NJ Education Report

My column today at NJ Spotlight  examines Assemblyman Patrick Diegnan’s rewrite of New Jersey’s charter school laws. While there’s much to like about it, including a focus on development of charters in high-needs districts and attention to kids with disabilities, the draft declines to address one of the primary weaknesses of our charter school laws: only one entity is authorized to approve new charters.  Now it’s the Commissioner of Education. Mr. Diegnan, contrary to model charter school law, would transfer that mantle to a thumbs up or down community referendum.

No other state in the country has a system like the one proposed by Assemblyman Diegnan. But read on.

Here’s a rarity within New Jersey’s education reform community: consensus. The NJ Education Association, Gov. Chris Christie, Commissioner Chris Cerf, Education Law Center, and NJ Charter Association concur that the state’s charter school law is broken. In response, several members of the state Legislature are working on overhauls, and last week a draft of the bill Assemblyman Patrick Diegnan (D-Middlesex) is putting together was leaked to NJ Spotlight.

Critics of our 14-year-old charter school law are buttressed by various national research organizations that evaluate state charter school legislation and find ours lacking. The National Alliance of Public Charter Schools (NAPCS), for example, ranks New Jersey 31st out of 42 states with charter school laws.

Read the rest here.