considered private schools. Although see Louisiana for why the charter crowd turned out not to be so happy with the consequences of that one.
But that's not my point. I didn't say that "charter schools" were private. Some are, most aren't. But "charter schools" are not part of a universal free (and equal) public school system, and are in fact specifically designed to destroy free universal equal schooling. So charters are in no way shape or form public schools. You might want to check back with your private school logic teacher for a bit of a tune up.
sPh
This can be confirmed by what happens when charter schools fail: their students are sent back to "the public schools" - namely the local universal public school district.
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LOL, but I went to public school for all but 2 years. We definitely had no logic teacher!
I may be naive, but can't students from failed charter schools attend another charter school as well as the conventional public school?
Re:Breaking news (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd suggest reading the series in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about the model charter school program in that city. Two sets of articles: the first hopeful and complementary, describing how powerful institutions in the region (universities, medical centers, etc) were going to sponsor each of the five "super charters", full backing of the political class, will fix all the problems and can't fail, etc... Then the second set of articles four years later when the for-profit operator pulled out (no profits), the big sponsors disappeared, and the children were told in June they were going back to their home public school districts (which were in even worse shape after losing four years of funding).
Sure, parents can find different charters. Of course that's a large investment of time, effort, and money for a family which might not have much of any of those to spare. But it is important to keep in mind the effect on the children: pulled away from their friends, their teachers, their familiar building and routine. A school and a teacher can be very large things in the life of a 2nd grader (esp one from a neighborhood where the school might be the only safe place he can go); pulling them here and there by what seems to them a whim is not a good thing. To me anyway.
I would suggest that, but unfortunately last time I checked the STLPD had put up a paywall so those articles may no longer be available. Try google and see if you can get to them though. Here's one link
http://www.stltoday.com/news/l... [stltoday.com]
sPh
Re:Breaking news (Score:4, Insightful)
not to mention, charters have a NUMBER 'unfair' advantages that public schools don't:
1. by hook and by crook, they reject low-performers... (guess where they end up ?)
2. (in florida) their teachers DO NOT have to be certified...
3. they are NOT having to comport to an INSANE testing regimen which FORESTALLS actual teaching...
4. they do NOT have to accommodate 'special needs' children... (guess where they end up ?)
5. the kicker: virtually ALL articles/studies on the subject find that -in general- with ALL THEIR HUGE ADVANTAGES, they STILL do not perform significantly better than public schools on the all-fucking-mighty tests... (oh, and they CHEAT on the tests, too...)
note, NOT that there are NOT good charter schools with good practices which make for a better learning environment; but MOSTLY it is a SCAM: rich pukes are 'investing' in these because they get all kinds of tax breaks to fund NEW SCHOOLS, but not a fucking penny to upgrade existing ones... it is a money-making proposition, has NOTHING to do with actually educating the rugrats...
'the problem' with public education, is NOT public education (or unionized teachers, you fucking conservatard dingleberries), it is the socio-economic disparity: education/learning tracks EXACTLY with socio-economic status: you come from a middle-class or above family that has books and some discretionary income to go to museums, etc; you do okay in school... you come from a poor family that doesn't have one book in the house, you generally don't do well in school.. gosh, who would have thought that ? well, EVERYONE *EXCEPT* the education scammers who are making money from bad-mouthing public education...
Re:Breaking news (Score:4, Insightful)
Thanks for the link. I have to admit being very ignorant of charters outside of the Philly area. Here, the schools are excellent except for Philadelphia. The Philly public schools are so bad that the last governor (a Democrat) flooded them with money and it had no results at all. The Republican we have now yanked them back to their previous levels and that didn't really help either. ...
I know, this is /. and the vast majority don't RTFA.
Here is perhaps a better summary for this story:
School system in the state is terribly corrupt. $100M given to school, with requirement that another $100M must match it. Over $200M is given to the system. ALL THE MONEY in the known-to-be-corrupt system was spent by politicians, union groups, and administrators, NONE OF THE MONEY was actually spent on students.
