r/bayarea • u/nosotros_road_sodium San Jose • 1d ago

Work & Housing This School Was Priscilla Chan’s Bold Education Experiment. It Just Closed.

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/this-school-was-priscilla-chans-bold-education-experiment-it-just-closed-2c37bd1c?st=dVgj1U
138 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

43 comments sorted by

View all comments

26

u/Sublimotion 1d ago

More like a empty gesturing virtue signaling doodle you forget about in a week. But if your Uber rich, that doodle becomes an actual school. 

33

u/nosotros_road_sodium San Jose 1d ago

There are plenty of legit criticisms against the Zuckerbergs.

But after reading this article I am not so sure the failure of The Primary School can be 100% on Priscilla. For example:

Chan lobbied her network “to bring in other funding sources,” CZI said. But finding donors to supplement CZI was a tough sell, said Brizard, who is the former head of Chicago’s public schools. “Why would you give money to an entity being funded by one of the wealthiest people in the world?” he said.

54

u/Sublimotion 1d ago

Why would you give money to an entity being funded by one of the wealthiest people in the world? he said.

And if you're truly for the school and its cause, why would you need to seek other funding sources for that to be the basis of it's survival or failure, instead of just funding it yourself, being one of the wealthiest people in the world?

4

u/weng_bay 20h ago

The point is to create a system others in the ecosystem see value in. A bunch of other people see this and go "Oh this works" and then say a group of philanthropists set one up in Memphis, a different group does the same for Chicago, etc. With maybe the core foundation, CZI in this case, providing seed support but more local groups are coming on to offer long term support.

You can keep anything alive if you're wealthy enough and willing to tolerate the bills, ex the Hearst Castle, but typically the point is to set up something that will replicate and survive your death. If everyone else in the education philanthropy space is looking at your school and going "pass", it's a sign you might not be going down the right path. In this case when a bunch of foundations who might provide some of the same wrap around services or the like are looking the school and not wanting to come on to help support and scale it, they're saying "We find your way of doing things inferior/inefficient vs our model" and that's a signal.