Lyndsey Layton wrote a compelling account in the “Washington Post” about Governor Chris Christie’s calamitous and non-productive attempt to burnish his credentials as a school reformer in Newark.
Five years ago , Christie boasted that he would turn Newark into a national model of school reform. He and then-Mayor Cory Booker persuaded Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to donate $100 million for such reforms as merit pay and charters. Christie and his then-state Commissioner Chris Cerf.
What’s happened in the past five years has not enhanced Christie’s reputation as a reformer. His appointee as superintendent, Cami Anderson, has alienated students, educators, parents, the clergy, and legislators. Her plan, One Newark, was imposed without community support. Ras Baraka was elected mayor in large part because of Anderson’s unpopularity.
“Five years after Christie launched what could have been a career-defining policy initiative for an aspiring future president, city leaders are in revolt. On Wednesday, a band of city, county and state elected officials, along with leaders from the NAACP and others, will board a train bound for Washington for a meeting with Obama administration officials. Newark parents have filed a federal civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Education, alleging that the plan, called “One Newark,” disproportionately affects African Americans, and the local officials plan to ask the administration to help halt a plan they say has thrown their city into chaos.
“The plan, which fully took effect during this academic year, essentially blew up the old system. It eliminated neighborhood schools in favor of a citywide lottery designed to give parents more choices. It prompted mass firings of principals and teachers, and it led to numerous school closures and a sharp rise in the city’s reliance on charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately run.
“Many families saw their children spread among multiple schools or sent across town. The scattering has been problematic for a city divided along gang lines, where four in 10 residents don’t own cars.
“In addition, state test scores have stayed the same or even declined. Amid protests, Christie’s hand-picked Newark superintendent, Cami Anderson, faces calls for her removal — even from some of her onetime allies.”
Newark is turning out to be a drag on Christie’s presidential ambitions, says Layton.
What’s astonishing is to read defenders of “reform” finding silver linings or straws to grasp at. Some claim that Cami has plenty of supporters, others say that success is around the corner. Just be patient. Christie’s state commissioner says, “Christie, through a spokesman, declined to comment. According to Christie’s education commissioner:
“It will take time to see the type of progress we all want,” he said. “Whatever we’re doing, we need to double down.”
Astonishing. If they double down, they are likely to face open rebellion from the parents of Newark.
Christie, in his typical bully style, makes clear that he doesn’t care what the people of Newark think. He likes her and that is all that matters. He just reappointed her for another one-year term.
Anderson is paid nearly $300,000 a year. In 2011, Christie capped superintendents’ salaries at $125,000-175,000, depending on the size of the district. Charter school leaders and Cami Anderson are exempt from the state salary cap.
He reappointed her for another year? Hm — maybe she WON’T be replacing Deborah Gist here in RI.
I have written on this blog before that the response of the heavyweights of the self-styled “education reform” movement to the failure of their policies and actions is to try even harder—to do what has already been proven ineffective and counterproductive and even harmful.
I meant the above as simply descriptive. Zero in on this excerpt from the article by Lindsey Layton:
[start quote]
Now, a school overhaul that once seemed like an ideal talking point for a Republican governor looking to make his mark as a tough-minded reformer is shaping up as another drag on Christie’s already flagging presidential prospects.
Christie, through a spokesman, declined to comment. His education commissioner, David Hespe, said the early indicators from Newark were positive.
“It will take time to see the type of progress we all want,” he said. “Whatever we’re doing, we need to double down.”
Christie’s former education commissioner, Christopher Cerf, an early architect of the plan, acknowledged that if the goal was harmony and consensus, “I would say it is not a national model.”
“But I don’t think those were the goals,” Cerf added. “You can’t be a caretaker in this business. You’ve got to go in and do something big and brave and bold. If you are going to be consequential, you’re going to be controversial.”
Anderson, in an interview, said the changes have been well-received by many parents. “Some people are hugging me and crying, some people are wait-and-see,” she said. “The amount of momentum and good will on the ground is palpable.”
[end quote]
To repeat: double down on failure, going at it even stronger than before, and delude yourself into thinking that it’s popular among the folks you’re imposing it on.
Do not expect self-correction to come from people that inflict Rheeality Distortion Fields on themselves.
😎
“It will take time to see the type of progress we all want,” he said. “Whatever we’re doing, we need to double down.”
Reminds me of this:
http://www.despair.com/incompetence.html
Priceless.
How much longer? 20 years and counting…from the original Jersey Boys. Seems to be there theme up in Newark.
sp “there” should be they’re
“As tensions have mounted, Christie has distanced himself from Newark. He did not mention his Newark initiative during his State of the State address in January, a contrast to the year before, when he highlighted the plan and delivered a public shout-out to Anderson. Of the more than 100 town halls he has hosted around the state as governor, he has held none in Newark. ”
Coward.
