Word Jazz served (mostly) daily. Education, politics, music, the arts, New Jersey, and whatever else strikes me.
"A widely read teacher blogger" - Jane Roh, Courier Post.
"One of my favorite bloggers" - Diane Ravitch
I will protect your pensions. Nothing about your pension is going to change when I am governor. - Chris Christie, "An Open Letter to the Teachers of NJ" October, 2009
I often get the sense that something happens to the brains of people who do their two years or less at Teach For America and then, rather than continue to teach, go on to "stay in education" as "leaders." Maybe their self-granted halos are a little too tight.
So, as a college student, I organized a group of female athletes to challenge the university on the basis of gender inequity. We had amazing mentors -- my aunt who was a university employee and is a sports enthusiast, the Title IX officer for the University of California, a free-lance journalist who knew a lot about the Title IX law and movement. After a thoroughly-researched, public letter threatening a lawsuit was distributed far and wide, dozens of meetings, and several news stories -- the university agreed to massive changes. Female and male sports budgets merged, across all sports, and head coaches were mandated to ensure equity. Literally, overnight, we bought three new boats, moved in to share the men's boat house, gained access to the best weight rooms at the university, and began to fly -- instead of driving 15 hours -- to races.
[...]
As Superintendent of Newark Public Schools (NPS), I am no stranger to controversy and feel many of the dynamics I experienced in my Title IX days -- and throughout my life as an activist -- are at play in the fight for educational equity (in Newark and nationally). Vilifying the leader is a way of discrediting them and preventing them from earning the trust they need to lead. Fear, intimidation, and gender politics are alive and well. More people benefit from a broken public education system than may otherwise be obvious including people who should be "natural allies" for change. In the face of abject failure, even mediocrity is celebrated and challenging that is difficult. It is wildly unpopular to say what we have been doing is failing and even more controversial to make bold proposals that challenge sacred cows -- and adult interests embedded in the status quo.
Folks, there's no bigger fan of Title IX than yours truly. I say that as the uncle and brother of some outstanding college athletes who happen to be women. Women deserve all the protections and entitlements and privileges that have been traditionally reserved for men.
But let's recap:
Apparently, the following acts are exemplars of moral courage:
Walking out on a mother because you, and you alone, have decided what is and is not appropriate speech for people who are advocating for their children.
Taking a bow at the biggest speech of the year for your boss, who has said explicitly he does not care about the opinions of those citizens of Newark who dare to disagree with him.
According to them both, not heeding the summons of the chair of the state's most important legislative committee on schools, and not answering the emails of the elected representative of your school board.
All of these acts are so selfless, so noble, so righteous indeed that they deserve a public self-lauding -- one where the author can tell us all about her lonely, arduous crusade at her extremely elite college to get more money for her crew team so she could fly to her meets rather than drive.
Take a sec to let that sink in...
Anderson really should be more careful: she just might re-injure herself, what with all the contorting she's doing to pat herself on the back.
If you are ever asked to testify before a legislative committee for your state, you should go.
Not just because, as I found out this week, it's a singular experience - which it is. No, you should go because... well, because these are the elected representatives of your state, and they want to hear your opinion, and that's not only a great honor but a great responsibility.
I got up even earlier than usual this past Tuesday and schleped down to Trenton to give my testimony to the Joint Committee on the Public Schools, based on the two reports on Newark school restructuring I coauthored with Bruce Baker. The first, An Empirical Critique of One Newark, looks at the plan with a focus on students. The second, One Newark's Racially Disparate Impact on Teachers, concentrates on the consequences of the plan for Newark's teachers. I'm obviously quite proud to coauthor anything with Bruce, arguably the foremost expert in the country on school finance.
But I was doubly proud that Joseph Oluwole, from Montclair State University, agreed to coauthor our second brief; Dr. Oluwole is one of the nation's most eminent scholars of education law. His contribution to the brief, which outlines in great detail the historic context of racial discrimination against teachers of color, is worthy of its own publication.
Bruce, Joseph, and I had released the last brief the day before I was schedule to testify, so I presented evidence from both briefs. NJEA, my union, was there to capture the testimony of Vice-President Marie Blistan, but they recorded me as well:
Yeah, 50 is approaching fast, and it shows. Rub it in...
Let me add a few personal observations about the day:
- First and foremost: I will admit, to my mother's chagrin, that I am a lifelong Democrat. I've crossed the line a few times to vote for Republicans who I thought were good leaders and deserving of my vote; overall, however, I vote in the "D" column.
That said: I was extremely impressed by the bipartisan and serious tone of this committee. I know it's fashionable to universally beat up politicians as hacks and self-servers; I have to admit, I've engaged in that a bit myself from time to time...
Well, there are undoubtedly politicians who are disingenuous or obtuse at best -- on both sides of the aisle. But the statements I heard and the questions I and others received were uniformly insightful and well-versed -- on both sides of the aisle. For the Republicans, I have to particularly commend Assemblyman David Wolfe, who was exceptionally perceptive and asked me and others excellent questions.
