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Friday, May 30. 2014

"Cory Booker, Chris Christie, and Mark Zuckerberg had a plan to reform Newark’s schools. They got an education."


It's quite a detailed story in The New Yorker about an attempt at top-down education reform by the experts: SCHOOLED - Cory Booker, Chris Christie, and Mark Zuckerberg had a plan to reform Newark’s schools. They got an education.


Yes, they got an education but nobody else did. That was $100 million thrown into the trash.

Posted by The Barrister in Our Essays, The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 14:56 | Comments (5) | Trackbacks (0)

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What happened to Newark? My mother tells stories of taking the train from Summit NJ to Newark to shop with her friends when she was in high school in the 50's when all of the better stores were there. In the 60's things changed.
#1 LP on 2014-05-30 18:07 (Reply)
I don't care that the money was wasted. At least it was private money not my taxes.
It sucks for the kids, but this is proof that money isn't the problem.
#2 Bulldog on 2014-05-31 10:07 (Reply)
The fact that we've been spending more tax dollars per pupil than almost every other country with much worse results is proof that money isn't the problem.

I suggest that it is a lot of the crap that was started with the Great Society that is to blame for the majority of the problem. Even good teachers are at a great disadvantage if the students have no hope. From one side, they are told that you can't do this (either "let us take care of you", or "take the rich's money to take care of them") from another side they are told they are chumps for trying to learn. I am reminded of what Pat Condell said of the kids on the dole in England who rioted a few years ago: "They are like rats that shit in their own nest."
#2.1 mudbug on 2014-05-31 16:08 (Reply)
Culture is one of the hardest things to change. And few like paying the price in blood (primarily), time, and money it takes to change it.

We all pretend that each child is a new beginning, but it’s not true. Each child is a continuation of the past.
#3 ErisGuy on 2014-06-01 05:26 (Reply)
The article records the many reformers and radicals who united to improve Newark’s schools. And the results are exactly as expected: money’s gone to no effect.

The article drones on and on about the glittering moral authority of radicals and reformers involved without realizing the people tasked with solving the problem are the problem.

In one hilarious paragraph the author writes both charter lotteries disproportionately attracted the “choosers”—parents with the time to navigate the process (that is, parents motivated to seek a good education for their kids) and children and revenue were siphoned off [into the charter schools].

Can’t have it both ways. Can’t have a school that educates those willing and able and a school that is a conduit to prison.

And so the parents who want an education for their children will again see their children condemned to pre-prison daycare while the reformers and radicals loot The Man.

You’d think after fifty years, that road show would close from boredom.
#4 ErisGuy on 2014-06-01 05:52 (Reply)

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