7 Things Wrong with Gov. Christie's School Funding Proposal

There's an old joke that goes like this: 

Q: How do you know when a politician is lying? 

A: When their lips are moving.

I guess now that Christie's poll numbers are in the tank, his ego is pushing him to appear relevant. So what does he do when his back is against the wall? Attack public education of course. 

In true Christie style, he gave a speech yesterday that even Pinocchio would cringe at, ripping into the state's school funding formula—one of the most progressive in the nation—and vowing to change it to flat funding.

There are so many things wrong with it that it's hard to know where to begin. But let's start with this: Gov. Christie used the word 'unfair' seven times in his speech. So here are seven things that are unfair not only with his proposals, but with how he has treated public education over the past 6 years:

1. Gov. Christie has cut almost $7 billion in education funding statewide, and given away just about that much in corporate tax breaks, yet he has the nerve to claim that urban education is 'failing'.

2. Under Gov. Christie, urban charter schools have bled their host public school districts of hundreds of millions of dollars, which has forced massive layoffs and cuts to programs and vital services. 

3. Under Gov. Christie, segregation has skyrocketed in urban school districts as charters habitually skim the best and brightest (and least expensive to educate) students, and toss those most in need of additional resources back to cash-starved public schools. 

4. Under Gov. Christie's new funding formula urban districts would be drastically underfunded, thus devastating the very schools and students he claims to want to help most.

5. Under Gov. Christie, aid to those most in need in this state has been slashed. Funding for women's health centers, housing assistance for low income and chronically ill citizens, food stamps, and earned income tax credits have all been red-lined. He even fought the raise in the state minimum wage. These cuts directly affect parents in our large, urban centers, many of whom were already struggling to make ends meet before he became governor. And when their children do not have a good head start in life (like the majority in our wealthier, whiter suburbs), they have greater learning hurdles to overcome.

6. He simply will not, as he claims, "make sure that we have the aid for special needs students so that they may reach their potential too." Why? Because he is going to slash funding to our poorest, neediest districts where there generally tends to be a larger population of special needs children. He has not once kept his word to public school districts. Why should we believe him now?

7. This plan simply will not reduce property taxes. The year after Gov. Christie imposed the 2% tax cap, property taxes across the state skyrocketed an average of 20%. I don't know about you, but my property taxes have only gone up since then. But if by chance property taxes do decrease, it will be a massive tax break for wealthy, white, suburban NJ, and a massive tax hike for poor, brown and black urban areas. 

So, what will work? 

• Fair school funding, not equal funding. The two are very different.
• Full funding of our public schools as required by the law
• A moratorium on the expansion of segregationist charter schools
• Access to quality, affordable prenatal health care for every expectant mother in NJ
• Access to quality, affordable health care for every man, woman and child in this state
• Access to fresh, quality food in our urban centers
• Safe urban neighborhoods with true community schools as their anchors
• A living wage—not a minimum wage—so that parents don't have to work two or three jobs to make ends meet
• An end to unfunded mandates

This is just a start. There is much more that can and should be done, but unless and until profits are removed from the public education equation, things will never change.

Before I go...

Hat tip to my bloggy buddies, Jersey Jazzman and Dr. Bruce Baker for always having facts and figures at the ready...

... and Darcie Cimarusti (aka Mother Crusader) for reminding us what 'fair' really means:

 

More PARCC drivel from the NJ Star Ledger

Oh my! The NJ DOE shill Star Ledger editorial board is at it again. Today's propaganda piece is about Education Commissioner Hespe's proposed punishments for school districts that don't hit the 95% participation rate on PARCC, the magical test that can determine if your third grader will get into the college of their choice (it just won't help you pay for it). 

The exam is like an MRI for education. It can tell us where kids are failing and help diagnose the problem, even when it's hidden in an otherwise well-performing district. But because parents in more affluent communities have become increasingly suspicious of the state test itself — not unlike the overwrought side-eye given to childhood vaccines — what's now at risk is funding for kids who are most vulnerable.

WHAT?! "An MRI for education"? Vaccine refusers? Government more concerned about students not taking a deeply flawed and harmful test than they are about children not getting life-saving vaccinations? Did somebody put Crazy in the water?! I'm sorry, please excuse me while I clean up the coffee I just spit out, and adjust the antenna on the tin foil hat Tom Moran accuses me of wearing. I've simply got to find the comedy channel source of his claim. 

And we're back.

Yea, I couldn't find any legitimate, researched and vetted sources to back up his claim. But there's plenty out there from organizations who are profiting from this CCRAP.

