NJ Education Report

Patrick McGuinn of Drew University speculates on the impact of a Christie presidential campaign on NJ’s application for a waiver from the strictures of No Child Left Behind):”Most of the stuff that the waiver is calling for are things Christie has done and wants to do anyway. But if he runs, there could be a whole different story,” he said. (NJ Spotlight)

Ray Pinney at New Jersey School Boards Association suggests that NJEA, the teacher union, is behind the Christie-Will-Run rumors. No matter: Herman Cain says Christie’s too liberal to win.

The NJ DOE approved four new charter schools; none of them are the Mandarin-immersion programs that incited much wrath from suburbia. Here’s the New York Times article, the Star-Ledger, and the DOE press release. The four approved schools are Beloved Community Charter School in Jersey City, Knowledge A to Z Charter School in Camden, Trenton Scholars Charter School in Trenton, and Regis Academy Charter School in Camden County.

Senator Nia Gill (D-Essex) has filed a legal challenge against the NJ DOE to force the department to turn over the names of people who reviewed applications for charter schools.

Camden Public Schools is ending its controversial ICE-T program where students were paid to attend school. At Camden Central High about 77% of students attend school regularly.

Only 28% of eligible kids in NJ get free/reduced breakfast, which puts us 46th among the state rankings.

Teacher annual raises are trending slightly downward, as indicated by this Star-Ledger piece covering Hunterdon County.

The Record Editorial Board opines that the superintendent salary cap is detrimental to student achievement.

Check out this new report from Complete College called “Time is the Enemy”; the theme is that the longer it takes students to accumulate credits (attending part-time, needing remedial courses, etc.), the less likely they are to graduate. For example, 50.1% of students admitted to two-year community colleges require remedial courses and only 9.5% of them will complete an associate’s degree within three years.