Throwing more money at the people who are known to be corrupt will not correct the corruption problems. To fix corruption requires actually removing those who are corrupt and implementing strong accountability systems that also remove those who are corrupt or underperform. Right now the politicians in the state are among the most immoral corrupt politicians in the world, the teachers union is strong enough that once hired you have a job until you die no matter how bad you teach, and administrators are protected by both the political and the union sides.
Throwing more money at them is like throwing pretty little fish into a piranha tank hoping it will make a beautiful fishy ecosystem. The natural result should not be surprising. You need to dump the tank and start over.
Re:Breaking news (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, it's public money all right. It's public money going to a for profit company, further weakening our already underfunded schools. They definitely ARE private institutions. When profit motive rubs up against educating kids, what do you think will win? But hey, even if fail, at least the public schools lose more money....
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They don't do any worse than public schools, even though they kick out bad performing students and don't have to handle special education students.
They remove funding for the public school facilities, which are mostly fixed.
So if they are not any better, even cherry picking from the student body, why have them at all?
Re:Breaking news (Score:5, Interesting)
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... [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... [wikipedia.org]
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... [vorige.nrc.nl]
Re:Breaking news (Score:4, Interesting)
Small addendum: anecdotal but still - I know many non-religious parents that came to regret sending their kids to religious schools. I personally never understood their optimism that somehow their kids would escape the indoctrination.....
No, not so much (Score:4, Interesting)
Or could it be that good education is really, really expensive, and that $100 million dollars isn't really a lot of money on the scale of a State of American. Could it also be that a lot of that $100 million was spent on trying to make the school district turn out cheap employees for facebook?
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I gather economics isn't one of your strong points, as "administrative costs" and "profits" are disjoint categories. It's certainly true that plenty of charters are scams meant for efficiently transferring taxpayer money into connected people's pockets... but unfortunately public schools are much the same.
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shocked to find systems flaws are of great complexity and cannot be solved by simply shitting large sums of money into education.
Hmm, wow, perhaps we could draw some sort of broader conclusion from th ... ow, ow, the down mods, it burns!
Re:Breaking news (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that it's surprising. It's about the most American concept in existence: ignore a problem chronically until ignoring it further would cause chaos... then smother it with money and hope it goes away.
The education system
The financial crisis
The war on drugs
The war on terrorism
(goddamn, America loves its wars)
No real plan, no forethought, just vulturous agencies and contractors circling the poor starving bastard, waiting to feast on that juicy pile of cash that they know will come soon enough.
Show me a national problem where this response isn't the default.
Re:Breaking news (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
I would call the FBI, call fraud (Score:5, Interesting)
If 100M yields no results, call the FBI.
All those advisors and union officials need to go to jail now.
And kids, lesson of the day, all school work was a waste of time to graduate, just become a union official or politician, no qualififications, easy money, and your above the law.
Re:Breaking news (Score:5, Interesting)
How on earth do you spend tens of millions on consulting groups?
Not that hard when as the MSN article states "Many of the consultants were being paid upwards of $1,000 a day.", nothing is being said about what the average consultant fee were but for the sake of argument let's say it is $500 that amount to just 4000 days of paid consultants with an average of 250 working days per year that comes down to 3.2 full time consultants per year that evidently have been grossly overpaid.
Very few careers beyond politics reward ability to talk and write BS combined with failure and/or incompetence to such an extent as that of consultancy.
Re:Breaking news (Score:4)
"Many of the consultants were being paid upwards of $1,000 a day."
Note to self: get job as education consultant.
Imagine that! (Score:4, Insightful)
Throwing money at every problem doesn't make it go away. Who woulda thunk it?
While I appreciate the research potential of this experiment I just don't think people are looking at the human element when it comes to social problems like education and welfare. Our politicians don't seek a better answer because they don't care that people are wasting their lives on reality TV and booze as long as they get their pockets lined from it.
rich people go back to paying taxes? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Same problem will often happen though if the government spends the $100 million instead of the rich guy. Anyone spending the money should first make sure that it's going to be spent well. Otherwise it is way too easy to misspend. Give money to your local elementary school, then find out it was all spend on new paint jobs, resurfacing parking lots, and all the other stuff they've been putting off, but no extra money spent on teachers or smaller class sizes or new DRM-free textbooks.