- I was really happy I went first, so I didn't have to follow Marie Blistan, VP of NJEA:
(Uh-oh - looks like a problem with the embedding code. Here's a link to Marie's testimony - go ahead and watch it. I'll wait...)
Zing. Marie is pretty much the proverbial ball of fire; I was happy to spend a little time with her afterward over at NJEA's office building, which is right across the street from the Statehouse. The friendly folks who run my union gave me a quick tour, which I thought was only fair; it is, after all, a building paid for with my dues and the dues of teachers all around the state.
I know that our blustering governor loves to say that the NJEA headquarters is a "palace on State Street" -- but you know what the office building really is? An office building. People there work in cubicles and decorate their desks with pictures of their kids and grandkids and they eat lunch at their desks and make copies in the copy room and do all the stuff you do in an office. The notion that it's a "palace" is absurd. In any case, everyone was quite friendly and took the time to stop and say hi.
I've disagreed with NJEA on occasion in the past, and will probably disagree again in the future. But the cartoonishly evil and profligate characterization of the group, as exemplified by folks like Tom Moran of the Star-Ledger and Jim Gearhart of NJ 101.5, is just plain silly. Stop it.
- The other three witnesses were Liz Athos from the Education Law Center, who gave an excellent presentation on Newark and SFRA, the state's school financing law that Chris Christie is illegally ignoring; John Avignon of the Newark Teacher's Union, who had the best line of the day: "Cami Anderson says she needs to close schools because they're empty. But she created all these empty schools by emptying them!"; and Antoinette Baskerville-Richardson, Chairperson of the Newark School Advisory Board.
Baskerville-Richardson's testimony was a show-stopper. She described a school system where the superintendent has lost not only the trust of the elected school board, but most of the community. Most of the members appeared stunned at her claim that Anderson hadn't returned any of her emails for weeks. Senator Wolfe asked whether she had a staff or an office or a phone; Baskerville-Richardson replied: "Senator, we don't have a shelf. We don't have a pencil. We did get some Blackberries."
Baskerville-Richardson, as a former teacher herself, is a historian of the Newark Public Schools. And what she describes is a system that, at one time, at least tried to work with the elected board even as the schools were under state control. That era is over, and Baskerville-Richardson knows exactly how it happened: testing, she said, has become the mechanism through which the state justifies its continuing control over the pursestrings and policies of Newark's schools.
I asked this at my ALI talk, and I'll ask it again: couldn't we have taken a tiny fraction of the Facebook money for Newark's schools and studied these tests? Figure out if they're really measuring what they are supposed to measure? I know, crazy talk...
- Probably the biggest bombshell of the hearing was when Senator Ronald Rice, the co-chair with Assemblywoman Mila Jasey, disputed Newark State Superintendent Cami Anderson's charge that she wasn't invited to testify. You could tell that everyone on the committee, Republican and Democrat alike, was having none of that. The committee was actually ready to vote on asking the Legislature for subpoena powers before Assemblyman Wolfe fairly pointed out that all of the committee members should be there to debate before a vote of that importance.
Assemblywoman Sheila Oliver was particularly incensed. I will always disagree with Assemblywoman Oliver on the pen-ben bill, but there's no doubt she cares about the children of Newark and wants them to have a public school system that needs their needs as well as Millburn's district meets their children's. The same with Senator Teresa Ruiz: I was not happy with some of the assumptions she made during the crafting of the tenure bill, and I stand by my criticisms. But she is clearly someone who has thought a lot about education and she made some insightful comments. And she was more than a little annoyed that Anderson had not deigned to show up before this committee.
But it turns out that Anderson does, indeed, have an answer for some of her critics...
- After chatting with people for a while, I made my way down to the Statehouse cafeteria (it's clean and nice and the food's good, but your senators and assemblypersons sure aren't living la vita loca, NJ - it's a cafeteria) and met John Mooney of NJSpotlight, who is my editor there (new column this week!). John asked me, "So, did you see the response to you and Bruce?"
"Response? What response?" Turns out that NPS had released, that very day, a rebuttal to our first brief on One Newark. Hmm...
Folks, believe me: we'll get to this response in due time. But there's one thing I'd like to correct immediately:
NPS claims our data source for building utilization rates is "unknown." Well, look right in Appendix A of the brief and you'll see we state our data source explicitly: the Education Law Center. Perhaps NPS has better data and ELC gave us the incorrect numbers... but it's not because ELC didn't try, over and over again, to get good data from the district.
In fact, NPS is long overdue in filing its Long Range Facilities Plan (LRFP), as required by state law. Just before I went up to testify, Liz told me ELC had received an amendment to the 2005 LRFP. We're trying to get a copy and will happily correct any errors when we do.
Until then, you can be confident we'll have a few things to say in response to NPS. More to come...
- One last thing: the nicest part of the day was meeting a terrific young woman named Melissa Katz. Melissa is studying to be a teacher at TCNJ, one of this state's outstanding institutions of higher learning and great teacher training centers. This brilliant young woman couldn't have been nicer, and we had a great talk (albeit too short) about education policy and her career plans.
