NJ Education Report

That’s what Fred Snowflack surmises in yesterday’s Daily Record. He points out that while Governor-Elect Christie has touted his bona fides for reform, he’s stacked his education subcommittee with 20 people “who include a cross section of the education establishment,” a conventional political move that hardly supports an agenda to “turn Trenton upside-down.”

Writes Snowflack,

Rather than selecting a team filled with many education establishment figures, how about a team of education establishment critics? These would be people who openly support, among other things, changing tenure laws, reforming collective bargaining and merging districts. Should not the idea of a transition be to formulate the policy of the new administration? And if you want to turn Trenton upside down, you need people from outside the system to do that, do you not?

True enough. Political expediencies may demand a public genuflection towards those who kick it old-school, but we’re a long way from the bold promises of real reform if critics don’t get a voice.