What not to do with $100M
No one is going to turn down $100 million.
That made this month’s announcement by the founder of the world’s largest hedge fund of a massive donation to Connecticut’s public schools a major event. But it was not unprecedented.
It wasn’t long ago that another multibillionaire appeared with leaders of a densely populated Northeastern state to pledge a $100 million gift to public schools. As to how that one worked, the best that can be said is Connecticut can try to learn how to do things better this time around.
In 2010, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg came on Oprah Winfrey’s talk show with Chris Christie, at the time the governor of New Jersey, and Cory Booker, then the mayor of that state’s largest city, to discuss a $100 million gift Zuckerberg’s foundation planned for the Newark public school system. The fiveyear plan was matched by the same amount from other donors, making for a massive infusion aimed at making over a troubled system.
Zuckerberg, Winfrey, Christie and Booker, who as a group could almost make up their own Jeopardy category of “People Who Will Never Be President,” lavished praise on one another as they talked about what promised to be a transformative gift, with Newark’s plan to serve as a national model for reform.
It didn’t quite work out as planned, and nearly a decade later it’s not clear what $200 million over five years accomplished. There were some improvements, but also some backsliding. Some measures got better, but many stayed about the same. A troubled school system then, Newark is still in a tough spot.
Included in the program were millions of dollars spent on consultants drawing up plans in a boardroom that had little to do with what was happening in the classroom. That makes the specifics of plans for the Connecticut money — specifics which do not seem to exist at this point — so crucial.
Booker’s successor as mayor last year mostly dismissed the project on those grounds. “You can’t just cobble up a bunch of money and drop it in the middle of the street and say, ‘This is going to fix everything,’” he said.
Then as now, the eye-catching numbers looked smaller compared to actual education spending, adding up to about 4 percent of what went into Newark schools on an annual basis. And the Facebook money was going to one city, not spread over many in Connecticut.
In this state, the occasion this month was one of those Greenwich-themed get-togethers our governor loves so much, with Ned Lamont and his wife joined on stage at East Hartford High School by Ray and Barbara Dalio, he the founder of the hedge fund Bridgewater and she the operator of the family’s charitable foundation. In addition to their $100 million, the plan calls for the same amount of state money plus a further $100 million from other philanthropic sources.
A lot has changed in the past decade on the education reform front. Booker’s philosophy in Newark of charter schools first, last and always has fallen a bit out of favor, and most of what passed for reform has been exposed as anti-union privatization efforts.
Barbara Dalio, in her telling, had in the past directed her education philanthropy in a charter school-friendly direction. To her credit, she’s moved on. “I realized charter schools have their place and are doing great work, but it really doesn’t solve the problem,” she said recently, probably overstating on the “great work” but at least acknowledging the shortfalls of such an approach.
For now, the Connecticut plan involves jargon like promises to “help advance positive outcomes as quickly and sustainably as possible” and to “utilize practices with demonstrated positive impact,” whatever that means. Already jockeying is underway to ensure that everyone in the state gets a share of what’s coming.
Under a best-case scenario, this should be thought of as a welcome gift, but not anything more than that. An infusion, even a large one, is not a solution. The plan’s purported focus on students who are losing touch with school sounds sensible.
The best idea is something the governor hinted at this year before quickly backing down as the Wiltons of the world erupted. Education in the state would be best-served by a wholesale makeover of the kind that is never going to happen for political reasons. Maybe some of the $300 million could go toward selling rich towns on that whole regionalization thing?