Chris Christie Agenda: Divide, Conquer, De-Fund

From Education Law Center:

Statement from David G. Sciarra, ELC Executive Director:

The Governor’s school funding plan announced today is not only the opposite of fairness, it would spell the end of our State’s commitment to an education that will prepare all New Jersey children to be good citizens and productive participants in our economy.

This irresponsible plan is a complete non-starter for many reasons. First, the NJ Legislature, on a bipartisan basis, has stood firmly by the school aid formula, our state’s model funding mechanism that is weighted to provide resources based on student need. The Governor neglected to mention that it is his failure to fund the school aid formula adopted in 2008 that has led to dire circumstances in so many of our school districts.

Second, the Governor’s proposal is completely contrary to the long held consensus in NJ that funding should be based on the unique needs of students. This principle has guided every funding formula in NJ since 1970, and is the basis on which the current funding formula rests.

Third, if this plan were implemented it would devastate our schools by removing an unprecedented level of educational resources – teachers, guidance counselors, librarians, support programs and services, and more – from districts all across the state. It will target communities that educate at-risk children, including poor children, children who are learning English, and children with disabilities. Our communities of color are especially vulnerable, and students in school districts in rural, suburban and urban areas will all suffer.

Finally, without question this proposal is unconstitutional under the basic principles that govern the state’s obligation to provide a thorough and efficient education for all children under the NJ Constitution. As recently as 2009, our Supreme Court has made clear that the State is legally required to provide funding to children across the state at a level that allows each district to deliver a constitutional education. This plan is completely contrary to these core principals and the values that all New Jerseyans share.

Instead of spending his time on a hopeless campaign to pit schoolchildren, families and communities against each other, the Governor should work with the Legislature to provide the resources all New Jersey children need and deserve.

Mark Weber on the Destructive NJ Ed Commish, Chris Cerf (Broad Academy '04)

from NJ Spotlight: 

The state education chief’s so-called reforms may have stirred up something more powerful than frustration and resignation

Chris Cerf says he’s not leaving his post as New Jersey’s Commissioner of Education because of Bridgegate, and I believe him. When Cerf departs at the end of March, he’ll be continuing a pattern of sliding back and forth between the private and public sector that he’s engaged in over his entire career.

Leaving for Rupert Murdoch’s Amplify -- or some similar corporate education outfit -- was the next, inevitable step for Cerf, no matter how many scandals may dog Gov. Chris Christie.

In many ways, Cerf is the prototypical education “reformer”: he never taught in a public school, never earned a degree in education, and never ran a school building. More accurately, perhaps, Cerf is the prototype of a new sort of reformer, one who leaves a groundswell of resistance in his wake.

After a few years of teaching at a private school, Cerf pursued a law career, eventually working in the Clinton administration. He shifted over to education not as a practitioner, but as the president of Edison Learning, the ill-fated school management company that never lived up to its promises in Philadelphia and elsewhere. That was followed by a stint in the vast and complex New York City schools, serving as deputy chancellor under his colleague in the Clinton White House, Joel Klein. who he will report to once again at Amplify.

An important part of Cerf’s training was his attendance at the Broad Superintendents Academy, an unaccredited project of California billionaire Eli Broad. The Academy is famous in education policy circles for recruiting potential education leaders -- many of whom, like Cerf, have minimal experience actually teaching in or running schools -- and indoctrinating them in the techniques of “creative disruption,” a style of governance that owes much to the cult of the CEO found today in American business.

Broad has proved to be an invaluable ally for Cerf during his tenure in New Jersey: his foundation provided money to create plans for the restructuring of the Newarkand Camden school districts (with minimal community input), and to start theRegional Achievement Centers (RACs) that Cerf has tasked with carrying out his policies in the local school districts.

But what, besides bringing Broad’s philosophy and money to New Jersey, is the legacy of Chris Cerf’s three years running the state’s schools? What does he leave behind for the next commissioner, and for those of us who actually do the daily job of teaching New Jersey’s children?

From this teacher’s perspective, Cerf has influenced what is one of the nation’s best state public education systems in ways that are both profound and disturbing:

The test is now everything Test scores determine whether a school closes in Newark. Test scores determine whether a school gets a “Priority,” “Focus,” or “Reward” rating from NJDOE. Test scores, as filtered through Student Growth Percentiles (SGPs), will play a critical role in determining whether a teacher of a tested subject keeps her job. Test scores determine whether a school outperforms its “peers” in the new performance reports.

