Dear NJ Teachers and Their Families: You MUST Not Vote For Jack Ciattarelli

To all NJ public school staff and their families:

You must not vote for Jack Ciattarelli. He will do serious, lasting damage to you personally, and the students you serve.

No, I'm not being overly dramatic. You may or may not like Mikie Sherrill for any number of reasons. You may like Jack because... well, I don't know why you would, but it doesn't matter. If you vote for him, Ciattarelli is going to harm you, your family, your colleagues, and your students. 

Hear me out:

Jack Ciattarelli will do whatever he can to freeze, and maybe even cut, your salary. 

Ciattarelli has made it his top priority to give a huge tax cut to the wealthiest people in the state. He can only do this by either:

1) Raising more revenues through sales taxes, which will hit you harder than the very wealthy (sales taxes always fall harder on working people than the rich because they take away a bigger chunk of your income than they do for the very wealthy). 

2) Cutting state spending. 

Ciattarelli has made clear he's going to do both, and guess what? The biggest item in the state's budget is aid to schools -- the place where you work. Four out of every five dollars spent on schools are spent on personnel, so when those cuts come, they will inevitably be aimed at you. 

Your job is on line... but even if you manage to keep it, your board of education is going to be under enormous pressure to cut costs, which means keeping your salary as low as possible. You are going to make less money than you otherwise would under Governor Ciattarelli.

Jack Ciattarelli will do whatever he can to defund, and maybe even eliminate, your pension.

After years of neglect and abuse, New Jersey is finally on the path to fiscal responsibility by making substantial payments to its underfunded pension systems. But Jack doesn't care; he wants your money for his wealthy friends. There is no doubt he will slash pension payments, and try to get away with it by degrading, and maybe even eliminating, your pension benefits.

Ever since I started this blog, I have kept Chris Christie's biggest lie at the top: "I will protect your pensions. Nothing about your pension is going to change when I am governor." He said that just before he was elected, and we all know what happened next. Do you really believe Ciattarelli is any different?

Jack Ciattarelli will do whatever he can to slash your health care benefits.

Health care costs are out of control. What is Jack's plan to rein them in? He won't say, because his plan is to pass the cost on to you. 

Those benefits are the reason many of you chose to work in a public school: you knew your salary would be bigger if you worked somewhere else, but you were willing to take less so long as you got decent health insurance. But, once again, Jack needs money for his rich patrons, and he wants to get it by Jack-ing up your health care costs.

I'm also talking to school staff families here, because what happens to your relative who works in a school also affects you. When your parent brings home less pay, you will feel it. When your spouse gets their pension slashed, that will degrade your retirement. You can't afford to have your family's vote split when the stakes for you are so high.

Folks, I understand you may have some hot-button issue that motivates you. You may have strong feeling about guns, or abortion, or transgender women in sports (that's your big thing?), or whatever. I won't debate you on these, but ask yourself this: "What's more important than my family's finances? What's more important than making sure my spouse and I have a retirement with dignity? What's more important than making sure my loved ones can go to the doctor without breaking the bank?"

NJ school staff, your family is more important than any other issue in this election. Which is why you must not vote for Jack Ciattarelli.

My fellow teachers, and paraprofessionals, support staff, and administrators: we had eight long, terrible years in New Jersey of being punched in the face. Let's not do that again, OK? 

Vote Mikie Sherrill on Tuesday.

Jack Ciattarelli is my kinda guy!

Dear Haters: No, NJ's Schools Don't Suck

The New Jersey gubernatorial election is right around the corner. I have a whole bunch of reasons why teachers and their families, despite whatever you may think about Mikie Sherrill (D),  should never, ever vote for Jack Ciattarelli (R). I'll get to those in a bit, but let's talk about what seems to have emerged as the number one education issue in the race: Do New Jersey schools suck?

If you follow the news, this will seem like an absurd question. Time and time again, New Jersey's schools are highly ranked. But Jack Ciattarelli thinks New Jersey has much to learn from low-ranked states in the South:

In response to a Chalkbeat question during last month’s Newark Today episode on WBGO radio, the Republican candidate said he would implement a “high-impact curriculum,” a set of research-based teaching strategies and learning practices that align with state standards and help boost student achievement. He pointed to Louisiana and Mississippi’s high-impact reading curriculum that has gained national recognition for improving state test scores, particularly in literacy. [emphasis mine]

Mikie Sherrill responded in one of their debates that emulating southern states was a bad idea for New Jersey:

“He keeps citing places like Louisiana and Mississippi, I think some of the worst schools in the entire nation.

If that’s where he wants to drive us to, I think voters should be aware of that.”@RepSherrill, in the NJ gubernatorial debate with @Jack4NJ.

Who wants to tell her? pic.twitter.com/Lwgu1mPICP

— Karen Vaites (@karenvaites) October 18, 2025

“He keeps citing places like Louisiana and Mississippi, I think some of the worst schools in the entire nation.

If that’s where he wants to drive us to, I think voters should be aware of that.”@RepSherrill, in the NJ gubernatorial debate with @Jack4NJ.

Who wants to tell her? pic.twitter.com/Lwgu1mPICP 

— Karen Vaites (@karenvaites) 

You'll note that the X user I quote here is skeptical of Sherrill's claim. That's because there is a vocal (and in many cases, well-funded) group of education "reform" advocates who have latched on to the idea that there is a "Southern Surge" in school outcomes, driven by changes in literacy instruction loosely termed "The Science of Reading."

