Christie Continues Super-Sized Lie About Public Schools in Newark

The nation's most morbidly-obese governor continues to trumpet lies aimed to demonize and dismantle public institutions that he was elected to manage and improve. 


From Politifact and the Star-Ledger:

Gov. Chris Christie pushes his plans to reform New Jersey public schools using student performance in urban school districts as one of his statistical battering rams, but consistently misrepresents the high school graduation rate of the state’s largest district.

Christie claims fewer than 25 percent of freshmen in Newark high schools graduate in four years. PolitiFact New Jersey debunked similar statements twice -- first in June, then again in November. But the governor hasn’t learned his lesson and keeps repeating the statistic.

On Nov. 18, the day after we published a story criticizing Christie for his use of the statistic, the governor delivered the keynote address at a Notre Dame education forum. He said there: "How hard is it to understand failure, when in Newark, the children this year, two months ago, who entered the ninth grade, 23 percent will graduate in four years with a high school diploma."

More recently, in a Dec. 29 radio interview on WOR-AM, host John Gambling asked Christie what his biggest disappointment was in 2011.

"The biggest disappointment is that we didn't get any education reform this year, and we really need to. Now, members of the Legislature are telling me that we're going to get to it in the first quarter of 2012. So I live in hope, John," Christie said. "But my biggest disappointment is, when you know that the kids who start in the ninth grade in the city of Newark this past September, 23 percent of them will graduate in four years, 23 percent."

He said to Gambling later in the interview, after also citing per-pupil spending costs in Newark: "that's why education reform is so necessary and that's the biggest disappointment from 2011 is that we didn't get it done."

Actually, more than half of Newark’s ninth grade students will graduate high school in four years, because there’s more than one way recognized by the state Department of Education to earn a high school diploma.

But Christie cites the lower number, which represents a segment of the city’s high school graduates. Both graduation rates are included in a presentation based on a study by a private consulting firm that had ties to Christopher Cerf before he was named New Jersey’s acting education commissioner.

The smaller percentage -- 22 percent, not 23 percent, according to the presentation -- only includes students who graduate in four years by passing the High School Proficiency Assessment, a state standardized test. But there are other routes to graduation.

Students can take an alternate exam, now called the Alternative High School Assessment, to finish high school and some students are exempt from testing.

In all, 55 percent of students graduate from Newark’s high schools in four years, according to data from the 2009-2010 school year.

Though there is debate about the merits of the alternate exam, it is still a state-approved way to graduate high school. And when Christie cites a graduation rate without explaining who it represents, he ignores a group of the students he argues it’s imperative to help.

The governor’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

Our ruling

Christie said "that the kids who start in the ninth grade in the city of Newark this past September, 23 percent of them will graduate in four years."

The claim has been debunked twice but Christie continues to repeat the erroneous statistic. About 55 percent of Newark freshmen graduate in four years, not 23 percent. Consistently repeating a proven falsehood isn’t just wrong, governor, it’s ridiculous. Pants on Fire!
To comment on this ruling, go to NJ.com.

Scores are Up in Newark--Murder Scores, That Is

By 65 percent.  Meanwhile, the most fabulously-grandiloquent and morbidly-obese governor in New Jersey history cuts more police officer position in Newark, while cops in his leafy suburbs earn six figures for writing traffic tickets.  Christie is also slated to sign a bill choking off collective bargaining by public employees, despite his lie 3 months ago that he supports collective bargaining.  Plus cut pension and health care benefits for public employees in order to sustain the hundreds of millions in tax cuts for Jersey's millionaires.

Not to worry, though, for Newark's ostensibly-black and oratorically-gifted mayor, Cory Booker, has just completed a swing down to Atlanta to rally 4,000 charter school troops to redouble their efforts at creating more of the segregated total compliance testing sweatshops that have proven so effective in culturally neutering and psychologically sterilizing black and brown children across urban America:

Charismatic Newark Mayor Cory Booker told the annual National Charter Schools Conference in Atlanta this morning, “This room is full of modern-day freedom fighters who refuse to accept what is and demand every day what we know can be.”

In fiery rhetoric suitable for a civil rights rally, Booker called for an end to an achievement gap that he described “as wide as the Grand Canyon.” He applauded an effort by charter schools “to transform pitfalls into pools of potential.”

Freedom fighters, do you hear!  Yes, we can return to segregated chain gang schools, Cory.  Hallelujah! and Amen. But it's gonna take your help and the help of every oligarch throughout this fair land.  Do go on, Brother Cory:

“This is not our children’s fault. It is our fault,” Mayor Booker said. “We must stop playing the blame game where we blame the parents or the teachers or the politicians or the community. This is what the charter movement is about. Democracy is not a spectator sport where you stand on the sidelines and give colorful commentary.”

Charter school advocates “do not let their fear grow bigger than their faith. They do not let their inability to do everything stop their determination to do something,” he said to applause.

“We are part of a charter school community under attack in every single state,’ Booker told the 4,000 attendees. “We are part of a charter school community that is trying to show the nation that our children should be our focus, that we not have vilification of children in charter schools.”

We know whose fault it is, whatever "it" is.  Do you hear that, you anti-charter child vilifiers?  Just to make sure you understand, to be against corporate charter schools is to be against children!  Corporate foundation charter schools are under attack, I say, in every single state, even the ten states that don't have charter schools.  Amen! Under attack by those public employee union scumbags.  But don't worry, for Cory's mammoth white friend, Gov. Christie is on the job back home to deal with that rabble.

Booker ended with a flourish that, no doubt, channeled Booker T. Washington at another big Atlanta meeting in 1895, when Booker T. became one of the true black elites of his day when he said

In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.

Think global economy, amen, Brother Booker.

Which gets us back to where we began this little rant: the murder rate in Newark:

Booker talked about the 13-year-old shot and killed in Newark over the weekend in an argument that the mayor says was over a girl. He bemoaned the high incidence of homicides among young black men and the school-to-prison pipeline.

“We fought the greatest war on American soil for the liberation of our people yet we imprison more and more of our own in prisons of ignorance every single day.”

I know, Cory, it is all just too ironic for words, even for someone with your gift for them.

Why I Closed My Facebook Account: Zuckerberg Going Oprah

Last updated 9/23 8:49
I just closed my Facebook account with this reason:

Your CEO wants to get into the school privatization game with other oligarchs.  I am not interested in supporting your efforts to dismantle America's public schools.  Go Cheney yourself!

I urge you to do the same, i. e., close your Facebook account. 

From the Star-Ledger:

LOS ANGELES — N.J. Gov. Chris Christie and Newark Mayor Cory Booker will make a surprise appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show Friday to announce an unprecedented restructuring of Newark's school system and the gift of $100 million from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, two officials with direct knowledge of the plan told The Star-Ledger tonight.

Christie and Booker will proclaim that the long-troubled Newark schools, which have been under state control for 15 years, are going to be placed under Booker’s authority. Together, Booker and the school system will embark on a massive program of educational change long opposed by teachers unions.

It will include an expansion of charter schools, new achievement standards and methods for judging which schools and teachers are effective, the sources said. 

The announcement was confirmed by a third person with knowledge of Booker and Christie’s arrangements. The sources detailed the plans on the condition they not be identified because they were not authorized to go public before Friday's show. . . .