And yet, so far as I know, New Jersey has never conducted an independent study to determine the validity or reliability of the NJASK, HSPA, or PARCC tests that are coming. And we know that student poverty is heavily correlated to proficiency rates, which raises the question: what, exactly, are we testing?

Urban school districts are being deconstructed Newark’s state-run district is closing schools without the consent of its elected School Advisory Board and turning over facilities to charter school operators.

Camden, another state-run district, has invited in charter operators from out of state; the Pennsylvania Auditor General, speaking of one of these operator’s charter school in Chester, PA, said: “this well-funded charter school seems to disregard even basic school operational requirements." Paterson’s teachers remain without a contract for a fourth year, while charters there continue to expand.

Under Cerf, the large, urban, autonomous, public school district has been gradually replaced by a portfolio system of school “choice.” It’s quite telling that this is not happening in the suburbs, home of Chris Christie’s political base – at least, not yet.

New Jersey’s commitment to equity has been shattered According to a new report released by the Education Law Center, New Jersey’s school districts are backsliding to an era of funding inequity. The School Finance Reform Act, successor to the Abbott laws and supposed guarantor of funding equity, remains underfunded. New Jersey is increasingly become a two-tiered school system, where wealthier districts largely finance themselves while poorer districts, without an adequate tax base to meet their school needs, go begging.

Leadership has been redefined, and not for the better Cerf and Christie brought Cami Anderson in to lead Newark’s schools; similar to Cerf, her school-level experience is limited to two years of teaching, followed by stints at private education organizations (like Teach For America) and the NYCDOE bureaucracy. Since her arrival in New Jersey, she’s managed to alienate the elected Schools Advisory Board, the city council, the teachers union , and many vocal and angry parents and students.

Janine Caffrey, also from the NYCDOE prior to taking over as superintendent in Perth Amboy, was recently fired by her school board, despite multiple intercessions from Cerf to try to save her from losing her job.

Tim Capone, one of Cerf’s recruits to his RACs before leading the schools in Highland Park, is facing strong community resistance after dismissing the president of the local teachers union.

Cerf brought Penny MacCormack to the NJDOE from Connecticut; she left to run the Montclair schools, but has faced a growing chorus of opposition to her plans to expand standardized testing.

And another product of the NYCDOE bureaucracy, Paymon Rouhanifard, has taken over the Camden schools, newly under control of the state. America’s most dangerous city’s schools superintendent is a 32-year-old who has a total of six years in education on his resume, most having little to do with teaching, curriculum, or teacher supervision. Experience, it seems, is no longer a prerequisite to take on the toughest school leadership jobs in a post-Cerf New Jersey.

Segregated and apartheid schools are now a defining feature of New Jersey Ascathing report from the Institute on Education Law and Policy at Rutgers-Newark finds that many of New Jersey’s schools have moved beyond “segregated” status. They are, in effect, apartheid schools, where children of color have little or no interaction with white students. This intense segregation extends to poverty status as well.

Local control of schools has been eroded State control has come to Camden, and,despite a few feints from Cerf, it looks as if it is firmly entrenched in Paterson and Jersey City.

Newark has actually moved further away from local governance, with an appellate judge upholding state control last summer. State monitors continue to exert power in several other districts: in Asbury Park, the local school board had its choice for a new superintendent rejected by the state’s fiscal monitor (who also just happened to be an applicant who was rejected for the interim job).

But it’s more than just direct state control: all local districts must move to the computerized PARCC standardized tests, but the state has not helped with the cost of implementing them. And the state has imposed a new teacher evaluation system, but has not helped with the costs for implementing that, or providing professional development.

Teachers are burned out In the words of a spokesman of the NJEA, the state’s largest teachers union, teachers are feeling “terrorized” by the new, state-mandated teacher evaluation system, AchieveNJ. Teachers are writing Student Growth Objectives with little guidance from the state and little evidence that they will improve student performance in untested areas. Teachers are wondering how they could possibly be responsible for the Student Growth Percentile scores when even Damien Betebenner, the “father” of SGPs, let slip once that the scores can’t be attributed to teachers.

Check out the Facebook posts of teachers or their tweets, and you’ll read many comments by professionals who still love their jobs -- and have no problem with being held accountable for their performance -- but are disgruntled, dispirited, and burned out. The joy of teaching is being sucked out of them, all in the name of “creative disruption.”

