Gov. Christie says that Newark School Advisory Committee shouldn’t hold its breath about regaining local control. Star-Ledger: “I won’t turn it back over until there is success and excellence,” Christie said at a Newark news conference in which he named Cami Anderson, a New York City senior superintendent, as the city’s next schools chief. “That’s why it was taken over in the first place — a lack of success and a lack of excellence.” NJ Spotlight examines the process.
Here’s a “Conversation with Cami Anderson,” Newark’s new superintendent.
Peter Meyer at Fordham’s Flypaper advises Newark Superintendent Cami Anderson to restrain herself from posing on the cover of Time holding a broom (a Michelle Rhee reference). He says she has “her work cut out for her,” including a $75 million gap in the Newark schools’ annual $970 million budget and the lukewarm community reaction to reforms.
Governor Christie will be in “uncharted territory” if he ignores the upcoming ruling of the State Supreme Court on whether his budget violated the School Funding Reform Act, reports the Star-Ledger. Paging constitutional crisis.
Assemblyman Dave Rible writes in the Asbury Park Press (in a nod to Special Education Week) that “there are significant inconsistencies in the quality of special education in NJ and that millions of dollars are being wasted on on inefficient and ineffective special education programs.”
Speaking of special education, Paterson Public Schools is still denying speech and language services to eligible elementary students. Here’s more info from Education Law Center.
The Press of Atlantic City reports on remarks from Carlos Lejnieks of the NJ Charter Schools Association, who told an audience that finances and facilities are major hurdles for aspiring charters. “It’s both an efficiency issue, and a moral issue,” he said. “Those public schools were paid for with public tax dollars. Why shouldn’t public charter schools use them, as they do in New York City?”
Today’s New York Times profiles an 8th grader and his parents trying to navigate the “school choice maze” in New York City.
Donald Boudreaux in the Wall St. Journal says we should reexamine the presumption that “market forces can’t supply quality education.” What if grocery shopping was a politicized and monopolistic service?
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