NJ Education Report

Bob Ingle reports on the new feature-length movie “The Cartel,” which pans American education in general and New Jersey public education in particular. Here’s some Garden State-related highlights, courtesy of Ingle (who makes a cameo appearance in the flick):

New Jersey is the No. 1 spender per pupil while our SAT college entrance exam scores are 37th. (Slight quibble here: we also urge many more kids to take the SAT’s than other states, so our pool of test-takers is far more diverse.)

The movie “tells of the outside audit commissioned by the New Jersey Department of Education that questioned $83 million in spending by the state’s Abbott districts, the 31 that get more than 50 percent of the state’s education budget.”

In one scene “The Cartel” tells about the $8 billion that disappeared from the School Construction Corp.’s coffers with little to show for it. That’s followed by Gov. Jon Corzine boasting he plans to put more money into education.

There is Corzine’s education commissioner, Lucille Davy, looking like a deer caught in the headlights, unable to explain why three charter schools were rejected by her department. There is Joyce Powell, head of the New Jersey Education Association, claiming she doesn’t know why charter schools do better.

You can see it for yourself. The film premieres on May 30th at 2 at the Hoboken International Film Festival.