Becky Peterson writes in Business Insider about the philanthropic ventures of Apple founder Steve Jobs’s widow, Laurene Powell Jobs. While Powell is apparently trying to brand the Emerson Collective as a progressive foundation, its education ideas are firmly rooted in the failed ideas of the NCLB-Race to the Top paradigm. We learn in the article that Ms. Jobs relies on Arne Duncan and his former aide Russlyn Ali for her education advice.
The Emerson Collective’s big idea was the XQ Project, which awarded $10 million to ten schools to reinvent the high school. in addition to the seed money of $100 million, Emerson spent another $200 million on XQ, part of which was a mega program on all three networks to declare the failure of the traditional high school and the debut of the XQ Project.
Unfortunately for Chalkbeat, it had the temerity to report honestly about the failures of the XQ Project. The Emerson Collective was a major donor to Chalkbeat. And then the funding stoppped.
For the first few years, Chalkbeat and Laurene Powell Jobs looked like the perfect match.
The billionaire philanthropist and widow of Steve Jobs was known for her interest in education and school reform, and the Chalkbeat nonprofit newsroom had a compelling mission to report deeply on education policy and practice.
So in 2015, Emerson Collective, Powell Jobs’ personal office, issued a two-year grant to Chalkbeat. It was the first in a total of $1.6 million in checks written to the publication and one of the earliest media grants from Powell Jobs as she steadily transformed Emerson Collective from a small social-change organization into one of the most well-funded and ambitious philanthropy and investment firms in the country.
Chalkbeat might have remained just another example of Powell Jobs’ incalculable generosity— one of thousands — if it weren’t for some of its coverage.
In May, Emerson Collective stopped funding the publication altogether. The decision, a former employee told Insider, was at least in part a response to Chalkbeat’s critical coverage of an education organization that is one of Emerson Collective’s marquee projects.
(Emerson Collective denies the characterization.)
It was a surprising display of institutional pettiness at the mission-driven Emerson Collective, and it did not go unnoticed among the staff, most of whom had signed on in large part because of its founder’s “sincere connection” to a variety of progressive causes…
Ali first joined Emerson Collective to lead its education investments in 2012; then in 2015 she and Powell Jobs cofounded XQ Institute, an independent nonprofit backed by Emerson Collective.
“I think we share a common belief that this is among the most, if not the most, important civil-rights and social-justice issues of our generation,” Ali said of Powell Jobs. “Education was the path out for both of us.”
Behind XQ is a controversial thesis that technology will fundamentally transform the future of work and require a brand-new approach to education. The US education system, Ali wrote in a 2019 essay in The Atlantic, is “faltering.” The best way out, Ali argues, is to “rethink and reinvigorate” the way schools teach.
To address this, Ali and Powell Jobs launched XQ: The Super School Project, and issued $10 million grants to 10 winners of a competition to rethink American high schools in 2016. They followed up a year later with an hourlong star-studded network TV special that included a live performance by Kelly Clarkson, a school-bus sing-along with Tom Hanks and James Corden, and a key question: “What if schools unlocked the power of technology to transform education?”
All told, Emerson Collective has put about $300 million toward XQ Institute, making it one of its most well-funded projects, according to people familiar with its finances.
As might be expected with that amount of spending, the effort has drawn some scrutiny.
In the fall of 2019, Chalkbeat reported that XQ had occasionally leaned on wrong or misleading data to support its thesis in promotional messages. Another Chalkbeat article asked a more pointed question: three years after XQ first issued its grants, “is it working?”
Later that year, Emerson Collective decided to wind down its support for Chalkbeat and give the publication a final $200,000 “exit” grant.
Ali had indicated in conversation that Chalkbeat’s negative coverage would no longer be a problem once its grant ran out, a former employee said. And according to an email from 2021 viewed by Insider, Ali considered Chalkbeat’s critical coverage to be too opinionated….
Chalkbeat CEO Elizabeth Green told Insider in a statement: “I’m a strong believer that philanthropically supported journalism can and must be rigorously independent. Emerson Collective made a big bet on Chalkbeat’s model early on, and during the many years they supported our education reporting, they were a generous donor. In addition to financial resources, Emerson provided us with fundraising training that enabled us to mobilize a strong and stable slate of supporters who make our fearless independent reporting possible.”
In August 2021, the question about Emerson’s coverage of education resurfaced. For years, Ali had been pushing to fund a different education website called The 74, which was more aligned with Ali and Powell Jobs’ politics.
The media team wouldn’t fund it after deeming the website too political, so Ali asked Powell Jobs’ second-in-command, Stacey Rubin, to fund it using money earmarked for political organizations, according to an email viewed by Insider.
So far, the funding hasn’t happened.
