Silicon Valley billionaires are remaking America's schools with their cash

New York

IN San Francisco's public schools, Marc Benioff, the chief executive of Salesforce, is giving principals of middle schools US$100,000 "innovation grants" and encouraging them to behave more like startup founders and less like bureaucrats.

In Maryland, Texas, Virginia and other states, Netflix's chief, Reed Hastings, is championing a popular math-teaching programme where Netflix-like algorithms determine which lessons students see.