Newark Schools and the Zuckerberg Donation

Posted by Kenneth Ronkowitz on

This is big news online today, but it's even bigger news here in New Jersey. It's also of interest to me for a number of reasons, including that I spent my last year at NJIT (which is in Newark) working at a city high school on technology integration.



Governor Chris Christie (who was my student when he was a high school freshman) and Mayor Cory Booker are expected to say, according to The Star-Ledger, when they appear together on The Oprah Winfrey Show tomorrow, "that the Newark school system, under state control for 15 years, will be placed under Booker’s authority. Booker, with the governor’s support, will embark on an ambitious series of changes long opposed by teachers unions."



What might those changes include? An expansion of charter schools, new achievement standards and methods for judging which schools and teachers are effective.



Of course, the online buzz is that all this will be driven by a challenge grant of $100 million from Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO of Facebook.  Zuckerberg (#35 on Forbes’ list of the richest Americans) is making this personal gift (though most posts imply incorrectly that it is Facebook making the donation) from his own estimated $6.9 billion.



It will be interesting to see what the money will be used for - and what effect it has on the schools. Will students need to have a Facebook account?

 


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