Where Is Chris Cerf's Accountability?

LEAP Academy, a charter school in Camden, has lost its non-profit status, which puts $8.5 million in bonds at risk for default. Since these bonds are guaranteed by Rutgers-Camden, either state taxpayers or tuition-paying students will have to take a haircut if the bonds go south. In addition, the school has been under-performing academically, not having made Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) for the last two years.

And yet, just this past fall, NJ Education Commissioner Chris Cerf proudly cut the ribbon for the opening of LEAP's brand new $12.5 million STEM school.

This is an enormous embarrassment for Cerf, because his office is the only authority in the state that charter schools have to answer to. The New Jersey Department Of Education is ultimately responsible for charter approvals, reauthorizations, oversight, and advising; LEAP's fiscal failures and educational troubles must be laid at Cerf's feet:

According to its statement, LEAP did not file a required annual Form 990 with the IRS “due to conflicting advice on the administrative need to do so as a New Jersey charter school.”

LEAP said it learned 13 months ago that its tax-exempt status had been revoked in November 2010. The school issued the statement after a recent bond publication reported on the change.

Camden Pride’s tax-exempt status also was revoked in November 2010, according to the IRS. [emphasis mine]

There is really only one source of "advice" for LEAP that actually matters: the NJDOE. So how did Cerf's office screw up so badly? A little history is in order:

When Governor Chris Christie came into office in 2010, Rochelle Hendricks ran the Division of School Effectiveness and Choice, under which charters were regulated. Christie appointed Brett Schundler as Education Commissioner; after Christie famously screwed up New Jersey's Race To The Top application and used Schundler as a scapegoat, Hendricks stepped in as Interim Commissioner.

During her tenure, she relied on Deputy Commissioner Andy Smarick to help her with charter school expansion. But even the state Board of Education had problems with their plans; it was clear charters would only grow under a new regime.

Enter Chris Cerf; Christie announced the veteran education privatizer as his formal pick for commissioner in January of 2011. Cerf eventually reorganized the NJDOE and brought in Carly Bolger to oversee charters. Bolger lasted less than a year, eventually replaced by the current director of the charter office, Amy Ruck, who has been officially on the job less than a year.

In other words: by my count, at least three different people have been in charge of charter schools in the three years of the Christie administration.

What has all of this turnover in personnel led to? Well, even organizations as reformy as the Center for Education Reform criticized the NJDOE for their "...lack of transparency in the application review process while uncovering severe bias and subjectivity applied by external reviewers and the New Jersey Department of Education’s Office of Charter Schools."

And that's only one part of the follies that surrounded charters in New Jersey; there was also:

• The ill-advised push for charters in suburbs that didn't want nor need them.
• The Regis fiasco in Cherry Hill.
• The Tikun Olam fiasco in Highland Park.
• The virtual charter fiasco.
• The continuing Hatikvah fiasco in East Brubswick.
• The alleged scandal at Robert Treat Academy.
• The double-secret charter panels of 2010.
• The inexperienced and secretive charter panels of 2011.
• The charter report that took 631 days for Cerf to produce.
• That report, put out by the reformy folks at CREDO, that didn't support charter expansion the way Cerf said it did.
• The political bias surrounding charter applications.
• The problems in Piscataway, Camden, and Jersey City.
• More problems in Newark, Camden, and Trenton.
• The selling out of the Fisher and Robeson charter schools.
• The failure to hold charters accountable for equity.
• The disenfranchisement of citizens in Camden, who have to accept charters with records of failure into their city against their will.
• The disenfranchisement of citizens in Newark, who have to accept charters against their will under highly questionable pretenses. 

I don't think I've even covered it all, but you get the point: New Jersey's oversight of charter schools under Chris Cerf has been a disaster. He brought in people light on experience - both in education and in New Jersey - and the state's children have paid the price for their incompetence.

And it's not just the turnover at the NJDOE that's caused this train wreck; it's the infestation of inexperienced ideologues, paid for by California billionaires who bad-mouth New Jersey's students and schools. Their arrogance and intransigence have turned the state's charter approval and oversight processes into a bad joke.

This is why the NJDOE tried to put charters into towns where they weren't wanted and weren't needed. This is why charter applications were approved not on sound practices and records of success, but on political connections. This is why Chris Cerf cuts a red ribbon at a charter school's new building, and three months later the school is in deep trouble because it got bad "advice." The NJDOE has become dysfunctional under its current commissioner; the charter school circus in this state is all the proof anyone needs.

Monday morning, Cerf will finally go before the Senate Education Committee; he should have to explain his track record of failure when it comes to charters. Any man who worries so much about "accountability" should be required to start with himself.

"Accountability" begins at home.

ADDING: The senators should also ask Cerf whether Eli Broad's payments to the NJDOE should be subject to legislative oversight. I would dearly love to hear his answer.