Mark Zuckerberg Gave New Jersey $100 Million To Fix Newark's Schools, And It Looks Like A Waste

Business Insider ^ | 05/13/2014 | Caroline Moss

[SeekAndFind]

In the fall of 2010, Mark Zuckerberg announced on Oprah that he'd be making a generous gift to Newark, New Jersey. As Oprah said in her Oprah way, "one ... hundred ... million ... dollars" would be given to Newark Mayor Cory Booker and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie as the three began the Startup:Education foundation.

The plan was to turn Newark into what Zuckerberg called "a symbol of educational excellence for the whole nation," spent on retaining the best teachers, and creating environments that would produce successful students and, one day, graduates.

Newark is a city wrought with crime. Its graduation rate is about 67%. It needed the help, and Booker's vision sounded promising.

Between 2010 and 2012, The New Yorker reports that "more than twenty million dollars of Zuckerberg’s gift and matching donations went to consulting firms with various specialties: public relations, human resources, communications, data analysis, [and] teacher evaluation." Many of the consultants were being paid upwards of $1,000 a day.

“Everybody’s getting paid but Raheem still can’t read," Vivian Cox Fraser, president of the Urban League of Essex County, was quoted saying.

Today, the money is pretty much gone, and Newark has hardly become that symbol of excellence.

[trisham]

"The secret to happiness is freedom...
And the secret to freedom is courage."

~Thucydides

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[DemforBush]

A stark reminder than throwing money at a bad system won’t fix the problem. Derrick Coleman blew most of his NBA fortune trying to revive Detroit, with similar results.

[Fresh Wind]

In spite of all that money, liberals found to their dismay that simply adding tons of money didn’t solve the problem????

Obviously, it wasn't enough money. $200 million would have done the trick quite nicely.

And if $200 million didn't do it, then they must have needed $500 million.

[samtheman]

Any move that stops short of sacking nearly every teacher and ‘administrator’ is futile.

Yup.

[Little Ray]

We have a winner!

It was money laundering!

[Gen.Blather]

Years ago I hired a newly graduated engineer who attended 1-12 in Nicaragua. He spoke excellent English and wrote it better than any college grad I’d interviewed. He told me that his first 8 years of school were in a dirt-floored shack with multiple grades in the same room. After long discussion I concluded he was so well educated because his parents made it a priority. (They spoke no English, but they made darn sure he did.) So, it’s not the money that counts, because when he was in school Nicaragua’s entire national budget was less than Florida’s school budget.

[RckyRaCoCo]

“WE NEED MO MONEY!”

[dfwgator]

You can lead a kid to books, but you can’t make him read.

[MrB]

If the parents gave two shakes about their kids’ education,
that would have already happened.

[kearnyirish2]

Thanks; if Zuckerberg actually cared about black people there are better ways to show it. How about setting that money up as scholarships to get them out of the hands of the Public Education Industrial Complex?

[Rumplemeyer]

And people are shocked by this?

[Nevadan]

However, it was a great tax write-off!

[husky ed]

Didn't spend enough money. Needs to try a Billion (with a "B"). That will fix it. ;8^)

Ed

[G Larry]

Our schools don’t NEED more money!

Our schools NEED NON-UNION Teachers and Administrators, who have the EDUCATION of our children as their first priority.

“Education” is NOT “Indoctrination” to a Leftist idology!

[dfwgator]

You could get rid of 99% of administrative staff in this country and not miss a beat.

[DPMD]

Surely Zuckerberg knew what he was doing: Not donating money to help schools, students or education, but donating money to enrich democrats. If he wanted to help schools, he would have given money directly to them. His concern is ingratiating himself to the party so he can eliminate his tax exposure and benefit from the near-slave labor expected to result from amnesty.

[Little Ray]

Zuckerberg has a LOT of money and he remembers what happened to Bill Gates and Microsoft.
If he actually did something effective and bypassed the Democrats and PEIC, you can bet he’d find himself in front of a committee as soon as the Democrats had the pull for it.

[kearnyirish2]

Good point, though I suspect Zuckerberg is on board with the Dem agenda.

[Buckeye McFrog]

A naïve but well-intentioned act of generosity.

Next time give to a faith-based charity, Mark.
Gubmint bureaucracies just suck cash down the rat hole.

[Dick Vomer]

He's stingy... he needed to give them $200 million dollars. pfft... $100 million isn't going to do it. The poor little children of Newark were screwed by the stingy billionaire. What the heck?

In fact Oprah and Zuckerberg and maybe even Gates each need to pony up $200 million dollars into Newark and REALLY fix the education system for the little children.

They're just racists. What do they need all that money for? just give it to Newark. And when they fix Newark.... ON TO DETROIT!!!

hahahahahahaha... let's all tweet and pass this on the social media. that the white liberals AREN'T spending enough of their money.. Bwahahahahahahaha...