17 ms·

Zuckerbergs' New “Primary School”: Private but Free

74 points by ohmyiv 11y ago

kristopolous 11y ago
That's a lot of money for something that ostensibly already exists. This terribly busy website has a bit better content as to why they are doing this: http://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area-news/ci_29007119/facebooks-zuckerberg-wife-chan-start-private-east-palo http://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area-news/ci_29007119/faceboo...
swampthinker 11y ago
http://www.theprimaryschool.org/ http://www.theprimaryschool.org/ Didn't see a link in the article.
mtgx 11y ago
Speaking of Facebook, does anyone know if this is true? https://www.youbetrayedus.org/facebook/ https://www.youbetrayedus.org/facebook/
- tzs 11y ago
  It's from "Fight for the Future", so it is at best highly questionable. They have a long history of exaggerating (I'm being very charitable in my choice of words) about bills. They believe that inaccurate information is fine as long as it gets people to click their links to send form letters to Congress. See, for example, this other page at the same site: https://www.youbetrayedus.org/experian/ https://www.youbetrayedus.org/experian/ I asked them to back up a particular serious claim on that page in this discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10321374 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10321374 Note the lack of a response. I also asked them several times on reddit where they were repeating the same thing. Again, no response.
- SFLemonade 11y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised at all. Zuckerberg worries me in a very ominous and looming way. He has access to a lot of data and his company is a massive source of public influence. And he's repeatedly abused that power with little to no public knowledge or blowback. Initiatives like his free limited internet and the primary school seem like attempts to control information and future generations, disguised as philanthropy. Couple that with his radical political views / connections and you've got yourself a recipe for a kind of war and oppression that we've never really faced before: a war on information.
  - marincounty 11y ago
    He doesn't scare me. I just thought people would get tired of his site by now. I can't figure out the appeal anymore, unless you come from a third world country, or are under a dictatorship, or you in you twenties, married, or with kids. Don't get wrong, I don't hate his site. I just don't get the appeal anymore, but it might be me. I'm older and I can take only so much of the social posturing, 5000 friends, photos that are so self-aware--I cringe, the constant positive affirmations about a person's looks, the crying out for a attention, and praise, the nosey algorithms, etc. I have one question, and it's geared towards Americans, "What are you getting out of Facebook these days. I'm not trying to be cute, or clever. I'm just curious. Maybe it's my fault. I have used Facebook in order to look up old friends. I have found that so many people seemed to have caved into social pressures, and become politically correct conformists(which is fine), and I understand why they need to protect their online identity. It just depressing looking at people who raised their hands in class, tried to fight certain aspects of the system just settled, and went along with the Villagers. I'm not even bothered by that--it's the phonyness, or I hope phonyness? Has anyone over thirty, gone on Facebook and looked up someone you used to know, maybe that women/man that was different than the rest; and viewed their profile, and said, "I must get in touch with that person!". I have found complete opposite effect. I'll admit it's probally just me, or I'm being too negative, or my experiences on Facebook is not typical.
cptmeister 11y ago
That's great for the community, but in a larger sense we should question what the point is of amassing huge concentrated wealth and then giving a small part (or even a large part) back to make isolated positive impacts. Wouldn't it be better if it was impossible to amass that concentration of wealth in the first place? Then the token donations would not be necessary. This is not supposed to be a cynical post, but this pattern is indicative of a general problem with the system.
- anfedorov 11y ago
  I think there's a good argument to be made that personally accumulated wealth spent on experimental projects such as this one is used better than if it were taxed and added to the relatively enormous federal budget. DoD yearly spend is greater than 10x of Zuck's net worth, after all.
  - dublinben 11y ago
    You're pushing a false dichotomy of personal wealth or Federal income tax. It would be much easier and effective to simply preempt the concentration of such wealth in the first place by ensuring more equitable salaries across the workforce. No onerous redistribution necessary.
    - panic 11y ago
      How would you force employers to pay their employees equitable salaries? What if a job isn't worth that much to an employer?
      - dalke 11y ago
        Turn the question around - how do you force employees to accept horrible salaries? You make sure there is no job safety so they are scared to ask for a raise. You make sure there is no good social safety net, so they fear for losing their job. You make sure the employees cannot effectively organize to present a more effective bargaining force. And you get people to believe that a business model that can't pay its employees an equitable salary should still be allowed to continue.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
vezzy-fnord 11y ago
So what model is this, I can't seem to tell exactly? Montessori, Sudbury, democratic, anarchistic free? Or just a traditional school with integrated daycare?
- rory096 11y ago
