NJ Education Report

“I’m a believer in the Malcolm X school of education – by any means necessary,” said Ed. Comm. Bret Schundler at the graduation of 370 former high school dropouts at an alternative school in Camden, as reported in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

A new Quinnipiac University poll reported by New Jersey Newsroom:

New Jerseyans like their teachers 56 to 26 percent, but by a 50 to 24 percent margin they have a negative opinion of the teachers’ union. Residents with children in public school like their teachers 65 to 23 percent, but dislike the teachers’ union 53 to 22 percent. While 45 percent trust the union more to make the right decisions about teacher contracts, 43 percent trust Christie more.

After 60% of school budgets were rejected by voters in April, local municipality officials have cut with a butter knife, not a scalpel, according to NJ Spotlight, making “relatively small cuts … and in 30 of the 315 budgets, no cuts at all.” Also in NJ Spotlight: everyone’s talking about whether Newark Schools Superintendent Cliffford Janey will get renewed or not.

The Star-Ledger reports that New Jersey School Boards Association is “spending millions to renovate its headquarters” after deciding it was too pricey to build a new $18 million conference center on land that is paid $1.6 million for:”The New Jersey School Boards Association collects more than $7 million a year from 588 member districts, which are legally required to join. It has socked away so much in dues and conference fees — $12.3 million, an amount greater than the group’s annual operating budget — that it is paying cash for the improvements.”

On today’s front page of the NY Times, public schools struggle to educate severely disabled students.

The Asbury Park Press wishes that the NJ DOE adoption of the Common Core standards came with concrete explanations: “Well, they could simply trust Sandra Alberti, director of the education department’s Office of Math and Science Standards, who described the new standards as “clearer, fewer, higher” than the preceding standards.What exactly does that mean? That description is positively mist-like in its explanatory power. Let’s hope the new national language arts standards would not find that sentence acceptable in a freshman essay, let alone from the mouth of an educational professional.”

“Although Hispanics are the largest ethnic group in New York City’s public schools, there are almost twice as many blacks among the 30,000 charter school students, an analysis by The New York Times shows.” (NY Times)

David Oscar, president of the NJ Association of Health Underwriters, says that the feud between Christie and NJEA’s leadership is not about salary freezes but about heath care premiums.