Facebook CEO “Friends” the Right School Reformers

Lindsey Burke / September 27, 2010

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Newark Mayor Cory Booker appeared on the Oprah show last Friday to accept a $100 million gift from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Derrell Bradford, executive director of Excellent Education for Everyone in New Jersey, told the New York Post that “the mayor has a very compelling vision about what should be done with the schools. He was able to convince Mark to be part of it.”

But will Zuckerberg’s first foray into philanthropic giving result in more money being thrown into the black hole of the Newark public school system, or will it prove to be money well-spent?

As Matt Ladner of the Goldwater Institute and I detail in our new paper on closing the achievement gap, public schools are drowning in money but failing to provide a quality education for students. While they don’t suffer from a lack of funding, school systems do suffer in most cases from an inability to better target their resources, often blocked by demands from public education unions. (more…)