  It seems to be a bit more structured than a free school model, more focused on personalization of lesson plans than total student choice. Someone on the New York Tech Meetup mailing list gave a pretty extensive answer: >Hi everyone, I wanted to address because I think there's some confusion around the term "self-directed" learning as well as Altschobol's mission. >Altschool is a network of microschools, founded by Max Ventilla - who worked on personalization at google. Through personalizing the learning process, Ventilla hopes to use technology to make the learning process cater to individual student's learning style and interests. They also have a sophisticated method of tracking student process. >For example, a student who loves basketball might have the opportunity to learn about algebra as it relates to basketball. Personalized learning is quite different than "self-directed learning" where a student has autonomy over what subject they want to learn next. >A "free school" which is what some of you seem to be referring to is generally a democratic school where students have complete control and autonomy over their own learning process. Far from being without structure, their is a complex set of rules and systems that are invented by the students themselves. Rather than reading "at level" the child has the opportunity to learn if and when they want to. Many boys do not learn to read until age 10, but they do eventually learn to read. Some children go on to college - others pursue different routes. Good examples are Sumerhill in the UK and Brooklyn Free School in Brooklyn. Direct observation and long-term studies have shown that this model can be incredibly successful if started at an early age- but when students enter a "Free school" as teens after being subjected to years of their willpower being squashed by authority figures, the change is too drastic and they flail around and often don't know how to negotiate their new found freedom. This is not the case, of course with every child. >In the 21st century, the teacher's role as "purveyor of knowledge" is no longer necessary. Instead, the teacher is becoming a facilitator of knowledge. The knowledge is there and leaders like Sugata Mitra with his hole in the wall experiment and Sal Khan have demonstrated how far a child's natural curiosity can take them. >Back to Altschool. >Alt school was developed on the premise of three aspects being essential to productive learning 1) great teachers 2) individualized instruction 3) parent and community involvement in the learning process. >Far from ignoring the indispensable role parents play in the learning process, Altschool hopes to use technology to breach the gap between what goes on at home and in the classroom. Furthermore, by 2016 they are planning on launching their first charter schools in an effort to redesign the entire public school system to be more agile, affordable, personalized and keep track of each student to prepare them to live happy, meaningful lives that make a contribution to the larger community. >As a disclaimer, I am not affiliated with Altschool and do not know if they will be successful in their mission. However, I think it is a mistake to dismiss self-directed learning and free schools without fully looking into their unique advantages. > Manisha, http://cottageclass.com http://cottageclass.com
andreyf 11y ago
If this works, can it be used as an example for better public schools? Even if it's more expensive, one can argue that the increased productivity of well educated kids outweighs the cost of their education.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  Better models have been around for a long time, with traditional compulsory schooling being criticized by authors and educators such as John Taylor Gatto, John Holt, Ivan Illich, Charlotte Iserbyt, A.S. Neill and others. There is no interest in them. Zuck's approach appears to be only marginally better and almost entirely devoid of influence from alternative schooling.
- andreasklinger 11y ago
  same argument could be made for healthcare and higher education as well
- dogma1138 11y ago
  Well if a single primary school needs 1 bln or anything close to it to operate that won't be scale able. The question now would be how much improvement would there be due to actual new methods in delivering the education vs just pouring money onto the problem and cherry picking your students. They did seem to open the school in a place that could benefit from it as far as the silicon valley area goes, EPO didn't receive as much benefit from the valley as some other areas, Belle Haven is a mixed bag with it being quite popular with silicon valley folks that are looking to find a big enough house for a family but can't afford more sought after locations. The only grief I really have with this program is that they did not publish their acceptance policy online which doesn't bode well for transparency in that aspect, so cherry picking and gating might be a problem here as well. Their management team and staff has more accreditations than some school districts combine probably, they have a huge capital investment, so the school should do rather well, but I'm really not sure how much impact it can have in the long term.
  - lacksconfidence 11y ago
markdown 11y ago
Why is "Primary School" in quotes? Are you suggesting it isn't a primary school?
- vpanyam 11y ago
  The name of the school is "The Primary School" http://www.theprimaryschool.org/ http://www.theprimaryschool.org/
  - markdown 11y ago
    Oh ok. In many countries of the world, primary schools are schools that cater to classes between kindergarten and high/secondary school. Calling a primary school "The Primary School" is like calling a brand of bottled water "The Bottled Water".
    - just_curioussss 11y ago
      And who is calling their internet service, Internet? Oh, right, the same person. What's next, Facebook? Oh.....
- tzs 11y ago
  It looks like the submitter (or a mod?) rewrote the title to try to make it clearer, and botched it. The actual title of the article is: "Inside Mark Zuckerberg's new school: Private, but free". The name of the new school is "The Primary School". It looks like the title rewriter decided to try to put the name in the title, but left out the "The", resulting in the confusing title we now have. A better rewrite, if the name must be incorporated, would have been "Inside Mark Zuckerber's new 'The Primary School': Private, but free" or "Inside Mark Zuckerber's 'The Primary School': Private, but free".
  - ohmyiv 11y ago
    Clarification: It was a mod change. I left the title close to the original except I left out "Mark".