According to Hespe, a school that fails to hit the 95% cut off could be put on a Corrective Action Plan (CAP) that would include holding parent PARCC information meetings and face-to-face meetings with refusing parents. Like that's going to change things. Schools hold informational meetings all the time and some parents don't show up. Schools hold face-to-face meetings with parents all the time (they're called parent-teacher conferences) and some parents don't show up. What are they going to do? Send armed guards to drag the parents out? Subpoena them? You laugh, but in this altered reality of education 'reform', I wouldn't rule it out.

But, if any of those parents do show up at these meetings, I hope they will print out a copy of this list of must-ask questions and demand answers, and remind school officials of what NJ State BOE President, Mark Biedron, said at the January meeting:

"We know we can't force any kid to put their hands on a keyboard." 

Moran continues...

Hespe says he is "not going to default to a 'you didn't do it, you lose money'" attitude, because it rarely helps kids in the end. He's right. Let's hope he follows through on that pledge. We shouldn't punish the neediest kids for the misguided actions of parents who feel they have nothing to lose.

But it's perfectly okay "to punish the neediest kids for the misguided actions of" adults who want to starve their schools of resources so they can 'fail' and be flipped to charters. If Moran is so concerned about "funding for kids who are most vulnerable", why isn't he shouting from the rooftops about the $6 billion in education funding cuts under the Christie administration? (For more on the egregious cuts to NJ school funding, go to Jersey Jazzman or Dr. Bruce Baker's blogs.) 

More from Jersey Jazzman: 

Unless and until these fine, reformy folk are willing to stand up and demand that schools serving poor children get the funds they need, I don't want to hear any more of their tut-tutting at middle-class white people for opting their children out of standardized testing. 

And their mouthpieces in the press and the bloggosphere and the think tanks — those who consistently ignore the problem of inadequate and unfair school funding — don't even deserve acknowledgment. Their indifference to the plight of impoverished children in underfunded schools, all while looking down their noses at those who opt their children out, speaks volumes. (emphasis mine)

And no SL education op-ed would be complete without attacking and blaming teachers: 

The teachers' union that has been whipping up hysteria about this test is now accusing the state of "threats and intimidation." 

Well, Tom, what else would you call a policy that threatens and intimidates schools, educators and students? Oh right: "an MRI for education".

I've said it before and I'll say it again:

It doesn't matter that the test is flawed. It doesn't matter that the test is developmentally inappropriate, especially for special needs students. It doesn't matter that the test is not diagnostic. It doesn't matter that teachers, parents and students won't be able to see the answers. It doesn't matter that the prep and administration of this test has taken countless instructional hours out of the school day. It doesn't matter that school districts are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on tech upgrades for this unfunded mandate. It doesn't matter that many students have purposely thrown their test answers because they know it doesn't count for them this year. It doesn't matter that many teachers' jobs will be on the line because of those thrown tests. It doesn't matter that this test was never properly vetted nor piloted... None of that matters because according to Moran, this test is the 'Great White Hope', that will finally defeat poverty in our mostly minority, urban areas. (Adding: while lining the pockets of the edupreneurs)

And as long as Tom Moran and the Star Ledger editorial board keep writing this CCRAP, I will keep saying it. As the parent-led opt-out movement grows, more and more parents are realizing just how much mainstream media is responsible for propagating this drivel.  

ADDING: It seems Jersey Jazzman and I were on the same tin foil channel today. At the same time I posted this, he posted this.

2014 Education Recap: The Good, The Bad, The 'Reformy'

Happy New Year!

In my humble opinion 2014 was a watershed year for public education. While there were plenty of knuckle-headed 'reform' policies and decisions, there were also some big wins, a lot of small victories and the beginnings of a shift in public opinion. So, let's take a walk down memory lane and look back on the good, the bad and the 'reformy'. 

'The bad' and 'reformy'

While there have been many horror stories from around the country, these had me scratching my head more than most:

• Stanford's CREDO Director, Dr. Margaret Raymond says the free market approach doesn't work in public education. Raymond made this statement at a conference in which she spoke about CREDO's latest study. Blogger, professor and attorney Stephen Dyer reported that, "Considering that the pro-market reform Thomas B. Fordham Foundation paid for this study and Raymond works at the Hoover Institution at Stanford — a free market bastion, I was frankly floored, as were most of the folks at my table."
• One Newark. Because sending 4 kids from the same family to 4 different schools around the city, often without school district-provided transportation, and sometimes through dangerous neighborhoods is a really, really good idea. And that's just the beginning of this hot mess.
• Arne Duncan's latest: he wants college teacher programs to be accountable for their students' students' outcomes. No, I am not kidding.
• The York, PA public school district becomes the next 'Post-Katrina New Orleans' school district.
• The rise of Campbell Brown. Because America needs another non-educator talking head with a lot of secret money behind her pushing through policies that will ultimately damage public education, which leads us to...
• The Vergara decision. Money, power and influence deal a huge blow to teacher tenure and open the floodgates for similar litigation nationwide. Brown is leading the charge in New York State. California Gov. Jerry Brown is appealing the ruling.

