Camden, Néw Jersey, is one of those impoverished districts that lost local control and was taken over by the state in 2013. Recently, the Chris Christie administration hired a young, ex-TFA, ex-Joel Klein guy as superintendent, and it was clear that the district was headed for demolition.
This past week, the trouble started as layoff notices went out to more than 200 teachers. Students walked out in mass protest, but the plan began to reveal itself. Nothing innovative about it. Layoffs, charter schools, TFA, community outrage, officials indifferent to community outrage.
Thanks to Race to the Top, which dovetails neatly with the privatization goals of rightwing governors and relies on TFA scab labor, the demolition of public education in Camden is underway.
A reader added this note:
1) Buried in the numbers is the fact that the layoffs are only of general education NOT special education teachers. The reason being that as charter schools expand in Camden they cream and refuse to take special needs kids leaving almost all of them in district schools.
2) While firing staff, Paymon brought on a score of staffers from Tweed. None of them has any direct experience supporting schools. They are all young office workers with little knowledge of schools or of teaching.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Camden schools were taken over by the State in July 2013. Please update your post. Hope you are feeling better Diane!
Thank you, NJ Teacher. Fixed.
“This past week, the trouble started”
Well, maybe for some of the adults in the Camden schools. The trouble for students has been ongoing, and while economic conditions in the city are big contributors to the school problems, nobody can deny that a high school with a 50% dropout rate is contributing to the city’s downfall as well.
Diane, what’s your solution for Camden? You obviously disagree with what the new Superintendent has planned, but what would you do if you were him?
Do you think this school system is doing the best that it can under the circumstances? Do you think major changes are desirable? Possible? Why haven’t they happened from within, and if you propose any, why do you think they can be done from within now?
You frequently say that the problems in schools are caused by the ed reform agenda. Here’s a pre-reform district for you. Here’s the real status quo of what many urban school districts have become.
Pretend you’re in charge in Camden instead. What do you do?
Jpr, you must be new to Diane’s blog because Diane has given all kinds of solutions to the problems schools face in cities like Camden, one of the poorest and most crime ridden cities in the nation. The solution is not to close the REAL public schools, the solution is not to fire hundreds of teachers and to replace them with TFA newbies. The solution is not to privatize the schools and to turn the city into a charter school dystopia. Some of the recommendations of Diane: smaller class size, more counselors, more school psychologists, more social workers and more wrap around services for these kids who have so many needs in devastated cities like Camden. Or read Diane’s books.
I’m not new, Joe, and I’ve read Diane’s books. The data is clear on smaller class sizes not solving this problem. Is there any data that shows that more counselors, psychologists, social workers, and wraparound services do it? Obviously, those are all good things, but where has that worked?
Reign of Error and other books are very clear about what Diane believes we shouldn’t be doing, but vague on what to do with districts like Camden. Nostalgia and hope are not strategies.
I think services can help as part of a larger set of changes, but I don’t think there’s any reason to expect that to be sufficient.
Actually, jar, the studies produced by the anti-class reduction “academics” are clear that class size doesn’t matter; actual research says otherwise, including several recent studies which you can locate through Google.
Demonizing teachers and public schools and blaming them for the effects of generational poverty, corporate greed, and political corruption sure is fun and hits all the right notes for the conservatives who have always hated public education because they hate the idea of their money being used to pay to educate blacks, hispanics, and the poor, but it won’t change a thing regarding poverty in the long run.
As Diane has so eloquently proven, the charters that succeed do so because they cream the best, most supported students and give the rest back to the public school system, exactly what is happening in Camden. it’s a little scary how closely this mimics the current political and legal systems that favor corporations over people and place the burden of the commonweal on the poorest members of our society while allowing the titans of capitalism to pay little to no taxes, evade civic responsibility while contributing to the downfall of the middle class, and end accountability for malpractice and malfeasance.
We will never solve poverty by fiddling around with schools. We will solve poverty when we use sensible laws to reign in greed, rentier profit-taking, government subsidized tax evasion and corporate welfare, and racism. Until then the best solution are those used by the very charters that are touted as the most successful. The Harlem Success Zone schools use all the extraneous services they can muster including healthcare, mental health care, parenting classes, food banks, community outreach and support of religious and civic institutions, etc. All things you dismiss as not being important or feasible.
That’s bordering on hypocrisy in my book.
Chris,
I’ve read quite a bit on class sizes over the years, and the data is not compelling. Yes, there are some studies that show it helps, and there are about equally many that show it hurts. Most show no meaningful effect in the ranges that are possible.
Re Harlem Children’s Zone (not “Success”; different group) yes, they offer wrap-around services as part of what they do, but they are also charter schools and do many of the same things that are planned for Camden. It seems people want to pick the part that would place the responsibility somewhere else and ignore the parts that require change. I don’t say wraparound services don’t work or aren’t feasible, I say that they are not sufficient.
I also agree with you that taxation and other government policies have led to the economic situation in Camden.
I don’t think any of these are responsive to my question about what Diane (or you) would do in Camden right now.
The parts of the reform agenda I see coming in Camden include longer school days and years (vs. Camden’s current less than NJ average time), focus on attendance and behavior (vs. the less than 80% attendance rate and the 60% of students who say other student’s behavior has a negative impact on them), and focus on high expectations (vs. the >60% of Camden students and >60% of staff that say the schools don’t expect enough of the students).
What would you do instead?
