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In light of this announcement, it's worth reading the New Yorker's fantastic piece exploring how Zuckerberg's previous $100 million investment into the Newark p

In light of this announcement, it's worth reading the New Yorker's fantastic piece exploring how Zuckerberg's previous $100 million investment into the Newark public school fared. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/05/19/140519fa_fact_russakoff?currentPage=all http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/05/19/140519fa_fact_...

nostromo 12y ago
Amazing that the money is all gone (or committed) with a large chunk being spent on consultants billing "a thousand dollars a day." It gives me more appreciation for Bill Gate's approach, which seems much more cautious, albeit slow.
- monochr 12y ago
  >Amazing that the money is all gone Not really. This is what American Capitalism is known as around the world. In oil and gas you know to sell your shares and not work for a firm that gets an American CEO because everything the article talks about happens without fail within the first three years. The short and simple of it is that Americans businesses just plain have no morals and everyone expects to be screwed over by them. >It gives me more appreciation for Bill Gate's approach Is just as bad as everyone else. Remember that amazing mosquito zapper he demoed 4 years ago[1]? Turns out the reason you haven't heard anything more about it is because he hired his patent troll friends over at Intellectual Ventures to do it for him [2]. Since they own the patents for it no one else can develop it and they aren't cross licensing, kind of obvious for a patent troll. Since they are a patent troll they aren't doing anything but holding the intellectual property and not producing any units. So all in all, it's just another green washing bullshit fest as are most of his other investments in the region. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwyMuwNYKvI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwyMuwNYKvI [2] http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB123680870885500701?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB123680870885500701.html http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB123680870885500701?mg=...
  - throwaway7767 12y ago
    > Remember that amazing mosquito zapper he demoed 4 years ago[1]? Turns out the reason you haven't heard anything more about it is because he hired his patent troll friends over at Intellectual Ventures to do it for him [2]. Since they own the patents for it no one else can develop it and they aren't cross licensing, kind of obvious for a patent troll. Since they are a patent troll they aren't doing anything but holding the intellectual property and not producing any units. This was, to me, the most interesting part of your comment. Do you have any references to Intellectual Ventures refusing to license this particular technology? If so, it certainly paints the whole program in a different light.
  - InclinedPlane 12y ago
    Applying the label "capitalism" to a government run school system is outright laughable.
    - monochr 12y ago
      This is capitalism in government, that was the whole point behind the "venture philanthropists". Watching plan after plan crash and burn with them blaming the poor is like a getting a time machine ride to 1860's Britain trying to deal with the massive dislocations of the industrial economy without doing the one sane thing they could have done: massive government intervention in the economy to slow down the worst effects of industrialization.
      - InclinedPlane 12y ago
        At least have the intellectual honesty to call it "crony capitalism". Implying that there is any relation to the free market or the "invisible hand" is ridiculous.
        monochr 12y ago
        Actually existing capitalism is capitalism. There is no more point in trying to differentiate it from "ideal" capitalism than there is of trying to separate "ideal" feudalism or socialism from their real world counterparts. If a system fails every time it is tried in the exact same way what you're looking at isn't a bug but a feature.
- makomk 12y ago
  Both Bill Gates' approach and Zuckerberg's have the same fundamental issue, though - they're using their money to push their own half-baked political ideas about what would make schools better, despite a spectacular lack of evidence they works. (Gates is slightly more efficient in how he does it, making his donations conditional on the government paying most of the cost of his planned reforms, but that's it.)
sytelus 12y ago
I'd some 2nd hand experience of how inefficient US school system is. Lots of districts and school actually have huge budgets. Some in fact have more budgets than entire state of a 3rd world country. The way this goes is, people in charge would cry about not having money. Then they would get chunk of money. And then those people would come up with ideas such as free distribution of iPads to everyone, go to conferences all over, hire speakers that charge $20K for speaking fees, build stupid websites that no one cares to use, fly over consultants to brainstorm education models, hire programmers to build useless school specific apps, and so on. Soon enough money would be all gone and then cycle repeats. Actual students hardly ever gets benefit from this drama and they may continue suffering bad cafeteria food or inadequate science lab. I guess inner city schools probably are in need of money and improving facilities but for many others more money is not a solution.
- throwaway7767 12y ago
  The mentality of "Just throw technology at it!" is spreading over the world, it's not just the US. Even here in Iceland, where we are really not doing too great on the PISA exams (and getting steadily worse - so it's hard to say the problem is lack of technology), and there is not sufficient funding for schools, you have people calling for "modernisation" of the school system which always involves spending inordinate amounts of money on giving iPads to students. This is at the same time as competent teachers are moving jobs in droves as they get paid shit, and only the bad ones who can't get jobs elsewhere remain. I just don't understand these priorities.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- aianus 12y ago
  When I was a senior in High School in Toronto in 2009, our school had recently purchased a pallet of brand new $100+ calculus textbooks. The up-to-date textbooks were chock-full of politically correct pictures of minority students doing math in wheelchairs by typing equations into their latest-gen $200 Texas Instruments graphing calculators. On the other hand, they were missing topics such as integration entirely since they had been removed in recent versions of the Ontario math curriculum. My math teacher, however, handed out the same tattered calculus books students had been using since the 1980's and forbid the use of calculators on all tests or exams. We learned math by proving theorems and solving word problems involving few, if any, numbers. I went on to study math in university and freshman honors calculus was a cakewalk compared to Mr. Sidhu's twelfth grade calculus and vectors class and his 30 year old textbooks. I fail to see how any amount of money could improve education unless it's spent on hiring better teachers (which the unions would never allow). You really don't need much besides a chalkboard, a copier, and a high-quality, engaged teacher.
moomin 12y ago
The thing about Bill Gates is that he's applying his brain, his time _and_ his money to the problems. Just throwing money at them, depressingly, seems to have little effect.

