Soviet-Style Educator Pay

Like all bullies, Chris Christie thinks the rules don't apply to him - he's special. Now New Jersey's schools begin to pay the price for his arrogance:

A month after being honored on the floor of the state Senate, New Jersey’s school superintendent of the year is headed to New York, another consequence of the Christie administration’s cap on school administration salaries. 

Roy Montesano, the superintendent of Ramsey schools, was expected to be formally approved last night as the next superintendent in Hastings, NY, right over the Tappan Zee Bridge. The district put out a release last week announcing the hire 

Montesano, a 30-plus year educator in New Jersey schools, yesterday was careful to say the caps didn’t force him over the border, but he said they were certainly a factor in his decision to leave the state. 

“With what is coming out of Trenton, it is forcing some of us to consider other options,” Montesano said in an interview. “It has opened us up to other opportunities.” 

In Hastings, he will earn $235,000, according to the New York district. In Ramsey, Montesano now makes $226,000, he said, but under the new salary caps, that would have gone down to $167,500 when his current contract expires in two years. 

Montesano, part of a family of four brothers who were each New Jersey superintendents, said the prospect of a 30-percent pay cut with a child off to college was difficult to manage. “The math doesn’t add up well,” he said. 

He’s not the only superintendent to depart. Montesano’s brother Jim also left New Jersey schools, where he was last the superintendent in Paramus, to become superintendent in Nyack, N.Y. And New Jersey superintendents are retiring or leaving the state at nearly double the rate since the caps were put in place at the start of last year. “I’m sure there will be more of us,” Montesano said.

In Christie's world, if Montesano doesn't give up $67,500, he's a greedy SOB who doesn't really care about kids. Because Christie and Christie alone knows what a superintendent should make, and labor market pressures can go take a flying leap.

By the way, the cap was never about saving money: it was always the first step in reducing teacher salaries. New Jersey has paid teachers less than New York for some time now, even as teacher salaries in Jersey haven't kept pace with the rest of the labor market (it's all here). Simple economics - which Christie apparently knows nothing about - dictate people will go where they can get paid more for their skills.

For a guy who goes on and on about how important it is to have good teachers, Christie has never shown the slightest understanding of the phrase "you get what you pay for." He believes the government should intercede and attempt to disrupt the labor market. Where have we seen this type of thinking before?

The Politburo shall determine your teachers' salaries, young Boris...

High-Performing Students? Meh...

So says the Gates-funded, ultra-reformy National Council on Teacher Quality:

New Jersey’s report card from a group that seeks to improve standards for the nation’s teachers is dismal: D-plus, 36th in the U.S. and making less progress than most states.

The report, scheduled to be published today by the National Council on Teacher Quality, could bolster parts of Gov. Chris Christie’s education overhaul agenda — though his critics say it shouldn’t.

The analysis considers how teachers are trained, evaluated, rewarded and fired.

But it does not assess the overall state of teaching and learning. That’s an area where, on average, New Jersey is among the highest-performing states — despite being home to low-performing schools, particularly in its most impoverished cities like Camden.

Some of the areas Christie wants to fix are the same ones the Washington-based research and policy group says are broken.

“What the governor has proposed with evaluation and tenure would put New Jersey among the trailblazer states,” said Sandi Jacobs, vice president of the teacher quality organization.

New Jersey’s grade barely budged from the “D” it received from the council two years ago.

Florida, a state where standardized test scores are far short of New Jersey’s, received the highest mark this year — and it got just a “B.” [emphasis mine]

Wait a minute: New Jersey has HIGHER student scores than Florida, but gets a worse grade from NCTQ? Are we sure Florida isn't doing a better job at teaching kids?

Yep:

New Jersey beats Florida in every NAEP assessment listed on the state comparison tool. And New Jersey beats the national average in all of its assessments; Florida beats the national average in only five.

