I applaud the motivation, but the United States public school system is as dysfunctional as your average third world government. Pouring more money into this broken system simply does not help.
As an example, consider the Washington D.C. public school system, which spends more per capita than almost any other city in the nation, yet consistently scores among the lowest in all performance metrics. There is something wrong with the existing culture of American public education. Introducing more funding might temporarily alleviate some of the symptoms, but it cannot cure the underlying disease.
A $100 million dollar fund to found charter schools in the Newark area would most likely be more effective, and would certainly be more interesting.
My take on charter schools vs. public schools is quite simple really. I firmly believe that all the hype surrounding better test scores (better outcomes) can be solely attributed to the fact that the population is self selecting. As it turns out, public schools are the lowest common denominator when it comes to education. In order to attend a charter school the parent must do something. The fact that the parent must do something in and of itself is testament to the fact that the parent is involved. Any educator, anywhere in the world, will tell you that an involved parent makes all the difference.
It says that often, things that look like overall trends can be split into sub-groups, in which the effect is gone. For example, take the "Public Schools perform worse than Private Schools" idea. If you split both school populations into the children from wealthy parents vs children without wealthy parents (ending up with 4 groups), you'll find that the test scores are the same for the "wealthy" kids, whether they go to private or public schools.
In other words, it doesn't matter whether kids are going to private or public schools, what matters is whether they have wealthy parents or not. It just so happens that more kids with wealthy parents go to private schools.
More details about the paradox, and a link to a study on private vs public schools, can be found in the Wikipedia article.
You underestimate researchers. Recent research on charter schools uses randomized assignment, induced by oversubscribed schools. They often find large positive effects:
Okay. But charter schools can induce involvement among the parents. I have seen no evidence about this effect so I'll just put it out there. Really, the argument of whether charter schools are effective or not should not be important. The environment the child spends his time in is more important than the number of facts crammed into his head. The idea that parents should have their children forcibly relocated and locked inside a building and just pray that it's competently enough run so as not to be filled with poorly supervised violent hoodlums with no alternative cost-effective choices, is evil.
Charter schools can induce nothing. If the parent wasn't already interested enough to take time out of their day to sign their child up there is nothing the charter school can do about it.
On the other hand, if you have a kid and he isn't registered somewhere in the school district (public, private, or home) someone from DCW knocks on your door and "induces" you to send your child to school.
Founding charter schools is only part of the solution. You still have to get parents to send their kids to the schools, and you have to get the kids to want to go, and those are tough hurdles to overcome in a place like Newark.
Like it or not, the public school system is what many kids in Newark are stuck with, and it's hard to see how something like this will not help considerably.
And I'm not sure if I agree with your blanket statement re: our public school system, as much of it is functioning just fine. Parts of it are broken and corrupt, yes, but I don't think I'd go as far as comparing them to third world governments.
In case you haven't noticed, charter schools have far more interest from parents than there are spots open, that's why they have lotteries to get in. In fact there is a documentary specifically about this, called simply [1] The Lottery.
Also New Jersey schools are some of the most corrupt in the nation, which there is also a documentary about called [2] The Cartel. In The Cartel they actually have a scene from one of the charter lotteries, which is one of the saddest scenes I've ever seen in a film as it literally brought tears to my eyes watching parents and kids celebrate when they were chosen, and brought to tears of anguish when they were not.
Also it would be nice if you could show us where the public school system is supposedly "functioning just fine," as I'd love to see the evidence for that. In fact, there is a movie being released this Friday called [3] Waiting for "Superman" that argues the opposite, along with former NY state educator of the year [4] John Taylor Gatto that argues in his books that the entire system should be abolished and started over from scratch. Sure, there are the very rare few teachers that are actually doing good work, but the system is flawed from the top down starting with the goals (essentially to produce factory workers with no individual thought [5,6]).
I'm aware of the Superman movie & I mostly agree with your criticisms, and again, my objection was that I thought you overstated your criticism of the "United States public school system." Obviously, not all public schools are bad.
For example, my hometown of Montville, NJ has a wonderful public school system which has very good outcomes. As does Bergen County, NJ. And many of my friends and family have attended Rutgers University and received outstanding educations. These are public schools, functioning just fine. Rutgers is arguably better than most private universities, and our high school arguably better than most private schools.
