Dr. Priscilla Chan, a pediatrician married to Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, worked with Meredith Liu, an educator and friend, to build the school.... The community was saddened in 2023 when Ms. Liu, the school’s co-founder, died....
If the explanation lies there, I can see why Zuck (and Chan) don't want to say it bluntly. I don't even want to say it bluntly.
The school's website does note its commitment to "identity development, diverse cultures and ideas" and we're told of a couple bland signs in the school — one with a rainbow with the words "safe space" and another with a quote from that poem a young black woman read at Joe Biden's inauguration. That's very mild encouragement for the young.
The wind-down comes more than a decade after another education experiment by Mr. Zuckerberg. In 2010, he contributed $100 million toward revamping public education in Newark, an amount matched by other contributions. That effort benefited charter schools but also frustrated parents, activists and teachers.
Parents in East Palo Alto said on Thursday that they did not know what was behind the school’s closure, but they were frustrated by the announcement....
I guess the parents were frustrated. The word is used twice — in a row — and both times, it seems to be a euphemism.
Speaking of frustrated, I'm frustrated. I want to know a lot more about the praise Zuckerberg received years ago for his grandiose promises of charity — especially in the field of education. But who got the money? Chan and Zuck's friend Liu, now departed? Give me some tough reporting. Don't just waft the anti-DEI suspicion that fits the general anti-Trump slant of the newspaper. "Some families wonder" — ugh.
पोस्ट्स
८८ टिप्पण्या:
I don't suppose that those crack reporters at the NYT would think to contact the Zuck people and ask them their reasons.
Not as deeply insightful as "some families wonder...," though.
I recall reading about another very wealthy man who made a large contribution to a school system. He soon found that all of the money had been squandered by the education bureaucracy. He did not repeat the donation.
If they were giving $25 million a year to support 550 students at the two schools, that comes to $45,000 per student.
"I don't suppose that those crack reporters at the NYT would think to contact the Zuck people and ask them their reasons."
There is material in the article that I didn't quote, and of course, the NYT reporters did this work:
1. "The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative directed reporters to the school’s statement."
2. "Carson Cook, the Primary School’s senior manager of strategy and advancement, declined to say much in an interview in the school’s central office.... Asked when the administration learned that the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative was withdrawing support, Mr. Cook said, “No comment.” And asked whether he thought Mr. Zuckerberg was pulling his money because of the president’s focus on eliminating D.E.I. initiatives, Mr. Cook replied, 'I have no comment on that.'"
3. "Jean-Claude Brizard, a former superintendent of the Chicago school system who is chairman of the board of directors for the Primary School... Mr. Brizard emphasized that the closures were not part of a D.E.I. retrenchment by Mr. Zuckerberg. And officials with the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative pointed to their continued investment of $50 million to support families in the East Palo Alto and San Leandro areas as an example that it remained committed to the same cause."
This happened right around the same time that Texas enacted universal school choice, which added to the dozen or so other states that have done so in the last 4-5 years, means that slightly over 50% of the country's children live in school choice states.
This was inevitable if the school was entirely reliant on a single donor—no matter the specific reason, sooner or later that donor is going to stop donating. Maybe Zuckerberg just didn’t like how they were spending his money.
They should have diversified, and until they did, they should have done a better job of keeping him happy.
Anytime a kindergartener lisps out some pithy bit of political speech that begins with "Mommy..." the Bullshit tag must be applied. Immediately.
Maybe Zuck and wife should give $100m to the Jesuits to run a school in Oakland. I can guarantee you that it won’t fail and that they will have a succession plan. The Jesuit schools didn’t fail after the death of St. Ignatius.
Virtue has its limits, after all.
In summary ...
1. The money was stopped.
2. Why? We don't know but we're (the NYT) working on it.
Zuck and wife could have a number of reasons to stop funding. What is the school’s performance vs the public school? I recall performance being the reason he stopped throwing money at Newark schools. Silicon Valley people are very pragmatic. He wants a return on investment. In this case ROI should be improved grades. There is increasing evidence that money isn’t a fix for minority schools. Look at Kansas City as an example, the court ordered funding had zero impact on performance.
"The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has given only $100 million to this school over the past 4 years.......I'm sorry, I don't see how closing the school is worth doing...."