I don't think New Jersey understands how lucky it is that young people like Melissa, in spite of the stupid and unproductive War On Teachers being waged across this state and across this country, still want to enter the profession and educate kids. I hope she sticks with it - but I wouldn't blame her at all if she didn't. Someone like Melissa could do whatever she wanted with her life, including many jobs where she'd make a lot more money.
It heartens me to meet young people who want to serve in our public schools. Instead of vilifying the profession and its professional organizations, why don't we instead raise the prestige of being a teacher? Why not honor her commitment by keeping the commitments to teachers and providing them with decent salaries, good benefits, and a dignified retirement? No one goes into teaching expecting to make any more than a comfortable middle-class wage; why can't we at least meet that reasonable bar?
And why not give young people like Melissa the chance to earn the autonomy that comes with every other profession? Why should she spend her time and her money getting a degree in education when others who won't make that demand on themselves can use political connections and force policies on the schools that will undermine her ability to do her job?
I think Melissa would join with me in saying she and I and all the other teachers of this nation have absolutely no problem with being held accountable for our work. But let us hold each other accountable, with appropriate oversight from officials who have been trained in our field, our elected representatives, and the citizens we serve. It's what every other profession does; why should we be any different?
Let's make teaching, once again, a profession worthy of people like Melissa Katz.
I really wanted to let this story die the death it so richly deserves. But I just can't let this pass without comment:
I wrote a lot about Perth Amboy, a small city on the Raritan Bay here in New Jersey, over the past few years.
I wrote about how Janine Caffrey, a lightly experienced administrator who took over the district's schools, was turned into a folk hero by Tom Moran of the Star-Ledger on the issue of tenure, even though her arguments were weak and her evidence was anecdotal at best.
I wrote about the ongoing fights Caffrey had with her board, abetted by interference from B4K, New Jersey's richest and reformiest lobbying shop.
I wrote about how Former Acting Commissioner of Education Chris Cerf did a disservice to both Perth Amboy and Caffrey herself as he allowed her case to be unnecessarily dragged out.
And so now, after years of unnecessary strife and turmoil, after all that angst, after hours of public relations jockeying and political maneuvering, the time has finally come...
Acting Superintendent of Schools Vivian Rodriguez takes a calm approach in making sure the district focuses on getting work done.
The calmness she displays in her management and personal approach may be one of the reasons she was asked back to the district after being on sabbatical for several months.
And her calmness appears to be a welcome change from the upheaval the district has been through over the last three years during disputes between the board and the school superintendent, who was put on paid administrative leave last fall.
“She’s sincere in how she goes about things. She’s not reactive. She thinks about what she says and she’s very organized and very diligent in how she follows through,” Board of Education President Obdulia Gonzalez said.
“Dr. Rodriguez is fair in her assessment. She’s not quick or slow to make a decision,” said Diane Crawford, president of the Perth Amboy Federation/American Federation of Teachers. “She has had a very open door.”
Rodriguez, who has worked in Perth Amboy for nine years, came back to the district in December as assistant superintendent, two months after Superintendent of Schools Janine Walker Caffrey was placed on administrative leave. It was the third time the school board had placed Caffrey on leave, and the first time the board’s decision was not reversed by a judge.
Prior to the sabbatical, disputes between Rodriguez and Caffrey led to Caffrey relocating Rodriguez's office to the basement of one of the district elementary schools.
Rodriguez previously served as interim superintendent when Caffrey was originally placed on paid administrative leave by the school board in April 2012. Rodriguez was made acting superintendent in January.
“I wanted to come back because I really care about this city and I wanted to help,” said Rodriguez, who has a doctorate in curriculum and instruction from Fordham University, has taught Holocaust and bilingual education, worked as a school principal, and run a model bilingual program. She has previously served as an associate dean of the Kean University College of Education and still teaches graduate courses at the college.
Is Vivian Rodriguez the best person to take Perth Amboy's schools into the future? I have no idea; however, I wish her the very best, as I wish for all the staff and students and parents and citizens of Perth Amboy.
But let's take the moment to ask a simple question: what happens when reformy interlopers move on? What happens when they grow bored with interfering in local school districts, and shift their attention to the next, new, shiny toy? What happens when they go cash out into the private sector? When their old lobbying shops fold? When they decide to spend their political lucre on other, more interesting political races?
I'll tell you what happens: dedicated, lifelong educators, like the outstanding professionals of the Perth Amboy Federation, step in and do what B4K and Chris Cerf and Alan Fournier and Arthur Rock and Tom Moran and all the other reformy buttinskies could never do:
They teach. They lead. They inspire.
From now on, Perth Amboy (and all other local school districts), do yourselves a favor: work with your teachers and your principals and your school leaders and your elected school board and your town leaders and your parents and your citizens and run your own schools.
The last thing you need ever again are bureaucrats and billionaires and bloviators telling you what to do.
Let's start by acknowledging the insanity of New Jersey charter school approval process. For all intents and purposes, one unelected official -- the Commissioner of Education -- gets to decide which charters survive and which fall. It doesn't matter what the elected school board members of the local community, which has to pay for the charters, may think about the applications: all that has counted for the last three years is whether Former Acting Commissioner Chris Cerf thought your charter was worthy of a seal embossed by his signet ring.