The really, really good!

This week The Network for Public Education published its Top Ten "Why We Will Win" Stories of 2014, and what an inspiring list it is! There are actually 11 items on the list—how could any one of them be left off? Be sure to check out the full description of each at the NPE website.

• The Common Core and PARCC/Smarter Balance are bloodied and on the ropes. States are dropping both as the reality of 'high-stakes' sinks in. Click on this interactive map to see what's going on in your state.
  Learn About Tableau
• Race to the Top was completely defunded in the 2015 omnibus bill. If there is no money to fund the program, will the program cease to exist?
• The collapse of data-collection giant, inBloom, was a big win for parents and education activists in New York, and further proof that Bill Gates' money is no match for the power of the people.
• The first annual NPE Conference in Austin, TX proved that the push to save public education is only growing stronger. The next one is set for April 25-26 in Chicago.
• Pro-public education candidates are being elected in states all across the country despite being outspent by truly sinful amounts of 'reformy' money. Further proof that money can't always buy elections. Here's who NPE endorsed in 2014.
• Michelle Rhee's education 'reform' policies have been exposed for what they were from the start: failures. Her departure from her grass-roots astroturf organization, Students First, is another symbol of the 'reform' movement's weakening.
• Louis CK takes America's growing frustrations with the Common Core and standardized testing prime time. Check out his appearance on David Letterman.
• 2014—The year of the education author. Still looking for a last minute holiday gift? Or maybe you want to get a jump on this year's gift list? Well, 2014 was a banner year for books written about public education by public educators and those who support public education. Check out NPE's list. Pasi Sahlberg's follow-up to his Finnish Lessons hits this year, too.
• Teach for America loses steam. The WalMart of teacher training programs is closing its NY City training facility blaming "a contentious national dialogue around education and teaching in general, and TFA in particular." Imagine that.
• Two Oklahoma first grade teachers just said, "No!" to testing their students and refused to administer the MAP test.
• Could an end to standardized testing really be in sight? Republican aides are working on a reauthorization bill for No Child Left Behind that would end the federal mandate on standardized testing, leaving those decisions to individual states. 

News from New Jersey

I'm happy to report there has been significant progress in New Jersey. Although Newark, Camden and other mostly poor, minority urban areas are still under the 'separate and unequal' thumb of Gov. Christie and NJ Education Commissioner David Hespe, parents, students and education professionals across the Garden State are pushing back like never before, and that momentum is only growing. In no particular order, here are some of my personal Jersey favorites:

• The rise of the opt-out movement. Commissioner Hespe's statement at the NJEA Convention in November that he was unaware of any opt-out movement in the state lit up the NJ Opt-Out Facebook page and Twitter feed, and ramped-up the group's outreach and advocacy. Hespe may soon regret uttering those words. The next open topic NJBOE meeting is January 7th and I expect it will be standing room only. 
• 77 Newark ministers and religious leaders denounce One Newark. They signed a letter to Gov. Christie denouncing Superintendent Cami Anderson's One Newark plan. More on this disastrous plan below.
• The Delran Education Association threw down the gauntlet against standardized testing. The Delran EA is leading the way in the state-wide push back against the overemphasis of standardized testing. Their showing of 'Standardized' followed by their highly successful 'Take the PARCC' event and publication of their position statement on high-stakes standardized testing was followed by their Superintendent and board of education passing a similar resolution that respects the rights of parents to make decisions that are in the best interest of their children, including opting out. The district will accommodate students who are not taking the test. Many other county and local education associations are now hosting their own events to engage and involve parents.
• The analysis of One Newark by Jersey Jazzman, Dr. Bruce Baker and Dr. Joseph Oluwole proved that the plan discriminates against poor, minority and special needs students, and minority teachers. I am so happy these guys live and work in New Jersey!
• The election of Ras J. Baraka as Mayor of Newark. Despite the millions of ed 'reform' dollars poured into the race, the people of Newark handed 'reformers' a resounding defeat by electing this Principal of Central High School to the city's highest office.
• NJ's pension trustees file suit against Gov. Christie for failing to make the required pension payments he signed into law. What does this have to do with public education? Plenty! State lawmakers have been raiding the fund for decades. If the system collapses, the biggest losers will be the state employees, many of whom are education professionals. Underfunding the pension system is one more tool 'reformers' use to weaken teacher unions and public education. New Jersey has one of the best public education systems in the country and one of the strongest education associations in the country, and that's no coincidence. If you want excellent educators, you have to be able to attract, train and retain them. People simply won't go into teaching if they cannot afford to support themselves and their families.
• Study finds NJ charter schools serve a different population than traditional public schools. Jersey Jazzman and Rutgers Professor Julia Sass Rubin crunch the numbers and their evidence is irrefutable: NJ charters simply do not serve as many at-risk, LEP and special needs students as their public school counterparts.
• NJEA members pushed back against the rush to implement too many unfunded mandates too fast and came up with a big win. The evidence was clear: the State DOE's rush to fully implement the new evaluation system (AchieveNJ), PARCC and the CCSS all in one year was crushing districts and educators. Hundreds of parents and educators testified at State BOE meetings. Thousands more wrote letters. In the end, the NJDOE listened. The biggest victory was their decision to reduce the weight of student standardized test scores to 10% for 2015.
• Student protests in Newark. The Newark Student Union is a force to be reckoned with. Just when you thought the younger generation was too apathetic, the students of Newark rose up. In 2014 they walked out, stood up, sat down, protested, got arrested, shut down major Newark arteries, and continued to fight back against the 'reform' machine. They are smart, passionate and committed to protecting their right to a thorough and efficient public education. Watch for more great advocacy from them in 2015.
• The bloggers and activists. Along with the best tomatoes, corn, blueberries and cranberries in the US (and we can have that debate over the summer), New Jersey is home to some of the best ed bloggers and activists in the country! Yes, I'm biased, but seriously, can you argue with the big 3 bloggers:

