Zuck, like Gates before him, has realized that the only way to gain the respect of polite society is by wasting millions on hopeless progressive projects. Vietnamese students with a fraction of the educational budget easily outscore Newark's pupils on international assessments. Who really thinks Newark will be changed by this?
This is a pretty cynical take on things. Newark has improved considerably over the last decade and hopefully things like this will speed up the process.
The Ironbound district is coming along nicely, with restaurants and art galleries popping up around large corporate offices, many escaping nyc's high rent. I'd recommend visiting if you haven't been recently.
And yes, a lot of work is still necessary. It doesn't mean we should give up on it. If anything, I'd argue we should pay more attention to it if things are as bad as you think they are.
"Vietnamese students with a fraction of the educational budget"
I agree with you that pouring more money doesn't mean thing will get better, but costs are different for people living in America vs Vietnam. This is an unfair and dishonest comparison.
The thing is though that in the U.S. the research has shown that increased spending doesn't mean improved outcomes, whereas in other countries this isn't necessarily true. I'm all for improving outcomes in schooling, but if you want to do that by putting money into it then you have to do so in a country where more money buys better outcomes, and that isn't the case here.
Under the current system, the worst students cost far more to educate than the best students. Because of this you can slice the numbers to say everything from money is harmful, meaningless, or beneficial. The simple truth is in education resources matter but like all things there are significant diminishing returns after a while.
"Under the current system, the worst students cost far more to educate than the best students."
This is an excellent argument against the current system. The reason why the worst students cost more to educate using the Gary Plan is largely because of expensive pull-outs, which isn't a problem under, say, Open Systems Instruction.[1] Under the current system they actually talk about Total Adjusted Pupil Units rather than students, which shows just how pervasive the problem is.
The ROI from educating poor students is actually fairly high. The cost gap between someone at minimum wage vs. welfare vs. prison is huge. It's generally speaking much easier and more cost effective to avoid a single teen pregnancy that to fund enrichment programs.
Grab a copy of Equality and Achievement by Riordan. It's the best introduction to education research there is. The cites on financial issues are in the chapter on between school effects.
"And how unanimous are these views amongst sociologists? I'd imagine there is disagreement on the subject?"
As far as I know there isn't much disagreement about the fact that school funding doesn't correlate well with outcomes, but there is obviously a lot of disagreement about how to translate this into actual reforms.
In terms of assessing the validity of the original research though, I get the feeling that in this case the answers you get are much more determined by the questions you're asking rather than by the methodology of the studies. Unlike, say, when you are trying to understand how the results of surveys on self-reported drug use correlate with actual drug use, and you need to read a 594 page PDF worth of research before you're able to say anything intelligent.[1] (Which I read last night for fun, which is why I know this.)
I disagree on Gates wasting money. If you put enough money at nearly any problem you can solve it. The question is just how much will it take. If anyone has a chance in Africa it's Gates.