Bruce Baker has long documented the patterns of segregation and student attrition at many of the state's "successful" charters; yours truly has contributed a bit to the discussion as well. No matter: here in the Garden State, we have established a regular ritual where charter applicants, both new charters and expansions, wait with baited breath while Lord High Executioner Cerf hands down his decrees.
The latest round was just this past week, featuring two decisions that really couldn't be any different, demonstrating the arbitrary nature of the entire process. First, let's head out to East Brunswick and get the latest chartery news:
Hatikvah International Academy plans to appeal the state’s denial of its expansion, the controversial charter school’s board President Laurie Newell said.
A letter on Wednesday from Department of Education Chief Innovation Officer Evo Popoff renewed the elementary school’s charter for five years but denied a middle-school expansion into eighth grade over the next three years. Popoff cited “a decline in the school’s academic performance in the 2012-13 school year.”
The Hebrew language immersion program already had accepted sixth graders and had advertised an expansion to eighth grade, which it planned to accommodate with a furiously protested move into a warehouse in an industrial zone off Cranbury Road. Last summer, Superior Court overruled the township council’s block of the move.
That "decline in the school's academic performance" is a very interesting claim that I'll try to explore later. For now, let's acknowledge the obvious: a Hebrew immersion program is not exactly the best way to foster an integrated school. Darcie Cimarusti, who's been following this story closely since the beginning, tells us more:
The New York-based Hebrew Charter School Center helped establish the Hatikvah Hebrew charter school in East Brunswick, New Jersey, whose principal, Marcia Grayson, says that she tries to maintain a nonsectarian identity for the school. “We are hypervigilant about church and state,” Grayson says. “We go so far out of our way to make sure that we are not perceived as a Jewish school.”
While Hatikvah may indeed "go out of their way" to avoid the "perception" that Hatikvah is a "Jewish school", there is often a large gulf between perception and reality. The Hebrew Charter School Center (HCSC), which provides the start up funding for Hebrew charters like Hatikvah, similarly distances itself from the Ben Gamla chain of Hebrew Charters which has no problem whatsoever identifying their schools as Jewish.
“A lot of Jewish education goes on in the schools, absolutely,” said Deutsch, a former Florida congressman who serves as Ben Gamla’s legal counsel.
“It’s a very Jewish school, just not a Jewish religious school,” he said. “The definition of Judaism is not just a religion, it’s peoplehood — the same way the Irish or Chinese are a people."
Ben Gamla and HCSC represent two radically different approaches to the rapidly growing Hebrew charter movement.(emphasis mine)
But, I don't buy that there's much difference at all between the HCSC charters and the Ben Gamla charters. And I'll tell you why. It's possible I suppose to argue that the education provided at the charter during school hours is indeed secular. But since all Hebrew charters also have religious afterschool programs, protestations like Grayson's that Hatikvah is "hypervigilant about church and state" need to be closely evaluated and not just taken at face value.
Read the whole thing, and then remember this: NJDOE thinks it makes perfect sense for the state to pay to immerse children in Hebrew in grades K through 5 (and not expect there to be any cultural, ethnic, or religious segregation as a result), and then return these same children back to their sending districts where there is little if any instruction in the same language. This is, I suppose, the department's idea of a rational curriculum.
And then there's the little issue of how Hatikvah's plans would have impacted the sending districts:
The DOE letter stated that public correspondence and comment contributed to the decision to deny the Hatikvah expansion. Opponents included school superintendents from the township, Highland Park, Edison, North Brunswick, New Brunswick and South River, as well as the three representatives from the 18th legislative district.
[...]
”The school district had estimated that Hativah’s expansion would increase its next allotment of public school funds about $1 million to nearly $3.3 million, more than 46 percent of the 2 percent state cap on municipal budgets.
As a result, the district would not have been able to meet its incremental costs, never mind 11 additional needs identified as the 2014-15 budget is developed, said Bernardo Giuliana, the district’s business administrator for 20 years. According to a board of education resolution, they include eight security guards, one for each elementary school; replacements for 10-year-old, out-of-print textbooks, four additional elementary school teachers to address increased enrollment, several addition teachers for students with special needs, an additional school psychologist, and technology that meets the requirements of the Partnership for Assessment for Readiness for College and Careers. [emphasis mine]
Your NJDOE, ladies and gentlemen: imposing unfunded mandates on schools, then taking the money away by approving charters. At least it won't get worse in East Brunswick and these other districts; the same can't be said for Hoboken:
The state Department of Education this week approved the addition of two middle school grades at a bilingual Hoboken charter school, despite urgings from the superintendent to reject the expansion.
HoLa Hoboken Dual Language Charter School can add seventh and eighth grade classes, an expansion that is expected to bring nearly 100 more students to the school, said Barbara Martinez, president of the school board and one of the school's founders. The school currently has 254 students enrolled in kindergarten through fifth grade classes, and already received approval to add sixth grade classes. The state Department of Education has also renewed the school's charter for the next five years, according to the department's renewal letter.