jonlucc 11y ago
Interesting that the logo for The Primary School is nearly identical to that used by artist and printmaker Gustave Baumann[1]. I was just at a lecture about him today, and the speaker said it was probably taken from the International Order of Oddfellows who had some saying along the lines of "what you do with your hands, you should do with your heart". [1] http://grainger-arts-and-crafts-studio.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/GB-Seal.jpg http://grainger-arts-and-crafts-studio.com/wp-content/upload...
cowsandmilk 11y ago
The Milton Hershey model? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Hershey_School https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Hershey_School (In case you don't notice, Milton Hershey's endowment is larger than that of most universities)
datashovel 11y ago
Perhaps I'm initially too cynical about what appears at face value to be selfless philanthropy, but I won't consider these efforts to be anything but self-serving unless they're willing to share data about their successes / failures with other educational institutions and governments.
- ageek123 11y ago
  How is this self-serving? How does it directly benefit Zuckerberg?
  - zo1 11y ago
    At the very least publicity.
  - datashovel 11y ago
    $77.4 billion for the Department of Education across the entire US. The article mentions that this $1 billion investment will go toward "free education and free healthcare for low-income students in the Palo Alto area". So comparing the two it's obvious that the investment is going into an unsustainable model. The way I'm thinking about this, that could be for one of a few reasons. 1) They want to pour a lot of money into research and development to figure out how to improve education. Concentrate a bunch of money into one place to figure out how to improve the overall model. 2) They want to show how they can do better than public education system. If they're after #1 I can see no reason why they wouldn't try to give back by sharing data from their research. If they're after #2 then it's obvious they're simply creating a facade (an unsustainable "model" implementation of what primary education should look like). Depending on the results they'd be looking to sway public opinion that private sector can do better than government. Needless to say, #1 is constructive, and #2 IMO is highly destructive.
- crdoconnor 11y ago
  Well, when the data looks like this... http://mathbabe.org/2012/03/06/the-value-added-teacher-model-sucks/ http://mathbabe.org/2012/03/06/the-value-added-teacher-model... That could be embarrassing. "Objective" teacher performance measures all seem to be as bad as, if not worse than measuring programmer performance with SLOC. Oddly enough it looks like the proposals he was trying to ram through in New Jersey look like a attempt at teacher union busting. Why Zuckerberg would involve himself in that is a bit of a mystery. While he seems to be the public face, it could be that a lot of the money doesn't come from him.
seibelj 11y ago
Anything any rich person wants to do to improve education, I'm for it. The system is so broken for so many people that I welcome any attempt at reform. And the rich have the best chance of fighting the entrenched interests that prohibit improvements to education.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
pbreit 11y ago
One-off private schools are never going to move the needle. Even Alt School only caters to folks who don't really need it. Is it really not possible for private industry to address public education? Perhaps "for profit" is just never going to work in education? Kipp?
- ageek123 11y ago
  > Perhaps "for profit" is just never going to work in education? Well, government-run certainly isn't working, at least in the US. Charter schools (like Kipp) seem to be doing a lot better.
  - zo1 11y ago
    Unfortunately, when it comes to "state-run" institutions and policies, you're arguing against an ideal, rather than an implementation. I.e. You could argue it is some form of the no true Scotsman fallacy. Additionally, there is a very prevalent and saturated belief in the current society that views anything with 'for profit' motives as somehow bad/greedy. Consequently, everything that is "non-profit" (including the state) regularly gets undeserved moral brownie points.
  - pbreit 11y ago
    Public universities, public schools in "better" neighborhoods and public schools in other countries operate well. I think the commonality likely has to do with how devoted the constituents are.
- cookiecaper 11y ago
  Modern education in the West is mostly pomp and circumstance. Facts are extremely non-discriminatory; people can't help but learn things and absorb the information that's around them. A key to successful education is putting people in environments and circumstances where the information is so well-integrated that it's difficult NOT to absorb it. That basically means giving people something interesting and valuable to do, telling them to do it, and being there to show them how. The magic really kicks in once they begin to show each other. We're focusing on the wrong things. You don't need a $50 million facility and $5 million of payroll per school to teach people stuff, and you don't have to pay everyone's medical bills. You need to have the learners do something of actual utility and value to both themselves and their immediate community so that they are properly engaged, and then you have to be there to communicate the information they need to fill the gap from "no idea" to "some idea", and the rest happens automatically. Virtually anyone who has written a program has followed this process. It's best if the teacher is directly invested in the learners, like a parent or other close family member. They'll care much more about the individual child's success. I plan to home school my kids once they hit 3rd grade or so (I think those first few years of school are important for developing the social baseline). If we actually care about educational quality, we need to get down to basics. As long as the dialogue on education is dominated by pension funds and zoning, it's a losing proposition.

