Laurene Powell Jobs has given away $100 million to 10 schools, with the goal of reinventing the high school. Ms. Jobs is the widow of Steve Jobs, the legendary co-founder of Apple. She is very active in the corporate reform movement. She is on the boards of Teach for America, NewSchools Venture Fund, and Stand for Children.
The ten prizes come from XQ: The Super School Project. The high school redesign competition has financial backing from the Emerson Collective, an organization launched by Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.
“The Super School Project was born out of the conviction and commitment that every child from every background has a right to a quality education that prepares them for a future none of us can easily predict,” said Russlynn Ali, the chief executive officer of the XQ Institute, in a press release. (Ali has long worked in the education policy arena, including a stint as an assistant secretary for civil rights in the Obama administration.)
Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in D.C., recalls the efforts of the New American Schools Development Corporation, which held a competition in 1991 to redesign the American school. It gave away $50 million. No traces remain.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Was she another billionaire bilked out of $100 million just like Facebook’s Sucker-Berg was?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Fortunately for Ms. Jobs, she is worth about $17 billion, so it won’t affect her at all to throw away $100 million, just as it did not affect Zuckerberg.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I have in the files I developed while doing doctoral studies on educational policy the reports/studies of the different efforts of the New American Schools project of several decades ago. Some of the folks responsible for some of those efforts are still around, and in fairness some of the efforts still continue, although it is also fair to say without all that notable “success” and my putting of that word in quotes is a deliberate reference
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ken,
Many of the NASDC winners are still around, but it would be difficult to see that they “broke the mold” of the high school. Seems to be the same mold all over the world.
LikeLike
Diane, it was clear in the first studies done that they were not breaking the mold
in fact, one of the things that became clear is that rather than the particular model of the school, what led to success was the commitment and professionalism of the staff
LikeLike
It is not surprising that it is the teachers that count – invest in them!
LikeLike
Ms. Jobs has big plans for someone that knows a lot about technology and business and little to nothing about education. She would be wise to consult with actual educators, but I doubt she will. The area of Louisiana in which they plan to build New Harmony High School is in a very diverse, poor part of the state. This location was the setting for the film ,”Beasts of the Southern Wild.” It is the mouth of the Mississippi delta and is an area that is suffering from massive erosion and rising sea levels. The community mostly makes a living from fishing. If her money can help to teach students to address some of the environmental issues facing them, she will have spent her money well. Without astute leadership and an understanding of how students learn, her project may turn out to be the same lame failure as so many others in “reform.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’ve been hearing stories of how many “new” school projects put into place by those who understand technology but not social reality expect much student use of the Internet, but do not provide Internet service to students’ homes…thus creating a growing divide between those who have and those who have not.
LikeLike
Ms. Jobs does have an advisor: Arne Duncan. What could possibly go wrong?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Like!
LikeLike
Will the public be subjected to more fluff, media pieces that place ed. messiahs on pedestals, relocated from N.Y. and N.J., to the delta?Hasn’t the quota been reached?
LikeLike
Better use: give 1000 high school teachers a year’s paid sabbatical. Invest in teachers.
LikeLike
To what end(s)?
LikeLike
To become better teachers.
I, a world history teacher, would:
Travel to the places I teach about.
Read more history than I’m currently able to. This would enable me to revise and improve my lessons.
Read more about education and cognitive science.
Write op-ed pieces and essays to share my views with fellow teachers and the general public.
Revise and create new lessons and units.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sounds good to me!
LikeLike
I have an idea for high school reform. Let’s take a high school of about 1600 students and divide into four smaller high schools of about 400 students each. This way all the staff can know all the students in their school. This can’t fail. I wonder why no one tried this before. Does someone give me $10 million now?
LikeLike
LOL.
I think you already missed the small high school gravy train.
How much did Bill Gates (BG) spend on that pet project before he abandoned it like he seems to do with everything he touches that fails horribly?
BG is experimenting with our children but not with his. I think as a child Bill Gates took apart clocks, toasters, cars, and when he couldn’t put them back together again, he just tossed the junk pile he’d created in the trash and moved on to the next dismantling experiment.
LikeLike
How about give me 4 small high schools of about 400 students and I’ll combine them into one large high school (to hell with the wishes of the communities in which those 4 schools are located) and offer a comprehensive school with all the curricular amenities. I’ll do it for a million a year. Just give me five years and I’ll have the students being #1 in everything-sports, academics, music, FFA, etc. . . .
LikeLike
You are completely atavistic, Duane!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I read in the LA Times that XP is giving 10 of the $100 million to two TFAers to start up a charter scam (100% tech) for homeless and foster children in LA. The irony is killing me: Steve Jobs outsourced production of Apple products to Foxconn in China, increasing profits while flatlining the GDP and devastating employment prospects at home. And after contributing mightily with Apple business to the homelessness and family breakup problems here at home, LP Jobs offers a bandaid in the form of a TFA led tech charter to plug the sucking chest wound Jobs created. And the bandaid will take more money out of public use to increase profits while flatlining the GDP. Vicious. Not philanthropy. Vicious.