Jersey Jazzman (aka Mark Weber): From coast to coast, JJ chews up and spits out 'reformy' rhetoric with lightening speed, solid research and biting wit. 

SchoolFinance101 (aka Dr. Bruce Baker): While he may not be as well-known to the general education public as JJ, Bruce is a nationally recognized scholar in the field of school funding policy and a professor at Rutgers University. His name and/or research is attached to a great deal of scholarly work on education 'reform' madness, especially school funding. In addition to mountains of irrefutable evidence, his blog posts are full of acerbic wit and humor. 

Bob Braun: This former Star Ledger reporter has found his calling in retirement. No other blogger has done more to expose the complete incompetence of Newark Superintendent Cami Anderson's administration. He is a one-man accountability meter, and he's got the folks down at Two Cedar Street running scared.  

And this list ain't too shabby: This is a partial list of bloggers and organizations fighting to preserve public education in NJ, and doesn't even scratch the surface of all the individuals who are out there making a difference every day. If I made a complete list, I'd be here all day, and I do want to post this on New Year's Day. So, please add any additional individual names or groups along with links to their websites or blogs in the comments section below and I will update. The fact that I may forget to list a person or group is proof that 'The Fight', as I call it, is alive and well! All names in blue have links on the right side of this page: Blue Jersey, TeacherBiz, Save Our Schools NJ, Mother Crusader, Melissa Katz, Sarah Blaine Tepper, Stephen Danley, The NJ BATs, NJ Spotlight, The Newark Parents Union, NJ Working Families Alliance, The Education Law Center.  

A special thank you to Diane Ravitch, Anthony Cody, The Network for Public Education, Jonathan Pelto and all the great bloggers at the Education Bloggers Network. 

May you all have a healthy and happy New Year!

"The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dreams shall never die." 

~ Sen. Ted Kennedy

Asw. Simon's folklore tales of school consolidation & property taxes

Size doesn't necessarily matter

With some of the highest property taxes in the nation, every discussion about reducing them invariably turns to consolidating some of New Jersey's 565 municipalities and 590 school districts. Senate President Steve Sweeney has been an outspoken advocate for the former, and Asw. Donna Simon (R-16) presents her case for the latter in this op-ed.

Unnecessary administrative costs are among the reasons we continue to have the highest property taxes in the country. On average, more than 50 percent of our annual property taxes go toward schools. Taxpayers pay outrageous property-tax bills for the salaries and benefits of the duplicative layers of administrators in our 590 school districts.

As we've seen time and again since Gov. Christie started his assault on public education, it's all too easy to blame the high cost of living in NJ on our excellent public schools. While consolidation sounds logical on the surface, the real reason NJ property taxes are so high is due to cuts in municipal and school aid. In their recent study, Size May Not Be The Issue, Rutgers University Professor Dr. Ralph J. Caprio and Assistant Director and Senior Policy Fellow Marc H. Pfeiffer, present municipal evidence that must be taken into account when discussing school consolidation as a means to offset property taxes, as reported in NJ Spotlight :

With 15.6 government units per 10,000 population, New Jersey actually has about half as much government as the national average, and lags just behind New York (17.7 government units per 10,000 residents) and far behind both Pennsylvania (38.5) and Delaware (37.2). 

