Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Only time will tell if the $100 million pledged last week to the Newark schools by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg turns around the fortunes of the system or was just a good TV moment enjoyed by Oprah Winfrey. However history tells us that Newark has done a great job of wasting money for decades and pessimists like me have little faith the money will be a wise investment although at least in this case the city won’t be wasting taxpayers’ dollars. While everyone is gloating over the donation the truth is that it disguises what continues to be one of the biggest problems in education and it’s especially evident in cities like Newark.

Ask most teachers on the front line what’s a bigger problem….lack of money for supplies or the fact there are too many students wasting everyone’s time and my guess is the later will prevail. I certainly understand that we have an obligation to educate children but at what point does that obligation end? If you have 25 children in a class and three or four are problems they negatively impact the others. I’m not talking about those who have trouble learning but rather those who don’t want to learn and waste time and resources. Why can’t we recognize that there is something wrong with a system in which we remove students from school or in some cases expel them and then send teachers to that student’s home to instruct them. Who do you think pays for that?

Sure we all know there are some late-bloomers who succeeded because others did not give up on them but we have to draw the line. Until we commit more time, energy and money to the gifted rather than delinquents we will continue to fall behind the curve. When it comes to education the good old days really were the good old days. That’s when school administrators were not afraid to punish those who deserved it and stand behind teachers whose classrooms were disrupted. Today there are too many cases where teachers are stuck with bad apples in their classrooms and just told to deal with it.

Only time will tell if that $100 million donation will greatly improve the Newark School System but it’s a change of philosophy and not money that education really needs. Unfortunately none of those in position to do so will ever admit it.