Best bet for the nouvea
Re:rich people go back to paying taxes? (Score:5, Informative)
So you just repeat what the media tells you? well done.
in 1969, the average spending was $4,221 per student, per year.
the $27,176.91 in today's dollars. We spend about 40% of that.
Spending on kids has gone down.
Why? becasue the tax decrease since then. Look at all the data, the only reason not to go back to 1968 tax rates(adj. for inflation) is pure and simple greed for the top 1%.
Re: (Score:2)
Really? I have never seen any data to support your claim. The Kruger Dunning is about cognitive bias, not media reporting being flat-out lies.
Everything I have ever seen suggests current US inflation adjusted per student spending is about 200% of 1969 levels.
This article [intellectualtakeout.org] shows inflation both adjusted and non adjusted back to the 30s and the trend is up up up though there are some minor dips along the way. And the numbers here are consistent with government sources, etc.
Frankly, I think you are as wrong as
Re:rich people go back to paying taxes? (Score:4, Interesting)
Here in my upstate NY town, we spend $27,000 per student per year, almost on the nose. I just looked quickly at the cost of prep schools. Rutgers Preparatory was one of the first results from Google. It's yearly tuition is $28,240. They have a little over half of the enrollment of our school district. Tell me again how spending on kids has gone down, and tell me how we are going to improve their education by spending more money?
You could take each class year (90 students per class year), hire 9 teachers, for 10 students per teacher, and get:
a 1 million dollar building (more than what you need, and only need to buy it once every 40 years)
2 full time custodial staff at $90,000 total compensation per custodian
$200,000 yearly maintenance/heat/electric on the building.
and pay those teachers 116,500 per year in total compensation.
Now, if you would like to add some features, go ahead and do so. I think I am being very generous with the million dollar property. After all, you could spend 1 million more each year on property and buildings and still not have an issue excepting increased maintenance costs, and that's just for the kindergarteners. I'm sure you have a much more nuanced understanding of what is needed to educate our children. Why don't you enlighten us further?
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, and in our county the tony private schools refuse to accept special needs children ("not qualified", they say; "more of a job for the public schools") and ruthlessly kick out any child with disciplinary problems ("shape up or you're going back to the public school"). Technically they also kick out any kid who falls to the C level academically, but generally mom & dad step in with 10s of thousands of dollars of additional tutoring and nannying so that seldom actually happens. But the expenditures
Re:rich people go back to paying taxes? (Score:4, Informative)
The dollar isn't worth as much as it used to be? (Score:2)
Re:The dollar isn't worth as much as it used to be (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
The one that says "constant dollars".
Re:The dollar isn't worth as much as it used to be (Score:4, Informative)
According to the parent page [ed.gov], the chart for per-pupil spending is already adjusted for inflation. As such, the $4,221 per student figure in 1969 looks to be close to the truth, except that it's *already* adjusted for inflation at that value.
As much as I would like to have a simple explanation like "spending is less than half what it used to be", the numbers don't lie.
Re:rich people go back to paying taxes? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yup, that's why all of the figures on that page are adjusted for it. Total spending per pupil, adjusted for inflation, is almost 5 times now what it was in 1969.