There is, however, resistance. The NJEA has found its voice as of late under new president Wendell Steinhauer, and is no longer simply accepting the current situation. For that matter, parent groups like SOSNJ and Montclair Cares about Schools are questioning Cerf’s policies. The Newark Students Union has challenged the state-run district to step up and meet their needs, as has the Newark Teachers Union. From the cities to the suburbs, parents, teachers, and students are no longer accepting the education policies of the past three years.

Ironically, this may be the ultimate legacy of Chris Cerf: his “reforms” have generated so much resistance that an organized and vocal opposition to the interests he has aligned himself with has taken shape. As Cerf retreats back to the private sector, his successor will have to deal with antagonists who are no longer willing to accept the status quo of “reform.”

And as Chris Christie’s troubles grow, their political power increases. Chris Cerf’s tenure may not have been the beginning of corporate reform in New Jersey; it may well have been the beginning of the end.

Mark Weber is a public school music teacher in Warren Township; a doctoral student at Rutgers University in Education Theory, Organization, and Policy; an NJEA member; and a New Jersey public school parent. He blogs at Jersey Jazzman His opinions are his own and are not necessarily those of his employers, Rutgers, the NJEA, or NJ Spotlight.

Christie Bows to the Billionaires: Public Schools to Go the Highest Bidder

Through filing of a FOIA request, the Education Law Center in Newark has obtained the Broad Plan for privatizing schools in New Jersey where least resistance will be offered--poor schools.  The plan is being passed around by Cerf's henchmen in the Ed Department, as they try to stay ahead of legislation that could put restrictions on this planned economic bonanza for Wall Street aspirants who are not smart enough to operate there, but not dumb enough to miss out on a feeding frenzy if the Christie/Broad alliance holds.  From NJPR: 

The New Jersey Department of Education is moving forward with a reform plan for the state’s lowest performing schools by using private money from a California-based foundation [Broad].

The proposed plan calls for school closures, state operation of failing schools and elimination of union representation in schools that do not improve after sustained efforts to raise student performance. . . .

The plan is very similar to the one being finalized in Tennessee and other states with legislators for sale, whereby the most vulnerable schools in the state will be gobbled up by the Achievement School District, an enterprise run at the state level for turning urban schools over to corporations.   Local pols can avoid the angry questions by parents, and the State can blame federal requirements under Race to the Top.  Duncan, in turn, can blame teachers, parents, and children for not accomplishing what poverty disallows.

 

Here is the beginning of a piece from Reuters today that examines the economic bonanza awaiting the billionaires and their yes men, the same ones now infiltrating school systems across New Jersey and paid for by tax dollars.  

Aug 1 (Reuters) - The investors gathered in a tony private club in Manhattan were eager to hear about the next big thing, and education consultant Rob Lytle was happy to oblige.

Think about the upcoming rollout of new national academic standards for public schools, he urged the crowd. If they're as rigorous as advertised, a huge number of schools will suddenly look really bad, their students testing way behind in reading and math. They'll want help, quick. And private, for-profit vendors selling lesson plans, educational software and student assessments will be right there to provide it.

"You start to see entire ecosystems of investment opportunity lining up," said Lytle, a partner at The Parthenon Group, a Boston consulting firm. "It could get really, really big."
Indeed, investors of all stripes are beginning to sense big profit potential in public education.

The K-12 market is tantalizingly huge: The U.S. spends more than $500 billion a year to educate kids from ages five through 18. The entire education sector, including college and mid-career training, represents nearly 9 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, more than the energy or technology sectors.

Traditionally, public education has been a tough market for private firms to break into -- fraught with politics, tangled in bureaucracy and fragmented into tens of thousands of individual schools and school districts from coast to coast.

Now investors are signaling optimism that a golden moment has arrived. They're pouring private equity and venture capital into scores of companies that aim to profit by taking over broad swaths of public education. . . .

New Jersey's big fat corporate ed reform liars

Al denounced the idea of charters when it became clear that the concept had changed and was being hijacked by corporate and business interests. In Al’s view, such hijacking would result in the privatization of public education and, ultimately, its destruction — all without improving student outcomes. — Edith Shanker

It all started a few days ago when Edison scoundrel and Broadyte Chris Cerf published a fact-free diatribe extolling a charter school solution to a non-existant problem. To say that Cerf plays fast and loose with facts would be the understatement of the summer, but his most mendacious statements (and a grievous factual error) occur in regards to the venerable Albert Shanker.