Gee, they only gave $100 million, what skinflints. Hard to see how it's worth closing !
Something is a little bit on-its-head here, but I agree the reporting is to the usual low standard of ambiguity and bias, reinforced by the apparent censorship of comments. Maybe they took Scary Poppins on, as an advisor (Ms. Jankowicz).
I had to deal with the Gates Foundation. From that experience I can assure you that ROI and performance are top most on their minds, even if the effort is for charity. I doubt Zuckerberg is any different from Gates.
Gee, the Zuckerberg and Gates Foundations should look at the ROI of the Jesuits. Omaha’s Jesuit Academy (grade school) has an outstanding record with minority students.
Anti-Catholic prejudice is the last acceptable prejudice.
Modern journalism is all about frustrating readers who thirst for the plain truth, the bare facts, the who-what-where-when-how of ye olde journalism. One has to decode it, like the pre-fall Soviets had to do with Pravda and Izvestia, reading with an eye towards "what was left out?" and "why are they saying this but not how it happened?"
Sorry, the Jesuits are not on their radar. They may have an allergic reaction to religious entities.
Tacotus @7:03, my very first thought as well. I was figuring that's why our host used it as her pull quote.
As to the commitment to charity, I think it was Marc Andreesen but it might have been Peter Thiel who has talked about "the Deal" - the conditions under which the American Left will permit you to get rich (while maintaining a positive rep). Part of it is - or was - that, having made your millions or billions, you would give generously to Left-approved causes. No matter what your business practices (and he wasn't saying that you were expected to be unscrupulous, just that they'd turn a blind eye if you were a little ruthless, you know how it is, as long as you followed through on the rest), your virtue would be assured by following the terms of the Deal.
And then, he said, it crumbled: the Left was no longer satisfied with your doing what you wanted or needed to do in business to get rich and then buying their indulgences (he didn't put it that way); suddenly what you did while you were actively building your fortune also came under scrutiny. Plus you still had to become an epic philanthropist. And even then, you had no virtue unless you checked the right boxes - you were forever a fundamentally fallen and probably evil supplicant for their blessings (which you would never receive). He said the breaking of the Deal was the beginning of his break with the Left.
I've put it in more religious language than he used.
Speaking of parental frustration, how can a case that involves 3-year-olds being subjected to gay pornography keep being decided against parents opting out, making its way to the highest court before (maybe) they get relief? SCOTUS has already ruled parents can optout of public education altogether, but when it comes to grooming tiny tots, then opting out is not an option?
I deleted my comment (originally the first comment on this thread) which began: "I saw that there were 966 comments on that NYT article" and ended: "Did the NYT take the comments down?"
I was mixing up the current article with another article (linked to in this post): "Mark Zuckerberg Vows to Donate 99% of His Facebook Shares for Charity."
That article, from 2015 has 966 comments and these comments cannot be accessed.
The new article, the main article I'm writing about in this post, does not have comments at all.
The most successful education enterprise in America is run by the Society of Jesus, but the institutional Left and public school bureaucracy can’t acknowledge that.
I did not divine any DEI from that paragraph about Mrs. Z that was quoted.
MJB Wolf:
There are Jesuit grade schools in the US. I can guarantee those schools don’t have gay porn books in the schools.
There’s something sketchy about writing an article about an event like this and not provide the reason(s). Is there an NDA?
ROI and performance are top most on their minds, even if the effort is for charity
Whaaaaat? Asking a purpose-driven charity to meet some metrics?
My husband just ended a medium-length stint with a pretty large but place-based foundation. When he arrived, they had no short-term goals. None. They had long-term goals, with a horizon of ten years or more, but absolutely no way to assess whether they were making progress toward those goals. It was ludicrous. After MUCH argument and negotiation, he finally got them to realize that they were never going to get anywhere if they were wandering around in the dark like that, and now they have short-term goals and actually measure their progress against them.
Tacitus, sorry for misspelling your handle! My eyes aren't all the way awake yet.
At first, I thought that the quote was from a Harvard student.
I take the lesson for the multi-millionaires is that once you start funding a school, you can not stop without some effort to embarrass or shame you.
Zuck gave a man a fish.
::
::
Lesson not learned, again.
The school got $100 million and it couldn't put any of that money aside into an ongoing fund to support future years? Is this school really big, or just really short-sighted?
