Rick Cohen: What Happened to Zuckerberg’s $100 Million?

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1. Jon Awbrey says:

   May 22, 2014 at 10:05 am

   Follow the money
   And you can bet
   It flows in circles
   Pocket to pocket
   And down the toilet.

   BURMA SHAVE

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   • KrazyTA says:

     May 22, 2014 at 10:13 am

     Jon Awbrey: close shave, that!

     😎

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     • Jon Awbrey says:

       May 22, 2014 at 10:35 am

       shear is …

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   • Yvonne Siu-Runyan says:

     May 22, 2014 at 11:50 am

     Jon,
     You are absolutely right on!

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2. Chiara Duggan says:

   May 22, 2014 at 10:33 am

   I knew this was coming. We will now move from “reforming” education to “how can we do education on the cheap?”

   I remember reading Governor Snyder’s “skunkworks” plan in Michigan and the base level of funding per student was 5k. They were going to leverage the awesome power of “blended learning”, and also save a lot of money! They had one actual public school advocate on the planning team and he quit when he realized what the goal was.

   This will be the next big ed reform PR push. We’ll go from “excellence!” to “efficiency!” which of course fits perfectly with the low-tax, anti-public funding agenda of the promoters.

   http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/05/public_schools_and_reform_u_s_schools_cost_way_too_much_and_should_be_cheaper.html?utm_content=buffer4f177&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

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   • Duane Swacker says:

     May 22, 2014 at 10:47 am

     “We’ll go from “excellence!” to “efficiency!”

     Been there and done that. See Ray Callahan’s “Education and the Cult of Efficiency” from 1961 or so.

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     • Chiara Duggan says:

       May 22, 2014 at 11:11 am

       Here’s the Skunkworks plan. It was ultra-super-top secret! 🙂

       Once again they rode right over about those pesky “status quo” notions of “transparency” and “democratic governance and public participation” we stubbornly insist on clinging to.

       “The Detroit News, which first highlighted the “secret” meetings last week, reported the group was developing a low-cost, technology-centric charter school with a voucher-like funding mechanism. The governor said he was not aware of those private meetings but wants the discussion over expanded classroom technology to continue in public channels.”

       Like Chris Christie, another heroic ed reformer, he is “not aware” of many, many things.

       http://www.mlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/04/michigan_gov_rick_snyder_on_sk.html

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   • Steve K says:

     May 22, 2014 at 10:51 am

     Over the last year or so, editorials that sang the praises of charter schools had shifted tactics. Since the initial promise of student growth was not being reflected in charter school stats overall, the new argument became that it is cost-effective.

     But charters are about to lose that argument. Here in Michigan, charters are asking for equalized funding. Even though they don’t have legacy costs and rarely provide transportation, they want the same allowance.

     Chiara, I know that you know this, but it has become increasingly obvious that the education reform fight has decreasingly become an issue of educational quality and increasingly become an issue of who gets the money. Articles like the one you referenced in Slate are the next strategy.

     Last note: The article praised New Orleans on the basis of a conservative think tank study.

     Journalism is indeed a dying form of public discourse.

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     • Chiara Duggan says:

       May 22, 2014 at 11:05 am

       I agree. They use that argument in the piece I linked to promote vouchers in Milwaukee. Private schools have never out-performed Milwaukee public schools, so I guess the new tactic is “they’re cheaper, so they actually beat public schools!”

       I think it’s baloney. Milwaukee public schools take all kids, there’s no self-selection bias, and I have no idea what sort of subsidies private schools get. I do know they pay their employees much less here, and a race to the bottom on middle class wages isn’t really what I’m after in my local community. Are you?

       The moving of the goalposts from people who claim to value “accountability” so much would be amusing, if it wasn’t constantly used to beat up on public schools. I mean, for God’s sake. Just give Milwaukee Public Schools the credit. They do better than private schools in that city. I know saying anything remotely positive about a public school system is unfashionable but give them what they’ve earned. It’s not like vouchers are going away in Milwaukee. When does using public schools as political punching bags stop? I’m sick of it.

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     • Chiara Duggan says:

       May 22, 2014 at 11:25 am

       “But charters are about to lose that argument. Here in Michigan, charters are asking for equalized funding. Even though they don’t have legacy costs and rarely provide transportation, they want the same allowance.”

       Ohio is always a couple of years ahead of Michigan (this is, after all, national, despite denials) and they started pushing for increased funding for charter schools a couple of years ago.

       It’s funny how the “better!” argument was seamlessly replaced with the “choice!” argument and now is being replaced with the “cheaper!” argument. if you;ve been following this for a while, we’ve now come full-circle, because they originally sold charters as “cheaper”.

       I no longer understand liberal ed reformers. I don’t understand how they can not see where this is so obviously heading. “The movement” is so completely dominated by conservative ideology that it is indistinguishable from the hard Right on public education.

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3. Michael Fiorillo says:

   May 22, 2014 at 11:22 am

   It’s more than a little ironic that Mark Zuckerberg, who early on called people using Facebook “dumb f&@!s,” was treated like a drunken rube with money by the so-called reformers.

   Readers may recall that the “gift” was announced when heand Facebook were having some PR difficulty, and the donation was intended to distract from that, as well as privatize the Newark schools.

   It seems like Cerf, Anderson and crew couldn’t keep their hands off the money, though it’s a shame that Dana Russakoff, author of the New Yorker article, was taken in by Anderson’s self-serving lies.

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   • Jake says:

     May 22, 2014 at 1:18 pm

     There was never any evidence that privatizing and charters are the answer to “reform”. Russakoff did little objective research. She spoke only with Anderson’s appointed administrators and the Teach For America scabs. Her book was flawed from the get go.

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4. TC says:

   May 22, 2014 at 12:04 pm

   “some $20 million went to various consulting firms”

   Overhead, test, measure, observe, look at data, post data, have meetings about data. I guess $100 million doesn’t last long.

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   • Chiara Duggan says:

     May 22, 2014 at 1:12 pm

     I don’t know which consultants got what, but if you read the emails that the ACLU had to sue to get released, they mostly talk about “optics”. How does it look, should they put a more local face on it, etc.

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5. Jake says:

   May 22, 2014 at 1:28 pm

   Zuckerberg knew what he was getting into. He wanted to buy his (or others) self serving ideas of reform. His agreement clearly states he can rescind the money at any time he doors not agree with the leadership (superintendent, mayor, governor). If there was anything left he would be getting ready to take it back right about now. He gave it with the intention of funding more charter schools, which would cause more public schools to close, decrease union workers, and privatize the management of schools to the financial benefit of a select few. Shame shame shame Mr Zuckerberg for sticking your nose and your money in other peoples business.

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6. Gordon Wilder says:

   May 22, 2014 at 1:47 pm

   And additionally, what could that 100 million done for public schools?

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7. Judith says:

   May 23, 2014 at 12:40 pm

   One interesting thing I found in the New Yorker article was that Booker declared that it was silly to continue doing the same things to try to improve the Newark schools, so he was doing something different. I would have been more impressed if he’d done something first about the Newark political system–he was the first mayor in 50 years who wasn’t indicted for a criminal offense (according to the article). But they keep on electing them.

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