Again, I agree that our public schools aren't great for the most part, but I think this is a complex problem and that we should try to remove ideological arguments and drastic, unrealistic solutions (like taking a hatchet to our entire public school system). And again, yes, charter schools are great and more are necessary to meet demand, but I don't think that necessarily means we should ignore efforts to attempt to improve the public school system which many kids are stuck with.
tl;dr: Yes, charter schools are fantastic, and we need more, but we should also try to improve our public education, especially in the poorest of our communities.
For example, my hometown of Montville, NJ has a wonderful public school system which has very good outcomes. As does Bergen County, NJ. And many of my friends and family have attended Rutgers University and received outstanding educations. These are public schools, functioning just fine. Rutgers is arguably better than most private universities, and our high school arguably better than most private schools.
I thought even the best public school is highly inefficient, especially with the high school I go to. They have pep rally and sport team. It cost money to train coaches, build stadium, and other items. Heck, my educational field trip got canceled even though sport teams get to go.
I mean, a true autodidact, not a shallow self-educated learner like me who happens to learn little bit there and there, would probably own the students at my highschool with terrifying efficiency.
Now, bringing athletics into the discussion is a wholly different beast. Having interacted with a lot of fans and alums and faculty, and having attended panels back at RU, there will be quite some opposition against athletic spending and it will be labelled as unnecessary but more often then not, the benefits of athletics to an institution outweigh the cons by a whole lot (if run properly that is) and the arguments against it are often misguided.. that conversation is for a different time, diff place.
1) NJ is very notorious when it comes to unions. this extends to public schools. not many people care about actually teaching as much as they care about the 3 month vacation and a very steady paycheck + a very healthy pension.
2) Up until this point, the NJ state controlled Newark public schools. Now, the gov has agreed to hand over the control of the public schools in Newark to the mayor, Corey Booker (who's the best thing to happen to Newark in recent history).
Recently, Gov. Christie cut higher ed funding to divert it to the public school systems. Now this doesn't help public universities like Rutgers in the state. Being a recent alum, I know the first hand effect of the state's constant budget cuts to the university since 2006-07 (about 61 million $ then through about 20 mill in 2010) ..
You forgot that the Mayor of D.C. and his School Czar, after spending years actually making progress in improving D.C.'s school and cutting costs, just lost the election to a new guy who swears he's going to fire the school Czar because she's mean.
Zuck, like Gates before him, has realized that the only way to gain the respect of polite society is by wasting millions on hopeless progressive projects. Vietnamese students with a fraction of the educational budget easily outscore Newark's pupils on international assessments. Who really thinks Newark will be changed by this?
This is a pretty cynical take on things. Newark has improved considerably over the last decade and hopefully things like this will speed up the process.
The Ironbound district is coming along nicely, with restaurants and art galleries popping up around large corporate offices, many escaping nyc's high rent. I'd recommend visiting if you haven't been recently.
And yes, a lot of work is still necessary. It doesn't mean we should give up on it. If anything, I'd argue we should pay more attention to it if things are as bad as you think they are.
"Vietnamese students with a fraction of the educational budget"
I agree with you that pouring more money doesn't mean thing will get better, but costs are different for people living in America vs Vietnam. This is an unfair and dishonest comparison.
The thing is though that in the U.S. the research has shown that increased spending doesn't mean improved outcomes, whereas in other countries this isn't necessarily true. I'm all for improving outcomes in schooling, but if you want to do that by putting money into it then you have to do so in a country where more money buys better outcomes, and that isn't the case here.
Under the current system, the worst students cost far more to educate than the best students. Because of this you can slice the numbers to say everything from money is harmful, meaningless, or beneficial. The simple truth is in education resources matter but like all things there are significant diminishing returns after a while.
"Under the current system, the worst students cost far more to educate than the best students."
This is an excellent argument against the current system. The reason why the worst students cost more to educate using the Gary Plan is largely because of expensive pull-outs, which isn't a problem under, say, Open Systems Instruction.[1] Under the current system they actually talk about Total Adjusted Pupil Units rather than students, which shows just how pervasive the problem is.
