[nymph]

Precious.

Another instance of the principle that money is, in many ways, like violence: you'd like to think that if it hasn't solved your problem already, if you just keep throwing more and more at it it, you'll solve it eventually -- but all to often, it just makes the problem worse.

And inasmuch as Zuck would like to believe that being young means you're smarter... whatever your baseline, oftentimes, having too much money -- in Zuck's case, literally more money than he knows what to do with -- just makes us stupider.

Between 2010 and 2012, The New Yorker reports that "more than twenty million dollars of Zuckerberg’s gift and matching donations went to consulting firms with various specialties: public relations, human resources, communications, data analysis, [and] teacher evaluation." Many of the consultants were being paid upwards of $1,000 a day.

“Everybody’s getting paid but Raheem still can’t read," Vivian Cox Fraser, president of the Urban League of Essex County, was quoted saying.

[gwern]

At the time, people were wondering if it was a PR move to help defuse _The Social Network_. Zuckerberg isn't mentioned as being incensed at the waste of money, so...

[mikeash]

I often compare XML to violence: "if it doesn't solve your problem, you need to use more."

Perhaps in Zuckerberg's case, it was PHP rather than XML.

In any case, the headline gets a gigantic "well, DUH" from me. Two reasons:

1. It strikes me as unlikely that a lack of funding is Newark's fundamental problem here.

2. Even if lack of money is the fundamental problem, the annual budget for the system is a billion dollars. Why would anyone expect 10% of their annual budget, spent over a period of years, to do anything interesting?