They were not aiming at the root of the problem: massive poverty and massive inequality.
In fact I'd go further, $100 million is nothing. What is probably needed is billions of dollars worth of investment in public services.
While this is completely true, you also have to factor in politics. Take a look what's happening in NYC right now. You have charter schools that are doing incredible work in low income areas and De Blasio wants to shut them down:
"Bill de Blasio, who repeatedly singled her out on the campaign trail as the embodiment of what he saw was wrong in schooling, and who last week followed his word with deed, canceling plans for three of her schools in New York City while leaving virtually all other charter proposals untouched."
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/05/nyregion/de-blasio-and-bui...
Yet, there I am helping them, raising money for equipment, buying them rPi's, trying to teach them Python, implementing software for their FRC robot and trying to act as an all around mentor.
My cost to the CPS is negative (I bring in all the money, $1k-$2k here, from my company). This is the solution I'm talking about. Of course, my impact is minimal. But money from donors such as Zuckerberg could be used to create bigger grassroots efforts and amplify the impact greatly.
Ask yourself: What is the solution that YOU suggest? Reading the thread I was only one concrete suggestions, using the $100M to open a calling center in the area. Is that the best we can do?
How ironic. You write off an entire group of people because of their background as not being able to understand a problem and then throw out the privilege (AKA: "You are being preemptively blacklisted from this argument) card. In a thread about education.
Seriously?
If a group of people haven't got the background to understand a problem, they aren't likely to produce a solution that is viable. I don't see how that's a controversial statement. We "exclude" on this basis all the time in our every day lives (e.g. by selecting doctors for solutions to medical problems, as opposed to, say, firemen or physicists), because it's entirely rational and the empirically correct thing to do.
People go to to med school to become doctors, you don't automatically blacklist everyone of a particular socioeconomic/racial background (NB: there's a word for this..) as being incapable of having the background necessary to be a doctor.