In fact, New Jersey ranks just 34th in the nation in the number of general governments per capita... 

[R]ural communities with low populations that are often considered prime targets for municipal consolidation have the lowest-cost municipal government services per person in the state — directly countering the assumption that “consolidation of small, inefficient municipalities” would lower property taxes, the study said. “We may need to rethink the conventional wisdom that forcing municipalities into larger organizations will be more effective, more efficient, and/or less costly,” Caprio and Pfeiffer concluded. “It should also give pause as to whether we should be advocating with uncompromising vigor that consolidation of municipalities is a solution to the state’s high property-tax problem.”

  ... 

"We may need to rethink the conventional wisdom that forcing municipalities into larger organizations will be more effective, more efficient, and/or less costly."

... 

[T]he Rutgers policy experts contended that too little attention has been paid to one of the biggest drivers of local property tax increases — namely, cuts in state aid to municipalities. 

In the wake of the Great Recession of 2007-2009, New Jersey’s cash-strapped state government cut unrestricted aid to municipalities from $1.727 billion in 2007 to $1.303 billion in 2010, reducing state aid from 15.4 percent to 10.6 percent of municipal budget revenue. 

Of the $1.36 billion increase in property taxes over that three-year period, $423.7 million was needed just to make up for the cuts in state aid. As a result of those state aid cuts, property taxes rose from 51.7 percent to 58.3 percent of local municipal budget revenue. 

“In effect, close to one-third of the statewide property tax increases experienced between 2007 and 2010 could be attributed to simply offsetting revenue loss from aid the state itself could not provide,” … policymakers should stop pursuing the “folk hypothesis” of “consolidating our way to savings” and focus instead on solutions to the underlying problem. They called for an in-depth analysis of the impact of the 2011 pension and health benefits law, the municipal budget-cap laws, and the overhaul of the interest arbitration statute for police and firefighters to “determine their actual impact beyond the superficial attention they have received.” (emphasis mine)

"Policymakers should stop pursuing the
'folk hypothesis' of 'consolidating our
way to savings' and focus instead on
solutions to the underlying problem."

Lifestyles of the not-so-rich-and-famous

Simon omits these facts with her assertion that property taxpayers are supporting the lavish ‘lifestyles of the rich and famous’ school administrators. Rutgers University Professor Dr. Bruce Baker had this to say when I asked him about her presumption:

Administrative costs are relatively trivial, and there's just not that much savings there, and they certainly aren't the cause of our relatively high (by no means highest as a percent of household income) property taxes. That's due to relatively low state share of funding for schools. (emphasis mine)

NJ Spotlight reports on those lavish perks:

"[T]he average New Jersey government employee is paying more for individual health insurance coverage than government workers in any other state and the 10th-highest average premium for family coverage in the country.

"Further, state and local government workers are paying a much higher percentage of the cost of their individual health insurance policies than private-sector employees in New Jersey have been paying, and not much less than the percentage paid by the state’s private-sector workers for family coverage." (emphasis mine)

All this has been happening while property taxes were accelerating at break-neck pace. NJ Spotlight spelled it out two years ago:

"Property taxes are eating up a larger share of family income under Gov. Chris Christie than under previous governors, primarily due to a sharp reduction in direct property tax relief over the past two years."

The great brain drain and charter school hanky panky

Simon’s criticism of NJ’s school administrators is based on a study by the Center for American Progress that shows financial inefficiencies in school districts across the country. (I urge you to take a look—especially at the interactive chart for New Jersey. Lots of terrific information in there about cost per pupil, poverty and student outcomes.) When Gov. Christie capped superintendents’ salaries at $175,000, lest any of them earn more than the state’s chief executive (but perfectly ok if you work at the Port Authority) it launched a ‘brain drain’ as superintendents left for NY, PA and other states that don’t have punitive salary caps and reductions. As the Wall St. Journal reported earlier this year:

10 of the 43 districts in New York's Westchester County are now run by former New Jersey superintendents who left after Gov. Chris Christie imposed the salary cap in February 2011, saying it would help limit sky-high property taxes.

The superintendent cap did nothing to reduce property taxes, but it sure did a lot to hurt public education:

Nearly 100 New Jersey superintendents who had left their jobs as of February 2014 cited the salary cap as a factor, according to a survey of districts conducted this year by the New Jersey School Board’s Association. 

The article states that even the NJSBA—the governing body of local boards of ed, which sit on the opposite side of the bargaining table of all those pesky unions—opposes the salary cap. It has compromised their ability to find quality candidates and offer them a competitive salary.

"The superintendent salary cap did
nothing to reduce property taxes."

