Bob Braun, the veteran investigative reporter who has covered New Jersey politics for many years, describes an astonishing ripoff of taxpayers.
Archives for category: Newark
One way that charter schools get high test scores is to get rid of students with low scores. The Education Law Center called out one of New Jersey’s High-flying charters for excessive disciplinary tactics imposed on students with disabilities. That’s a prelude to expulsion or “encouraging” these students to leave.
ELC SUPPORTS COMPLAINT OF EXCESSIVE DISCIPLINE OF STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES BY NORTH STAR CHARTER SCHOOL
A complaint filed by Rutgers Education and Health Law Clinic (Rutgers) with the NJ Department of Education (NJDOE) on August 17, 2018, alleges that the North Star Academy Charter School in Newark has engaged in a pattern and practice of imposing discipline without regard to students’ disability status, resulting in the inappropriate suspension and retention of students with disabilities and a denial of a free and appropriate public education.
Education Law Center, in a letter to the NJDOE on August 17, is supporting the Rutgers complaint.
Rutgers filed the complaint under a procedure requiring the NJDOE to investigate systemic violations of special education law by districts and charter schools. Rutgers’ clinical law fellow, Deanna Christian, Esq., prepared the complaint based on the Clinic’s representation of individual North Star Charter students and families, an examination of North Star’s discipline policy, and NJDOE data regarding suspension rates.
North Star Academy Charter School is managed by the Uncommon Charter network based in New York City. Under a single charter granted by the NJDOE, North Star actually operates 13 separate charter schools in Newark, enrolling approximately 4,000 students.
To manage classroom behavior in its Newark charter schools, North Star relies heavily on a “paycheck” system in which a student’s loss of dollars or points, and his or her ultimate detention or suspension, may result from minor infractions, such as poor posture, off-task behavior, or incomplete work or homework. Many of the infractions may be related to a student’s disability.
The NJDOE data examined by Rutgers revealed that, during the 2016-17 school year, North Star suspended 29.1% of students classified as eligible for special education and related services, placing it among New Jersey public schools with the highest discipline rates for students with disabilities. During that same period, all other K-12 charter schools in Newark suspended less than 9% of their special education students, while Newark Public Schools (NPS) suspended only 1.3% of those students.
“Some parents of students with disabilities who attend North Star have reported more than thirty out-of-school suspensions in a year, resulting in loss of instructional time and retention,” said Ms. Christian. “North Star’s use of the paycheck system, without modification for students with disabilities, has a disproportionate and discriminatory impact on those students and must be revised.”
The data presented to the NJDOE by Rutgers is consistent with complaints ELC has received from North Star parents. ELC also noted that North Star’s high suspension rate for students with disabilities was accompanied by a low enrollment rate of those same students: during 2016-17, only 7.3% of North Star’s students were classified, compared to 15.48% of NPS students.
“We applaud the Rutgers Clinic for requesting that the NJDOE investigate an apparent pattern at North Star of imposing excessive and inappropriate discipline on students with disabilities,” said Elizabeth Athos, ELC senior attorney. “A 29.1% suspension rate for students with disabilities is shockingly high, as is North Star’s low enrollment rate of classified students. North Star, like every other New Jersey charter, is obligated to ensure its discipline policies support, and do not undermine, the right of students with disabilities to a free and appropriate education under state and federal law.”
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I have never met Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey. I probably never will. I only know him as a politician who did his best to turn Newark into another New Orleans, without a hurricane. He became the best buddy of the horrible Governor Chris Christie, who together persuaded billionaire Mark Zuckerberg to put up $100 million to open charters in Newark, an effort that was chronicled in Dale Russakoff’s “The Prize.”
He has been honored by any number of rightwing groups, like the conservative Manhattan Institute. It was funny to watch him fulminate Against Betsy DeVos’ nomination, since he shares her agenda, including vouchers.
Here is his description of the deferred American Dream.
In his account of his life, he stresses his ties to Newark but does not mention that he attended one of New Jersey’s fine suburban high schools, which prepared him for entry to Stanford University, then a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford, then Yale Law School. He is not a humble Newark guy. He is part of the elite, which need not be hidden. He succeeded, and a great public high school set him on the road to success.
If he plans to run for President in 2020, he has to own his entire history and break his ties with the DeVos ideology.
I posted earlier today about Chris Christie’s poison pill for Newark, having approved in advance of his retirement an additional 7,000 charter spaces on the basis of a long waiting list.