The incorrigible Cerf isn't the first corporate snake oil salesman to try and misrepresent the late President of the American Federation of Teachers' views, or for that matter, spin the original purpose of charters to be a gateway drug to vouchers. The latter argument is usual spun as "charter schools were created to be schools of choice." Anyone familiar with actual history knows that Shanker intended charters to supplement public schools by serving the most difficult to educate students (the ones current charters avoid like the plague), he never supported the core segregationist tenet of "school choice." Most high profile corporate education privatizers have perpetuated these outrageous lies at one time or another.

In What Chris Cerf Needs to Know About Albert Shanker the distinguished Professor Diane Ravitch took Cerf to task on his 896 word deception. Notably, the first thing she has to do is correct Cerf on Shanker's union affiliation. It speaks volumes that the bumbling Cerf, endeavoring to enlist an authoritative source, can't even get his source's association right. Ravitch literally schools Cerf across the board on Shanker's vision, intentions, and motivations for charters, and reiterated his staunch opposition to privatization and union busting. Since Ravitch knew Shanker, her recitation of historical facts is further bolstered by an understanding of the person being discussed.

Interestingly, at the end of her piece Ravitch outlines a set of ideas that would bring charter schools back in alignment with their original intent before they became a lucrative path to ever more privatization. Her list reads like a social justice manifesto, which, if implemented, would send the current charter camp scurrying onto the next bubble. Imagine Eva Moskowitz, Steve Barr, or Geoffrey Canada actually taking suggestions like this to heart?

...insist that all charters recruit and enroll only the lowest-performing students, the students who have dropped out, and the students who are doing poorly in their present public school. Ravitch

One would think that the profiteers and poverty pimps in the corporate education reform camp would have slithered back under their stones after being excoriated so effectively. Instead, Ravitch's speaking truth to corporate power brought out an even more deceitful and duplicitous individual than Cerf. Enter Laura Waters, an arch-reactionary with a doctoral degree in corporate servitude, or something to that effect. Waters, whose zeal for school privatization and segregation exceeds that of even Ben Austin or Michelle Rhee, cobbles together screeds littered with neoliberal gems like:

Free market competition is the best way to ensure that kids have real school choices

A survey of Water's corporate education reform essays reads like a John Birch Society education wish-list, with right-wing schemes of competition, choice, privatization, high stakes testing, and "merit" pay at the fore. Sadly, this reactionary repugnant is a School Board President.

Waters had the unmitigated gall to attack Professor Ravitch on her piece critical of Cerf. Despite having never met Shanker (unlike Ravitch), Waters decides that she can best speak for him. She then claims he'd be a corporate reformer pushing for segregationist ideas like school choice. The widely respected blogger Jersey Jazzman (aka Duke) exposed Waters' absurd ramblings to reality based community, and puts the reformers' misconceptions in perspective:

I guess maybe Laura has a ouija board now with which she communes with Shanker to get his answers

The rest of the Jazzman's post further dismantles Waters' tirade, including her patently false assertion that charters in New Jersey cannot be run by private entities. Ravitch wrote a short response on the Waters' fiasco, but it was the Darcie Cimarusti's response to Waters' arrogance that reminded us of another big fat liar — Rupert Murdoch's lapdog, Joel Klein. Like Cerf and Waters, Klein tried to claim Shanker as a corporate privatizer. Cimarusti (aka Mother Crusader) prompted rereading of a year old essay by Shanker's widow, Edith Shanker, entitled A Response To Joel Klein, in which all of these misattributions are cleared up.

A day later the Jazzman had even more evidence of Cerf, Klein, and Waters' perfidy. In that post he includes a brilliant comment by Jennie Shanker, daughter of the late unionist, that is profound beyond words:

your stance on this issue is diametrically opposed to his values and intent, and you are dead wrong to shame Diane Ravitch for her position. Indeed, if you consider your thinking to be in line with my father's, I recommend that you champion her work, as my family does. If anyone can speak for my father in this day and age, the person who should be most trusted is Dr. Ravitch. It's unfortunate that many people who read your article will not see this comment. I would like to respectfully request that you reconsider further publicizing your characterization n of my father's position on this topic. From what is in evidence in this article, despite your love for the man, you are in no position to speak for him.