But—amazingly—charter school administrator salaries weren’t included in the cap. Charters are funded with up to 90% of the per-pupil funding from the sending district of every child they enroll. Almost 4 years ago, The Associated Press reported on the double standard in administrator pay:

[S]ome heads of small charter schools earn far more than the limits proposed for public school administrators by Gov. Chris Christie. For example, the director of Teaneck's Community Charter School, which has about 300 students, made more than $200,000 in 2009-2010 when salary, bonuses and reimbursement of unused time are factored in. That's more than the town's interim public schools superintendent receives for overseeing seven schools with about 4,500 students. 

"It seems somewhat unfair that you're asking charters and (traditional) publics to compete for the same funds, but the rules are different," Ardie Walser, president of the township school board, told the newspaper... At Englewood on the Palisades [Charter School], school director Anthony Barckett testified at a court hearing that he earned over $152,000 in 2009-2010 for what amounted to part-time work. (emphasis mine)

If Simon is so concerned about the financial inefficiencies of small school districts, she should start with charters. Dr. Baker continues:

If consolidation is such a great idea, whether to promote integration, remove administrative redundancy, etc., then it would seem utterly foolish that we continue to expand charter schools. These schools tend to operate at inefficiently small size, further segregate our students, and when they do grow to a size where they operate as districts within our districts, they create significant administrative redundancy — a whole layer of "management corporation" siphoning district funds passed on to charters.  

We know, for example, from IRS 990 filings, that the administrative structure of Uncommon Schools has plenty of well paid admins—including their "managing director" for Newark Uncommon at about $200k in 2012. No doubt much higher now in 2014. So, in addition to Newark Public Schools, we've added, through this structure, additional governing layers that siphon resources, but don't show up on the traditional books. (emphasis mine) 

"If consolidation is such a great idea,
then it would seem utterly foolish that we
continue to expand charter schools."

So, Newark has a superintendent with a $240k salary, but now has districts within it which use funds generated by management fees skimmed from the charter allocation (which passed through the district) to pay several entire additional administrative teams. (emphasis mine)

Charter school financial malfeasance and inequity is widespread and well documented. A recent study by Rutgers University Professor Dr. Julia Sass-Rubin and doctoral candidate, Mark Weber (aka Jersey Jazzman), proves New Jersey's charter schools, which are undergoing rapid expansion, "do not serve nearly as many children in economic disadvantage, have special educational needs, or are English language learners as their host districts' schools." These additional links, which are just the tip of the iceberg, offer more compelling evidence: 

• Jersey Jazzman here 
• Diane Ravitch here, here, here 
• Bill Moyers here 
• Salon here

South Hunterdon: A work in progress

Enrollment numbers from NJDOE website

The South Hunterdon consolidation worked because, as Simon stated, there was overwhelming community buy-in. Just take a look at the 2012-2013 enrollment numbers. They are on par with many charter schools around the state. While it's terrific that the district saved $170,000, it won't make a dent in property taxes.

But take a look at the district's per-pupil cost calculations. Overall they've grown. In addition to some maintenance expenses, that $170K was most likely realized through the loss of one superintendent, but they've increased in every other category.

The new South Hunterdon school district is still very small. Mergers that push student populations close to the magic number of 3,000 could see their costs increase instead of decrease. More students means more services—not less. Consolidation can have other drawbacks as well: longer commutes for students, less community involvement and support, and less —not more—opportunities for students in certain extracurricular activities such as sports, theatre and musical performance—activities that many students want on their college application resumes, and many parents expect for their tax dollars.

The essential questions

• How can Simon's primary focus be further reductions in our public schools, which are free, open and accessible to every child, while charters—notorious for fiscal mismanagement and student segregation—remain untouched? 
• How can Simon place the blame squarely on the shoulders of public school administrators when their salaries and benefits have been drastically cut while charter school administrators, who oversee much smaller schools, earn much more? 
• How can Simon push so hard for consolidation into K-12 regional districts when the NJDOE's own data shows that on average our K-6 school districts spend less per pupil than our K-8 or K-12 districts respectively? 
• Why isn't Simon pushing for restoration of the almost $5 billion Gov. Christie has cut from public education since he was first elected, or the hundreds of millions in state aid to municipalities that has been cut since the Great Recession—both of which are proven causes of increased property taxes?

In conclusion

While school districts, municipalities and elected officials must continually look for ways to control costs to taxpayers, it is essential that they make choices that will not diminish the delivery of goods and services. NJ has one of the best public education systems in the country and a charter school system that has been proven to segregate and has questionable financial practices. The massive cuts to public education over the past few years combined with the rapid expansion of charter schools and massive spending to gear up for PARCC testing, have left it battered and bruised, but still managing to provide an overall exceptionally high level of service. If Asw. Simon is looking to cut costs in public education, she needs to start with the charter schools. As a member of the Assembly education committee, she should know better.