California is Franciscan territory, Begley.
Dear Professor - I think you have a double negative in your second paragraph.
Carson Cook, the Primary School’s senior manager of strategy and advancement... Jean-Claude Brizard, a former superintendent of the Chicago school system who is chairman of the board of directors for the Primary School...
This single school required a manager of strategy and advancement and required a board of directors headed by someone who previously was the superintendent of a district with more than 300,000 students? It is a wonder they had any money left over to hire teachers!
I'm with Dave Begley. Jesuits (God's own SS) and a bunch of mean ass Irish nuns as shock troops, er educators will have that school humming along in a couple of months. In a few years you'll have every student reading on gade level +, well behaved and no longer illiterate even with a median IQ level of 80-90. Spare the rod and spoil the school.
Zuckerdude's Facebook USED TO BE super profitable..
so did his Instagram..
those are SO 2020.. WHAT has his Meta corp made recently?
WHERE is Zuckerdude's NEXT trillion coming from?
answer: it's NOT COMING
$100 million over 4 years? Staggering!
Mommy, does dat muddafuggin' Zukabug give a shit?
No, honey, he doesn't.
Was there anything about how well the students that completed the school were performing? I saw nothing in the quoted sections. I get the school seemed to care about "identity development, diverse cultures and ideas", but did that translate into graduates that were successful outside of school?
Boy the NYT reporters REALLY wanted to har "DEI" as the answer! But none of the sources would bite on that lure.
The money would have been better spent on urging marriage - both getting and staying married. The data on its impact to children is clear.
Or you can donate to downstream institutions and continue chopping at the branches of the problem.
How much money do you think it will take to fill the void that religion - Christianity - used to play in America? (See e.g. Jonathan Rausch's new book "Cross Purposes".)
@Leslie Graves - perhaps no amount of money is sufficient to turn little colored children into Louise’s scholars. Apparently $45,000 a head doesn’t do it
Bill Gates poured $100 million into the Tampa/Hillsborough County school system but demanded that taxpayers match his contribution. Of course the politicians approved it. The money (our money) was squandered on consultants and a teacher evaluation plan with cash bonuses that was set up at great cost, then abandoned. All that largesse ignored the real problems with the schools: poverty, crime, single-parent and non-English speaking households. Then magnet schools became the
craze. Traffic exploded as liberal parents excused themselves for pulling their kids from local districts by pretending they wanted them in some special program an hour away from where they lived (while bitching endlessly about Republicans' being for "segregation"). Trendy movements stopped school discipline and suspensions. Teachers could not control their classrooms. I knew two who were injured and others subjected to nonstop slurs, fistfights, throwing tables and chairs, and worse. If these billionaires really cared about improving schools, they would fund religious education and discipline in the most violent areas. Their money only made education more expensive, more dangerous, and less effective. Then they inevitably walk away. Nobody wants to admit the real.problem.
Too much money, and no improvement in student achievement? Visit their website and their goal from the beginning was to access public money as the primary funding.
Zuck is going to pump some money into the kids' education funds. And the school will still be there. Why cant it be a charter school?
@Dave Begley - perhaps the Jesuits are a sect that hews to the straight and narrow, in a manner of speaking, but historically Catholic schools have done a fine job of grooming without gay porn in the school library. Perhaps this is just one more endeavor in which they outperform secular institutions.
@Heartless Aztec, the Jesuit shock troops won’t help when the average IQ is closer to the 65 to 80 range of East Palo Alto.
> Said a little kindergarten boy
I'll take "Things that never happened" for $500, Alex.
Begley, my mom was a Chicago public school teacher for 30 years, at the height of urban parochial schools. Her oft-repeated comment about the catholic schools was that they can throw kids out, while the public schools can’t. That, not the ruler or burly brothers, was the secret to their success.
JSM
The opposition is to color judgment and class bigotry under the Diversity umbrella. DEI is the systemic, institutional practice of Diversity (e.g. racism, sexism, ageism). That said, diversity of individuals, minority of one. #HateLovesAbortion
Why should he have to keep donating? Maybe the deal was to kick it off, then it would become self supporting, but anyway, why should he keep donating?
PS That little kindergarten boy said no such thing. That's made up. What else in the article was made up?
One of my cousins was thrown out of a catholic girls high school within a month of graduation, for a fairly minor dispute with a nun.
