Jersey Jazzman celebrates the end of the horrible Chris Christie administration. Christie was openly hostile to teachers and public schools. It’s over!

Christie loved charter schools and made a habit of belittling teachers.

For example, he writes,

“Allow me a few personal thoughts:

“Eight years ago, I started this blog in direct response to what I and many other teachers around the state perceived as a climate of teacher bashing brought on by New Jersey’s governor, Chris Christie.

“Today is Christie’s last day as governor. Somehow, we teachers survived.

“I’m only being a little hyperbolic when I say this. When I look back on Christie’s two terms, I see both a series of policies and a set of attitudes that were — and are — a threat to the teaching profession in New Jersey.

“- The value of our modest pensions and health care benefits (which are less generous than those found in the private sector) continues to erode, and current retirees have lost their cost-of-living-increases. We were already paying a wage penalty for choosing to become teachers. Now, Christie’s appointees want us to give up even more of our compensation, even as pension fund managers collect outrageously high fees.

“- New Jersey teachers are subject to an innumerate, illogical evaluation system that uses arbitrary weights of error-prone measures of “growth” that appear to be significantly biased. In short, NJDOE under Chris Christie has created an unvalidated mess of a teacher evaluation system that wastes time and money.

“- Despite these serious problems with NJ’s evaluation system, Christie has worked for years to undermine tenure and other workplace protections for teachers — which happen to also be protections for taxpayers and students.

“- Christie has demeaned the professionalism of educators by consistently appointing people into leadership positions who have neither the experience, the qualifications, nor the track records necessary for success.

“- Christie has promoted the expansion of charter schools, which hire less-experienced teachers at lower pay than hosting public district schools. Many of these charters have serious issues with accountability and transparency, yet Christie enthusiastically supports them. Christie’s administration has also turned a blind eye toward charters that clearly do not enroll the same types of students as their hosting public district schools. He has also actively promoted policies that disproportionately affect teachers of color through pubic school “renewal” and charter school expansion.

“- Perhaps most important: Christie has tarnished New Jersey’s legacy as a leader in school funding reform by promoting inequitable, inadequate school funding schemes and repeatedly ignoring the state’s own law regarding school funding.

“Add to all this Christie’s bullying, preening, sneering, dismissive, sexist attitude toward teachers — no, not just their unions, but teachers themselves.”

Read it all.