JPR,
My last book has 11 chapters on what to do now. Reduced class size is one of those chapters. When small children are struggling to learn to read or do math, they need extra attention. Seriously, do you believe it doesn’t matter if class size is 15 or 35? Why do all our elite schools–like the ones where the Obama girls go, or Bill Gates’ children, or Exeter or Andover or Deerfield Academy–boast about having small classes and experienced teachers? Why do you think poor kids should have large classes and inexperienced teachers?
Yes, in the example you gave (ELA, lower grades, cutting in half), I agree this would be positive. But I don’t think this and wrap-around services (neither of which might even be possible within budget constraints) are enough to make much of a difference in Camden.
There are many schools in Camden experiencing the same thing, therefore there is a lot of schools that need to be fixed. Let me rephase that…It’s not the schools that need to be fixed, it’s the politics.
Diane Ravitch, REIGN OF ERROR (2013).
😎
More than 20 years ago I was asked to write a review of a book,”McDongh 15: Becoming a School.” When I read how a principal and her staff had rebuilt a high poverty school in New Orleans that the school district had completely neglected, I was amazed and inspired by their hard work, compassion, and common sense. The book is out of print, but still available from Amazon and a few other sources. I’d like to see it re-published and sent free of charge to all the school reformers in the country.
A year or so later a friend and I visited the school while at an education conference in New Orleans and found it to be as wonderful as it was described. We talked to the principal (author of the book), Lucianne Bond Carmichael, and found her delightful, but she was leaving her job for some reason she did not explain. We thought the district was getting rid of her.
P.S. After writing the comment above I Googled the book title and found it still available. I also found the first page of my book review, published in the Elementary School Journal. I haven’t re-read the book lately, but I have many times in the past. I’m still convinced that it is the description of what a school should be.
Ordered a copy, thanks for the recommendation.
This is the school district that Assembly Bill 2032 was targeting, and TFA is the “teacher recruitment” organization to which NJ tax dollars would be appropriated to find “teachers,” as if there are no teachers in Camden. I suppose after firing the public school teachers, there will be very few teachers in the district, right? In rushes TFA to “save” the district! This was a calculated strategy from the get-go.
http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/bills/BillView.asp
There has been little movement on the bill since its introduction to the Higher Education Committee where it really doesn’t belong anyway. Greenwald and Lampitt apparently introduced the same bill to the Education Committee last November 25, too. They just keep on trying.
As a NJ taxpayer, I’d like to see the email correspondence that invited TFA into the Camden political arena. Surely Joel Klein was corresponding with TFA about Camden’s situation at least enough for them to court two unsuspecting, well-meaning legislators on this bill.
NJ does not need to waste public money “hiring” recruiters to find teachers especially when teachers’ positions are being eliminated in the very same district. There are plenty of good people in these jobs–it is the community that is not able to support the schools. POLITICIANS, FIX THE COMMUNITY FIRST!
Same thing is going on in Newark LG. Veteran teachers are becoming EWPS as TFA novices are hired as replacements. The Camden superintendent labored in Newark for one hot minute.
Disgusting. We need a united front against this. Can any of the Newark teachers enter into some sort of legal action? I’d like to see “proof” that they deserved to lose their jobs.
Let us look at what happened to the “Castle on the Hill”, the ” High”. I was blessed to be Administrative Assistant, Vice Principal, and Co-Principal of the “High”. Plus, I have been consultant paid and unpaid for scheduling multiple times for schools and various programs!! I love the city and I love the district as a result I have a very special perspective. Simply stated Gov. Whitman and the politics that followed destroyed what was once a model for urban education under Governor Florio. The DOE came in and eliminated all jobs and positioned that was not recognized by the DOE, ignoring the effectiveness of the system. Then the DOE allowed/encouraged the political processes to replace professional decisions.
The Medical Arts High School took the top 50 students a year out of the “High”. We lost future valedictorians, class officers, AP students and family support/network. This was followed by Performing Arts High School which not only took away musician, artist, and thespians it raided Medical Arts High School because it was the “place to be”. Then Med East, resulting in the final blow. Combine this with the Leap Academy, Camden Catholic, Pope Paul IV, Bishop Eustace, all taking Division 1 athletes and future academic achievers. What high school could survive this kind of assault? In addition, we realized a total collapse of the juvenile justice system. I had 150 students on active probation (most with “bracelets”). The mighty “High” has fallen from a powerful Group IV to Group III and now Group II. There was a time I would have matched the faculty and students from the “High” with any school in America but not after the raiders had finished. As Co-Principal of Camden High I signed off on plans for the New “High” but the politics destroyed that too. Now privatization is starring at the district and big brother has taken over!!
Only community control can save the “High”. The DOE formula has not worked any where what make you think it will work now. I know for a fact that there has been opportunities to place the district in competent hands but politics prevailed. Now the district is in the abyss.
Perhaps this is why Gates was in favor of breaking up comprehensive high schools into smaller schools. (I know he said it doesn’t work, but InBloom also says it’s going out of business. I got a bridge…)
It’s easier to create failing schools once you siphon off the kids who are academically able and whose parents have access to political levers. Maybe you send them to boutique schools or maybe they go to charters. It’s just their choice, after all.
You may have a bridge, Christine, but I’ve got some exclusive ocean front property for sale at Lake of the Ozarks in central Missouri for sale quite cheaply. Operators are standing by!!