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Mark Zuckerberg and his wife to donate $120M to needy Bay Area schools

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Re: Mark Zuckerberg and his wife to donate $120M to needy Bay Area schools

#31

Post by sytelus »

L_Rahman wrote: post #14

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_...

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.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg and his wife to donate $120M to needy Bay Area schools

#32

Post by monochr »

nostromo wrote: post #23
L_Rahman wrote: post #14

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_...

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.

>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

[2] http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB123680870885500701?mg=...

Re: Mark Zuckerberg and his wife to donate $120M to needy Bay Area schools

#33

Post by easytiger »

PhantomGremlin wrote: post #15
easytiger wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The federal government spent $683.7 billion in a year on defense alone. maybe they could spare a few million for the children. Relying on private finance to help schools simply will make matters worse from a big picture in a similar way to how Africa became addicted to overseas aid

Sigh. Did you spend one nanosecond of time doing any research before firing off your oh so pious comment about sparing a few pennies to save the children? A very quick google found me ed.gov, which is the US Department of Education. Here is an exact quote [1]: ED currently administers a budget of $67.3 billion in discretionary appropriations (including discretionary Pell Grant funding) and operates programs that touc…

And yet, there are impovrished schools. How is that possible?

Re: Mark Zuckerberg and his wife to donate $120M to needy Bay Area schools

#35

Post by guelo »

spindritf wrote: post #25
fdsary wrote: post #13

From a Scandinavian point of view this seems like such a detour. Why wait for billionaires to be so kind of fund schools when you could tax wealth and fund public and universal education? Why do the American people chose this way time after time?

Americans spend over $14k/kid on education already, more than Sweden which is below $12k, and almost twice the OECD average.[1] I'm guessing that all developed countries have already reached a point of diminishing returns in their spending on education. The reason money from billionaires is interesting is because it's less limited by the regulations. It can be spent in ways public money cannot be used. It didn't work…

That $14k average includes public and private schools, as well as college tuition. It also ignores the fact that US public school funding is provided via local property taxes, so wealthy neighborhoods have better funded public schools than the lower income neighborhoods, whose kids actually need more resources.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg and his wife to donate $120M to needy Bay Area schools

#36

Post by wturner »

fdsary wrote: post #13

From a Scandinavian point of view this seems like such a detour. Why wait for billionaires to be so kind of fund schools when you could tax wealth and fund public and universal education? Why do the American people chose this way time after time?

As a U.S. citizen I can give my perspective, although I don't know the real 'reasons' for anything people do.

People in roles like Zuckerberg are not only required to fulfill Machiavellian responsibilities to the companies they operate but they also need to do everything they can to counter the day-to-day reality with a strong likable public image. When Zuckerberg throws money it kind of acts as a bit of an inoculation to things like privacy concerns or the undermining of the middle class through the false culture of 'openness'. If Zuckerberg really cared about bad schools he would have dedicated a year ( or some meaningful amount of time) to teaching at one of them while learning about all the internal granularity and interacting pieces that truly are fucking up kids lives. Just throwing money is nice and I'm sure there is a ton of data behind his decision, but I can't help but think that a first hand perspective is something Zuckerberg has no desire to even begin to entertain. In fact I get the feeling that like most people ( admittedly myself) ), he would rather avoid it all together.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg and his wife to donate $120M to needy Bay Area schools

#37

Post by InclinedPlane »

The problem with public schooling in the US isn't funding, inflation adjusted per-student funding has more than doubled since the 1970s but educational outcomes haven't budged. Pouring more money into the top of the funnel is the same thing we've been doing for decades, and it hasn't worked. If you want to make a big impact in education you either have to spend money closer to the students or you have to build something disruptive.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg and his wife to donate $120M to needy Bay Area schools

#38

Post by VeejayRampay »

Ihmahr wrote: post #28
VeejayRampay wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Fellow European here) Because: - Obama is a socialist - Trickle-down economics is the only thing that works - Taxing wealth is hating the rich (so basically being a nazi) - Taxing the wealthy doesn't give them a tax cut like donating money to schools or charities does - Because taxing job creators just encourages the moochers and takers (Rinse and repeat ad nauseam until it becomes a way of life)

I think people didn't get that your comment was a caricature / ironic.

Or maybe they did get it, found it heavy-handed and crass and chose to downvote it. I didn't exactly go for subtlety to be quite frank. Doesn't matter anyway, that's why Hacker News has +/- buttons to begin with :)

Re: Mark Zuckerberg and his wife to donate $120M to needy Bay Area schools

#39

Post by [deleted] »

sytelus wrote: post #31
L_Rahman wrote: post #14

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_...

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…

[deleted]

Re: Mark Zuckerberg and his wife to donate $120M to needy Bay Area schools

#40

Post by fantomass »

fdsary wrote: post #13

From a Scandinavian point of view this seems like such a detour. Why wait for billionaires to be so kind of fund schools when you could tax wealth and fund public and universal education? Why do the American people chose this way time after time?

Honestly, I don't like this kind of condescending comments. I'm european too and I hear this kind of statements all the time.

We Europeans in general and particular Scandinavians have it very easy to judge in our warm and cuddly nests.

A lot of what is wrong in the U.S. today goes back to our own absolutely unparalleled failure in the roughly 40 years between 1940 until 1980.

I think the American people could be far more powerful and demanding if they weren't hindered by their absurd notion of "socialism". And the reason why the politians can pull this term out of the cage in order to scare and control their folks is rooted in our continent.

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