Great editorial today from Janelle Duffy over at JerseyCAN on the politics behind the recent “study” of charter school demographics in New Jersey. The study was written by Mark Weber and Julia Sass Rubin on behalf of the anti-charter group Save Our Schools-NJ. Rubin founded the Princeton-based organization; she recently told the Star-Ledger that its purpose was to speak for poor urban parents because “people in abject poverty don’t have the bandwidth to even evaluate charter schools. It’s just not going to be high on their list.”
(Chrystal Williams, Newark mother of five, begged to differ in an editorial called “Pushing Back on Reckless Critique of Charter Schools. Williams asks, “Who is Julia Sass Rubin and what does she have against my kids? “)
Duffy dissects the opaque funding behind the report (see here also) which was paid for by the Daniel Tanner Foundation. Duffy writes,, “We think it’s hardly a coincidence that a Foundation that clearly doesn’t believe that charter schools can play a role in improving education would fund a report that doesn’t show charter schools in a positive light.”
She continues,
Rubin and Weber opened their report by saying that their goal was to “to facilitate an honest and positive discussion” about charter schools in New Jersey. I would truly love to have such a discussion, but I’m not sure it’s possible given the predisposition of the authors and funders of this study. They say that they will be releasing more of these studies about New Jersey charter schools in the coming months. Assuming the same authors and funders will be involved in the future reports, we already know what their conclusions will be. It will be the same old stuff from SOS.
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