74 points by ohmyiv 11y ago

That's a lot of money for something that ostensibly already exists. This terribly busy website has a bit better content as to why they are doing this: http://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area-news/ci_29007119/facebooks-zuckerberg-wife-chan-start-private-east-palo http://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area-news/ci_29007119/faceboo...

swampthinker 11y ago

http://www.theprimaryschool.org/ http://www.theprimaryschool.org/ Didn't see a link in the article.

mtgx 11y ago

Speaking of Facebook, does anyone know if this is true? https://www.youbetrayedus.org/facebook/ https://www.youbetrayedus.org/facebook/

tzs 11y ago
It's from "Fight for the Future", so it is at best highly questionable. They have a long history of exaggerating (I'm being very charitable in my choice of words) about bills. They believe that inaccurate information is fine as long as it gets people to click their links to send form letters to Congress. See, for example, this other page at the same site: https://www.youbetrayedus.org/experian/ https://www.youbetrayedus.org/experian/ I asked them to back up a particular serious claim on that page in this discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10321374 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10321374 Note the lack of a response. I also asked them several times on reddit where they were repeating the same thing. Again, no response.
SFLemonade 11y ago
I wouldn't be surprised at all. Zuckerberg worries me in a very ominous and looming way. He has access to a lot of data and his company is a massive source of public influence. And he's repeatedly abused that power with little to no public knowledge or blowback. Initiatives like his free limited internet and the primary school seem like attempts to control information and future generations, disguised as philanthropy. Couple that with his radical political views / connections and you've got yourself a recipe for a kind of war and oppression that we've never really faced before: a war on information.
- marincounty 11y ago
  He doesn't scare me. I just thought people would get tired of his site by now. I can't figure out the appeal anymore, unless you come from a third world country, or are under a dictatorship, or you in you twenties, married, or with kids. Don't get wrong, I don't hate his site. I just don't get the appeal anymore, but it might be me. I'm older and I can take only so much of the social posturing, 5000 friends, photos that are so self-aware--I cringe, the constant positive affirmations about a person's looks, the crying out for a attention, and praise, the nosey algorithms, etc. I have one question, and it's geared towards Americans, "What are you getting out of Facebook these days. I'm not trying to be cute, or clever. I'm just curious. Maybe it's my fault. I have used Facebook in order to look up old friends. I have found that so many people seemed to have caved into social pressures, and become politically correct conformists(which is fine), and I understand why they need to protect their online identity. It just depressing looking at people who raised their hands in class, tried to fight certain aspects of the system just settled, and went along with the Villagers. I'm not even bothered by that--it's the phonyness, or I hope phonyness? Has anyone over thirty, gone on Facebook and looked up someone you used to know, maybe that women/man that was different than the rest; and viewed their profile, and said, "I must get in touch with that person!". I have found complete opposite effect. I'll admit it's probally just me, or I'm being too negative, or my experiences on Facebook is not typical.

