Ahwatukee Foothills News

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, is obviously a rich and smart guy. He recently donated $100 million to the Newark, N.J., public schools in a good-faith effort to improve a failing school system. The results of his philanthropy should be a wake-up call to Arizonans insisting that our schools will be improved if and only if they are boosted with vast infusions of cash.

The impact of Zuckerberg’s generosity was highly disappointing. Nothing really changed. Zuckerberg went through official channels, so the money went mainly to consultants and to raising the salaries and pensions of administrators and unionized teachers. In retrospect, it was highly unlikely that the result could have been much different...