A decade ago, Priscilla Chan set up a school in East Palo Alto which was designed to help children who were being held back by the fact that they grew up in a poor part of town. The "Primary School," set up by Chan was funded by large grants from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, was to provide students with all sorts of free services including free tuition and free medical and dental care. Back in 2015, the hype was about how much this new experiment would change education.

Under the leadership of Zuckerberg's wife, Priscilla Chan, the couple is planning to open their own school in Palo Alto, Calif. The Primary School will serve the children of East Palo Alto and Belle Haven, Kindergarten through grade 12. More distinctively, the school will also provide its students health care services from birth to graduation.

In partnership with Ravenswood Family Health Center, the school will even offer prenatal care for parents. There is no tuition.

The health center, located close to the school, will give comprehensive health and dental care for students and their families. The school will also have an on-site clinic...

“My experiences of running an after school program in a low income housing project and working as a pediatrician in a safety net hospital has shown me first hand that we need a better way of caring for and educating our children,” she wrote in her own Facebook post. “The effects of trauma and chronic stress create an invisible burden for children that makes it very difficult for them to be healthy and live up to their academic potential.”

We must address these issues holistically in order to allow children to succeed,” she added.

This was the sales pitch. A holistic approach to school which included free healthcare for students and families would create a dramatic success which might then be replicated elsewhere. And it got a lot of personal attention from Chan.

Chan was on campus often, including to read a Mo Willems book (“The Pigeon Needs a Bath!”) to kindergartners. During the launch of a curriculum with Sesame Workshop, Chan bantered with Elmo in a promotional video. Teachers attended the workshop’s 50th-anniversary gala and met Michelle Obama.

For the past 10 years, the Primary School apparently did not report any of its performance metrics to the state of California. There don't seem to be any articles about how the school was doing, say, five years ago. But the school is now shutting down and we're learning that a major reason why is that the metrics just didn't show the success that Chan anticipated.

The board voted unanimously in April 2025 to close the school after learning that the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative wouldn’t fund it after the 2025-26 academic year, people familiar with the situation said...

By some measures, the school’s academic performance fell well short of state norms and its leaders’ expectations, complicating efforts to spread its model to public and charter schools. By others, it succeeded in helping students outside the classroom in ways that are usually not available in public schools...

Chan was “not shy” about her frustration with academic performance, Brizard said. Chan told The Wall Street Journal last year that outcomes weren’t where “frankly, anyone would have wanted them to be.”...

A Stanford University report found that in spring 2025, 14% of local students in third grade and above exceeded literacy standards; at the Primary School, it was 26%; statewide, it was 47%.

So after a decade of free funding, the Primary School is ending and parents of kids attending will have to find a new school for next year. No doubt it was great for them while it lasted. Everyone likes free stuff. But the goal here was something much grander. Priscilla Chan was hoping to show that capitalism was holding students back (or something like that) and the results just don't back that up. A marginal improvement in scores for an investment of $125 million isn't a great ROI and isn't going to be replicated anywhere else.

Editor's Note: President Trump is fighting to ensure America's kids get the education they deserve.

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