“It’s a great thing for HoLa, and it’s a great thing for Hoboken,” she said.
“Overnight, families have more options then they did a week ago, and that’s an important step for keeping families in Hoboken.”
Superintendent Mark Toback opposed the expansion, and urged the state in November to conduct a study of charter school effectiveness in the city before greenlighting additional grades. In a letter to the state, Toback said that expansion could exacerbate an already tenuous budgetary situation: The district foots the bill for 90 percent of each student's enrollment costs at the city's three charter schools. [emphasis mine]
Let's be clear about HoLa: it does not serve the same student population as Hoboken's public schools:
By this measure, HoLa is the most economically segregated school in New Jersey. And, as I wrote in this brief, that segregation has little to show for it:
There are plenty of public schools in Hudson County that get results just as good, if not better, than HoLa but serve many more students who are economically disadvantaged. And, as I wrote the other day, the notion that HoLa's demographics reflect the entire Hoboken population of public and private school students is simply not borne out by the facts, no matter what credulous newspaper editors may want to believe.
Two charters, both causing economic distress to their sending districts, both contributing to the ongoing segregation of New Jersey's schools. Yet one is approved while another is not. If you can explain how any of this makes sense, Chris Christie has a job for you at the Port Authority.
New Jersey's new teacher evaluation system -- code name: Operation Hindenburg -- is not cheap. Superintendents around the state have been warning us about this for a while: the costs of this inflexible system are going to impose a significant financial burden on districts, making this a wasteful, unfunded mandate.
But if you don't believe me, and you don't believe these superintendents, why not listen to a couple of scholars who have produced definitive proof of the exorbitantly high costs of AchieveNJ:
In 2012, the New Jersey State Legislature passed and the Governor signed into law the Teacher Effectiveness and Accountability for the Children of New Jersey (TEACHNJ) Act. This brief examines the following questions about the impact of this law:
• What is the effect of intensifying the teacher evaluation process on the time necessary for administrators to conduct observations in accordance with the new teacher evaluation regulations in New Jersey?
• In what ways do the demands of the new teacher evaluation system impact various types of school districts, and does this impact ameliorate or magnify existing inequities?
We find the following:
On average, the minimum amount of time dedicated solely to classroom observations will increase by over 35%. It is likely that the other time requirements for compliance with the new evaluation system, such as pre- and post-conferences, observation write- ups, and scheduling will increase correspondingly.
The new evaluation system is highly sensitive to existing faculty-to-administrator ratios, and a tremendous range of these ratios exists in New Jersey school districts across all operating types, sizes, and District Factor Groups. There is clear evidence that a greater burden is placed on districts with high faculty-to-administrator ratios by the TEACHNJ observation regulations. There is a weak correlation between per-pupil expenditures and faculty-to-administrator ratios.
The change in administrative workload will increase more in districts with a greater proportion of tenured teachers because of the additional time required for observations of this group under the new law.
The increased burden the TEACHNJ Act imposes on administrators’ time in some districts may compromise their ability to thoroughly and properly evaluate their teachers. In districts where there are not adequate resources to ensure administrators have enough time to conduct evaluations, there is an increased likelihood of substantive due process concerns in personnel decisions such as the denial or termination of tenure. [emphasis mine]
I need to clarify something here: TEACHNJ is the tenure reform law that says an "...employee [must] receive multiple observations during the school year which shall be used in evaluating the employee." No one has a problem with that; no, this issue is with AchieveNJ -- Operation Hindenburg -- which is the NJDOE's scheme for implementation of TEACHNJ. This innumerate, illogical disaster of a plan is the real problem - and it's going to cost your school district plenty.
It's important to understand why the NJDOE under Former Acting Commissioner Cerf went down this road. AchieveNJ is based on two premises:
There are hordes of bad teachers roaming the halls of our public schools, which explains both why there is an "achievement gap" and why, as the Former Acting Commissioner used to say, there are suburban schools that are "a little bit too satisfied with how they are doing." (The cure for this, of course, is to call up Cerf's new company and buy a bunch of tablets that have chargers that melt and cracked screens).
You can't trust principals and superintendents to do their jobs; therefore, you need a rigid, top-down evaluation system like AchieveNJ to force administrators to spend their time in ways that the NJDOE, and not the administrators themselves, see fit.
#1 is a transparently foolish positon, obvious to everyone except ignorant newspaper editors, ignorant Secretaries of Education, and executives in the education-industrial complex like Cerf's snake oil salesman boss, Joel Klein. When these people actually present some evidence -- not an economist's fantasy, but evidence -- that our biggest education policy problem is that we have too many "bad" teachers, give me a call.
#2, however, is the real issue with AchieveNJ as far as cost is concerned. Because the system is forcing administrators to spend their time in inflexible ways, supervisors of teachers must waste their time with the teachers they aren't concerned about, at the expense of time with teachers that they should be concerned about.
Imagine a principal with a staff that somehow magically matches the Hanushekian pipe dream of 5 percent "bad" teachers. That principal would love to spend her time with that 1 teacher out of 20 who really needs supervision, guidance, assistance, and yes, possibly removal. But she can't: AchieveNJ forces her to spend more time with #1 through #19, whether that is a good use of her time or not.