cptmeister 11y ago

That's great for the community, but in a larger sense we should question what the point is of amassing huge concentrated wealth and then giving a small part (or even a large part) back to make isolated positive impacts. Wouldn't it be better if it was impossible to amass that concentration of wealth in the first place? Then the token donations would not be necessary. This is not supposed to be a cynical post, but this pattern is indicative of a general problem with the system.

anfedorov 11y ago
I think there's a good argument to be made that personally accumulated wealth spent on experimental projects such as this one is used better than if it were taxed and added to the relatively enormous federal budget. DoD yearly spend is greater than 10x of Zuck's net worth, after all.
- dublinben 11y ago
  You're pushing a false dichotomy of personal wealth or Federal income tax. It would be much easier and effective to simply preempt the concentration of such wealth in the first place by ensuring more equitable salaries across the workforce. No onerous redistribution necessary.
  - panic 11y ago
    How would you force employers to pay their employees equitable salaries? What if a job isn't worth that much to an employer?
    - dalke 11y ago
      Turn the question around - how do you force employees to accept horrible salaries? You make sure there is no job safety so they are scared to ask for a raise. You make sure there is no good social safety net, so they fear for losing their job. You make sure the employees cannot effectively organize to present a more effective bargaining force. And you get people to believe that a business model that can't pay its employees an equitable salary should still be allowed to continue.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

vezzy-fnord 11y ago

So what model is this, I can't seem to tell exactly? Montessori, Sudbury, democratic, anarchistic free? Or just a traditional school with integrated daycare?

rory096 11y ago
It seems to be a bit more structured than a free school model, more focused on personalization of lesson plans than total student choice. Someone on the New York Tech Meetup mailing list gave a pretty extensive answer: >Hi everyone, I wanted to address because I think there's some confusion around the term "self-directed" learning as well as Altschobol's mission. >Altschool is a network of microschools, founded by Max Ventilla - who worked on personalization at google. Through personalizing the learning process, Ventilla hopes to use technology to make the learning process cater to individual student's learning style and interests. They also have a sophisticated method of tracking student process. >For example, a student who loves basketball might have the opportunity to learn about algebra as it relates to basketball. Personalized learning is quite different than "self-directed learning" where a student has autonomy over what subject they want to learn next. >A "free school" which is what some of you seem to be referring to is generally a democratic school where students have complete control and autonomy over their own learning process. Far from being without structure, their is a complex set of rules and systems that are invented by the students themselves. Rather than reading "at level" the child has the opportunity to learn if and when they want to. Many boys do not learn to read until age 10, but they do eventually learn to read. Some children go on to college - others pursue different routes. Good examples are Sumerhill in the UK and Brooklyn Free School in Brooklyn. Direct observation and long-term studies have shown that this model can be incredibly successful if started at an early age- but when students enter a "Free school" as teens after being subjected to years of their willpower being squashed by authority figures, the change is too drastic and they flail around and often don't know how to negotiate their new found freedom. This is not the case, of course with every child. >In the 21st century, the teacher's role as "purveyor of knowledge" is no longer necessary. Instead, the teacher is becoming a facilitator of knowledge. The knowledge is there and leaders like Sugata Mitra with his hole in the wall experiment and Sal Khan have demonstrated how far a child's natural curiosity can take them. >Back to Altschool. >Alt school was developed on the premise of three aspects being essential to productive learning 1) great teachers 2) individualized instruction 3) parent and community involvement in the learning process. >Far from ignoring the indispensable role parents play in the learning process, Altschool hopes to use technology to breach the gap between what goes on at home and in the classroom. Furthermore, by 2016 they are planning on launching their first charter schools in an effort to redesign the entire public school system to be more agile, affordable, personalized and keep track of each student to prepare them to live happy, meaningful lives that make a contribution to the larger community. >As a disclaimer, I am not affiliated with Altschool and do not know if they will be successful in their mission. However, I think it is a mistake to dismiss self-directed learning and free schools without fully looking into their unique advantages. > Manisha, http://cottageclass.com http://cottageclass.com