I feel it's very powerful that she names Professor Ravitch as the inheritor of Shanker's mantle. Moreover, these clashes with the corporate education reformers are extremely important, and not just empty exercises. We must point out every lie, false claim, miracle school, vested interest, and, yes, falsification of Shanker's ideals that the no-excuses crowd puts out there. Every time the corporate reformers get away with telling the public falsehoods, they are able to push us ever closer towards their goals of total privatization.

Lawbreaking and Open Corruption Sewer at NJ DOE

New Jersey state politics has long enjoyed a reputation for corruption, second only to Louisiana, perhaps.  Now it would seem that Chris Christie's henchmen like Acting Ed Commish, Chris Cerf, may be able to move Jersey into first place.

Cerf's open contempt for state laws governing education policy seems to be his strong suit, although a case could be made that his embedded linkages with the corporate school industry appear even more prominent.  Cerf's most recent acquisition of former EdisonLearning lawyer, Evo Popoff, makes a strong case for the latter, while Cerf's illegal attempts to alter NJ state charter law would favor the former.

A wrap-up of the most recent news on the Jersey Cerfdom.  HT to Stan Karp:

Audience to N.J. Board of Ed: Proposed charter school regulations a mistake

Star Ledger

More than three dozen local school officials, parents, teachers and advocates packed a Trenton meeting room Wednesday to testify before the state Board of Education on proposed charter school regulations that would, among other things, make it easier for virtual charters to operate. The state board took no action Wednesday on the regulations, but it heard from speaker after speaker who said the rules would take control from local communities; violate existing charter school law; or destroy public schools.

ELC Testimony on proposed regulations

ELC cited explicit language in the current charter law, originally adopted in 1995, that puts strict limits on the ability of the Department to expand or modify the charter school program: “The commissioner may not implement any recommended expansion, modification, or termination of the [charter school] program until the Legislature acts on that recommendation." N.J.S.A. 18A:36A-16(e) [emphasis added] Despite this clear limitation, the Acting Commissioner’s proposed changes seek to expand and modify the existing charter school program in multiple ways. “In six areas – virtual charter schools, restructured renewal, satellite campus, amendment of charters, one year conditional renewal, and summary revocation – the Acting Commissioner's proposal represents a completely unauthorized expansion and/or substantial modification of the charter school program.”

Save Our Schools NJ petition opposing the proposed charter regulations.

Almost 3400 signatures and counting…

Opposition to Online Charters Heats Up State BOE Meeting

NJ Spotlight

The usually sleepy board meetings grew crowded by afternoon as advocates and those who signed up as “concerned citizens” filled two small hearing rooms to object to the charter regulation changes. Those testifying came mostly from suburbia, communities like Princeton, Westfield, South Brunswick and Cherry Hill, where the growth of charter schools under Christie have seen their stiffest resistance. Some said the new charter regulations were an outright threat to public education, contending among many complaints that they violate existing state law and could potentially cost local taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. “The destabilizing impact of these measures cannot be overstated, and you can be very sure that the destabilization will be dramatic and immediate,” said Andrea Spalla, a member of the Princeton Regional Schools board of education.

NJ Spoltight also reported that the State Board approved the hiring of Evo Popoff as “Chief Innovation Officer.” Popoff is “a former senior vice president of Edison Learning, a for-profit education company where Cerf once worked. Popoff, who attended the meeting but wasn’t made available to reporters, has held a host of positions at Edison Learning, the New York-based corporation that was an early pioneer in private school management companies. Popoff, a lawyer, joined Edison in 2004, and his resume includes work with local districts in the company’s school improvement, extended learning and online programs…Starting this week, Popoff will earn $138,000, just shy of Cerf’s $141,200 salary, officials said.”

N.J. Board of Ed accepts more than $600K in donations from two private foundations

Star Ledger

With little discussion in public session, the state Board of Education today accepted donations totalling more than $600,000 from two private foundations. After the Newark-based Education Law Center wrote a letter to the board requesting that they defer accepting the funds, citing the "need for transparency, accountability and public confidence," the board asked the state Attorney General's Office if their objections had any merit, board members said. The matter was discussed in closed session, citing the "legal letter." But board member Ron Butcher said "in their (the AG's) mind, there are no issues.