Philanthropy: Not The Answer For Connecticut’s Public Schools
The news is full of the story of the Dalio Philanthropies donating $100 million to the Connecticut public schools. But is private philanthropy the best way to fund public education? I think not.
The Prize by Dale Russakoff documents the disaster it was when Mark Zuckerberg donated $100 million, which was matched by another $100 million from other philanthropists, to improve public education in Newark, NJ. The failure has been attributed to the “parachuting in” of outside consultants rather than rallying the forces within the school system and to the political football the $200 million became among local officeholders, among them Cory Booker and Chris Christie. Similarly, Bill and Melinda Gates gave over $400 million to design, promote, and implement the Common Core Standards. The Common Core Standards, designed without input from educators, have greatly reduced the quality of education for students and produced absolutely no increase in student achievement, even by the weak measure of standardized test scores. The results of these well-intentioned philanthropic efforts: NOTHING.
The way to create a state of the art public school system is not found in hand-outs, no matter how generous or how headline-worthy. Instead the way to CONTINUE READING: Philanthropy: Not The Answer For Connecticut’s Public Schools | Real Learning CT