How is this possible? Because - as both Susan Ohanian and I have repeatedly pointed out - these think tanky rankings have nothing to do with student achievement. They are based solely on whether the state in question is doing whatever the think tank making the rankings wants the state to do. But here's the problem...

Florida is doing a good job following NCTQ's prescriptions, and New Jersey is doing a poor job. But New Jersey's students do better than Flroida's. Logic suggests only two possibilities:

1) NCTQ's policies have no effect on student achievement.
2) NCTQ's policies have a negative effect on student achievement.

It's got to be one or the other, folks. But in either case, if you want a state's kids to do well on the NAEP, ignore NCTQ.

ADDING: Trolls, please don't bring up the ridiculous argument that if the NAEP is good for comparing states, standardized tests must be good for identifying good teachers. Just because screwdrivers are great for driving screws doesn't mean they're also good at beating eggs.

ADDING MORE: Even the wingers funded by the Koch brothers can't deny that New Jersey's kids kick some serious academic ass:

New Jersey moved from 10th place to third in student performance based on the 2011 scores for low-income students on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, given to fourth- and eighth-graders. Massachusetts and Vermont were the top two states based on student performance, and both also scored poorly on teacher quality.

Maybe "teacher quality" means something different when you're living in a think-tanky, hermetically sealed bubble. And dig this:

New Jersey gets an A for home school regulations, because the state has none. Parents who choose to teach their children at home are not required to follow any state guidelines or curriculum.

Oy. These people get to spew this stuff all over the press; me, I can't get a simple reply from Tom Moran...

Obama Blows It On Education

I'm having a hard time listening to the rest of the State of the Union. Because President Obama - a good and intelligent man - cited the Chetty, Friedman & Rockoff study as a justification for the odious Race To The Top, and to call for what will amount to an expanded testing regime which drives merit pay.

Here are some of the many objections and cautions about using this study to do EXACTLY what Obama wants to do:

• Bruce Baker
• Matt DiCarlo
• Michael Winerip
• Diane Ravitch
• Sherman Dorn
• Valerie Strauss
• Me

None of us are objecting to looking at the study carefully. None of us think this was a hack piece of work: it is serious scholarship and deserves a serious vetting.

BUT IT IS ONE STUDY! Should we throw away all of the scholarship about the errors inherent in VAM and the failure of merit pay on the basis of this ONE study? A study that itself cautions against the sweeping policy changes Obama implies tonight?

I am so greatly disappointed in this president right now. Those of us who are gravely concerned about what is happening to America's public education system deserved better than what we got tonight.

Why will he not listen to us? Why?

Stop Biting That Pencil!

In the brave, new reformy world, teachers will not be allowed to make excuses for a child's difficulty in learning. Which means teachers will have to work around the problems of poverty, poor parenting, hunger, homelessness and the environment.

The environment? Yep.

But one compelling thesis stands out, as bizarre as it may appear. It has to do with lead. Kevin Drum has been harping on this point for a while now, and the evidence is very compelling. The Washington Post had a great story on the connection between violent crime and lead levels in 2007:

The theory offered by the economist, Rick Nevin, is that lead poisoning accounts for much of the variation in violent crime in the United States. It offers a unifying new neurochemical theory for fluctuations in the crime rate, and it is based on studies linking children's exposure to lead with violent behavior later in their lives.

What makes Nevin's work persuasive is that he has shown an identical, decades-long association between lead poisoning and crime rates in nine countries.

"It is stunning how strong the association is," Nevin said in an interview. "Sixty-five to ninety percent or more of the substantial variation in violent crime in all these countries was explained by lead."

Through much of the 20th century, lead in U.S. paint and gasoline fumes poisoned toddlers as they put contaminated hands in their mouths. The consequences on crime, Nevin found, occurred when poisoning victims became adolescents. Nevin does not say that lead is the only factor behind crime, but he says it is the biggest factor.

There are so many factors that contribute to the highly complex human activity of learning; this is but one of many. And, like most of them, it is entirely out of the control of a teacher.