LikeLike
Psychopaths are 1 out of 100 in the general population. But 1 out of 5 in prisons – the same ratio in the mahogany halls of the executive suites of America. We don’t want these people running our schools.
LikeLike
Here’s the link for that article
http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-xq-winner-jobs-rise-20160912-snap-story.html
So instead of helping the student/family to have a home, they’re going to send a bus “equipped with wi-fi” to the shelter, so the kid can do homework online, I guess on an Apple computer.
Sounds like they’re going to buying lots of Apple products at the “three or four sites” where the online learning will presumably take place, and then the kids can go back to the place they will sleep for the night?
Neither of the TFA’ers understands homelessness apparently.
LikeLike
paz,
it seems they think that homelessness can be cured by having a computer. Duh. How about providing a home?
LikeLike
$10 million buys a bus.
LikeLike
And Tech pushers like the Jobs’ are especially offensive in this because they are choosing non-tech educations for their own children
https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2015/dec/02/schools-that-ban-tablets-traditional-education-silicon-valley-london
LikeLike
Is there a problem with your blog….longer comments do not post…is there a reason for that?
LikeLike
democracy,
Several people have told me that long comments don’t post. I’m checking into that. Meanwhile if you have a long comment, send it to me, tell me which thread, and I will post it. Dr19@nyu.edu
LikeLike
(1) Arne Duncan is now ensconced as a “senior partner” with Russlyn Ali, one of his former top aides, at the Laurene Powell Jobs reform entity, XQ Super Schools.
Ali formerly worked for the Education Trust and the Broad Foundation. She supported No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top. She wrote that California should not suspend Common Core assessments because “The Common Core provides the promise and the opportunity for California to again lead the country in education.” Otherwise, she asked, “Will America be ready to compete?”
LikeLike
democracy,
The reformers make Trump-style promises. As in, do what we tell you (Common Core, CBE) and “make California great again.” That’s as likely to happen as Trump bringing back all the jobs lost to technology and outsourcing to low wage places.
LikeLike
The point I keep making is that there are people — some in elected office in key positions at local, state and federal levels – who believe people like Duncan and Ali and Powell Jobs, and Gates.
And there are people in positions of educational “leadership” who do the very same. Some take the money offered, and then brag about how “good” they are, how “visionary” they are, because they got validated in some way by the people with the cash.
I bet readers here know how this works. Principals and superintendents and school boards tout the Duncan DOE’s “blue ribbon” award. The tout the SAT and/or ACT scores or AP courses offered at a school. They brag that their school or school division got a STEM grant from ExxonMobil, or an XQ Super School award from Powell Jobs.
All of these things are part-and-parcel of corporate-style “reform”, so why are educators so much a part of the nonsense?
LikeLike
democracy, you know the answer. When someone offers you $2 million a year for 5 years to “reinvent” the high school, it is hard to say no.
When Bill Gates offers your strapped district $100 million to evaluate teachers in a way that is unproven, it is poison but it looks good.
Why did almost every state apply for Race to the Top funds, when they had to adopt Duncan’s unproven, toxic mandates? $100 million, $75 million, $700 million is hard to turn down when your state is in a recession.
LikeLike
(2) It’s all pretty much nonsense. But Obama, and probably Hillary Clinton, listen to people like this. So do many in public education, including many considered to be educational “leaders.” When XQ Super Schools put out a request for proposals to “redesign the American high school…nearly 10,000 people from all 50 states have submitted full applications.” Winners (10 of them) were to receive $2 million a year for five years. Hey, maybe this is a good idea. Maybe it’ll work. Maybe it’s a new take on “reform.”
But it’s worth noting that XQ also collaborates with the Gates Foundation and with ExxonMobil. Powell Jobs worked previously for both Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs before getting an MBA at Stanford. She also heads up College Track, which “provides tutoring, SAT and ACT preparation and college counseling” to low-income students, According to its tax filings, College Track “qualifies as a publicly supported organization.”
LikeLike
(3) It receives money from the Emerson Collective — another Powell Jobs education enterprise, which is organized as a LLC and does not have to publicly report its donations – – and from JP Morgan Chase, venture capitalist John Doerr, and Summit 54, a Colorado organization conceived in the wake of ‘Waiting for Superman’ and dedicated to the proposition that “Our education system is not preparing our students for jobs of the future” and “this is having a detrimental effect on our economy.” Guess who else says this? If you guessed the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable, you’d be right.
The Emerson Collective has big investments in Udacity, a for-profit educational organization that also partners with Pearson, the testing behemoth, for the awarding of employment credentialing, and in for-profit AltSchool, which utilizes a software program is its curricular backbone and which charges tuition of “$20,875 for elementary school in San Francisco to $28,250” for a middle school in Brooklyn, New York. Do you see where this might be heading?