The ROI from educating poor students is actually fairly high. The cost gap between someone at minimum wage vs. welfare vs. prison is huge. It's generally speaking much easier and more cost effective to avoid a single teen pregnancy that to fund enrichment programs.
Grab a copy of Equality and Achievement by Riordan. It's the best introduction to education research there is. The cites on financial issues are in the chapter on between school effects.
"And how unanimous are these views amongst sociologists? I'd imagine there is disagreement on the subject?"
As far as I know there isn't much disagreement about the fact that school funding doesn't correlate well with outcomes, but there is obviously a lot of disagreement about how to translate this into actual reforms.
In terms of assessing the validity of the original research though, I get the feeling that in this case the answers you get are much more determined by the questions you're asking rather than by the methodology of the studies. Unlike, say, when you are trying to understand how the results of surveys on self-reported drug use correlate with actual drug use, and you need to read a 594 page PDF worth of research before you're able to say anything intelligent.[1] (Which I read last night for fun, which is why I know this.)
I disagree on Gates wasting money. If you put enough money at nearly any problem you can solve it. The question is just how much will it take. If anyone has a chance in Africa it's Gates.
This is a district with 40,500 students in K-12, spending $27,961 per student[1]. Compare that "free" education to the cost of tuition of any of the private schools in Newark. A quick googling revealed rates varying from $4000 to $17,000.
This contribution amounts to about $2,500 per student, an amount that very well might make the difference in allowing a family to afford to send their kid to a school that isn't at the bottom of the barrel[2]. It'd make even more of a beneficial difference if it was apportioned based on actual need.
1. How much of those schools' budgets are met through donations?
2. Could those schools actually operate at scale?
Much of those schools' success is really due to network effects. You throw a bunch of low-income kids into that setting, and they will crash and burn. Also, when you look at religious schools, the positions are truly considered callings, so compensation is less of an issue.
I'm not proposing to shutter the public schools. This type of beneficence isn't really useful for any substantive, long-term change. It's a PR stunt. My point is only that this $100M would, on the margins, help far more kids if it were directed towards helping individual families escape the public school system.
For example, if I had $100M to blow, I might accept applications from families and then rank them by amount needed to convert out of public schools (from smallest to largest), and donate the money in that order for those amounts. This would have the effect of helping the most kids. It would also counter the problems with self-reporting; ask for more than you really need and risk not getting anything.
>You throw a bunch of low-income kids into that setting, and they will crash and burn.
This strikes me as classism. While there is a correlation between economic strata and educational achievement, I'm not so sure about the causality implied in your claim. Instead, perhaps being financially relegated to the tender mercies of the Newark public school system contributes to such underperformance.
Sorry. What I mean to say is that the kids who are in the existing private schools have some sort of a support structure that has obtained the money for them to go to a private school, and it is that support structure more than the school that increases their academic output.
If I had that money to spend I would put it towards programs like Trio which don't throw money at schools, but instead put money into support structures like tutoring, counseling, and outright paying students money if they excel.
Putting kids in private schools is a somewhat blunt instrument to create network effects.
I don't feel like those two are mutually exclusive. Nor that $100M could be all his liquid assets—if he does indeed have $100M to donate, then chances are good that he has more.
"Mr. Zuckerberg is setting up a foundation with $100 million of Facebook stock to be used to improve education in America, with the primary goal of helping Newark."
Anytime someone announces that they will invest X million into a public charity, always ask, over what period and under what conditions? This reminds me of how BP pledged $20 billion to help the Gulf states affected by the oil spill, but they didn't mention the tax break they got out it and how it was actually placed in an escrow account with conditions favorable to them.
I applaud his actions but question his timing and motivations.
So (just out of curiosity) how does the school actually use this stock to do anything? Do they sell it off to interested individuals? Does the SEC allow that?
Can they use the stock as a collateral to a loan? What happens when they pull a $50 million loan to build schools and the stock is suddenly worth $25 million?
The cynic in me finds it convenient that Zuckerberg's first major act of philanthropy is announced just a couple weeks before a major film portraying him as a jackass is released.