Is that an excuse to accept mediocre teachers? Of course not. But it ought to shut up those who continue to harp on "bad" teachers as the primary cause of our society's ills. There's far more at work in our world than teachers unions.

How To Get a Charter School Approved

Are you interested in getting your own charter school? Do you want to increase your chances of getting an approval from the NJ Department of Education? There's one surefire way to dramatically increase your chances of success:

Join the Black Ministers Council of New Jersey. From January, 2011:

Rev. Reginald Jackson said he was celebrating after all five charter schools proposed by the Black Ministers Council were approved. They include an East Orange school with single-gender classrooms and a high school offering online instruction and instrumental music classes for students in East Orange, Irvington and Newark.

"I’m aware that most of our children are always going to be in public schools ... but at the same time parents ought to have options," said Jackson, executive director of the council. [emphasis mine]

Wow - you can't argue with a track record like that, right? I wonder: who reviewed the applications?

The reviewers each read several applications, using a scorecard and providing detailed comments and a non-binding recommendation on each proposal. They did not have the final say, however; Acting Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf said the decision on approvals was made within the Department of Education.

"We gave these applications a fair shake," said Shelley Skinner, a board member of the New Jersey Charter School Association and director of a Jersey City charter school. [...]

Derrell Bradford, executive director of the school advocacy group E3, said some applications were very strong, and others "needed a lot of work." Each reviewer read about three applications, he said, and several reviewers read each one.

Bradford also said school proposals were vetted for possible conflicts. He, for example, said he did not read applications submitted by the Black Ministers Council of New Jersey, whose executive director, Reginald Jackson, is on the board of E3.

The five proposals submitted by the minister’s council were approved. [emphasis mine]

That was back in January of 2011. Later that summer, Bradford took a new job at the hedge-fund moneyed, reformy lobbying shop B4K. His new deputy director? Shelley Skinner.

Did Skinner review the Black Ministers Council's applications? The article doesn't say.

The article does mention, however, that some of the other candidates were not happy with the way their applications were treated:

Arthur Nunnally of Newark, whose Newark Horizon Charter School proposed linking academics and an "entrepreneurial" curriculum for elementary school children, questioned why his proposal was turned down, when all five from the Black Ministers Council were approved.

"I don’t get it. I’m not going to claim there was politics involved here ... but that to me raises questions," said Nunnally.

Assemblywoman Bonnie Watson Coleman ( D-Mercer) issued a statement Wednesday applauding Christie’s attention to education but asking why no new charters were approved in Trenton.

Another charter school applicant, Vashti Johnson of the proposed Bright Minds Charter High School in Jersey City, asked why nine schools were approved in Newark, but only two in Hudson County.

She also said she received no formal denial notice.

"I’m not politically connected. I’m just a group of parents and life-long residents in the community. Maybe we don’t get the same focus and consideration that more highly political people do," she said. [emphasis mine]

Why was the BMC was so successful when others were not? Because they certainly were, and Rev. Jackson was happy to claim the credit; in fact, right afterward, in March 2011, the BMC sponsored a workshop on getting charters approved for other ministers around the state as part of their conference on education:

Conference Schedule

Wednesday, March 2nd

(Focus on Education)  

8AM Registration

9AM Opening Plenary

9:15AM The Rev. Reginald T. Jackson, Presiding

Executive Director, BMC

Keynote Breakfast

The Honorable Chris Christie

Governor, State of New Jersey

10:30AM Panel, “Public School Reform: What, How When?”