The only reason NJDOE wants this is that they don't trust administrators to identify poor teachers: somehow, scads of these losers are escaping the attention of these principals' feeble little minds. So everyone must be overly scrutinized, no matter whether they need to be or not.
AchieveNJ is a policy born of inherent mistrust: mistrust of administrators to do their jobs. And the price for this mistrust is inefficiency.
The authors of this brief are giving fair warning to us all about what's going to happen next:
The increased burden the TEACHNJ Act imposes on administrators’ time could
compromise their ability to thoroughly and properly evaluate their teachers. This is very troubling, given the fact that the law provides that evaluations will impact personnel decisions such as tenure denials and tenure terminations. Basing personnel decisions on evaluations that are not thorough or rushed raises substantive due process concerns under the United States Constitution. [emphasis mine]
When the first firings occur under TEACHNJ, watch out: the lawsuits will swarm like mosquitos on a hot summer's day. And all for a plan that has no evidence to back up the claim that it will help student achievement.
NJEA President Wendell Steinhauer delivered a blunt warning to the State Board of Education today: “Take a stand in favor of doing evaluation the right way, before it collapses under its own weight because we insisted on doing it the fast way.”
To underscore the point, Steinhauer hand-delivered 1,037 letters from concerned educators and parents to a board hearing in Trenton. The letters, which detail problems ranging from the overuse of standardized tests to the bungled implementation of the new evaluation system and the Common Core State Standards, were gathered online over the past several weeks.
“These letters were submitted as evidence that the New Jersey Department of Education is rushing to do too many things at once and is failing to do any of them well,” said Steinhauer. NJEA is calling on the Department of Education to slow down implementation of the new testing and evaluation systems in order to fix significant flaws and ensure that they work appropriately.
So yesterday was the first day of the rest of Chris Cerf's life: the former NJ Education Commissioner left his post to take a job at Amplify, the Rupert Murdoch-owned company run by former NYCDOE Chancellor (and Cerf's former boss) Joel Klein. Amplify sells tablet computers designed, among other things, to help districts prepare their students for the Common Core-based tests Cerf has pushed so vigorously.
This raised more than a few eyebrows in New Jersey, especially given all the troubles Chris Christie has been facing. How could anyone be sure, after all, that Cerf wasn't using his connections and influence as the outgoing commissioner to drive business to Amplify? Not to worry: Cerf himself said everything was just hunky-dorey:
Cerf said he doesn’t know of any specific contracts Amplify has with New Jersey schools, though he said the company has none with the state of New Jersey. "I can’t say with any measure of certainty now, but I suspect the answer is yes. They serve over 3 million students in 50 states," Cerf said.
Cerf said there are regulations in place that prevent him from trading on his connections, including soliciting business, and he pledged to follow them. But he scoffed at the notion he shouldn’t take a job in the private sector.
"McGraw Hill and Pearson and Apple and IBM have contracts," with school districts, he said. "That’s where the rules come into play." [emphasis mine]
Except, as I argued earlier, those rules are so lax and poorly enforced they may as well not even be in place. But let's leave that aside and concentrate for a minute on Cerf's contention that he's really not sure if Amplify is doing business in New Jersey: "I can’t say with any measure of certainty now, but I suspect the answer is yes."
Now, I haven't spent as much time zipping back and forth between the public and the private sector as Mr. Cerf. But it strikes me that if I was the commissioner, and a private company offered me a job, the first thing I'd do is find out what contracts they have with districts in my state. Especially if I was in protracted conversations with my future employer, which Cerf admitted to NJ Spotlight was the case:
“Frankly, this opportunity arose unsolicited, and I fended it off for quite some time, ” he added. And it just became increasingly intriguing for me, and fulfilled an objective I had for the last part of my career, which was to really think about ways to enhance public education through personalized learning and other solutions.” [emphasis mine]
So we are to believe that during this "quite some time" Cerf didn't bother to find out whether Amplify had business in New Jersey. That Cerf didn't know, as Bob Braun has reported, that the Newark Public Schools -- a state-controlled district -- has a multi-million dollar contract with Amplify. That he didn't know, as the Jersey Journal reported, that the Jersey City Public Schools -- another state-controlled district -- was conducting a pilot program using Amplify products. OK...
MOUNT OLIVE TWP. – The school district is continuing its inexorable march toward the time when books will be a quaint memory to students.
The latest technological advance involves the district’s purchase of 450 computer tablets for use by all freshmen and their teachers.
The tablets, made by Amplify of New York City, cost the district around $200,000, according to Schools Superintendent Larrie Reynolds.
“I can see the day when there won’t be any textbooks,” Reynolds said. “Everything will be on a tablet.”
Hamilton said Amplify will continually provide online and on-sight technical support. He said the Amplify system is the most advanced school system on the market.
He said the district hopes to provide tablets to all students over the next three years.
[...]