NEA President Lily Eskelsen Garcia has no time to be diplomatic – Part II

(UPDATE: Please see the addendum at the end of this post.)

Part I of this series on the round table discussion between NEA President Lily Eskelsen Garcia and NJ education bloggers and activists focused on the devastating effects of high-stakes testing on special needs children, and how edu-preneurs are profiting from the testing boom. 

Part II focuses on the mainstream media blackout.

As with Part I, unless otherwise indicated, all quotes are Lily's.

When you repeat a lie often enough it becomes the truth* 

*Attributed to both Vladimir Lenin and Dr. Joseph Goebbels.

"Everything [Secretary Duncan] said, everything [he's] advocated for says there must be a consequence for not having your quota of kids hitting your cut score...  

"[He] needs to see teachers being evaluated by students' test scores, students being labeled by their test scores, schools being called 'failures' by student test scores...

"Let's call it what it is; it's not 'accountability'...

"The fact is that standardized tests won't tell you if kids are college and career ready, yet they say it and the mainstream press prints it. And that has to end." (emphasis mine)

In the past six years or so education blogging has exploded. My blog roll is but a small sampling of the highly educated and well informed citizens who are writing about what's happening. Lily blogs and Tweets: here's her account of her NJ trip. Diane Ravitch's blog alone gets thousands of hits a day. Ed bloggers are doing incredible investigative work connecting the dots between Wall St., Silicon Valley billionaires, charter schools, test prep companies, 'charities' such as The Broad, Walton and Gates Foundations, ALEC (The American Legislative Exchange Council) and Washington, DC. They're writing books, too. Years from now, when this house of cards falls, I hope somebody will be giving out awards for all their efforts.

"The bloggers and the educators are the only ones asking, 'Why are we basing so much of education funding on something that benefits the testing industry?'"

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know about the ongoing feud some of us have with The Star Ledger editorial board including director, Tom Moran (here, here and here for starters). Despite numerous attempts to educate him on the facts, he simply refuses to do his homework. It's no wonder Lily didn't want to meet with them. They're not alone. Other Pulitzer Prize-winning newspapers are equally inept in their reporting, preferring to shill for those setting the policies or, like The Los Angeles Times, resorting to McCarthy-era tactics like publishing teachers' evaluation scores (the newspaper's reasoning being this is public information). A short time later a teacher who was rated ineffective took his own life. "Family members have guessed that the rating contributed to his death." 

Why the dearth of factual reporting? Much has been written about the incestuous relationship between the mainstream media and the billionaires who fund ed 'reform', but a good place to start is this David Sirota piece. For example, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp owns The New York Post, The Wall Street Journal and Fox Broadcasting Co. as well as Amplify, the company that was awarded a $12.5 million contract from the Obama administration to develop Common Core assessments. 

Is it any coincidence that Fox News comes down squarely on the side of 'reform'? There is so much wrong with this Tucker Carlson piece it's cringe-inducing, and my own appearance on Fox and Friends had me wondering how anyone in their right mind could believe that garbage. 

The traditionally 'liberal media' isn't entirely innocent. Although MSNBC's Morning Joe generally has a balanced roster of panelists and guests, Joe Scarborough has a personal ax to grind with teachers unions. (And I'll talk about NBC's Education Nation in Part III.) As I've said before, with all the excuses we hear from students about why they didn't do their homework, educators are experts in B.S. detection, and there's a whole lotta that being shoveled at the uninformed general public by media outlets that fan the flames, beat the war drums and call for teachers' heads on platters because "it's all about the children profits."  

Sirota writes (emphasis mine):

"Though it is rarely mentioned, the truth is that the largest funders of the 'reform' movement are the opposite of disinterested altruists. They are cutthroat businesspeople making shrewd financial investments in a movement that is less about educating children than about helping 'reform' funders hit paydirt. In that sense, they are the equivalent of any industry leaders funding a front group in hopes of achieving profitable political ends (think: defense contractors funding a front group that advocates for a bigger defense budget). The only difference is that when it comes to education 'reform,' most of the political press doesn’t mention the potential financial motives of the funders in question. 

"While I’ve written about this reality before, recent news perfectly exemplifies how the 'reform' movement is really just a sophisticated business strategy."

(Note to Tom Moran: Is David Sirota a 'conspiracy theorist', too?)

Rutgers University Professor and blogger Dr. Bruce Baker weighs in (emphasis mine): 

We've entered a bizarro world I never could have imagined when I started out doing this stuff back in the mid-1990s. And this Bizarro world is being promoted from the supposed highest echelons of our highly stratified society.
[...]