Ms. Jobs and Russlyn Ali preferred to support the pro-privatization website “The 74,” not independent journalism. “The 74” was founded by Campbell Brown, who is anti-public school and anti-union, a close friend of Betsy DeVos.
Good for Chalkbeat and Elizabeth Green!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Powell Jobs, definitely not the brightest bulb on the tree, launched the insane XQ Institute after supposedly volunteering at a perfectly fine San Francisco Bay Area suburban high school, Carlmont, and being shocked at its deficiencies blah blah blah blah usual “reform” propaganda blah blah. Like yeah, giving $10 million to a school probably WILL give it a boost. That doesn’t help the schools that didn’t get $10 million.
One of the S.F. Bay Area schools that got the XQ money is one of the hyped-to-the-skies Summit charter chain. A co-worker’s granddaughter started high school at that Summit charter school. She liked it OK, but after a couple of years, the students were taken on a tour of UC Berkeley, led by a recent alumna of their high school. That alumna/tour leader, when the adults weren’t listening, urged the students to switch high schools. She whispered that she and her fellow Summit graduates had been blindsided by being seriously underprepared for college. My co-worker’s granddaughter switched to a Catholic high school. So actually, apparently the $10 million didn’t provide that much of a boost.
I have to add praise for Chalkbeat. I’ve been reading it for years despite being 3,000 miles from NYC. I used to view it as sellout “reformy” propaganda, just puffing the usual billionaire-funded whims. It seems to have rethought its mission and is doing serious journalism now — shoutout to Matt Barnum.
Matt Barnum is an excellent reporter.
Powell is among a group of pretend progressive elitists that distain democracy. They think they know better than both professional practitioners and voters. They do understand, however, the power of communicating ideas. That has been their most impactful investment, influencing bipartisan education policy for decades
and where public school promoters have repeatedly fallen short
The public school community doesn’t grasp the notion of PR (or propaganda), while the so-called “reformers,” with the mighty PR machinery of the right-wing think tanks behind them, are masters at it. Powell Jobs’ project lost momentum right away, though, despite the initial hypefest. For one thing it’s supposedly a terrible place to work.
In 2016, our own privatizing sup, Antwan Wilson, partnered with XQ to bring a Summit Super!school to Oakland, and locate it right up the street from Oakland Tech, a strategic move that would have simply allowed the new school to poach kids from Tech. Thankfully, the project died after Mr. Wilson bailed on Oakland, leaving behind a giant financial mess in the form of a $20M budget hole. He flees to DC, where he is forced to resign in disgrace after bypassing the enrollment system and working the levers to get his daughter into one of the best of DC’s public schools. XQ partnering at its finest. Don’t let the door hit you on your way out.
I strongly recommend that people read the employee reviews of XQ at Glassdoor here about the toxic working environment. The first one is entitled, What are you willing to do for money?
https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/XQ-Reviews-E1538593.htm
“In May, Emerson Collective stopped funding the publication altogether. The decision, a former employee told Insider, was at least in part a response to Chalkbeat’s critical coverage of an education organization that is one of Emerson Collective’s marquee projects.
(Emerson Collective denies the characterization.)”
That’s a shame, because Chalkbeat is the only ed reform-aligned outfit that does any real analysis of ed reform- the success or failure of the projects.
The echo chamber does tons of critical (and wholly negative) analysis of public schools – the schools themselves and the whole concept of public schools- but they do NO analysis of their own work. One area where the hypocrisy is blindingly clear is “transparency”. There is lots and lots of criticism of the transparency or the lack of it in public schools, but none on charters or vouchers. Vouchers, especially, are completely opaque. They have no idea what those schools are doing with public funds and each new voucher initiative is less regulated than the last. The newest fad is to draft voucher laws that ban reviews of the programs. It’s bad government, whether you oppose public schools or not. Ed reformers draft these “governance” schemes. Why are they so bad?
I understand Jobs hiring out of the ed reform echo chamber- they are the dominant group in US education and they’re influential- but I don’t understand NOT hiring anyone from outside it.
Doesn’t she want different views? What could it hurt? Hire someone with some real exposure to a public school that didn’t involve working to shutter one. At the very least ADD a pro public school perspective to the group. Why is it desireable to have people who promote charters and vouchers but not desireable to have public school supporters? Public schools are permitted to have only detractors or “agnostics”? Why doesn’t that apply to charter and private schools?
Ruslyn Ali spoke to our district when we went into Program Improvement. Although we had missed only one benchmark ( an exit exam that is no longer given) she treated us as if we had failed across the board. The solution— eliminate full length books in literature and do test prep instead! Looks like she has failed upward. It has taken several years to reverse her damage. I notice no one ever puts No Child Left Behind on his or her CV.