LikeLike
(4) n public education we are focused on “college and careers.” And ACT and SAT scores, and Advanced Placement courses, even though there’s little research to support them. We emphasize the Common Core — the AFT and NEA have been pathetic on this, so too the National School Boards Association, and the national associations for superintendents, and elementary and secondary principals— and STEM, but not participatory democracy.
So, do the “leaders” of the NEA and AFT and National School Boards Association and the rest not deserve any criticism? Are they all working toward the “same agenda” that I see advocated on this blog? It sure doesn’t seem like it.
LikeLike
democracy,
Bill Gates gave millions to persuade those groups to support his pet project
He can buy support but he can’t buy success
LikeLike
Yes, Diane.
But nobody forced these people to go along with Bill Gates and Common Core. They shrugged their shoulders (if that) and took his money.
So what is wrong with calling out and criticizing those who took the money, refused to think or to fight for what is right, and just went merrily along the way to corporate-style “reform,” and then told their constituents they merely wanted a “seat at the table” or “we need a new paradigm,” or we “have to be globally competitive,” or any of the other unadulterated BS?
That’s a question that anyone reading here is invited to answer.
When – exactly – is enough enough?
LikeLike
democracy,
States were required to adopt “college and career ready standards” if they wanted to be eligible for Race to the Top money–$4.3 billion.
Everyone knew that the standards were CCSS.
LikeLike
“When – exactly – is enough enough?”
It is now, of course. The question is how you can change things around. Many people on this blog feel, political means (like talking to influential people) will do the job.
LikeLike
(5) What about those who applied for the Powell Jobs cash? Do they not understand that what Powell Jobs is funding is a “reform” formula that she seeks to apply “to private, public, and charter schools across the country” and make money off it? Do they deserve criticism? Are they “allies?” Do they share the same agenda as the Network for Public Education?
We can and should do much better.
We should hold accountable those in whom we place responsibility and trust, whoever they are.
LikeLike
Laurene P Jobs doesn’t want to make money as she dabbles in school reform
She already has $17 billion, more than anyone could spend in a lifetime
She is playing
Disrupting schools is a hobby for her
LikeLike
Diane,
Powell Jobs may be “playing” but she happens to be doing it in a manner that is not only subsidized by taxpayers but also she is “playing” through partners that are very much for-profit.
So, should those in education – our “leaders” – who go along with this stuff be criticized for what they are doing, or should we just shrug our shoulders and say, “well, we’re all allies here” and not do a darn thing?
I mean, hey, we expect “sensible” Republicans to call out Trump for what he is, don’t we? And to refuse to support him?
If so, then what is wrong with criticizing those who aid and abet and go along with corporate-style “reform?”
LikeLike
democracy, I am all for criticizing all those who aid and abet corporate-style reforms, especially now that we know that they have failed and failed and failed.
LikeLike
I am guessing that the LA shelters which host families with children have existing education programs and services. There was a series in the NY Times about homeless children in NYC and their school. I think that the issues are rather complex as homelessness is very traumatic for the family and giving a couple TFA teachers a van with wireless access is not what’s needed and I expect the shelters and existing educational and service program would know how to use those funds to find the families homes.
LikeLike
From the article: “At the Education Writers Association’s 2016 National Seminar in Boston, a variety of educators and analysts took education journalists on a “deep dive” into the issue of reimagining American high schools. ”
I have a free advice that fits our century best: cut classes by 10 minutes, add the time to breaks, reduce the daily number of classes from 7 to 5, eliminate homework. The resulting happiness, increased sleeping time prepare kids best for the 21st century.
After all, the 21st century is really about living better, happier, freer and not about constantly increasing the output of the billionaires economy. Forget about “economic growth”and replace it with “fair distribution”.
LikeLike
Reduce my teaching load from 7 classes a day to 5. That would give me time to grade more thoroughly, plan more thoroughly, think up individualized strategies for individual students (yes, this takes thinking time I rarely have), do more professional reading, and INNOVATE in important, micro-level ways that will be absolutely meaningful and effective –vastly more so than the botched, half-baked macro-level innovations that he reformers love.
LikeLike
There. Also, show me a kid in any grade who can pay attention 7 times 55 minutes. (Not to mention the 3 hour home work) Why did they start doing this in the first place? Had they done any research before?
LikeLike
In all the coverage of these grants, they talk about how no one else is innovating in high school, and how every high school fits the same mold. As a community college instructor working on career pathways I have met a number of high school administrators who demonstrate real imagination and creativity in their schools — and I have been working with those running continuation schools, and programs for parenting teens. These educators are working with the kids that the school districts have literally left behind and they are breaking the mold every day. I am so sick of these billionaires issuing blanket condemnations of people who have dedicated their careers to really helping students by being there, figuring out how to help them succeed, often against overwhelming odds.
LikeLike