Reformy Quote Of the Day

From SOSNJ (in the comments):

Asking the National Association of Charter School Authorizers to create our charter school accountability framework is like asking the National Rifle Association to write our gun laws.

Yep. ACTING NJDOE Commissioner Cerf hired the cheerleaders to ref the game; and the cheerleaders are buddied up with ALEC, which writes "model" legislation on education (among other things) and gets favored politicians to put before the Legislature. In other words: NACSA is writing the rules, enforcing them, and promoting the game all at the same time.

And the promotion is as phony as professional wrestling. From the article:

As recent performance data demonstrates, New Jersey’s charter schools are largely on the right track. In the five largest urban school districts in New Jersey, a higher percentage of students in charter schools are demonstrating proficiency or higher when compared to students in their respective urban school districts. In Newark, for example, charter schools performed 25 percentage points higher than district schools in math and 21 percentage points higher in language arts in 2010 - 2011.

That's because the charters are not serving the same types of kids as the publics. "Successful" charters in New Jersey are largely "successful" because they teacher fewer kids in poverty, fewer kids who don't speak English at home, and fewer kids with special needs than neighboring public schools.


The "performance framework" that NACSA set up does nothing to address this. Charters need only show that they are trying to be diverse; they don't have to actually get results. Unlike the publics, which must perform well academically or face closure. That double standard doesn't seem to bother NACSA or Cerf very much, though.

Cerf promised us a charter school report that would address this very issue 512 days ago.



There should be a moratorium on all new charter schools until this report is released and fully vetted.