Archives for category: New Jersey
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Where Is the Grass Greener? Texas or NJ?

By dianeravitch
August 19, 2012 //
5

Sara Stevenson explained how NCLB is still ruining public schools in Texas.

This reader in New Jersey says that getting the waiver has given unprecedented power to the state, which is now intervening in districts across the state to impose Governor Christie’s will on everyone. Bear in mind that on national tests, New Jersey is typically #2 in the nation (behind Massachusetts) and the governor is acting as if the entire system were a disaster.

Wouldn’t it be great if the politicians stuck to what they know?

I still cannot figure out which is worse. I hear nightmares of the impact of NCLB in states that did not apply for the waiver, but here in NJ the waiver is being used to intervene in massive ways by the state in local school districts, threatening them with take overs, instituting Regional Achievement Centers (RACs) which are really ‘the state is here to tell you how to run your district centers’ funded by Broad money (so read, ‘dismantle your public school system’), focus and priority schools are being made to jump through hoops for crazy reasons, and ‘failing’ charter schools are being doled out to CMOs. Is this better? Maybe the grass is always greener, but right now it is looking brown all over.
Categories NCLB (No Child Left Behind), New Jersey, Texas

Where Are the Miracle Schools?

By dianeravitch
August 16, 2012 //
4

Bruce Baker of Rutgers University has written a fascinating analysis of charter schools in New York City and Houston.

Do they enroll the same students as the nearby district schools?

Do they have higher test scores?

Do they spend the same amount of money?

These are very important questions, given the reformers’ belief that charter schools will close the achievement gap and solve the problem of poverty.

Spoiler alert: The charters do not enroll the same students; do not on average have higher scores than nearby district schools; and typically spend more money than district schools.

Please read this article. It has fascinating data.

 

Categories Charter Schools, New Jersey, NYC

What’s Wrong with Privatization?

By dianeravitch
August 9, 2012 //
17

This could be a very long post, but this is a blog so I’ll keep it short.

Almost every day there is a new scandal about a public service that was privatized: prisons, hospitals, schools, preschool programs.

Today it is the prison half-way houses in New Jersey, which were privatized and are now plagued with drugs, corruption, and various other problems.

The New Jersey legislature wants to impose greater supervision.

Governor Chris Christie, that tower of rectitude, won’t permit it, if it includes closer supervision of existing contracts.

One of his close political associates runs half-way houses in New Jersey.

Categories Education Reform, For-Profit, New Jersey, Privatization

Arne Duncan Says…

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2012 //
42

I hesitate to inflict this interview on my readers. You trust me to inform you and even on occasion to make you laugh with a good satire or parody. I try to shield you from pain and double-speak.

But I must share this with you.

Here is the latest interview with the Secretary of Education. It begins with a stomach-turning but accurate admission that education is the one thing that President Obama and the teacher-bashing governor of New Jersey Chris Christie agree on. How’s that for a reassuring opening?

When asked why the evidence for the reforms he is pushing seems weak, Duncan replies it is because they are new and therefore don’t have a 50-year track record. Oh, please, they don’t have any track record at all, yet he is pushing these untested, invalid measures on schools across the nation. Of course, everyone wants great teachers and great principals and great schools, but nothing he is doing is producing those results.

The questioner gently asks why there were no “dramatic” improvements in New York City or Washington, D.C. or Chicago, where Duncan was in charge for eight years. The answer is so vague as to be indecipherable. Ten years of Duncan-style reform in New York City, six years in D.C., twelve years in Chicago, and nothing to show for it. Just have faith! Believe!

I can’t go on.

Maybe you can.

But isn’t it nice to know that Arne Duncan and Chris Christie and all the rightwing governors are on the same page about how to deal with teachers and principals and schools and education?

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Chicago, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Merit pay, New Jersey, New York, Teacher Evaluations, US Education

Why Governor Christie Can’t Wait

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2012 //
9

As this article shows, Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey has decided that the state needs charter schools so badly that he can’t wait for the Legislature to act. He plans to do by regulation what the Legislature has thus far failed to do: To allow more charter schools and possibly an online charter school as well.

What’s the hurry?

The evidence is clear that charters don’t get different results from public schools when they enroll the same children. And the evidence is equally clear that online charters get worse results than public schools. There is no miracle in calling a school a charter, although it is true that nearly 90% of charters are non-union. Maybe that’s the point of having more charters: to get rid of union jobs.

There may be another reason for the governor’s impatience. As an article in the Star-Ledger showed last April, many of Christie’s bills are closely aligned with the ALEC model legislation. ALEC calls for charters that receive the same funding as public schools, and for for-profit online schools.

The Legislature is dragging its feet.

But Governor Christie can’t let Bobby Jindal and other rightwing governors outdo him in putting the ALEC plans into action.

Categories ALEC, Charter Schools, Education Reform, New Jersey

Funniest Story of the Month

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2012 //
8

As I was doing some research about virtual charter schools, I came across an article that caused me to laugh out loud.

It appeared in the Star-Ledger, the main newspaper in New Jersey. It was titled “State Has Virtually No Reason to Not Give Online Charter Schools a Shot.”

It said the state should stop “dithering” and should promptly approve an online charter school. No delay, no moratorium, approve the online school now.