I think you’ll be able to tell whether ed reformers are going to stick with Newark or bail on it by whether they invite Cami Anderson to the tens of self-congratulatory events they hold this year.
She was “a rock star” to use the extremely humble phrase they like 🙂
Reblogged this on Lloyd Lofthouse and commented:
More proof of the Double Standard designed to destroy the public schools in America.
Christie, in his typical bully style, makes clear that he doesn’t care what the people of Newark think. He likes Cami Anderson and that is all that matters. He just reappointed her for another one-year term.
Anderson is paid nearly $300,000 a year. In 2011, Christie capped superintendents’ salaries at $125,000-175,000, depending on the size of the district.
Charter school leaders and Cami Anderson are exempt from the state salary cap.
“”they are likely to face open rebellion from the parents of Newark.”
Before the parents take to the streets in open rebellion, they should know that Amazon sells body armor and gas masks. I even saw an armored gas mask for sale.
Here’s one UTG Law Enforcement SWAT vest selling for $39.39 and it has 472 customer reviews with a 4.6 out of 5 star average. Heck I might get one of those too.
http://www.amazon.com/UTG-Law-Enforcement-SWAT-Vest/dp/B001BR1O74/ref=pd_sim_sg_7?ie=UTF8&refRID=1XZWDQATA4VMZB8X6JH6
I’m sorry, parents of Newark, that previous vest I found on Amazon was not designed to protect from bullets. This $19.99 model offers that protection.
http://www.amazon.com/Tippmann-T299026-TIPPMANN-Chest-Protector/dp/B005X03OOQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=sporting-goods&ie=UTF8&qid=1425492155&sr=1-1&keywords=bullet+proof+vests
You might want to grab this soon because rather than dealing with real issues a clown in Congress has introduced this bill. Fear not, prior body armor purchases would be grandfathered in.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/378/text
I never thought I’d want to use this phrase in this millennium,”Power to the people, man!”
With that said—and I do agree—I also want to point out, after having fought in Vietnam, that I hate war, I hate the bloodshed, suffering and damage caused by this level of violence.
But sometimes those in power—-for instance, the Koch brothers, the Walton family, Bill Gates, Arne Duncan and others—-give us who aren’t in power no choice when we discover what the few want to do ends up hurting almost everyone else outside of their small sphere of peers.
Lord Acton said it best: “And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that.”
Acton also said, ““Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority.”
It would seem that Treebeard has finally emerged from Fangorn Forest and seen some things he doesn’t like.
The corporate reformers never expected parents to get angry about the abuse of their children? It seems so foolish of them. So disconnected from the natural order of things.
The analogy to Saruman is not bad, I think.
I will enjoy watching this play out.
Mark Collins: may I suggest using the gold standard for measuring how long before we know if “education reform” works?
Also called the Gates Standard. *This is a corollary of the BBBC Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules.*
From Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post, the beginning of an article entitled—
Bill Gates: ‘It would be great if our education stuff worked but…’
[start quote]
“It would be great if our education stuff worked, but that we won’t know for probably a decade.”
That’s what Bill Gates said on Sept. 21 (see video below) about the billions of dollars his foundation has plowed into education reform during a nearly hour-long interview he gave at Harvard University. He repeated the “we don’t know if it will work” refrain about his reform efforts a few days later during a panel discussion at the Clinton Global Initiative.
[end quote]
Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/09/27/bill-gates-it-would-be-great-if-our-education-stuff-worked-but/
That’s from a year and a half ago.
Time is running out. As I see it, another posting today on this blog reminds us that Newark anticipated the rheephorm bandwagon in 1995 when the state took over the public schools.
Let’s approach this with charterite/privatizer math. Two calculations.
5 ÷ 10 = 50% of the way to put up or shut up. By rheephorm standards.
But if we use 10 ÷ 20 that means rheephorm has long outlasted even the semblance of a trial-and-error experiment. Literally, by rheephorm standards, it has doubled down on its existence as an exemplar of catastrophic and verifiable failure.
“I reject that mind-set.” [Michelle Rhee]
And she means that in the most Johnsonally sort of ways, rheeally…
But in this case, as in the amount of time that testing sucks the oxygen out of classrooms [thank you, Arne Duncan!] she’s wrong. Really really wrong.
Thank you for your comments.
😎
I guess poor Mark Zuckerberg’s main fault is his youth. He didn’t have the life experience to imagine that his $100 million could disappear into the unyielding maw of Christie and his sycophants. Hopefully, his wife – apparently more grounded in the real world – helped him to learn from that experience.