There are, broadly speaking, two ways to reform institutions: from the top down, via an alliance of elites; and from the bottom up, with the impetus coming from those who are affected by the system and want to see it altered. Elites pushing social change ought not to forget that the legitimacy that will sustain their reforms will come from the bottom.
The Prize is a meticulously reported case study of one elite alliance’s attempt to reform public education in an American city. The alliance in this case is comprised of Mayor (now Senator) Cory Booker, Governor Chris Christie, and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. These three set themselves the task of transforming the schools in Newark, New Jersey, a city that has suffered tremendously since the advent of Eisenhower’s Interstate highway system, the creation of suburbs and attendant white flight (the uprooting of so many residents their quick replacement was, Dale Russakoff tells us, "the fastest and most tumultuous turnover of any American city except Detroit or Gary, Indiana") and an upsurge in crime and drug abuse.
Russakoff explains how the rot of public institutions that began after the Second World War continued—to the chagrin of the city’s new residents—until 1995, when the state finally took over control of the schools, declaring that the city had shown itself incompetent to administer education to the public. But despite state control and the second-highest per pupil spending in the nation (behind only Washington, D.C.), Newark’s public education system continued to deteriorate.
In 2010, Zuckerberg announced on the Oprah Winfrey Show, with Christie and Booker by his side, a $100 million gift to reform Newark public education. "You could flip a whole city!" Booker told Zuckerberg, who became convinced that that Newark could become "a symbol of educational excellence for the whole nation."
Neither Booker nor Zuckerberg said much about fixing Newark schools for Newark residents. Indeed, "their stated goal was not simply to repair education in Newark but to develop a model for saving it in all of urban America—and to do it in five years." Without doubt, this model would be great to have. But a model is clean, cut, and dried. It doesn’t admit of the messy details that come up when you involve actual humans, let alone the passionate concerns they have for their young—and for their own job security.
Newark residents had reason to be concerned, and interests they felt determined to defend. For years, they had lived in a city the ruling class of which had abandoned the downtown and yet continued to govern. Zuckerberg hardly understood the environment he was walking into. Then again, and less defensibly, neither did Booker. Why didn’t the mayor know his own city well enough to see that a flashy, top-down model of reform pushed by outsiders would be fatally flawed?
While Booker was a master recruiter, salesman, and marketing mind, Russakoff makes a strong case that he ultimately failed to implement the plan because he did not get Newark’s citizenry on board. Booker’s leadership style combined two elements: personally pitching in—he is known for lending a hand during snow-storms and, in one instance, for rescuing a lady from a burning building—and publicizing his personal heroics. Known as the "rock-star mayor," Booker attracted the attention of national figures. But as Clement Price, a local historian and Rutgers professor, told Russakoff, "[t]here’s no such thing as a rock-star mayor. You’re either a rock star or a mayor. You can’t be both."
Although the reformers ultimately failed to persuade the skeptical population of Newark that their vision was the right one, they were able to install charter schools into Newark and more or less dismantle the faculty seniority system that had ruled teacher promotion in Newark, partially replacing it with a merit-based system. But the new contract did not get rid of the seniority clauses enshrined in New Jersey state law. It was dependent on the donation money from Zuckerberg, which was limited and eventually ran out.
The Prize is an excellent report from the front lines of education reform, breaking off abruptly because the story is still underway. Russakoff gives her readers all the tools they will need to understand whatever is going to happen next.