Tag: Philanthropy

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative may not yet have the reach and influence of the Gates Foundation, but it is fast becoming one of the most significant funders of educational technology development and scientific research into learning and child development. This positions it to become a powerful source of authority in the shaping of education in multiple ways.

Through support for Summit and other charter school operations it is continuing the longstanding project of philanthropic advocacy for alternatives to public education, albeit now in the for-profit mode of disruptive philanthropy. Its personalized learning projects are extending adaptive, data-driven software beyond the charter chains where they have been developed and tested and out into schools and colleges at very large scale. And by funding research and development in learning science and learning engineering, CZI is advancing experimental new understandings of the human brain and cognition into applied teaching practices. It is in other words championing a new model of personalized, precision education that brings together the Silicon Valley culture of disruption, commercial technology, personalized learning advocacy, and new scientific practices modelled on those of precision medicine.

By creating CZI as an LLC, Chan and Zuckerberg also maintain powerful control over their spending and the direction of the organization. This gives them unprecedented power to shape the direction of research and development in education, by selecting and investing in programs that fit their personal vision. These efforts amount to an attempt to experiment on and re-engineer education into the form that Mark Zuckerberg and his networks find desirable, and that they believe can and ought to be pursued and attained. CZI is re-engineering education at scale.