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So apparently did the private sector
Technically (Score:4, Insightful)
If my inferior public school education is any guide, I believe that is technically known as "begging the question". There was no evidence beforehand that there are significant problems with US K-12 education on average, but there was and is absolutely zero evidence that the vast majority of teachers weren't already working hard 'to achieve results' before Grover Norquist and Michelle Rhee got involved to "improve" the situation. On the other hand, there is over 100 years of evidence as to why schools tend to evolve toward seniority systems (hint: not to protect "incompetent" teachers), all of which was ignored.
sPh
Re:Technically (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Technically (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Having been to a private school, I can tell you that most of the focus is not education, but on looking good to the parents. I don't think teachers are any better (though probably not worse), and the main reason students are better come down to pre-selection (entrance exam, no poor children). The only fundamental plus is that they're allowed to expel troublemakers.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree with you, but you have to admit that if you are the affluent parent of a smart, well-behaved kid the private school is a temptation. I went to both a mediocre public school and a very good Catholic school. The Catholic school spent a lot less per student and had somewhat pedestrian facilities, but the learning environment was much better and there were hardly ever fights.
Re: (Score:3)
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.
Having been to a private school, I can tell you that most of the focus is not education, but on looking good to the parents. I don't think teachers are any better (though probably not worse), and the main reason students are better come down to pre-selection (entrance exam, no poor children). The only fundamental plus is that they're allowed to expel troublemakers.
That's one form of private school. The school I sent my son to took any an all applicants and was largely populated with students (like my son) who were failing in the public school system, including kids with behavioral issues. The school's students also scored in the 95th percentile on the same standardized tests given to public school students -- and without "teaching the test". The curriculum was innovative and engaging, classes were small, and the teachers were uniformly excellent (even though they all
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There was no evidence beforehand that there are significant problems with US K-12 education on average
Until I read the rest of your post I assumed you were being sarcastic with this statement. The US spends more than any other country on education [cbsnews.com], but still ranks below average when compared to other developed countries. We have known this for a long time, but things keep getting worse. [npr.org] While none of this means teachers are the primary cause of these problems, it is ignorant to say that there are not significant problems in our K-12 education system.
but there was and is absolutely zero evidence that the vast majority of teachers weren't already working hard 'to achieve results' before Grover Norquist and Michelle Rhee got involved to "improve" the situation.
My employers don't care much if I am trying hard. They car
Re:Technically (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Yup. My inferior, decaying public high school offered five languages and a world-class music program. Guess what was cut first when the budgets were chopped?
sPh
well its obvious... (Score:5, Funny)
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!
Proverb (Score:5, Funny)
"A fool and his money are soon parted."
(Zuck should have Googled it).
Re: Proverb (Score:2)
I wish I was half the fool Zuckerberg is.
You do too, but you probably wouldn't admit it, even to yourself.
Re: (Score:2)
I abhor ugliness.
Does this mean we're not friends any more?
thank God and Greyhound he's gone (Score:2)
American Education System is well funded (Score:2, Insightful)
We spend more on public education in America than any other country. Money is clearly not the problem unless you are talking about controlling waste spending and corruption. Liberal idealists cannot come to terms with the ideas of hard discipline and failing students who disrupt other students' education. Social liberals are too afraid of the politically correct reality that some students need to be held back. Instead they will bankrupt society to try to find any solution that doesn't cause people to "track
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Guess it isn't as easy as it looks:
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I mostly agree with you on charters, but it's important to admit that the public schools were in pretty terrible shape even before the charters. And statistically, the charters aren't really any worse - or better. At some point you have to go after the underlying poverty. I'm not sure how to do that, but I think we all need to step away from 60 years of Democrat and Republican cliche positions on the matter.
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Some historic central city schools districts are certainly in bad shape and a few are probably irrecoverable. Some aren't: NYC amazes me with the incredible job it continues to do even as resources are slashed and social support is damaged.
But that's irrelevant, because the US ceased to be majority urban around 1970. The US is now a suburban and exurban nation. And the vast m
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You wanna be more specific?
just pay the kids already. (Score:5, Interesting)
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... [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)
Re:just pay the kids already. (Score:4, Insightful)
Dept. of Ed. and others do fund research. The results are usually ignored as they do not fit in with people's world views or funding restrictions.
Librarians & Books (Score:3)
In our county, the library system used to do outreach to the schools, where they'd go and try to get kids interested in reading ... but then the county went and fired all of the branch managers, and they didn't have staffing to keep it up.
