On Mark Zuckerberg & Newark Schools

Marc Oestreich

When you set out to create Facebook (then "The Facebook") you didn't work within the confines of what was already there. You built what should be there.

You could easily have volunteered to work with the powers at Myspace, or funnel your venture capital into their infrastructure. After all, they had already built the full site, found an audience, and created a monopoly of sorts in the market for social networking. You could have simply recognized their dominance and bowed before it, but you didn't. You, my friend, are an inventor. You have been endowed with a natural affinity for understanding what the public needs... even when that doesn't yet exist. This is why its so surprising to see what you've done with your charitable giving.

What about the current public school system made you think an injection of $100 million would be beneficial? School spending per pupil has risen dramatically over the last 25 years with almost no resulting gain in achievement. Non-teacher staff positions in public schools have grown by almost 200 percent while enrollment has pushed up no more than 9 percent. Public schools are increasingly bureaucratic, increasingly resistant to change, and decreasingly useful.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at November 20, 2010 1:01 AM
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