Rutgers Professor Julia Sass Rubin explains that the current charter schools have openings, and the wait list is a myth:
If current patterns hold, many of the Newark charter school seats approved by Governor Christie are unlikely to be filled by Newark residents because there appears to be an oversupply of charter seats for the level of demand in Newark.
Over the last four years, Newark residents have filled only about 80% of the approved seats in Newark charter schools. This may have been a factor in the Christie Administration’s decision to close several Newark charter schools last year, as doing so would create more demand for the remaining charter schools.
This pattern of weak demand for charter schools is also seen in other New Jersey cities with large charter enrollments.
The data showing a gap between supply and demand throws into question the claims of a 35,000 student waitlist that the NJ charter industry has used to push back against any slow down in approvals. The 35,000 figure is self-reported and unverified. It is created by the charter school trade association. If a student’s family applies to 10 charter schools, the waitlist would count her as ten students. Analysis of specific individual charter waitlists also confirms that they may include students who have moved away or who applied in prior years and are no longer interested.
Mark Weber and I will be releasing a second charter school research report next month that goes into greater detail on these and related issues.
When Corey Booker, then Mayor of Newark, and Chris Christie, then Governor of New Jersey, persuaded Mark Zuckerberg to give them $100 million to transform the schools of Newark, they told him that Newark would become the New Orleans of the North and that it would become one of the highest performing districts in the nation. Hahaha. As Dale Russakoff explained in her book The Prize about Zuckerberg’s millions, most of the money went to consultants and to pay off debts to the teachers’ union.
Nonetheless, Christie delivered on his end of the bargain. Newark is on track to have more than 40% of its students in charter schools. Ten years ago, less than 10% were in charter schools.
The state has signed off on nearly 7,000 more charter seats to be available by the 2022-23 school year, according to state data compiled by Sass Rubin, who teaches at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning & Policy. If all those seats are filled and district enrollment stays flat at about 34,200 students, then the share of students who go to school in Newark and attend charters could climb as high as 44 percent.
No one knows whether the demand will meet the supply, but that doesn’t matter. The supply will be there thanks to the Christie administration.
Some said it made sense to stockpile extra seats during the charter-friendly Christie administration, under which the number of charter students doubled. “While the getting is good, and Christie is approving just about anything that sounds stable, why don’t we just go and apply for additional charters so we can have those in our pocket?” asked one charter leader, describing the thinking of some of his school’s board members.
So now we must eagerly await the results to see whether Newark becomes a model for the nation, as Booker and Christie said it would be. Or do we have to wait for Newark to become 100% charter? Apparently the goal is to prove that poverty and segregation don’t matter, and that charters can succeed despite those factors. Let’s see.
But the problem with Newark becoming 100% charter is that then the charters would have no place to send the kids they don’t want. As this report by Mark Weber and Julia Sass Rubin shows, the charters systematically under enroll students with disabilities and English language learners. If charters must take all of them, it might drive down their test scores.
The NPE Action Fund endorses Denise Cole for election to the Newark, New Jersey, Board of Education.
The vote is April 17.
“Denise Cole has received the endorsement of the Network for Public Education Action for a seat on the Newark, New Jersey Board of Education.
“Denise is a dedicated public education advocate, with a strong history of working with national, state and local organizations like Journey for Justice, The Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools, PULSE (Parents United for Local School Education), Parents Educating Parents, and Communities United. Her years as an advocate will help her amplify the voice of the voters and community so that they can collectively take part in decisions that will directly impact their lives.
“She supports the NAACP’s Resolution on a Moratorium on Charter Schools, and believes that “charter schools should be required to be totally transparent with the public on the spending of taxpayer money.” With almost $250 million dollars diverted to charter schools from the Newark Public School budget, such transparency is crucial.
“Denise told us that taxpayer dollars should go “directly into the classroom for teacher and student success,” and that this is best achieved “by incorporating wraparound services that are sustainable.” Denise invites parents to work to support changes in the traditional public schools that they seek in charter and private schools. She said, “We must become the change we want for our children and community.”
“We ask you to support Denise Cole’s candidacy for the Newark Board of Education on April 17th.”
Mark Weber, aka Jersey Jazzman, worked with Bruce Baker at Rutgers University to review the progress of the “reforms” (aka privatization and disruption) in Newark. This post is the first in a series that will summarize their findings.
The National Education Policy Center published a lengthy report written by Dr. Bruce Baker and myself that looks closely at school “reform” in Newark. I wrote a short piece about our report at NJ Spotlight that gives summarizes our findings. We’ve also got a deep dive into the data for our report at the NJ Education Policy website.