Librarians require Master degrees in most areas (and may require a specialization if they work in a school library), but regularly make the 'lowest paid graduate degree' lists. .... but the schools and governments would rather appear 'cutting edge' or 'high tech' and give
Unions and comitties (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with the education system in this country are pretty strait forward. They stem directly from the completely inflexible teachers union (who should be ashamed of themselves) and management that does nothing more than attend endless meetings over and over that churn out bullet point after bullet point. My kids school actually has some pretty good teachers by some miracle, but the management issue is ridiculous. I try to be an involved parent but all the events they have are so ridiculous it borders on insanity. They always serve Pizza Pit, the champaign of pizza. Follow that up with great games or skits to entertain the crowd... then the principle gives a 30 to 45min speech about all the great plans she has (but will never implement) then they let the parents talk for about 10min and avoid answering all our questions like "When will you fill in the 6 foot sink hole in the middle of the playground?" and no, I'm not kidding, there really is a 6' sinkhole.
The last one I went to they sent out a questionnaire that asked:
What is most important to you in the education of your child?
a. Hands on learning
b. A diverse and equitable learning environment
c. An involved teaching staff
What the hell does that mean? I just circled them all and wrote "YES" underneath. And these people have 4 to 8 year degrees.
Re:Unions and comitties (Score:5, Funny)
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
Like this doesn't happen all the time? (Score:2)
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Link? no? yeah, thought so.
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This shows the real problem (Score:5, Insightful)
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yep.
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The "we need to spend more money on education" wardrum is just manipulation by administrators. They starve the teachers of money, then encourage them to go out and proselytize to the public with sob stories about how they had to buy t
Public schools are broken (Score:2)
Zuckerberg spends $100 million to prove that throwing money at broken public schools does not fix them.
Are we surprised? No.
Reading comprehension, D- (Score:3)
Zuckerberg spends $100 million to prove that throwing money at broken public schools does not fix them.
Zuckerberg spent $100 million in a botched attempt to funnel selected students into for-profit charter schools. Helping to break the public school system for those left behind.
Problem not borne of cash? (Score:3, Insightful)
Throwing money (Score:4, Insightful)
Throwing money at a problem does not result in a solution, it results in a well-funded problem.
The System is Broken by Design (Score:2, Informative)
John Taylor Gatto covers it pretty well in "The Underground History of American Education". It' available for online reading here:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm
So... (Score:2)
... the consultants got rich and the kids got nothing. Good work, guys. There's a special spot in hell for you.
Wrong Approach (Score:4, Informative)
You can't just throw a bunch of money at a problem and expect a solution to come out. You have to decide on a solution and then throw a bunch of money at it.
It sounds like there were a ton of problems in New Jersey. Crumbling schools? Spend the $100 million fixing infrastructure. Kids have trouble at home? Spend the money on councillors and after-school programs. Poor teachers? Spend it on recruiting.
It seems like they went in with a lot of money and a grand poorly defined plan, a huge institution isn't just going to jump in and implement someone's poorly defined scheme, so instead of spend everybody was busy fighting over details and figuring out where the money should go. The result is the money is wasted in paperwork and of the stuff that got spent no one knows what actually worked.
A concept for higher education (Score:3)
Some years ago, when fantasizing about being a billionaire, I gave thought to how I would improve upon education.
The solution I came up with was to found my own network of private schools and colleges, which I could hold to a high standard due to them being under my control.
The private schools and colleges wouldn't be free to attend, per se, but I'd make it sort-of-trivially-easy for an ambitious student to gain admittance to the private high school without paying tuition (say, the student must participate in on-campus work, organized charity volunteer work, or extracurricular research work, or simply be gifted, etc).
Exceptional students at the private schools would be given scholarships to the colleges, and billionaire-money would attract top-tier professors and researchers. I fantasized about eventually running the top private research institution in the world.
In essence, you create a brand. Use the money to create top-tier colleges under a brand name, then 'franchise' private high schools under the brand, and funnel kids from those schools to the colleges.
