Questions For Zuckerberg’s $100M Waste

by mistermchem

In case you’re not aware, the New Yorker recently wrote an article regarding Mark Zuckerberg’s $100M donation (Business Insider summary linked here) to Newark and its failure to actually do anything useful. You should check that out before reading below.

It’s important to understand when you’re defeated. The climate change naysayers have experienced that feeling in a big way this past week, seeing the report from the national climate assessment and the inevitable 10 foot sea level rise in as little as 200 years. Hopefully, they will put their egos and fake science behind them and realize that they’re doing more harm than good by clinging to what can no longer be considered a belief. I see this event as one of these moments for education. Mark Zuckerberg, who had completely great intentions and ideas, gave a medium sized city $100M to fix its schools. In three and a half years it’s vanished.

As far as I’m concerned, and trust me, I have my qualms against some teachers, but the people working in the classrooms of this District are completely excused from any fault regarding this issue. They do not allocate the funds, they do not have say over their use, and thus they are not responsible for the disappearing fortune. The blame for wasting $100M fall squarely on the heads of the administration, with some side blame falling to the feet of the third party organizations receiving funding.  So let’s explore some hard questions we need to start asking about our schools that some of these administrators could answer.

Why does the District feel it needs to spend so much money on consulting?

People always complain about spending money on consultants, third party professional development, and guest speakers. It’s easy to complain. A more important question is why do schools feel like they need to? There are only three answers: pressure, incompetence, or corruption. I’m an optimist and maybe a little naive, so I’m not going to talk about number three. The first two factors, however, are real. Schools feel pressure from outside sources to succeed, so they turn to outside sources to get them there. There will always be pressure for one reason or another, so this will not go away. Schools must learn to deal with this pressure appropriately.

The issue of incompetence is one that can be remedied. It’s a sad state when the administration of the public schools in all of Newark feels it does not have enough expertise within the organization to the point where it also feels the need to hire $20M worth of consulting. Part of the problem may be that the talent doesn’t exist to be hired, but I don’t buy that. Even if it didn’t exist, a homegrown solution, one that is conceived within the District for the District, will have infinitely more pull than one composed by a third party. Take teacher evaluation, one of the tasks consultants were hired for by Newark. If a group of outstanding teachers from within the District were asked to develop an evaluation system for the teachers within its walls, and this proposal was taken to the administration in charge of the schools, then a few things start to occur. First, this system by nature is better than one written by a third party, since it’s tailor-made for the specific needs of Newark. Second, the District hired PR specialists to aid in what I’m sure is negative press regarding the District and its infusion of cash; these people would no longer be necessary due to the incredibly positive press that would be generated by a teacher-created system.

It’s important for schools to realize this and take the example from the rest of the world. Apple doesn’t bring in third party designers for their products: they are the experts. If a school district doesn’t believe it has an expert in multiple areas it needs help with, the answer is not to hire consultants for $1,000 per day, it’s to hire new staff. We need to, as an entire educational field, start becoming the experts ourselves.

Why do schools pay consultants such a ridiculous amount of money?

I do not have a price list for services rendered, but the article cites that some consultants charged $1000 per day of work.  That is absolutely ludicrous. Teacher’s are offered a per diem rate of between $120 – $280 for things like curriculum design, committee participation over the summer, and what not, depending on their school district. Why on earth are we paying consultants between five and eight times this amount? Surely, a school can find something more useful to pay a teacher to do for a week over the summer than whatever a consultant would be doing in one day. Is the best use of $20M truly on consulting? Absolutely not, but administrators are more likely to listen to marketing pitches from consulting firms than insights from actual educators. It’s almost as if the consulting firms waltz into the offices of administrators and swindle them into believing that they deserve $1000 per day, and then drag their work out over an extended period of time to take further advantage of them. Wait a second…that’s exactly what happens! Schools really need to learn to say no to these people and hold them accountable for the work they’re hired to do, just like schools need to learn to hold their own staff accountable for what they do; teachers and administrators.

Why are we spending money on things like buying out teacher contracts?

Let’s not forget where part of the other $37M went – buying out teacher contracts. There are three universal things that every single educator would agree upon makes for a better learning situation: teacher to student ratio, parent involvement, and a safe school environment. We can’t buy the last two but we can certainly buy the first one. I could do infinitely better if all of a sudden there were 7 students in each one of my classes. Imagine if a Newark teacher had the time to follow up at home, something notoriously difficult with city schools, or really get to know a kid and help him or her find out what they’re good at? This is not universally possible with 26 kids per class, so I find it ridiculous that an enormous chunk of this money was spent on buying out teachers when it could have been spent on hiring more.

How will this district be held accountable for their actions?

Schools need to start asking this question more frequently. How can folks be held accountable for their performance? Surely, the superintendent of this school district must be fired, right? The mayor? The superintendent’s cabinet? Someone? I’ll tell you what, if I wasted a $100M dollar investment for my company, I’d fire myself for my own good. I don’t think I’m the only person in a leadership role that would do that. Unfortunately, schools don’t even have the capacity to fire ineffective employees, let alone ineffective leadership.

How come nobody in charge of spending this money actually does anything?

At some point, someone has to get dirty. Let me explain how this process works: superintendent allocates funds for development of initiative A at school. District administrators in charge of initiative A then outline a plan for implementation at school. School administrators then receive plan and develop plan to adapt it to school. Plan is distributed to teachers who may or may not follow it, are not accountable for following it, and usually have no reason to care about it. Superintendent and/or district administrators observe implementation of plan for a day or two, say some words of praise about it, and never return to the school.

This is simply not good enough. It’s insane. If a superintendent or administrator really wants to implement a plan at a school, he or she should be in charge of personally seeing to its completion. The handoff system we have in place is not only not productive, it breeds indifference, incompetence, and by the time the plan is actually implemented, it suffers from the telephone effect and is likely a shadow of its original intent. The level of disconnect administrators have with their various initiatives and programs is mind boggling. Film directors are involved at almost every level of detail within their movie, Zuckerberg coded most of Facebook himself before he was more useful doing other things, and even chiefs of fire departments go into burning houses. People in charge of schools? Basically nothing. I’m not sure why it’s tolerated.

 

There are many important questions to ask and consequences to impose surrounding this tremendous waste of money. I would be lying if I didn’t say I sincerely hope everyone in charge of spending that money is fired. It’s simply unacceptable to throw away $100M with no consequences. In the bigger picture, however, we need to start asking these uncomfortable questions about our administrative structure in education. Any system that can waste this much money is clearly not in the best interest of our students, even if they all have good intentions. Good intentions don’t produce results, as beautifully exemplified by the $100M waste.