You might be wondering why anyone outside of New Jersey, let alone Newark, should care about what we found. Let me give you a little background before I try to answer that question…
In 2010, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO and founder of Facebook, went on the The Oprah Winfrey Show and announced that he was giving $100 million in a challenge grant toward the improvement of Newark’s schools. Within the next couple of years, Newark had a new superintendent, Cami Anderson. Anderson attempted to implement a series of “reforms” that were supposed to improve student achievement within the city’s entire publicly-financed school system.
In the time following the Zuckerberg donation, Newark has often been cited by “reformers” as a proof point. It has a large and growing charter school sector, it implemented a teacher contract with merit pay, it has a universal enrollment system, it “renewed” public district schools by churning school leadership, it implemented Common Core early (allegedly), and so on.
So when research was released this fall that purported to show that students had made “educationally meaningful improvements” in student outcomes, “reformers” both in and out of New Jersey saw it as a vindication. Charter schools are not only good — they don’t harm public schools, because they “do more with less.” Disruption in urban schools is good, because the intractable bureaucracies in these districts needs to be shredded. Teachers unions are impeding student learning because we don’t reward the best teachers and get rid of the worst…
And so on. If Newark’s student outcomes have improved, it has to be because these and other received truths of the “reformers” must be true.
But what if the data — including the research recently cited by Newark’s “reformers” — doesn’t show Newark has improved? What if other factors account for charter school “successes”? What if the test score gains in the district, relative to other, similar districts, isn’t unique, or educationally meaningful? What if all the “reforms” supposedly implemented in Newark weren’t actually put into place? What if the chaos and strife that has dogged Newark’s schools during this “reform” period hasn’t been worth it?
What if Newark, NJ isn’t an example of “reform” leading to success, but is instead a cautionary tale?
These are the questions we set out to tackle. And in the next series of posts here, I am going to lay out, in great detail, exactly what we found, and explain what the Newark “reform” experiment is actually telling us about the future of American education.
Bruce Baker and Mark Weber have assembled a full report about charters in Newark.
There are successes and failures and much in-between.
Before accepting the assurances of reformers about Newark, read this.
Bob Braun: Former NJ State Commissioner Hespe Hired to Work in Newark by Former NJ Commissioner Cerf
Dale Russakoff’s book “The Prize” described how everyone—consultants, entrepreneurs, reformers—fattened off Mark Zuckerberg’s gift of $100 Million, which was intended to make Newark the New Orleans of the North. Things didn’t work out so well for the students, who were treated like pawns on a chess board, shuttled from school to school.
The game goes on. The current superintendent of Newark is Chris Cerf, who previously served as New Jersey State Commissioner, chosen by Governor Chris Christie.
As veteran journalist Bob Braun reports, Cerf has given a consulting job to another former New Jersey Commissioner of Education, David Hespe, Another Christie appointee.
Braun writes:
“David Hespe, the former New Jersey education commissioner responsible for many of the worst excesses of state control of the Newark public school district, has a new source of employment–the Newark public school district….
“Hespe’s work for Cerf is the latest in a dizzying exchange of jobs between top state educators. Hespe appointed Cerf to run the district which has been under state control since 1995. Cerf had preceded Hespe as state education commissioner–and Cerf himself had worked for the school district before he was appointed state education commissioner. Jobs among pals of outgoing Gov. Chris Christie spread like a highly contagious stomach virus among preschoolers.
“Contagious. Nauseating. But profitable.
“Both Cerf and Hespe as state education commissioner supported the so-called “reforms” imposed by Cami Anderson, Christie’s first choice to run the state-operated district–wrenching changes in district enrollment patterns, the closing down and sale of public schools and their assets, the misuse of new teacher tenure rules to dismiss veteran teachers and union activists, and the vast expansion of privately-operated charter schools.
“That charter expansion came at the expense of traditional public schools. Tens of millions of dollars were transferred annually by Hespe and friends to privately-operated charter schools to ensure they are “saved harmless” from state aid cuts–cuts that devastated regular public schools. Hespe supported the transfer of public funds away from Newark public schools to the charters.”
New Jerseyans pay very high taxes. Watch the carnival in Newark to see how that money is squandered.
The M.E.T.S. Charter school in Newark opened in late August, with Governor zchrus Christie present to cut the ceremonial ribbon and slam Newark’s public school (which have been controlled by the state for 22 years and are only now regaining local control). Two months later, the school abboinced it would get rid of two grades (9 and 10) and close down completely at the end of the school year.
Forget about it.
The school announced it has decided to remain open after all. At least for now.
Hey, that’s business. Shoe stores open and close. Restaurants open and close. Charter schools open and close, then change course and don’t close.
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