What does Ms. Jobs have in common with the French royalty before the French Revolution?
If interested, you may find that answer here, but Ms. Jobs isn’t the only guilty billionaire:
https://www.ducksters.com/history/french_revolution/causes_of_the_french_revolution.php
We can learn something from the French people that came together to cause a perfect storm leading to the revolt of the people against the French monarchy that didn’t care about the people that lived outside of their exclusive bubble.
The only thing that would change is replacing “French monarchy” with the words “U.S. billionaires”.
She’s a victim of utopian thinking.
Reform must be based in deep understanding of how education works. It’s not as simple as it seems.
The status quo is a mess, but wrecking it could usher in something worse. Things can always get worse.
Entropy.
Yes, this applies to many parts of society in addition to education. But “reimagining” is “on the right side of history” these days.
I’d like to reimagine public education as it once was before politicians embraced testing when public schools were considered a public responsibility. It was a time when teachers could teach, and they had a modicum of respect. Most administrators tried to be helpful, and nobody lost their minds over data.
“Reimagining” is a cool word. But it is Usually attached these days to failed ideas.
Remember that the Soviet Union “would have worked” if done correctly
So would NCLB and RTTT.
I do remember that. I actually hear “real communism has never really been tried” a fair amount lately.
I happened upon this while reading Bertrand Russell today:
“The world is full of idle people, mostly women, who have little education, much money, and consequently great self-confidence.”
The title, “How Laurene Powell Jobs is Spending Her Billions” uses the correct choice of words. She is spending money, not donating it. She, like the rest of the Billionaire Boys and Girls Club, is purchasing propaganda and schools, as the railroad barons purchased land. She is on a shopping spree with an unlimited credit card and public service has a sign in the window that reads: Going Out Of Business Sale, Everything Must Go! She uses her money to buy people, putting them in front of Summit screens all day every day so they can have the life sucked out of them by automation and converted to profitable data. She’s a terrible excuse for a philanthropist, and a terrible excuse for a human being. People praise her for being gregarious and blonde, as if those qualities are more important than generosity and wisdom. She should stop spending and start donating, donating her billions to Diane so that Diane could do some real good.
Imagine if one, just one, of these billionaires pouring money into quixotic education fixes actually did something valuable for kids. Imagine, for example, that they set up clinics to ensure that poor kids have proper eyeglasses. Or imagine them sending every poor kid in the U.S. his or her own personal library of classic children’s books, from Goodnight, Moon to A Snowy Day to Where the Wild Things Are to D’Aulaires Book of Greek Myths to Tolkein and Harry Potter. Imagine that. Imagine every poor kid having the same personal library of children’s books that middle-class and rich kids have.
Imagine if the money being spent to keep a fool like Arne Duncan employed were being spent on something worthwhile. Is he the worst educational leader the United States has ever seen? Well, along with Bill Gates, probably.
And imagine being so clueless about education that you have no idea how much damage Duncan did. I know. Hard to imagine.
Betsy DeVos is the worst. But Arne was terrible.
Certainly a contender. Certainly one of the worst people. But in terms of consequences of the decisions made? I think Arne wins the Ignoble there.
Here’s how real philanthropists do education: the Milton Hershey School, founded in 1909, with more than enough $$ in the kitty to keep on doing what they’re doing in perpetuity. 2k students in K12, all on full scholarship, all from families well below the poverty line, many of whom have been homeless, in foster system, traumatic childhoods, etc. A boarding school where children live onsite in a large homes (8 -10 kids each) nurtured by parent-couples who are part of their teaching process. Those who stick it out and do well are provided with $90+k scholarships for further education. Read about it in NYT’s 9/28 “When Dasani Left Home.”
Also, take a look at what philanthropist Julius Rosenwald (founder of Sears) did for schools way back when. (Amazing documentary, “Rosenwald,” 2015.)
Yes, THEY can.
Bur, sadly, choose not to. & also cause irrefutable harm to our schools & our kids.🤑
Also, take a look at what philanthropist Julius Rosenwald (founder of Sears) did for schools way back when. (Amazing documentary, “Rosenwald,” 2015.)
Yes, THEY can.
Bur, sadly, choose not to. & also cause irrefutable harm to our schools & our kids.🤑
News outlets report that the widow Jobs invested millions in Ozy media. “Smart” investors?
Walton heirs reportedly invested in Theranos.
Oh yeah, the Waltons and Betsy DeVos and many more scoundrels lost hundreds of millions investing in Theranos. Cry me a river.
Check out Russlynn Ali head of XQ on OZY video in 2014 arguing against teachers tenure and in support of the CA lawsuit against it https://ozy.com/news-and-politics/russlynn-ali-the-case-against-teacher-tenure/30579