Punctuate the concept with aggressive job placement assistance, complimentary career counseling and even therapy for all graduates that extends for for a lifetime beyond graduation. (I think this point is a huge idea in itself, to be honest, and is something that universities should do anyway).
Being a graduate doesn't just mean you got a degree there - it means you're part of a lifetime club, a member of a 'living network' (as opposed to 'social network') with high ideals in mind. Graduates would be encouraged to serve as mentors to students in their spare time in exchange for their lifelong benefits.
Above all, this all could exist without being exclusionary toward non-'members'. For instance, tuition credits could be earned for students who agree to tutor public school students in the community and 'take them under their wing'.
Basically, in the end, you have what a real society should be - a nurturing network of educators, counselors, mentors, and just plain *people* helping each other out for their entire lives. A community, you know? Rising tide, lifting boats.
I actually think this sort of thing could be profitable, and not an expense, in the long run. Once you are established as a top-tier educator, your 'product' will become desirable and those with money will gladly pay for their child's enrollment. Build a solid reputation for producing high-quality, well-rounded, well-adjusted, successful graduates, and marry that to the benefits of being part of this fantastic 'life support group', and you've got one hell of a desirable thing, here.
In short, if you want to do something right, do it yourself. Throwing money at a flawed system isn't going to fix anything. It's like trying to fix a leaky bucket by pouring more water in it.
Slashdot-reading billionaires, feel free to run away with my ideas and do something great with them. Also feel free to contact me if you need help in the implementation. :)
Surprised (Score:4, Insightful)
While $100 million sounds like a lot of money it isn't and while a lot of these posts are doing a Nelson on Zuck "Ha! Ha!" I'd say that at least he put up some money to try and make a difference. Are we that jaded nowadays that when somebody makes an honest effort that we mock the effort? I mean sure it was naive given the circumstances but at least he tried. How many other billionaires out there are willing to pony up their checkbooks and contribute? We should at least applaud the effort and work towards fixing the system so that the next time somebody ponies up some much needed funds, it goes to the kids and not to a bunch of consultants and union reps looking to milk the situation.
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Try linking to the actual f**king article
http://www.newyorker.com/repor... [newyorker.com]
Re:MSN (Score:4, Funny)
MSN is still around? That should be a news story in itself.
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In other words, the way dedicated and capable public school teachers have been handling it in the United States for 275 years. Good plan.
sPh
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teachers aren't the problem, and the goals and achievement I am talking about are about improving the school and teaching process. Objective measurement about the tools, use and progress. Not replace the manager and everything will be fine.
Something the cheaply measure progress, and allow the teacher to set progression goals with the plan as aggressive at any specific student can handle.
Re:Dear Mark (Score:4, Insightful)
Two points: the hideously counterproductive NCLB went into effect in 2002, and there has been enormous amounts of work done on testing and reporting numerically consistent results since that date. In some lower-performing school districts children now spend very large amounts of time per year taking tests (I've heard up to 20% of total school time, although that's probably an exaggeration). So whether those systems are good or bad, well-designed and managed or not, the one good result is that it is not possible in 2014 to argue that there are no standardized standards or reported numerical "metrics" for public education (many categories of private schools and of course homeschoolers being exempt from this testing, natch). If you have a better standardized evaluation system by all means form a company or nonprofit and start selling it, but let's not pretend that evaluation isn't occurring.
Second point: the entire job of a teacher, particularly a K-8 teacher, is to evaluate students and set good progression goals for that student. That's what they do all day, every day. I'm sorry if you personally had some K-12 teachers who missed that mark (I'm not saying there aren't some at the lower end of the capability distribution - stats says there will be), but the vast majority of teachers I've met work very hard to do just that and are quite good at it.
sPh
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I agree with you - the vast majority of teachers are very good and almost all work very hard. But just like any occupation, you have a few outliers. My beef with the public school system is that these outliers are protected as if they are just as valuable as the others. The teachers unions would earn a lot more respect from me if they thinned the herd a bit.
