A better way to spend $100 million

LITTLE ROCK — Here’s my (perhaps uncharitable) question about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million donation to Newark schools, announced with great fanfare on Oprah Winfrey’s show last week. Newark famously spends more money per pupil than just about any district in the country-$22,000 vs. $10,800 nationally. So it can’t be that money is the answer.

To be sure, I know that philanthropy can be critical to help fund reforms during the transition from old, bad ways of doing things to newer, smarter ways. Foundation funding has been central, for example, to Michelle Rhee’s plans to give much higher teacher salaries in exchange for greater professionalism in Washington, even though Washington has, like Newark, illustrated the notion that vast gobs of cash disappear in urban school bureaucracies without a trace. I’m also a big fan of both Newark Mayor Cory Booker, a Democrat, and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Republican, and I’m thus ready to stipulate that any education initiative they’re behind is probably worth supporting.

Still, given how rich Newark’s funding already is, I can’t help wishing the California-based Zuckerberg had looked for opportunities to fund cash-starved school innovations closer to home. In Los Angeles, for example, where the legacy of Proposition 13-which in 1978 capped the tax rate for real estate, eventually leading to fewer resources for public education-has left per pupil funding around $9,000. And great charter school operators such as Green Dot schools are given only $7,800 per pupil-barely more than a third of the resources Newark already enjoys. Yet Green Dot is transforming lives for thousands of poor kids, and with Zuckerberg-scale help they could offer lifelines to thousands more.

If, as the trailer for the upcoming movie The Social Network quips, “you can’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies,” it’s probably also true that you can’t give away hundreds of millions without making a few mistakes.

Here’s hoping Zuckerberg is open to learning more about where his cash for schools might make an even bigger difference.