I'm not going to weigh in on SOR; if you're interested, Paul Thomas has an excellent review of the debate at the National Education Policy Center. Instead, I'll turn to a blog post by Chad Aldeman that I see being passed around on social media. Aldeman weighs in on the Sherrill-Ciattarelli debate, taking the side of those who don't think New Jersey schools are doing a very good job:

But I want to double back on Sherrill’s casual slams on Mississippi and Louisiana. Do they have some of the “worst schools” in the nation, as Sherrill claimed? And by implication, is New Jersey doing better than these states? The answer to both of those questions is no. 

Sherrill’s confusion may stem from the fact that New Jersey does have pretty high student achievement scores, but this could be largely because New Jersey is a relatively wealthy state that spends a lot of money on its schools. Does that mean its schools are good? What value are the schools adding? [emphasis mine]

Again, there are lots of well-funded folks around these days making this same argument: New Jersey's schools aren't as great as the data appears to show. The implication is that the Garden State is coasting, because it's a wealthy state, and it's easier to get high test scores when you have lower levels of poverty and higher household income.

Of course, no one disagrees that income and test scores correlate. I've been pointing this out for years: socio-economic status is the strongest predictor of test score outcomes, and comparisons between states (or schools) have to acknowledge this. Aldeman, however, thinks he's found a way around this problem (the scores he refers to are from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), generally considered the most valid way to compare states):

I started with just one subject, one grade, and one student category (income), but the Urban Institute has taken this one step further. They factored in all the measurable forms of advantage and disadvantage to try to calculate “adjusted” scores by state. As you might anticipate by now, New Jersey looks much better on its raw scores than it does after you control for its advantages. Across 4th and 8th grade math and reading, New Jersey’s raw scores are higher than those in Mississippi and Louisiana, but once you dig in, those advantages start to disappear. 

Remember the raw 4th grade math scores? They looked like this: 

New Jersey: 240 

Mississippi: 239 

Louisiana: 235 

But once adjust them for the state’s demographics, here’s what they look like: 

Mississippi: 249 

Louisiana: 245 

New Jersey: 235 

A slight advantage turns into a big disadvantage once you look under the hood. In fact, this same pattern appears in all the tested grades and subjects. New Jersey looks good on the unadjusted scores. Here are the raw 8th grade reading scores: 

New Jersey: 266 

Louisiana: 257 

Mississippi: 254 

And here’s where things stand after the demographic adjustment: 

Louisiana: 265 

Mississippi: 263 

New Jersey: 259

Those "adjusted" NAEP scores are publicly available from the Urban Institute. I actually have quite a lot to say about how these adjustments were made and their validity for certain purposes, but that's for another time and forum. Right now, let's recap Aldeman's argument: New Jersey may have high test scores (or, in the case of Grade 4, not even that high), but that's only because its students are wealthier than in other states.

To which I reply: Yes, that's right -- and it's an indicator that New Jersey has good schools that are doing exactly what they were designed to do.

Let's bring up the data so we can examine it:

I'm using Grade 8 data because the students who take this test have been enrolled in their state's public education system for a longer period, likely better reflecting the actual effects of their schooling.* When Urban's adjustments are applied, NJ clearly has a disadvantage, while LA and MS surge ahead. Again, the argument is that this is "fair" because test scores shouldn't just reflect economic advantage.

I use the math scores to make the point here, but reading scores yield the same result. NJ is a low-poverty state; it has less than half the poverty rate of either MS or LA. It is easier to get high test scores when you are educating fewer kids in poverty, so it's arguably not "fair" to compare states without accounting for this. 

In the same way household incomes are much higher in New Jersey. But why? 

Because New Jersey is a well-educated state.

 

New Jersey has a much higher college attainment rate than Louisiana or Mississippi. Everyone knows college grads earn more than non-grads; that explains New Jersey's high income. And higher income means more money to spend... on schools! Which get higher outcomes and prepare kids for college, which leads to higher incomes, which leads to more school spending, which...

Despite the skepticism of many, a clear research consensus has emerged that higher spending on schools leads to better outcomes. But I'd argue much of New Jersey's school spending doesn't actually translate into higher NAEP scores; instead, more affluent schools spend on broad curricular offerings, extracurriculars, student support, and other things that help boost college enrollment but don't necessarily boost scores.

We can argue whether this is fair (notice I didn't put it in quotes this time); publicly funded social replication is highly problematic.** What we shouldn't do is argue that New Jersey's schools are bad when they are doing exactly what they are designed to do.

When Urban "adjusts" its NAEP scores, it is wiping away one of the primary outcomes of good schooling that public education advocates want: higher incomes.

Here's a thought experiment: suppose Mississippi enters a period of sustained educational success, due to Science of Reading or higher school spending or whatever. College-going rises for Mississippi, so incomes go up and poverty goes down. Consequently, Urban "adjusts" the state's scores so they go lower. Then advocates claim Mississippi isn't really doing that well, because its "real" test scores are low.

Does that make sense?

We have a lot to do to make New Jersey's schools more equitable, more effective, and more efficient. But let's be clear: relative to other states—especially in the South—New Jersey's schools don't suck. Quite the contrary.

Next: teachers and your families, if you care about your salaries, benefits, and pensions, you simply can't vote for Jack Ciattarelli.

Technical notes: The NAEP data all comes from Urban, both the adjusted and actual scores. Poverty, income, and spending data are from the School Finance Indicators Database, which uses NCES and Census Bureau data. All are based on data at the school district level; I get the state averages by weighted means, weights are student enrollment. NAEP data is 2024; SFID is 2022, the latest year available for the income data. College attainment data is from the Census Bureau, 2023.

 * I often notice that advocates for the "Southern Surge" cite Grade 4 statistics all the time, but often stay away from Grade 8. It's worth asking why...

** I'd also challenge anyone to make an argument that Mississippi and Louisiana's school systems are paragons of social equity. New Jersey's got real problems with equitably funding its schools, but it's not like the South is all that great itself.