I doubt he will actually cough up the money. It's not based on any assumptions about his character based on that movie, just my sense of how much of a paper tiger his and facebook's financials are.
Know how they get to be low SES? THEY DON'T STUDY!!
In the US, IF you work the educational system, you can pull yourself into the middle class with as much in student debt as a high end toyota. Today. With no money. Bust your ass in school, take out a loan, and go to a 2nd tier college in engineering or accounting, and voila -- you are middle class. This is the worst case -- if you are actually talented, you should be able to get scholarships and/ or go to a top tier university -- voila, you are UPPER middle class.
HOWEVER, if you are born to a rural working class family, your mom and dad tell you school is a waste of time, that you can't afford it, your teachers assume you are doomed to failure, and you can hit a local maximum in prestige by being a smart aleck and a decent football player and working early. Nobody is going to encourage you do anything else -- not your teachers, parents, or age group friends.
And you are screwed, before you even showed up in kindergarten... It has nothing to do with race or money, just culture. The classic guy on the interaction of culture with education with class is Pierre Bourdieu -- look him up.
I know about these white families some -- I imagine it is a little worse for black and hispanic kids. But the working class whites prove my point about culutre better, since they are supposedly the power group. (Well, in terms of race, sure, but what matters is class -- go Karl!)
(With asian kids, there is a reverse "Pygmalion Effect"; I knew a girl who got through a second tier UC NEVER doing any homework -- if she were black, she would have failed out early because every little thing she did wrong would have been fodder for preconceptions. Or if she was working class "country" white.)
In my public high school, we had kids go to Ivy's, and we had kids go to jail. I went to a decent state school on a scholarship - I was only 20th out of my class of 400. That wasn't that hard to do. Sure I didn't go to Harvard, but I got an engineering degree for basically the cost of living expenses which is not too bad. My total expense on education lifetime has been less than my first year salary.
Meanwhile, I found out one of the kids I grew up with in elementary school just got arrested for murder (of another girl from our HS). One of the kids I did stagecraft with in HS is in jail for 10 years for killing someone while DUI. I know a bunch of kids who did nothing at all with their lives and are still working local retail jobs.
We all went to the same public school. We all had the same teachers. It isn't even the parents, some of best in my class had 1 parent or bad parents (hell even my parents were AGAINST me doing honors classes, I hate to fight them about it). The outcome is entirely dependent on what the student himself put in.
But like one line is that "being poor" blog that is always passed around, you are responsible for decisions you made at 14 whether you like it or not.
wow...amazing coincidence -- he makes a generous donation and appears on oprah one week before "The Social Network" opens. I applaud him for his generosity, but question him on his timing. If this is about spin control, then it's sort-of ironic that "The Social Network" might do more for the public education system than "Waiting for Superman".
Some people will question him no matter what he does, when it happens, or what else is going on at the time. Same thing happened (and continues to happen) with Gates. How do you know he's not just being generous? If you don't, then why the negative speculation by default?
For one thing, always just assuming the best intentions allows people to be as slimy as they dare and just buy back karma with the money they made/stole.
mm interesting that this comes about knowing that movie about him was going to be released around this time of the year... and then you got all those nasty articles about him in the press lately...
I did take a dig at Facebook at the end of that post, I must say now that I am more than happy to eat my words!! Kudos to you Marky Mark, as a Newark residence this is very much appreciated:)
It would be very cool if even a tenth of this was put towards online education systems. $10M could go a long way towards improving online education, esp. with Facebook as a partner!
He did the graduation speech for my brother's college (NJIT, which is in Newark) a few years back and I was sold then, he will be a president in 10-15 years. He has done a lot for Newark, my brother started college there in 2002, and the difference between when we helped move him in and today is striking. Hopefully it will get back to the place it was in the early 20th century.
As an example, consider the Washington D.C. public school system, which spends more per capita than almost any other city in the nation, yet consistently scores among the lowest in all performance metrics. There is something wrong with the existing culture of American public education. Introducing more funding might temporarily alleviate some of the symptoms, but it cannot cure the underlying disease.
A $100 million dollar fund to found charter schools in the Newark area would most likely be more effective, and would certainly be more interesting.