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They don't neccesarily need to thin the herd. Training and motivating them so the present a usable product is another option.
If these problem teacher don't get with it, the should be expelled from the union.
Re:Dear Mark (Score:4, Interesting)
Second point: the entire job of a teacher, particularly a K-8 teacher, is to evaluate students and set good progression goals for that student. That's what they do all day, every day. I'm sorry if you personally had some K-12 teachers who missed that mark (I'm not saying there aren't some at the lower end of the capability distribution - stats says there will be), but the vast majority of teachers I've met work very hard to do just that and are quite good at it.
sPh
While I agree many teachers try to do that, the reality is standardized test force them to teach to passing a test; because if students fail to score high enough the school gets penalized. As a result, test performance, rather than real learning, becomes paramount. Teachers hate it but have to play along in order to succeed.
Re:Dear Mark (Score:5, Informative)
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The first half of that (very common) statement is unproven and in most cases demonstrably false. The second half, also very common hard right wing propaganda, is an issue on which there can be reasonable disagreement but is not in any form a "given truth" and even at best ignores the history of teacher unionization from 1920. So, not very good marks to your (presumably private school?) history and political science teachers.
sPh
Vint Cerf - Vinton F'ing Cerf - was not allowed to fill in for his kids schools CS teacher for a couple of months while the teacher was unable to teach.
The reason for this was that Vinton F'ing Cerf did not have a California teacher certification to prove he knew how to teach computer science. Clearly unqualified, after having invented the F'ing Internet.
That's kind of not allowing Edison to teach a introductory science class about electricity.
Re:Dear Mark (Score:5, Interesting)
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
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In other words, the way dedicated and capable public school teachers have been handling it in the United States for 275 years. Good plan.
sPh
We haven't HAD dedicated OR capable public school teachers in about 275 years.
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- - - - - We haven't HAD dedicated OR capable public school teachers in about 275 years. - - - - -
An brief examination of the list of Americans who have graduated from New York City public schools alone belies that sweeping statement. The United States has an overall very good public schools with - unfortunately - a few very bad spots. And there are hundreds of thousands of dedicated and very good public school teachers in the US to match. Your statement is the sort of baloney that makes glibertarians l
Re:Dear Mark (Score:4, Interesting)
You can't blame this on overall funding levels - the US spends more than just about any other nation on public education. Funding is uneven, however.
We have very serious structural problems with our education system that more money will not solve.
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Schools are largely funded at local levels. The parent is just wrong. What happened was the departmd.t of education was created.
Re:Dear Mark (Score:5, Informative)
No, I'm not wrong. Total funding has gone up, up, up for US schools. Measure it in constant dollars [ed.gov], % of GDP [ed.gov], any way you like. Compare us to other countries, and there are perhaps two who beat us per-pupil. We spend enough money - the solution lies elsewhere.
And while schools still are highly dependent on local funding, that too has been changing steadily [ed.gov] to the point where it is no longer the largest source.
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The question is, are you actually spending it evenly on all schools? Or are some schools eating up the lion's share of that funding, while others have virtually none?
Re:Dear Mark (Score:4, Insightful)
> Next time hire me to handle it
Sounds like an example of the Dunning - Kruger effect.
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Based on what I read, he set thew wrong goals and had little oversight once the match was made.
If there is something I missed, please let me know.
That said, I can come up with a plan that would help every child in that school today, and every day.
Well, I already have one, so 'come up with' isn't quite correct.
Thanks for calling me out if I missed something!
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You can do anything you want in school. It won't work if the society outside the school is completely dysfunctional.
Bill Cosby had it right.
http://www.snopes.com/politics... [snopes.com]
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We could hook the printers to all the "One laptop per child" laptops.
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I would add in art and music. Part of the trick is to find something that excites students and engages them in schools. Not everyone wants to work in a cube, some might like customizing cars. Others like acting or band. If you give the right rewards in the right way then things may improve. There's always the old "keep your grades up your you might get dropped from the { team | lead role in the play | field trip to the museum}" approach that does seem to work.