The tablets were first introduced at the 2013 South By Southwest EDU Conference in Austin, Texas. Mount Olive is the first district in the state to use the tablets. [emphasis mine]
This article is from back before the 2013-14 school year started. Mt. Olive is the first district in NJ to use Amplify products. And it just slipped Cerf's mind that Mt. Olive had bought the tablets, and was looking to purchase more -- even though Cerf has worked closely for years with Larrie Reynolds, the superintendent of Mt. Olive.
And, no, I don't mean they passed each other in the halls; I mean they've worked closely together in the past. Here's Bob Braun again, all the way back in 2011 when he was at the Star-Ledger:
Public education in New Jersey has been roiled recently by conflicts over charter schools, vouchers and "virtual" schools — but, now, a new type of privatization is on the horizon: allowing public schools to contract with a private company to offer "alternative" education.
The idea has been promoted to school superintendents by one of their own, Mount Olive schools chief Larrie Reynolds. He says it could bring extra income both to cash-strapped school districts and to a private, Dubai-based company for which he works as a consultant.
Reynolds is a friend and former employee and business associate of acting Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf. Reynolds, who calls Cerf a "magnificent man," recently appeared with Cerf and Gov. Chris Christie on a panel to discuss school reform.
Cerf says he knows Reynolds was "in the early stages of thinking about a program that would serve alternative education students drawn from multiple districts." He says he is unaware "of the specifics of his ideas."
Cerf has known Reynolds for years — hired him twice — and the relationship provides a glimpse not just into the growing political brawl over privatization, but also into the network of entrepreneurs who use longstanding contacts in both government and the private sector to try to make money on what had been a public monopoly.
Under Reynolds’s plan, a company he says that he represents as a consultant — GEMS Education — would help a school district apply to the commissioner to become a "district of choice" under a newly expanded inter-district choice law, allowing it to admit students from other communities. The law gives the commissioner the power of approval.
[...]
He also is president of Sangari Active Science, a subsidiary of Sangari Global Education, a company once run by Cerf. Reynolds also headed Newton Learning, a division of Edison Schools, a private education management company Cerf served as chief operating officer.
[emphasis mine]
A little over a year ago, I wrote about the relationship between Reynolds and Cerf. It turns out the "alternative education" Reynolds wanted was a variation on the increasingly popular Interdistrict Choice program. The problem, according to a report in the Mt. Olive Chronicle, was that Reynolds plan fundamentally changed the purpose of Interdistrict choice, at least according to the legislator who wrote the law, Mila Jasey.
Mt. Olive eventually withdrew its application, and the district gave up potentially $2 million in revenue. Further: you won't find Mt. Olive listed as one of the participating choice districts for 2014-15, and Sunset Academy is now a twice-a-week after school credit recovery program (at first glance, that looks to be a good idea). So it appears that NJDOE bent over backwards to get Reynolds's program approved, but he didn't go through with it after all.
Right from the district's website: "herald a new era of learning" and all that. You can scroll down and find Amplify promotional materials hosted on the district's own website -- not links to Amplify's servers, but the school district's. Of course, you can go over to Amplify's website and read all about the Mt. Olive program as well. I'd show you the picture of Mt. Olive's kids wearing Amplify t-shirts, but that might violate some intellectual property laws or something.
Let's stop a minute and regroup. There is nothing wrong with a school district giving a contract to a tech provider. There's a nothing wrong with using tech in the classroom; I do it all the time, and I'll be the first to admit it's the wave of the future. I don't know the Amplify products from squat: maybe they're fantastic (although I will always be wary of anything that comes out of the same corporate mothership as Fox News and the NY Post). But let's be clear:
Cerf, by his own admission, "fended off for quite some time" the offer to come to Amplify. Cerf and Larrie Reynolds have known each other and worked together for years. Reynolds's district, Mt. Olive, is the first in the state to use Amplify tablets. Cerf implied he didn't know specifically that the largest and second largest districts in New Jersey have deals with Amplify. Now he wants us to believe he didn't know about a similar deal with Mt. Olive, whose superintendent he has known and worked with for years and who calls him a "magnificent man."
Let’s start with Cerf’s new job, as CEO of Amplify Insight, an education firm self-described as providing professional services to help teachers assess student needs and determine progress. Cerf has said that he doesn’t see any ethical conflicts and that he’s not even sure if his new company already is doing business with New Jersey schools. Fact is, however, that as commissioner, Cerf has been busy propping up the controversial new “Common Core” standards for testing students and evaluating teachers that many believe are being rushed into place, at high costs and with uncertain benefits.
If school districts struggle with the implementation of the new standards, and test results plummet as a result of a mishandled transition, guess which company would be able to exploit those struggles by offering its services? Amplify Insight. A two-year ban on Cerf and Amplify doing any business with New Jersey schools should be in order with Cerf on board.
Except it might be a little too late for Mt. Olive, Jersey City, and Newark...
We'll get to the incoming Education Commissioner, David Hespe, in due time. But let's take one last moment to appreciate the legacy Chris Cerf leaves behind here in New Jersey. Because I really can't think of a better story than this one to sum up the last three years.
All the best, Mr. Cerf.
Christopher Cerf, NJ Education Commissioner, 2011-2014.
