The Times says that the Mark Zuckerberg donation to the troubled New Jersey city school system is ?good news.?? And Oprah is bringing the Facebook founder on her show today to talk about it.
There are, of course, plenty of complications, ably explained by the Times' Richard Perez-Pena this morning.? (To wit: If Newark, whose schools have been under state control since 1996, can't fix those schools by spending $20,000 per student, $4,000 more than the state average, will an extra $100 million make a difference?)
But Catherine Johnson?from the?Irivington (NY) Parents Forum sums it up nicely in this pithy post:
The local news report I saw on Mark Zuckerberg's 100 million dollar donation to Newark public schools was funny.? The news anchors breathlessly announced the gift: one hundred million dollars!!!! So much money!! So exciting!! Wowwwww!!
Then they asked the head of the Black Ministers Council for reaction. He was the opposite of giddy. He pointed out that Newark teachers are already the highest paid in the state & said that one of the major problems is Newark doesn't fire the bad teachers.
One hundred million dollars isn't going to solve that problem unless they're going to use it to buy out teacher contracts.??If Mark Zuckerberg wants to help the children of Newark, he should give his money to their parents so they can enroll their children in private or parochial schools if they choose.? Or he should use it to help keep the struggling Catholic schools alive. That is a desperate need.
Newark's public schools need a change in culture, and you can't buy that with money.
Amen to that.
?Peter Meyer, Bernard Lee Schwartz Senior Policy Fellow