JSM
The article states that there was a high turnover with teachers, but that has improved in recent years. There are no other observations about the school's success or failure. Does it do better or worse than other schools in the area? The article doesn't say.......If the school is an ongoing failure, isn't that cause enough to withhold funding? .......My guess is that the school considerably improved the lives of its administrators, but had less impact on the lives of its students.
Perhaps they should try to track down some former teachers to interview.
I was taught by nuns in primary school and Jesuits in high school. We were taught to respect learning and to avoid sex.
Tina Trent said " Trendy movements stopped school discipline and suspensions. Teachers could not control their classrooms. I knew two who were injured and others subjected to nonstop slurs, fistfights, throwing tables and chairs, and worse" That is the problem, earlier in your comment you cite, poverty, single parents, crime, etc. as causes of the bad schools. But I suspect if you'd address the discipline issues, most of the others would turn out to be problems that could be relative easy to address.
He should have paid the money directly to the students. I mean hand every kid $45K in new a Flintstones lunchbox. That would be a learning experience. If it happened to me, I'd buy out the local candy store, and then go straight to the bicycle department at Kmart. It would be a great summer for me and my friends with zero attention to gender or sex. By the end of the year, I'd still have most of it, but I'm just a kid with no experience with money.
Leslie Graves noted that Texas has recently passed school choice; parents of private- or home-schooled kids will get funding from the state. This was vehemently opposed by all the usual suspects, with all sorts of predictions of doom and the collapse of civilization.
What the opponents never mentioned is how the states that previously enacted this policy have done. Apparently no doom, no collapse. Our local schools are not exactly prize-winning currently.
Like any self-respecting aging Boomer, I'll continue to vote against any and all local school bond issues. Now, I'll feel better about it, knowing that parents who truly care about their kids' education will have access to good alternatives even if they are of limited means.
It is his own DAMN MONEY Ann.,... if you are so concerned YOU give some to that school. TINSTAAFL.
Dave Begley said...
MJB Wolf:
There are Jesuit grade schools in the US. I can guarantee those schools don’t have gay porn books in the schools.
Hmmm... Knowing the modern Jesuits ... I wouldn't be so sure...
"Why would you cut that off?" Cuz you realize 1. that in the US any charity turns into a racket, and 2.that in education, nothing makes any difference, particularly with "underprivileged" children, so that 3. after you've got your money's worth in virtue signaling, no point in throwing good after bad, even at the risk of incurring Althouse's wrath.
Was there anything about how well the students that completed the school were performing?
LOL nice one Leland!
"What is the school’s performance vs the public school?"
Yep, Lawnerd, that's the first question that popped into my mind. But the last thing a NYT writer might wonder.
I guess the Hawaiian Zuckerbunker is taking up more of Mark's money than he planned. It's a literal money pit.
Either that or the Zuckerbergs have started squirreling away money before the divorce.
Well, there's ROI, and there's your wife's best friend. Some things have to wait.
$25million a year for four years, and how many kids learned to read and do math, and how many administrators went to some really useful education conferences in Las Vegas and Miami? Just asking.
Here in Austin, the teacher's unions sued to prevent public release of information about school performance in 2023. And 2024. The appeal of the 2023 suit just ended and hey it turns out more schools got failing grades than high grades at teaching kids the basics of reading and math. To hell with the teachers unions, they should be outlawed. Teach the kids to read and do math. Hold them back until they learn, or send them to remedial school for special classes until they catch up. This bullshit of an education establishment that spends billions and can't teach kids has got to stop.
I'm guessing Lawfare is right: the students weren't doing any better than they had at the local public schools, and the Zuckerberg people decided it wasn't worth spending $20 mill a year for no improvement.
William: I had same combo. But in those days that meant cheap labor. Those days are gone with the supply of under 60 year olds.
Mommy, why does our education have a progressive price and return? Won't more money, debt solve the problem? It hasn't.
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has given only $100 million to this school over the past 4 years.
"Only"?
$25 million a year?
Let's make it K-12, so that's 13 grades
Let's make it 4 classes of 20 students each
13 x 4 x 20 = 1040 students. So that's ~ $25,000 / student / year
That's $500,000 per year per classroom
Spend $100,000 / year on the teacher, another $100,000/year on electronics etc for the students, another $100,000/year on the room
Where'd the other 40% of the funding go?
