By Brian Thiemer:

Education is a vital and noble cause that requires hearty investments of money and time. Measuring the efficiency of the money poured into the ‘black box’ that is our education system is a subjective but necessary metric. There are those who feel that “Any dollar spent on education is a dollar well spent,” but education performance does not necessarily rise with the education budget.

One notable example of this phenomenon is ongoing in New Jersey. The Newark school district, already equipped with a billion dollar budget, has a 67 percent graduation rate. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, in conjunction with then-mayor Cory Booker and Governor Chris Christie, offered to donate $100 million of his wealth to the school district over 5 years, provided that matching funds were developed.  This would provide $40 million dollars a year to a needy school district.  Yet, after a few years of this resource infusion, the school district has nothing to show, other than a pile of invoices from a herd of consultants.

via Expenditure request raises skepticism on school funding woes – The Reporter.