nostromo 12y ago

Amazing that the money is all gone (or committed) with a large chunk being spent on consultants billing "a thousand dollars a day." It gives me more appreciation for Bill Gate's approach, which seems much more cautious, albeit slow.

monochr 12y ago
>Amazing that the money is all gone Not really. This is what American Capitalism is known as around the world. In oil and gas you know to sell your shares and not work for a firm that gets an American CEO because everything the article talks about happens without fail within the first three years. The short and simple of it is that Americans businesses just plain have no morals and everyone expects to be screwed over by them. >It gives me more appreciation for Bill Gate's approach Is just as bad as everyone else. Remember that amazing mosquito zapper he demoed 4 years ago[1]? Turns out the reason you haven't heard anything more about it is because he hired his patent troll friends over at Intellectual Ventures to do it for him [2]. Since they own the patents for it no one else can develop it and they aren't cross licensing, kind of obvious for a patent troll. Since they are a patent troll they aren't doing anything but holding the intellectual property and not producing any units. So all in all, it's just another green washing bullshit fest as are most of his other investments in the region. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwyMuwNYKvI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwyMuwNYKvI [2] http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB123680870885500701?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB123680870885500701.html http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB123680870885500701?mg=...
- throwaway7767 12y ago
  > Remember that amazing mosquito zapper he demoed 4 years ago[1]? Turns out the reason you haven't heard anything more about it is because he hired his patent troll friends over at Intellectual Ventures to do it for him [2]. Since they own the patents for it no one else can develop it and they aren't cross licensing, kind of obvious for a patent troll. Since they are a patent troll they aren't doing anything but holding the intellectual property and not producing any units. This was, to me, the most interesting part of your comment. Do you have any references to Intellectual Ventures refusing to license this particular technology? If so, it certainly paints the whole program in a different light.
- InclinedPlane 12y ago
  Applying the label "capitalism" to a government run school system is outright laughable.
  - monochr 12y ago
    This is capitalism in government, that was the whole point behind the "venture philanthropists". Watching plan after plan crash and burn with them blaming the poor is like a getting a time machine ride to 1860's Britain trying to deal with the massive dislocations of the industrial economy without doing the one sane thing they could have done: massive government intervention in the economy to slow down the worst effects of industrialization.
    - InclinedPlane 12y ago
      At least have the intellectual honesty to call it "crony capitalism". Implying that there is any relation to the free market or the "invisible hand" is ridiculous.
      - monochr 12y ago
        Actually existing capitalism is capitalism. There is no more point in trying to differentiate it from "ideal" capitalism than there is of trying to separate "ideal" feudalism or socialism from their real world counterparts. If a system fails every time it is tried in the exact same way what you're looking at isn't a bug but a feature.
makomk 12y ago
Both Bill Gates' approach and Zuckerberg's have the same fundamental issue, though - they're using their money to push their own half-baked political ideas about what would make schools better, despite a spectacular lack of evidence they works. (Gates is slightly more efficient in how he does it, making his donations conditional on the government paying most of the cost of his planned reforms, but that's it.)

sytelus 12y ago

I'd some 2nd hand experience of how inefficient US school system is. Lots of districts and school actually have huge budgets. Some in fact have more budgets than entire state of a 3rd world country. The way this goes is, people in charge would cry about not having money. Then they would get chunk of money. And then those people would come up with ideas such as free distribution of iPads to everyone, go to conferences all over, hire speakers that charge $20K for speaking fees, build stupid websites that no one cares to use, fly over consultants to brainstorm education models, hire programmers to build useless school specific apps, and so on. Soon enough money would be all gone and then cycle repeats. Actual students hardly ever gets benefit from this drama and they may continue suffering bad cafeteria food or inadequate science lab. I guess inner city schools probably are in need of money and improving facilities but for many others more money is not a solution.

throwaway7767 12y ago
The mentality of "Just throw technology at it!" is spreading over the world, it's not just the US. Even here in Iceland, where we are really not doing too great on the PISA exams (and getting steadily worse - so it's hard to say the problem is lack of technology), and there is not sufficient funding for schools, you have people calling for "modernisation" of the school system which always involves spending inordinate amounts of money on giving iPads to students. This is at the same time as competent teachers are moving jobs in droves as they get paid shit, and only the bad ones who can't get jobs elsewhere remain. I just don't understand these priorities.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
aianus 12y ago
When I was a senior in High School in Toronto in 2009, our school had recently purchased a pallet of brand new $100+ calculus textbooks. The up-to-date textbooks were chock-full of politically correct pictures of minority students doing math in wheelchairs by typing equations into their latest-gen $200 Texas Instruments graphing calculators. On the other hand, they were missing topics such as integration entirely since they had been removed in recent versions of the Ontario math curriculum. My math teacher, however, handed out the same tattered calculus books students had been using since the 1980's and forbid the use of calculators on all tests or exams. We learned math by proving theorems and solving word problems involving few, if any, numbers. I went on to study math in university and freshman honors calculus was a cakewalk compared to Mr. Sidhu's twelfth grade calculus and vectors class and his 30 year old textbooks. I fail to see how any amount of money could improve education unless it's spent on hiring better teachers (which the unions would never allow). You really don't need much besides a chalkboard, a copier, and a high-quality, engaged teacher.

moomin 12y ago

The thing about Bill Gates is that he's applying his brain, his time _and_ his money to the problems. Just throwing money at them, depressingly, seems to have little effect.