Education Law Center and Save Our Schools Has a “Moment”

Save Our Schools-NJ has joined forces with Education Law Center to protest proposed cuts in school aid. SOS leader Julia Sass Rubin said, according to the Asbury Park Press,

Underfunding our schools not only shortchanges our children’s future, it also places an increased burden on local communities in the form of higher property taxes and fees.

The two organizations had bonded recently over their opposition to the Urban Hope Act, which permits non-profits to run up to four failing schools in Trenton, Camden, and Newark. Both SOS and ELC argued that the Urban Hope Act was a thinly-veiled get-out-of-jail-free card for an incompetent School Development Authority, the state commission charged with repairing and rebuilding some of NJ’s most decrepit school buildings.

Another bonding experience: the shared betrayal by NJEA, who originally fiercely opposed the Urban Hope Act, but applauded it once the bill was amended to protect teachers’ rights to unionize. (This support is also a sound strategic move on NJEA’s part: it provides convenient cover for its continued opposition to the Opportunity Scholarship Act [the voucher bill] because – hey – NJEA already supports alternative school models with innovative funding mechanisms.)

SOS and ELC share other interests as well: opposition to charter schools (to be fair, SOS would say the antipathy is not towards charter schools but NJ’s charter school laws) and disdain for Gov. Christie and Comm. Cerf. ELC was most recently in the news for Stan Karp’s sharp words o Monday for Sen. Teresa Ruiz’s tenure reform bill at the Senate Education Committee hearing.

About a year ago Stan Karp, a founding member of ELC, wrote an editorial for Rethinking Schools on the conspiracy on the part of “reformy” Obamaites and hedge fund managers to take over public schools. It’s a long piece and I’m on a short leash this morning but here’s his take on the scheme, which he learned about by reading the very reformy Stephen Brill book, “Class Warfare.”

One of the key vehicles for advancing the corporate reform agenda has been the Democrats for Education Reform, or DFER, a political lobby initiated and funded by hedge fund superstar Whitney Tilson. According to Brill, then-Senator Obama was present at the founding meeting of DFER in 2005, which was sponsored by a group of financial and charter school entrepreneurs, some of whom would later become key figures in the coming financial meltdown. DFER was formed explicitly to drive a wedge between Democrats and the two large teacher unions, the NEA and AFT, and to cultivate political support and develop strategies to bring market reform to public education. The fact that Obama won the Democratic nomination by defeating Hillary Clinton, who initially had the backing of both national teachers unions, only strengthened Obama’s ties to the hedge fund/DFER crowd. After Obama won, DFER produced a strategy paper memorably entitled “Bursting the Dam,” in which it described Obama’s election as creating “unprecedented political conditions” for “fundamental reform of public education.

Karp is reassured, though, by some ”hopeful signs” that “the tide is turning against education reform.” The first hopeful sign is the growth of a group called Parents Across America, which strives to “alliance between parents and teachers to defend and improve public education.” SOS-NJ is an affiliate of Parents Across America, so Karp’s admiration for the local group makes perfect sense. It’s always fascinating to ponder the interplay among various interest groups.

Correction: Stan Karp is not a founding member of ELC, but ELC’s Director of Secondary Education.