Remember when Facebook (FB) founder Mark Zuckerberg joined forces in 2011 with New Jersey’s Republican Governor Chris Christie and Newark’s Democratic Mayor Cory Booker to revive the city’s troubled public schools?
They ended up selecting Cami Anderson as the city’s superintendent of schools, and two and half year later she has had some successes. She closed nearly empty schools in a city that has lost 37 percent of its population since 1950. Last year she negotiated a landmark contract with the teachers unions enabling the district toaward the best instructors with merit pay. Fittingly, Christie reappointed Anderson last year to oversee the district, which has been under state control since 1995 because of its history of corruption and poor educational results. [emphasis mine]
Let's paused a sec and acknowledge a few things. First: it's not like there haven't been any school closings between 1950 and now; in fact, Anderson closed four K-8 schools and two 9th Grade academies in 2012. So that "37 percent" comment isn't much relevant to the discussion.
But the most illogical part of this is what I highlighted at the end: if the district has "poor educational results," isn't that the fault of the state, which has been running the district for nearly two decades? Doesn't it make sense that the good people of Newark would want control of their schools back, given the state's failure? Doesn't it make sense that they would reject the state's superintendent if there is a history of "poor educational results" under state control?
Of course, in a media outlet like Bloomberg Businessweek, we would never bother discussing the real reason that Newark's schools remain under control of the state:
I'll skip some similar ignorance in this piece and get to the heart of the matter:
Where are Anderson’s main supporters? Zuckerberg has been silent. Christie has apparently been too busy with the Bridgegate fallout to speak up. Even Booker, now a U.S. senator, has been uncharacteristically quiet.
There are reasons why it might be a good idea of them to keep their heads down: They might make things worse. Even before the bridge scandal, Christie was highly unpopular in Newark, which is a Democratic stronghold. If Zuckerberg were to speak up, it might fuel conspiracy theories that billionaire outsiders are scheming to take over the city’s schools. (Yes, people actually say that kind of thing in Newark.)
I mean, it's not like the Tisch family gave Cory Booker lots of dough to run for mayor while Andrew Tisch was chairman of a charter school management company! Oh, wait... (and in case you don't trust crazy teacher-bloggers, click here.)
That said, Devin Leonard -- almost in spite of himself -- makes a good point. The folks who are Anderson's biggest boosters have been pretty much mute during her current troubles:
Booker’s absence from the debate is more puzzling. He was elected overwhelmingly last year to serve the remainder of the late Frank Lautenberg’s senate term. Booker is in no danger of losing his seat when he runs for reelection in November. Surely, he could spend a bit of his political capital in defense of Anderson.
Folks, this is as good an example as you will find of how truly lazy the reformy punditocracy has become on education. Leonard uses Anderson herself as his source for the claim that the graduation rate rose 10 percent. But if he had bothered to read the post by Anderson he links to, he'd find she claims the graduation rates have climbed "10 points," not 10 percent. And that's actually not true, according to the NJDOE:
2013 Adjusted Cohort Grad Rate: 67.70%
2012 Adjusted Cohort Grad Rate: 68.72%
2011 Adjusted Cohort Grad Rate: 61.26%
Anderson was appointed in May of 2011; since that time, the graduation rate has climbed 6.44 points. OK, that's about 10 percent of 61.26% -- but's that's not what Anderson said. She said, "10 points," which is not correct.
But you know what? I feel silly quibbling over numbers like this anyway. Does anyone really think Cami Anderson put in place policies that made the graduation rate climb within her first year in office? Is there anyone out there that really believes Anderson hit the ground running so darn hard that she magically boosted Newark's graduation rates that much, that quickly?
Certainly not the Star-Ledger, which Leonard praises for defending Anderson:
The big jump in Newark’s graduation rate — from 61 percent to 69 percent — stood out in the state’s newly released statistics. It’s certainly cause for optimism.
But don’t break out those party hats yet. Because while there’s some evidence of improvement in certain low-performing city schools, this data was influenced by the district’s new, more accurate analysis methods. It’s still way too early to judge the performance of Newark’s turnaround schools.
A few things to understand about the numbers: The state has started using a new, federally mandated formula to calculate the percentage of students who graduate from public high schools. It better accounts for students who switch districts or move out of the country. And districts like Newark have become more adept at keeping track of those students, who shouldn’t be counted as drop-outs if they’re going to school elsewhere. [emphasis mine]
Uncharacteristically the S-L actually puts the numbers into context: yes, there may be reason for optimism, but it needs to be tempered. In other words: it's foolish to attribute the graduation rate change to anything Anderson has done. Hey, I'm all for increases in graduation rates -- hooray! But you can't just spit some numbers out there as proof that her "initiatives are working" without the proper context.
Of course, Leonard could have done some reporting on this. He could have tried to figure out why the numbers rose, and what Anderson has done to change them, if anything. He could have looked into whether this was just a cohort effect, or a real consequence of a policy change. But why waste your time with that when you can simply take a gratuitous swipe at teachers unions? That sort of thing is much more to Leonard's outlet's namesake's liking, you see?
