Newark Mayor Ras Baraka wrote a letter demanding Superintendent Cami Anderson’s resignation. And the Star-Ledger asked N.J. Education Commissioner David Hespe five questions about Newark Public Schools’ performance and future leadership.
Also, Anderson penned a piece in the Huffington Post that discusses efforts to “ensure that education systems equip all students with the skills to access their dreams and not replicate cycles of systemic oppression.” She notes some progress in Newark:
While we admittedly have considerable distance to cover before reaching the goal of a 100 percent graduation rate, we are proud of our progress to-date. The percentage of graduating students who also passed both sections of our graduation exam has increased by 11 percentage points. Last year, 68 percent of our students graduated — up from 54 percent in 2009. This rise is particularly notable because it was achieved while reducing the number of dropouts by 500 students since 2011, applying more rigorous metrics than most districts and yielding 7 percent more actual graduates.
[W]e can assure Mr. Morgan and the rest of the state’s taxpayers that charter schools are not just a good financial investment, they also provide an innovative, topnotch education to hundreds of children across our region...Charters across the state get, on average, only about 71 percent of per-pupil funding or about $6,000 less than traditional public schools. Put it this way: At Jersey City’s Golden Door Charter School, if students brought with them the full 90 percent of funding the law allows, it would add almost $3 million to the school’s budget every year.
State Assemblyman Patrick Diegnan Jr. (D-Middlesex), chairman of the Assembly‘s education committee, said he hoped to have a package passed by the summer. He said the specifics are still being discussed, but they were along the lines of a proposal unveiled this fall by a coalition of groups led by the state’s teachers union that sought to tighten requirements on teacher training and support once on the job.”
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