andreyf 11y ago

If this works, can it be used as an example for better public schools? Even if it's more expensive, one can argue that the increased productivity of well educated kids outweighs the cost of their education.

vezzy-fnord 11y ago
Better models have been around for a long time, with traditional compulsory schooling being criticized by authors and educators such as John Taylor Gatto, John Holt, Ivan Illich, Charlotte Iserbyt, A.S. Neill and others. There is no interest in them. Zuck's approach appears to be only marginally better and almost entirely devoid of influence from alternative schooling.
andreasklinger 11y ago
same argument could be made for healthcare and higher education as well
dogma1138 11y ago
Well if a single primary school needs 1 bln or anything close to it to operate that won't be scale able. The question now would be how much improvement would there be due to actual new methods in delivering the education vs just pouring money onto the problem and cherry picking your students. They did seem to open the school in a place that could benefit from it as far as the silicon valley area goes, EPO didn't receive as much benefit from the valley as some other areas, Belle Haven is a mixed bag with it being quite popular with silicon valley folks that are looking to find a big enough house for a family but can't afford more sought after locations. The only grief I really have with this program is that they did not publish their acceptance policy online which doesn't bode well for transparency in that aspect, so cherry picking and gating might be a problem here as well. Their management team and staff has more accreditations than some school districts combine probably, they have a huge capital investment, so the school should do rather well, but I'm really not sure how much impact it can have in the long term.
- lacksconfidence 11y ago

markdown 11y ago

Why is "Primary School" in quotes? Are you suggesting it isn't a primary school?

vpanyam 11y ago
The name of the school is "The Primary School" http://www.theprimaryschool.org/ http://www.theprimaryschool.org/
- markdown 11y ago
  Oh ok. In many countries of the world, primary schools are schools that cater to classes between kindergarten and high/secondary school. Calling a primary school "The Primary School" is like calling a brand of bottled water "The Bottled Water".
  - just_curioussss 11y ago
    And who is calling their internet service, Internet? Oh, right, the same person. What's next, Facebook? Oh.....
tzs 11y ago
It looks like the submitter (or a mod?) rewrote the title to try to make it clearer, and botched it. The actual title of the article is: "Inside Mark Zuckerberg's new school: Private, but free". The name of the new school is "The Primary School". It looks like the title rewriter decided to try to put the name in the title, but left out the "The", resulting in the confusing title we now have. A better rewrite, if the name must be incorporated, would have been "Inside Mark Zuckerber's new 'The Primary School': Private, but free" or "Inside Mark Zuckerber's 'The Primary School': Private, but free".
- ohmyiv 11y ago
  Clarification: It was a mod change. I left the title close to the original except I left out "Mark".

jonlucc 11y ago

Interesting that the logo for The Primary School is nearly identical to that used by artist and printmaker Gustave Baumann[1]. I was just at a lecture about him today, and the speaker said it was probably taken from the International Order of Oddfellows who had some saying along the lines of "what you do with your hands, you should do with your heart". [1] http://grainger-arts-and-crafts-studio.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/GB-Seal.jpg http://grainger-arts-and-crafts-studio.com/wp-content/upload...