It was published on July 11, 2012, as the state’s Acting Commissioner of Education Chris Cerf and the state board of education were mulling a decision to authorize the megacorporation K12 to open an online charter school in New Jersey.

The reason I laughed out loud was that the article appeared on the same day that the FBI raided the offices of the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter. See here too.

And it appeared several months after the New York Times published a withering expose of the terrible academic record of K12.

And it appeared fourteen months after the CREDO study of virtual charters in Pennsylvania, which showed they get awful results.

The invaluable New Jersey blogger Jersey Jazzman showed the fallaciousness of the claim that the state should not wait for more research but should promptly approve a virtual charter school.

Truly, this is one of those laugh out loud moments. They are so few these days that we should enjoy them.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Reform, K12 Inc., New Jersey, On-Line Education

Do Cities Need Virtual Schools?

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2012 //
9

Carly Berwick writes about K12’s plan to establish a virtual charter school in New Jersey. It was turned down, but only temporarily, to provide a year of “planning” time.

The poor academic results of K12 cyber charters are well known. They were written about in the New York Times and the Washington Post. They were reviewed negatively by the National Education Policy Center. The most startling statistic –of many–is that K12’s Colorado Virtual Academy had a graduation rate of 12 percent in 2010, compared to 72 percent statewide in regular public schools.

And let’s not forget the money! K12 had revenues of $522 million last year, and its CEO was paid $5 million of taxpayer dollars.

What’s to like?

Yet the “reformers” continue to demand more of these for-profit schools despite their poor academic performance. They continue to insist, despite the evidence, that they are a good choice for children.

Berwick raises an important point: If virtual charters take hold in cities like Newark and Jersey City, what will it do to urban life? Schools are now the center of their community, a place not only for children during the day, but for athletic events and community activities in the afternoons and evenings.

Will it weaken cities to turn their schools into vacant lots? Of course it will.

When will our public officials think of what is good for society and for our shared future?

The only beneficiaries of a new virtual charter in urban New Jersey, as she points out, would be the investors, not the residents of cities struggling to make a comeback.

Categories Charter Schools, New Jersey, On-Line Education

The Odd Couple

By dianeravitch
August 3, 2012 //
5

Blogger Jonathan Pelto in Connecticut read about the “school reform plan” proposed by conservative Republican Governor Chris Christie and realized that it was virtually identical to the one proposed earlier this year by Connecticut Governor Malloy.

Under this plan, the Legislature was asked to authorize a Commissioner’s Network, “a system in which Stefan Pryor, Malloy’s Commissioner of Education, would be given the authority to take over a series of local schools, remove the existing staff, ban collective bargaining and turn the schools over to some third-party who would then be exempt from the state’s laws requiring competitive bidding and limiting the use of consultants.”

Odd couple indeed. The allegedly liberal governor in Connecticut and the ultra-conservative governor in New Jersey. Same plan.

There is one link between them. Malloy’s State Commissioner of Education Stefan Pryor served previously as Cory Booker’s deputy mayor. Booker is a favorite of the Wall Street hedge fund crowd, and he is a leading advocate for privatization of public schools.

Maybe it is no coincidence after all.

Categories Connecticut, New Jersey

Privatization, Profits, and Politicians

By dianeravitch
August 3, 2012 //
8

A reader noted the similarity between Governor Chris Christie’s plan to privatize low-performing public schools, and Governor Rick Snyder’s reform plan in Michigan. Other readers have commented on the irony of conservative Republican governors–allegedly committed to small government–aggressively using the powers of government to undermine local control and privatize schools.

The similarity goes beyond Christie and Snyder. The same ideas–privatize low-performng schools, close low-performing schools–are embedded in Race to the Top, also in the Boston Consulting Group’s plan for Philadelphia, the Mind Trust plan for Indianapolis, the Bloomberg reforms in New York City, Mayor Frank Jackson’s plan for Cleveland. None of these plans ever works, other than by pushing out the low-performing kids and sending them to other struggling schools. It makes you wish that these guys would take a peek at evidence or actually care about the kids. And it also makes you wonder why none of them ever has an original idea. They just copy one another ad infinitum. And the more they copy stale, failed ideas, the more they praise themselves as “innovators.”

When you see how popular these ideas are among conservative Republicans, it shows how far to the right the Republican party has gone, when the principle of profit trumps the principle of local control and respect for tradition:

This sounds very eerily the same as what Gov Rick Snyder has already done here in Michigan. The Educational Achievement Authority (EAA) is set to operate the lowest performing 5% of Michigan schools starting in the 12-13 school year. Here is a quote from the michigan.gov website explaining the EAA ” It (EAA) will first apply to underperforming schools in Detroit in the 2012-2013 school year and then be expanded to cover the entire state.” Is this not a state takeover?
Categories Boston Consulting Group, Michigan, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Privatization

Is This the True Christie Plan?

By dianeravitch
August 2, 2012 //
40

A reader suggests the real purpose of the Christie “school reform” plan. Or could it be to introduce private markets to public education, with profits for some, losses for others?

Chris Christie, like many Republicans, main goal is to break the teacher union; it has nothing to do with education. He has no real interest in helping underperforming schools or struggling students.

Categories Education Reform, For-Profit, New Jersey, Privatization, Unions
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