Ms. Jeannine LaRue, Larue List, Group, Moderator

Sen. Teresa Ruiz, Chair, Senate Education Committee

Assemblyman Patrick Diegnan, Chair, Assembly Education Committee

Dr. Joseph Youngblood, Thomas Edison University

Mr. Shavar Jeffries, Esquire, Chair, Newark Public Schools, Advisory Committee

Dr. Edythe Abdullah, President, Essex County Community College

Mr. Ronald C. Lee, Supt. Orange Public Schools

12Noon Luncheon

Mr. Chris Cerf, Acting Commissioner

New Jersey Department of Education

2PM Panel, “School Choice: Viable Alternative or Fraudulent Hope”

Dr. Therman Evans, MD., Pastor, Moderator

Mr. Derrell Bradford, Excellent Education for Everyone

Sen. Raymond Lesniak, Chair, Senate Economic Growth Committee

Mr. James Harris, President, New Jersey NAACP

Mr. Jerome Harris, President, New Jersey Black Issues Convention

Mr. Martin Perez, Esquire, President New Jersey Latino Alliance

Charter School Expansion Workshop

(churches that would like to start charter schools)

3:30PM Closing Plenary

4PM Closing Prayer and Adjournment

Wow, look at all those politicians! I guess it is fair to say the BMC is "politically connected" after all; how else do you get the governor himself to be your keynote speaker. And Derrell Bradford was there, along with ACTING Commissioner Cerf.

I leave you, dear reader, to draw your own conclusions.

One last thought: guess who else was sponsored by the BMC and eventually got an approval later in the fall?

Pastor Amir Khan. The man Chris Christie doesn't "know."

Scrub the Evidence

Darcie Cimarusti posted some videos of the controversial charter school founder and pastor Amir Khan. Khan is the anti-"marriage equity" crusader who Chris Christie swore he didn't know, even though the man was sitting right behind him.



Darcie linked to videos from Khan's own YouTube channel that featured impassioned pleas to his congregation to support school vouchers and oppose local authorization for charter schools. Well - and I know this will come as a shock - the videos have been pulled.

Maybe a point Darcie made got someone a tad nervous:

What it REALLY sounds like to me is what Pastor Khan believes is that decisions about public education should be based on whatever is best for HIM and whatever enables HIM to re-open hisprivate school as a charter with public money.  And he's not afraid to lobby Trenton for what's best for HIM. 

Funny, looks like Khan could lose his tax exempt status if he get's caught doing it:

A church or religious organization will be regarded as attempting to influence legislation if it contacts, or urges the public to contact, members or employees of a legislative body for the purpose of proposing, supporting, or opposing legislation, or if the organization advocates the adoption or rejection of legislation .

Churches and religious organizations may, however, involve themselves in issues of public policy without the activity being considered as lobbying . For example, churches may conduct educational meetings, prepare and distribute educational materials, or otherwise consid- er public policy issues in an educational manner without jeopardizing their tax-exempt status.

Uh oh PASTOR Khan. 

Oh, dear.

How To Rule New Jersey From California

Apparently, Eli Broad's got it all figured out - which is why he appears to have pretty much taken over the search for a superintendent in Jersey City:

Several members of the public commented that the two search firms selected to find candidates for the position have close ties to the Broad Superintendents Academy, which trains business executives to run urban school districts, and that the Broad philosophy supported charter schools to the detriment of public education. Lester responded that many Broad candidates understand the nuances of how the process works and added that she was surprised that the search firms had such a high percentage of Broad graduates.

But the chosen search companies, West Hudson Associates and HYA Associates, will be given explicit search criteria that could possibly exclude Broad candidates. Lester added that the purpose of these meetings was to elicit from the public what the selection criteria should be.

Franklin Walker added that he was approached by Broad several years ago to enroll in the superintendents academy. One of the benefits that was offered was that Broad provides assistance in placing superintendents. Walker said that he declined the offer and chose his own path.

Of course, we all know ACTING Ed Commissioner Chris Cerf is a Broadie, which got him into some hot water in Newark. Now he's sticking his nose deep into the Jersey City super search. How much does anyone want to bet the finalist will be a Broadie, despite the board's assurances?

