Education Week - September 9, 2015 - 28

COMMENTARY

How Mark Zuckerberg's $100 Million Gift Found
Its Way to Newark's Public Schools

For an update on developments in the Newark
district, see the news article on Page 1.
Getty

Editor's note: This is an excerpt from The Prize:
Who's in Charge of America's Schools?, Dale Russakoff's just-published book that details the backstory of
how two public figures-a mayor and a governor-attracted an infusion of private money in an attempt to
transform a flagging school district. One of the most
closely watched philanthropic gifts to public education, the $100 million commitment to Newark, N.J.'s
public schools by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg
ultimately fell short of its ambitious goal. But the
book sheds light on how then-Mayor Cory Booker, an
African-American Democrat, and recently elected New
Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a white suburban Republican, undertook a controversial drive to change the city's
school system, including by expanding charter schools,
weakening tenure protections, and evaluating teachers
based on student test scores. Their aim-and Zuckerberg's-was to "create a model for solving the education
crisis in all of urban America," says Russakoff.

By Dale Russakoff
n July of 2010, Cory Booker found himself
in the company of billionaires and multimillionaires at the posh and secluded Sun Valley
Resort, in the mountains of central Idaho, for
a ritual mixing of big business and pleasure.
The invitation-only extravaganza of dealmaking and schmoozing for media moguls
and investors, hosted by New York banker
Herbert Allen, drew the richest and most famous people in the business. That year's guest list for the first
time included 26-year-old Mark Zuckerberg, founder of
Facebook. Booker had his sights set on Zuckerberg to
fund his and Christie's plans for the Newark schools.
As it turned out, Zuckerberg wanted to meet him, too.
The Newark mayor had an extraordinary social
network of his own, but for this particular connection,
Booker once again had his Yale Law School classmate
Ed Nicoll to thank.
When Booker was still a city councilman, Nicoll in-

| INSIDE |

troduced him to one of his investors, a venture capitalist named Marc Bodnick. Booker remembered Nicoll
briefing him: "This guy's a diehard Democrat and also
hates the failures in education and heard that you believed in everything from vouchers to charter schools,
whatever, and wants to meet you." They clicked in the
first meeting.
In what turned into a networking trifecta for Booker,
Bodnick later married Michelle Sandberg, whose sister
Sheryl became chief operating officer of Facebook in
2008. In mid-2010, according to Booker, Bodnick tipped
him that the Facebook founder was planning a significant philanthropic move, "something big" in education.
Then Bodnick learned that Sandberg, Zuckerberg,
and Booker all would be at Allen's annual Sun Valley
mixer, and Booker got another alert. "He said, 'Make
sure you connect with Sheryl and her husband out
there, because they want to connect you with Mark,' "
Booker said.
As always at the Sun Valley event, the panel discussions featured some of the most interesting and
compelling people in the country and the world. It was
not surprising that a discussion on the future of cities
included leaders from centers of commerce, culture,
and influence, like Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New
York, and Richard Daley, mayor of Chicago. The third
panelist, whose city had long ago lost its wealth and
influence, was Booker. Like Zuckerberg, Booker was
a first-timer at Sun Valley, and he poked fun at the
incongruity of his presence. He felt, he said, like a community college sitting beside the Harvard and Yale of
mayors.
But the incongruity was what made Booker intriguing. He was in fact completely at ease among the rich
and powerful. For years, he had been a regularly featured guest at Manhattan celebrity galas and Hollywood premieres, a sought-after speaker around the
country at political fundraisers, charity events, and college commencements, a frequent chatting partner on
late-night talk shows. Wherever he traveled, he made
rich people want to write checks for causes in Newark:

GOODBYE,
SACRED COWS?

28 | EDUCATION WEEK | September 9, 2015 | www.edweek.org/go/commentary

LETTERS TO
THE EDITOR

Zuckerberg
invited
Booker on a
walk and
explained
that he was
looking for a
city poised to
upend the
forces
impeding
urban
education."

Brad Pitt financed housing for low-income veterans,
Jon Bon Jovi for HIV/AIDS patients, Oprah Winfrey
for battered women. Shaquille O'Neal was developing
a 12-screen movie complex and high-rise apartments.
Even United States senators marveled at the way this
mayor of an impoverished city coaxed money from the
wealthiest donors.
Booker and Zuckerberg met at a buffet dinner one
night on the deck of Herbert Allen's Sun Valley townhouse, overlooking a golf course and a stream. They
shared a table with Amazon's Jeff Bezos and media executive Michael Eisner, among others. Afterward, Zuckerberg invited Booker on a walk and explained that he
was looking for a city poised to upend the forces impeding urban education, where his money could make
the difference and create a national model. Booker responded with a pitch that showcased what made him
such a dazzling fundraiser.
The mayor of Newark understood well that venture
philanthropists were looking for a "proof point," a
city where they could deploy multiple initiatives and
demonstrate measurable improvement in poor children's achievement. He already had pitched Newark
to many of them as fertile ground for charter growth,
emphasizing its proximity to a huge teaching talent
pool across the Hudson River and its manageable size in
contrast to New York, where then-Chancellor Joel Klein,
a hero of reformers, had shaken the school system's
foundations but hadn't begun to reach all 1.2 million
students. In raising $20 million for the Newark Charter
School Fund in 2008, Booker had emphasized the success of some of Newark's earliest charter schools and
New Jersey's generous school funding formula-more
than twice the amount per pupil as in California, for
example. Now, he was pitching Zuckerberg on the next
stage of the vision-Newark as a proof point for turning
PAGE 24 >

DALE RUSSAKOFF spent 28 years as a reporter for The Washington
Post, covering politics, education, social policy, and other topics. The
Prize (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) is her first book.

Q&A WITH
KEVIN JENNINGS

http://www.edweek.org/go/commentary

Education Week - September 9, 2015

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