Petrelli, of the Hoover Institute and the Fordham Foundation, considers the limitations of the Christie Administration’s intercession:
I can understand the impulse behind these state takeovers and I can understand the commissioner, (Chris) Cerf, who I respect tremendously, felt like he had to do something because the situation in Camden is so bad. What the evidence shows is most state takeovers have not led to dramatic increases in student achievement…
It’s hard to find a district where the academic performance has been improved and I think that’s because it’s the way state takeovers have worked. As dramatic as it sounds, it really hasn’t been a dramatic intervention. You remove a school board, but you have the school bureaucracy report through this superintendent to the state, but the bureaucracy is still there with all of its problems, the teacher union contract is still in place. The facts on the ground haven’t changed a whole lot.
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