Jersey City is turning into a perfect example of the perils of not giving local citizens control of their schools.   Unless and until the good people of JC manage to wrestle full control of their schools back from the state, they are at the mercy of Lord High Executioner Cerf - and he will install whomever he damn well pleases whomever Eli Broad damn well pleases.

Just don't get on his little list.



h/t K Reed on the Twitter machine

Know Your Charter Reviewers

I always find it funny when reformy types insist that charters are public schools. If they were, you'd think the people who review charter applications would have lots of experience in public education and running public schools.

In New Jersey, you'd be wrong. From NJ Parents Against Gov. Christie's School Budget Cuts [all emphases mine]:

The reviewers' "range of experiences" seems to include very little in the way of education experience, very much in the way of charter advocacy, charter founders, education consultancy, business, administration, etc. In fact, the only teaching experience I found was one student teacher.

IMPORTANT NOTE: THIS INFORMATION IS NOT FACT-CHECKED. I have not independently ascertained that the individuals found in these citations are in fact the same as those listed as external reviewers for the NJ DoE. It would have been really nice if the DoE had offered some actual information about these people, but they didn't.

So here's what I found in an hour of searching: 

 Sulafa Bashir: Program Manager for School Support, New York City Charter School Center, which describes itself this way: “We help new charter schools get started, support existing schools and build community support so that highly effective schools can flourish.”

http://www.nyccharterschools.org/for-charter-schools

Natasha Campbell: Founding executive director of Summit Academy Charter School in Brooklyn: “Summit Academy will open with a class of 100 6th-graders in Red Hook where the school's founding executive director, Natasha Campbell, was director of a youth center run by the Police Athletic League.”

http://insideschools.org/browse/school/1613

Elena Day: From LinkedIn:

Current: Chief Operating Officer at Friends of ROADS Charter Schools

Past: Director of School Support at New York City Charter School Center

Director of School Operations at NYC Charter School Center

Founder at Consulting Services

Vice President, IIG at Morgan Stanley

Vice President, Equity Strategy at Credit Suisse First Boston

Management Consultant at Freeman Associates

Analyst at Barra

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/elena-day/8/643/2b2

Barbara Greene: From LinkedIn:

Operations and Education Management Professional, Greater New York City Area Education Management

Past:

Executive Director at AllCare Provider Services, Inc

Senior Director of Educational Initiatives at AllCare Provider Services, Inc

Senior Director of Operations at TheraCare of New York, Inc.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/barbarasgreene

Radhika Parithivel: Not much found, but listed as a special guest at the Bates Area Civic Association in DC: “Accomplished Charter School –  Radhika Parithivel and Camille Morgan. Proposed charter school to open in Ward 5 in August of 2012 to serve grades pre-k through fourth grade.”

http://batesareacivicassociation.org/2011/02/02/rats-rats-rats-baca-meeting/

Amy Pozmantier: From Citizen Schools, an organization that "partners with middle schools to expand the learning day for children in low-income communities across the country.": “Amy Pozmantier is a second-year Teaching Fellow at the Ivy Hill School in Newark, New Jersey. She grew up in Texas and earned her BA from New York University. Eventually Amy plans to become a teacher, so her work leading a team of 10-15 middle school students gets her lots of hands-on experience. Amy is also the Civic Engagement Lead at Ivy Hill where she recruits and manages volunteers, plans events and engages the larger Newark community in Citizen Schools' work.”

http://blog.citizenschools.org/secondshift/2010/11/19/three-days-of-apprenticeships-cmon-ms-pozmantier/

And from LinkedIn:

Current: Student Teacher at Blankenburg Elementary

Past: Teaching Fellow at Citizen Schools

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/amy-pozmantier/39/27a/a60

Ray Regimbal: Listed as co-applicant for Accomplish Public Charter School on meeting agenda of Government of the District of Columbia, Advisory Neighborhood Commission 5C. 

http://www.anc5c.biz/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/anc5c_agendafeb15_2011.pdf

There is a person of the same name listed at LinkedIn:

Current: Assistant Director of Undergraduate Affairs, Internships, and Service-Learning at University of Maryland Baltimore County

Past: Undergraduate Student Administration at University of Maryland Baltimore County

-- Tamar Wyschogrod, moderator

Lots of NYC connections; gosh, I forget - where did ACTING Commissioner Cerf work before he came to NJ? Oh, yeah...

