How Do NJ’s New Graduation Rates Correspond with Christie’s Reform Agenda?

That’s the topic for my post today at Newsworks WHYY. Teaser:

These changes are serendipitous for those of the education reform persuasion, and dovetail smoothly with the Christie Administration’s vigorous attempts to highlight educational disparities within the state. It’s pretty tough to make an argument for systemic change when the perception is that all is grand amongst our public schools, no hard task to diminish the importance of the historically low performance of poor urban schools by ascribing the disparities to the intractable effects of poverty.

Why bother with the expansion of school choice or changes in tenure law if the system’s working just fine?

Sometimes perception is everything.

Read the whole thing here.