So we have a school that didn't accomplish anything when it comes to actually educating kids pissing away money like a drunk sailor after a bar crawl, and you're asking "why dont' they keep on lighting that money on fire?"
Well, probably because they were lighting it on fire to warm her friend, and the friend isn't there any more
I watched an interview with some rich guy many years ago who was asked about supporting private charity causes over government efforts to achieve the same goals. He said it's because when a private effort turns out to not be working, it can be ended and something new can be tried while, once a government program is started, it's practically impossible to shut it down regardless of how useless it turns out to be.
Another salient question: mommy, what's the difference between redistributive change schemes and charity? Between debt and capital? Why is exclusion and indoctrination discriminatory? Am I a person of human Diversity or diversity?
I had to deal with the Gates Foundation. From that experience I can assure you that ROI and performance are top most on their minds, even if the effort is for charity.
1. The children should be told their lack of effort failed to keep their school open -- they didn't learn enough so their school had to be closed.
2. They should also be told the same thing can happen at their next school, should they fail to perform.
3. The Zuckerberg foundation should then measure the results of this experiment.
The alliance between black people and the Democrats has produced wondrous results for the country as has the alliance between Democrats and illegal immigrants. Woundrous! /s
I am guessing the money was mostly absorbed by the school administration and their family and friends.
"where it serves underprivileged children."
What, you mean they don't have enough white privilege?
Kevin: "1. The children should be told their lack of effort failed to keep their school open -- they didn't learn enough so their school had to be closed. 2. They should also be told the same thing can happen at their next school, should they fail to perform."
If i had been told that as a kid, I would have gotten zeroes on every assignment, hoping I could leave a path of closed schools behind me!
JSM
No good deed goes unpunished. Ever.
Meta is also laying off VR programmers. Maybe Zuck is broke.
A key factor in successful schools is the level of parental involvement. Conversely, a key factor in failing schools is lack of parental involvement. Public schools that serve poor communities have to deal with the social consequences of their community, and the results are reflected in student achievement- or lack thereof. The social disparities don't go away because you have a wealthy benefactor.
Readering,
> Perhaps they should try to track down some former teachers to interview
Are you kidding? That sounds too much like actual work.
Avoiding just that is one of the prime modifications for becoming a journolist in the first place.
Arrrggghh! Here I am impugning other people's work ethic, and I'm too lazy to try to read through this tiny phone porthole and notice that voice dictate got the wrong word. "Motivations"
"Hey, Mr. [Zuck], whatcha gonna do / Whatcha gonna do to make our dreams come true?"
Far be it from me to defend Zuck, but he has given only$100 million to this school over the past 4 years.
Only? Really? Only $100 million?
If i had been told that as a kid, I would have gotten zeroes on every assignment, hoping I could leave a path of closed schools behind me!
LOL!
4. Underperforming students like John Mosby should be given shovels and a quota of daily ditch to dig.
Kevin: “ 4. Underperforming students like John Mosby should be given shovels and a quota of daily ditch to dig.”
You say that like it’s going to be a deterrent!
JSM
Perhaps the children weren't appropriately grateful.
You can please Leftist's none of the time.
Zuck understands the sunk cost fallacy.
"The sunk cost fallacy is a cognitive bias where individuals continue investing in a decision based on the resources they have already committed, rather than evaluating the current situation and future benefits. This often leads to irrational decision-making, as people struggle to abandon projects or investments that are no longer viable "
What sticks out to me is the lack of detail on the RESULTS of the school. Is it helping the kids it is serving? Are they performing appreciably better, either on standardized tests or in real world results after graduation? Maybe Zuch is tired of pouring good money after bad? If the schools have been a success, then why is that success not being touted? I would need to know a lot more before I have an opinion either way.
I haven't carefully read every comment here, so forgive me if I'm duplicating. But the NYT seems to miss completely this possibility. Donors believed that minority underperformance was not due to lack of ability, or lack or effort, but was due to lack of "institutional support". So donors provided extensive "institutional support". Then minority underperformance didn't improve. (Did it?? where's the info in the article on this?). So donors say (without being able or willing to say it out loud): "Oh, the minority underperformance must be due to lack of ability or effort." And our money can't change this. So let's quit.
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