cowsandmilk 11y ago

The Milton Hershey model? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Hershey_School https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Hershey_School (In case you don't notice, Milton Hershey's endowment is larger than that of most universities)

datashovel 11y ago

Perhaps I'm initially too cynical about what appears at face value to be selfless philanthropy, but I won't consider these efforts to be anything but self-serving unless they're willing to share data about their successes / failures with other educational institutions and governments.

ageek123 11y ago
How is this self-serving? How does it directly benefit Zuckerberg?
- zo1 11y ago
  At the very least publicity.
- datashovel 11y ago
  $77.4 billion for the Department of Education across the entire US. The article mentions that this $1 billion investment will go toward "free education and free healthcare for low-income students in the Palo Alto area". So comparing the two it's obvious that the investment is going into an unsustainable model. The way I'm thinking about this, that could be for one of a few reasons. 1) They want to pour a lot of money into research and development to figure out how to improve education. Concentrate a bunch of money into one place to figure out how to improve the overall model. 2) They want to show how they can do better than public education system. If they're after #1 I can see no reason why they wouldn't try to give back by sharing data from their research. If they're after #2 then it's obvious they're simply creating a facade (an unsustainable "model" implementation of what primary education should look like). Depending on the results they'd be looking to sway public opinion that private sector can do better than government. Needless to say, #1 is constructive, and #2 IMO is highly destructive.
crdoconnor 11y ago
Well, when the data looks like this... http://mathbabe.org/2012/03/06/the-value-added-teacher-model-sucks/ http://mathbabe.org/2012/03/06/the-value-added-teacher-model... That could be embarrassing. "Objective" teacher performance measures all seem to be as bad as, if not worse than measuring programmer performance with SLOC. Oddly enough it looks like the proposals he was trying to ram through in New Jersey look like a attempt at teacher union busting. Why Zuckerberg would involve himself in that is a bit of a mystery. While he seems to be the public face, it could be that a lot of the money doesn't come from him.

seibelj 11y ago

Anything any rich person wants to do to improve education, I'm for it. The system is so broken for so many people that I welcome any attempt at reform. And the rich have the best chance of fighting the entrenched interests that prohibit improvements to education.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

pbreit 11y ago

One-off private schools are never going to move the needle. Even Alt School only caters to folks who don't really need it. Is it really not possible for private industry to address public education? Perhaps "for profit" is just never going to work in education? Kipp?

ageek123 11y ago
> Perhaps "for profit" is just never going to work in education? Well, government-run certainly isn't working, at least in the US. Charter schools (like Kipp) seem to be doing a lot better.
- zo1 11y ago
  Unfortunately, when it comes to "state-run" institutions and policies, you're arguing against an ideal, rather than an implementation. I.e. You could argue it is some form of the no true Scotsman fallacy. Additionally, there is a very prevalent and saturated belief in the current society that views anything with 'for profit' motives as somehow bad/greedy. Consequently, everything that is "non-profit" (including the state) regularly gets undeserved moral brownie points.
- pbreit 11y ago
  Public universities, public schools in "better" neighborhoods and public schools in other countries operate well. I think the commonality likely has to do with how devoted the constituents are.
cookiecaper 11y ago
Modern education in the West is mostly pomp and circumstance. Facts are extremely non-discriminatory; people can't help but learn things and absorb the information that's around them. A key to successful education is putting people in environments and circumstances where the information is so well-integrated that it's difficult NOT to absorb it. That basically means giving people something interesting and valuable to do, telling them to do it, and being there to show them how. The magic really kicks in once they begin to show each other. We're focusing on the wrong things. You don't need a $50 million facility and $5 million of payroll per school to teach people stuff, and you don't have to pay everyone's medical bills. You need to have the learners do something of actual utility and value to both themselves and their immediate community so that they are properly engaged, and then you have to be there to communicate the information they need to fill the gap from "no idea" to "some idea", and the rest happens automatically. Virtually anyone who has written a program has followed this process. It's best if the teacher is directly invested in the learners, like a parent or other close family member. They'll care much more about the individual child's success. I plan to home school my kids once they hit 3rd grade or so (I think those first few years of school are important for developing the social baseline). If we actually care about educational quality, we need to get down to basics. As long as the dialogue on education is dominated by pension funds and zoning, it's a losing proposition.