Newark, New Jersey, may have been an idyllic American pastoral in the days of Philip Roth’s youth, but you wouldn’t want to be a kid there in this century. Drugs, gangs, and the 70 percent single-motherhood rate aside, education had become ancillary to the purpose of Newark public schools. Described by one observer as “a candy store that’s a front for a gambling operation,” the money that came with control of the schools was the “prize” that urban Democrats fought to possess.
Mayor Cory Booker promised to be a new breed of Democrat and saw in the Newark schools a new kind of prize: a laboratory to test and prove the promise of radical education reform. Republican governor Chris Christie was eager to shake up the status quo and challenge the teachers’ union. Booker pitched Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg that, with $100 million, they “could flip a whole city!” In September 2010, the troika appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s television show to present and accept the gift.
For education reformers convinced that poverty could be solved given the will and the money, it was a dream come true. With Booker as mayor, the schools under Christie’s stewardship, and Zuckerberg’s money in hand, reformers could bring in hard-charging leaders to reorganize the district, renegotiate a “game-changing” teacher contract to allow principals to hire, fire, and pay based on merit, and launch new charter schools, funded by the state but run by private organizations.
Dale Russakoff, a veteran education reporter, was given a front-row seat to it all, and The Prize is her balanced and incisive chronicle of how the reformers’ dreams turned into a political nightmare. Booker insisted publicly that he’d pursue “bottom-up” reforms, but actually relied exclusively on thousand-dollar-a-day consultants. When the consultants’ plans were leaked, public opposition flared, as much for the process as the substance. Reactionary critics often call reformers “neo-colonialists,” and to Newark residents, this all seemed like a plot by rich white outsiders to run their schools and make a profit.
Hopes for a game-changing teacher contract were quickly dashed, as reformers learned that teacher tenure protections were enshrined in state law. New, high-quality charter schools were launched, but Booker had no plan for the public schools as the students left for charters and money followed them. He blithely assumed that they were “going to flower, just like the cherry blossoms in Branch Brook Park.” Inevitably, public schools had to be closed, sparking harsh political backlash. Booker was largely absent from the day-to-day management, yet he was omnipresent on Twitter and television, earning the nickname “Mayor Hollywood.” He could captivate an audience, but when it came to running a city, one city hall aide reflected, “Everybody who comes to work here arrives with a hard-on or a crush, and then at some point you say, ‘WTF?’ ”
At a Newark public school board meeting, six proposals to open specialized schools were voted down to a crowd chanting “Cory fails! Cory fails!” But New Jersey’s commissioner of education, Chris Cerf, overruled the board’s decision, telling Russakoff: “I can’t have any more talks about ‘respecting the community.’ . . . They’re literally not entitled, not entitled to have their voice taken seriously. At the end of the day, I have to do what’s right.”
Condescending, neocolonialist, even — but at least Cerf is honest. Listening to his plans, a former Newark school board member objected, “I get nervous when we’re talking about schoolchildren and you say, ‘Change is going to have casualties.’ I don’t want to take risks with children.” But Cerf and his colleagues barreled ahead.
Surveying the path left in their wake, Russakoff faults the reformers for not taking the time to understand the needs of the community and concludes that, five years on, “there was at least as much rancor as reform.” It’s a depressing diagnosis, but it may be a bit too sanguine to imply that the reforms could have been received without rancor.
Even if Cory Booker were the world’s greatest mayor rather than a showboating schlemiel, all reform runs risks. No matter how many casualties are claimed by the status quo, parents will always be risk averse. Any meaningful school reform will be hotly contested, especially when it is directed by outsiders, involves closing down schools, and is opposed by a powerful and entrenched teachers’ union. And it’s not just the unions holding back change, as one mother said at a school board meeting:
In the inner city, we’re of the mentality that the government should take care of us, and when they don’t, we yell and get mad and go home and think we’ve done our job.
Reformers often wave away the import of parental neglect and assume that they can fix poverty through improving schools. That may be a skewed social perspective; but Russakoff’s reporting offers anecdotal evidence that good schools can actually change parents. Princess Williams, the teacher-heroine of The Prize, at first refused to abandon her public school for a charter. Armed with extra money from the reforms, she spearheaded a school improvement effort centered on engaging with parents and offering wrap-around services for families. Her successes bringing parents in and helping them help their children were truly inspiring. But she grew frustrated with the district’s inflexibility and finally decided to leave for a charter school. Williams concluded that charters were simply better able to allocate resources where they’re needed.
She’s right. Newark public schools spend $19,650 per pupil, but only $9,604 reaches the classroom. Charters spend $16,400, but $12,664 reaches the classroom. Students in Newark charter schools learn roughly twice as much in a year as kids in public school. After all the dust settles, the charter schools launched with Zuckerberg’s money will be left standing: By 2017, 10,000 children who would have been in public schools will be enrolled in charters.
Zuckerberg, apparently chastened by his experience in Newark, recently announced plans for $120 million in grants to high-poverty communities in San Francisco for programs that will work with communities rather than try to reform systems. Russakoff, though fair and balanced throughout, seems to endorse his decision.
His money will likely do good there, and will certainly not create a public-relations disaster. But it’s far from clear that he learned the right lesson. Philanthropic money is ultimately a bucket tossed into the sea. Sustainable change will help schools spend public money better. For all of the reformers’ dashed dreams, the one thing Mark Zuckerberg’s money certainly accomplished was a leveraged buy-out to grow the charter sector in Newark and shrink the public school district. The right lesson might be to focus less on top-down efforts to fix the public system and more on starting new and better schools.
That might not flatter the sensibilities of technocratic reformers, convinced they can fix everything and help everyone, but it could mitigate the rancor. Still, so long as we live in a world of scarce resources, charters will cause casualties and the fight will turn ugly. But just because that approach is ugly doesn’t mean there is a prettier one: Decades of failing urban school districts suggests that there’s not. It would be a shame if the example of Newark and the fear of epithets dissuaded future philanthropists from making more bids at the prize.
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