Billionaire Zuckerberg proves school choice only hope for failing urban school districts
Mark Zuckerberg’s been in the news for taking some conservative turns of late: he’s eliminated fact-checkers at Facebook, removed tampons from the men’s room at Meta offices and been seen…

Mark Zuckerberg’s been in the news for taking some conservative turns of late: he’s eliminated fact-checkers at Facebook, removed tampons from the men’s room at Meta offices and been seen hanging out with Donald Trump.
While this is refreshing, it’s easy to forget that in 2010, he gave $100 million to help reform Newark, New Jersey public schools. After 15 years, what did his money buy?
A recently minted billionaire after taking Facebook public, the young Zuckerberg supported plans by then-Newark Mayor and later Sen. Cory Booker to give students in the city’s failing school district choices, including charter and private schools.
Booker, a Democrat, tried to reform a system so bad it was still failing even after the state took it over in 1995 (it returned to full local control starting in 2018). He wanted more charter schools, the closing of failing schools and the monitoring of teacher performance to make sure students were improving.
Booker left the mayorship in 2013 to join the Senate, but a decade later, most of his reforms are still in place. And the district, while still troubled, is improving.
An analysis of several reports on the pros and cons of Booker’s efforts yields some conclusions:
The reforms were an overall success, and a testament to the effectiveness of charter schools and school choice. Despite initial pushback, most of what was built is still there today and producing superior results to what existed beforehand.
It’s not perfect and hasn’t solved all of Newark’s problems, but Booker, Zuckerberg and other donors were ultimately right: Something had to be done to fix the city’s failing schools, and school choice – including the proliferation of charter schools – has played a key role in that.
Charters are producing better results in Newark and could be further expanded. Yes, there was pain when some neighborhood schools shut down, but that was dictated by declining enrollment.
And that begs the question: If those schools offered such a great education, why did parents pull their children out when given a choice? This should be factored into ongoing debates about school choice when fearmongers claim it will cause beloved schools to close.
Anyone hoping for a magic bullet to solve a decades-long broken system is probably naive. Booker knew there would be strong opposition to his reforms, including from teachers’ unions and those who benefited under the old system. But with most of his reforms still standing and producing good fruit, it was worth it.
Implementing change was difficult and costly at times – change usually is – but good results have endured. Not great results, necessarily, since there’s plenty more work to be done – but you can make a solid argument that what Booker, et al., did has improved the education of thousands of Newark students, elevating a decrepit district into something viable, hopeful and capable of improvement. And that counts as success.
If you set an impossible standard, then you’re going to be disappointed. Did people really expect Booker, or anyone, to be able to take Newark from worst to first? Those who would criticize Booker should also blame the teachers’ unions, which let the district reach the point of a state takeover because it was failing so badly.
Revolutionaries rarely win kindness contests. They’re often rough, tough and determined because they have to be to make change.
This is not to defend every tactic Booker used, including a top-down approach that famously didn’t include many voices from district residents.
Sure, he overpaid consultants and relied on outside experts to turn Newark schools around. Was any blood shed in the process? Absolutely. Could things have been done in a gentler and more incremental way? Perhaps. But what did take place was necessary and has borne fruit, including changes that otherwise wouldn’t have been made.
If you look at the district today, it’s performing better than other urban districts with similar socioeconomic woes. There’s upward momentum, especially among the one-third of students who are attending charter schools. Opportunities and attention are present today that weren’t there two decades ago. These count as wins.
And if further school choice is enabled, as Booker originally said to include “Jewish schools and Catholic schools,” what further improvements could be made for Newark students?
Broad school choice has empowered innovation in things such as special education, which costs public schools disproportionately per student and yields mixed outcomes. If the education monopoly is broken, everyone wins – except corrupt teachers’ unions and their entrenched members.
In the fight to help our nation’s children, especially in failing urban districts, choice is the clear path forward. And nothing Zuckerberg, Cory Booker and Co. did disproves that. It only makes the case stronger.
In 2025 and beyond, let freedom ring!
Photo: Gary He for Facebook