Journal #7 Newark Public Schools donation

This past week it was announced on 'Oprah' that Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook has donated $100 million to the failing Newark public school system. The system itself has been turned over to Newark mayor, Cory Booker by NJ Governor Chris Christie. Evidently Zuckerberg and Booker met at a conference and discussed educational reforms. I caught a educational commentator on TV raising some questions that all this brought up in my head as well, particularly how, if other donations haven't helped, is throwing money at this system really the solution at this point?

Studies of other school systems around the world, abet more homogeneous and smaller ones, have shown that wonderful educations can be had for the same average we spend here in the U.S.. Research seems to show that money is not neccessarily the quick fix to the problem, neither are mass firings, which had also occurred in the Newark system. Seems that large scale firings do little more than lower school morale and weed out the small percentage of truly poor teachers. Donations of such large amounts seem to be purely for show and while appreciated, I myself am anxious to hear the voices of students these donations have actually helped.

While one can hope to hear success stories coming out of Newark in future years the reality is that positive effects of this donation may not been seen for years. Hopefully it will be used for some immediate concerns like decrepit facilities, up to date classroom technology, and replenishing of books and supplies. The intangible benefits are those which won't be measured by rigorous testing; community involvement, graduation numbers, improved school morale, and pride in teaching and I'm not sure any amount of money can truly change these things.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/23/education/23newark.html?_r=1