NJ Education Report

Civil rights hero Howard Fuller spoke in New Jersey this week about a variety of topics, including education.  At North Star Academy in Newark, he was asked how he felt about charter schools. He replied, “a good school is a good school is a good school.” Also from the Star-Ledger:

Without addressing the One Newark controversy, Fuller also argued that some of the backlash against closing schools in minority communities has more to with the jobs that would be lost than education policy.
For African Americans, in particular, teaching has been a popular and viable route to employment, Fuller said.
“It’s about jobs,” he said. “It’s about paying rent.”

The Star-Ledger Editorial Board tries to find the middle ground between Newark Superintendent Cami Anderson’s unprofessional “refusal to attend board meetings” and the Advisory Board’s meaningless “tantrum” about withholding Anderson’s salary. Background here from NJ Spotlight.

John Mooney spoke to WNYC Public Radio’s Amy Eddings about educational changes in Camden. In case you missed it, here’s my piece at WHYY’s Newsworks about NJEA, Education Law Center, and Save Our Schools-NJ’s unsuccessful efforts to derail amendments to the Urban Hope Act, which allows for some of that educational change.

The new PARCC tests will take more time than N.J.’s old ASK and HSPA tests. (NJ Spotlight)

The Trenton Times reports that “after writing, petitioning, brainstorming and outright fighting with the school district for nearly one year, the mother of a special-needs student says her son is getting the accommodations he requires.”

Here’s New Jersey’s report card from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, an affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in its Leaders & Laggards series.  The report “evaluates educational effectiveness in 11 categories: academic achievement; academic achievement for low-income and minority students; return on investment; truth in advertising: student proficiency; postsecondary and workforce readiness; 21st century teaching force; parental options; data quality; technology; international competitiveness; and fiscal responsibility.” More on this later in the week.

Laurence Tribe, often described as one of America’s chief liberal scholars of constitutional laws, discusses the Vergara case in USA Today:

During my career, I’ve written and litigated on behalf of progressive causes such as marriage equality, reproductive freedom and gun control. I doubt you could find a more fervent defender of teachers and collective bargaining.
But the right to unionize must never become a right to relegate children to permanent second-class citizenship. The outdated California laws the court struck down make no sense for the teachers they were intended to protect, or for the students whose learning is the very reason for the education system’s existence.