You have to wonder just how "independent" this group is. But there's no mistaking they are light on qualifications: no superintendents, no curricular specialists, no school business administrators, no teachers, no professors of education.

Tamar is right to point out the NJDOE should have listed the CVs of these folks as part of the press release, but maybe they decided not to because the "qualifications" of this panel are not particularly impressive. Should a student teacher really be making decisions about charter school approvals?

And should any town or city be forced to take charters approved by these people, whether they want them or not? It's what they're doing right now down in New Orleans, and it's not working out so well.

Local control is a necessary part of ensuring high-quality charters. Because the state - particularly this state at this time - can't be trusted to do the job correctly.

Nice work on this, NJPAGCSBC.

Islands of Sanity

In a sea of reforminess. Start with a reasonable take on charter schools:

I find it interesting that some very influential people have come out in support of the expansion of charter schools in our state, including Gov. Chris Christie, Mayor Corey Booker of Newark, and Reginald Jackson, director of the Black Ministers Council of New Jersey.

I attempted to view charter schools as a valued educational initiative, as I wanted to believe that these folks knew what they are doing as they appeared to have a solid track record of accomplishment. But then two things happened. The first was that I began to do some research on charter schools in New Jersey, and secondly, good common sense kicked in.

Charter schools are often viewed as a way for many children, especially those from “low performing schools” to receive a “better” education, with many parents embracing the idea. Education is often a great equalizer in our society, regardless of someone’s socio-economic background. It appears to me that some of these unsuspecting parents are being misled by those who have anointed themselves educators, but are actually charter school and voucher advocates. But the fact remains that charter schools have no better track record in educating children than the public school system.

This is not just me haphazardly tossing out my opinion, but the view of many educators, statisticians, and educational policy makers from coast to coast.

And then Valerie Strauss takes on St. Michelle of Arc for using misreading a single study to justify sweeping changes in schools:

I should note that Footnote 9, which starts on Page 5, and Footnote 64 on Page 50 say that even in the low-stakes tests that were the basis of this study, there’s a tendency for the top 2 percent of teachers ranked by value-added to have patterns of test-score gains that are consistent with cheating — and this percentage is, of course, much higher in the high-stakes era. You surely know all about the cheating scandal in Atlanta that pushed out the superintendent and others in a bunch of cities. In fact, there are investigations now into cheating when you were chancellor!

Cheating distorts the outcome, which leaves one to wonder why the authors put this important factor in a few small footnotes. Hmm.

Back to your Education Week commentary. You wrote that the study proves that the test-based reform program you started in D.C. schools when you were chancellor from 2007 to 2010 actually works. But it doesn’t prove anything of the sort.

Using the authors’ own markers of success, we can’t know until 2016 whether D.C. public school students who were in eighth grade in 2010 and had high-value-added teachers will get into good colleges. And we can’t know about the fourth graders until 2020.

These people aren't driven by research; they are driven by ideology. Research is a tool they use to justify their schemes, but only the research that comports with their world-view; the rest is routinely ignored.

Cerf Charter Report Clock: 322 Days

Time to check the Cerf Charter Report Clock:



I'm sorry, but 322 days is simply not as fast "as is humanly possible." Not when the New Jersey Department of Education insists on granting charters to controversial, politically connected religious leaders like Amir Khan, granting him the ability to open taxpayer-funded schools in communities that clearly do not want them.

What is the point of pushing the envelope like this when the DOE won't even release the data to show whether or not charter schools are effective?

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