This idiocy - cast as lofty super-intellectual progressivism that us poor common folk simply can't grasp... has to stop.

We are being led down a destructive road to stupid - by arrogant, intellectually bankrupt, philosophically inconsistent, empirically invalid and often downright dumb ideas being swallowed whole and parroted by an increasingly inept media - all, in the end creating a massive ed reform haboob distracting us from the relatively straightforward needs of our public schools.

Lily gets the last word:

"It's just incredible that Campbell Brown and Silicon Valley [billionaires who are financing Vergara] are all very wealthy and most of them have Wall Street ties. Isn't it just a coincidence that all these really wealthy billionaires woke up and said, 'I want to make the world a better place. Let's fire more teachers.' Not 'let's find better ways to train or hire teachers.' If you fire a bunch of people but have the same hiring practices, you're still going to get the same people, so how serious are you?

"What they're really saying is, 'We need a really fast, easy way to get rid of a bunch of teachers.' And replace them with... what? Teachers who never taught pre-NCLB. [Teaching to the test] is the only way they know how to teach."

... and not doing their homework is the only way mainstream media knows how to report on education.

That's it for Part II. Stay tuned for Part III:

The false invitation to educators and what happened when one said, "No more!"

ADDENDUM:

The following two excellent blog posts on the ways ed 'reformers' are buying the media and shaping the message were brought to my attention after I originally posted this piece.

First is Mercedes Schneider's post about how Bill Gates purchases messaging, particularly via NPR:

Those with the obviously-declared education privatization agenda have appointed themselves the “keepers of the education conversation.” They will publicize what they decide “works.” After all, they are above actually doing the educating, and since those of us doing the educating are “too busy,” we need for them to cement the narrative that what they pay for (test-driven reform, charters, vouchers) is what “works.” As Washington Post’s Lyndsey Layton reports:

Bruce Reed, president of the Broad Foundation, said the idea for Education Post originated with his organization but that other philanthropic groups had recognized the need years ago. …

One of the goals of Education Post is to publicize what works in public education, Reed said.

“Administrators, school leaders and teachers have papers to grade, schools to run, and they don’t have time to get out and talk about this,” he said. “This is an effort to help spread information about what works both inside the field and outside.”

Education Post also will have a “rapid response” capacity to “knock down false narratives” and will focus on “hot spots” around the country where conflicts with national implications are playing out, [former Arne Duncan communications shaper] Cunningham said. [Emphasis added.]

Information control, my friends. And, of course, the controlled narrative will feed the idea of corporate reform “success”:

While there are myriad nonprofit organizations devoted to K-12 education,none are focused solely on communication, said Howard Wolfson, an adviser to Bloomberg Philanthropies.

“There hasn’t really been an organization dedicated to sharing the successes of education reform around the country,” Wolfson said. “You have local success, but it isn’t amplified elsewhere. And there is a lot of success. There is also an awful lot of misperception around what ed reform is, and there hasn’t been an organization . . . focused on correcting those misimpressions.” [Emphasis added.]

I’m sorry, but the “misimpression” of corporate reform as being punitive and destructive to the community-based school and the career teacher and friendly to a grossly-under-regulated privatization is beyond “impression”; it is a reality fostered not only by years of a failed NCLB but one that continues to be fostered by NCLB waiver-yanking US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

How funny that those keen on promoting the traditional public education “failure” narrative now want to shape it into a “success” designed to conceal their own failure.

Second, Anthony Cody writes about the overt ways corporate money buys messaging. Please read the entire post and share. This is the next wave of ed 'reform':

We have some brand new players entering the field. Peter Cunningham, former PR agent for Arne Duncan at the Department of Education, has convinced billionaires Bloomberg and Walton to give his new Education Post $12 million to “shift the conversation” about education reform, away from the polarized place it has been.

In an early post on the Education Post, Cunningham wrote,

With the support of Bloomberg Philanthropies, The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation, we are launching a new organization called Education Post to provide a strong voice for those who believe the current education system needs to get better.

We will spread the word that in communities around the country progress is being made. All across America, there are countless success stories where states and districts had the courage and determination to put aside politics and work together to improve education.

And coming soon, with funding from the Gates Foundation and others, Edreports.org,

a new, independent nonprofit designed to improve K-12 education in the United States, will launch in winter 2014. EdReports.org will provide free, web-based reviews of instructional materials series focusing on alignment to the Common Core and other indicators of high quality as recommended by educators, including usability, teacher support and differentiation. These Consumer Reports-style reviews will highlight those instructional materials that are aligned to the higher standards states have adopted so that teachers, principals and district and state officials charged with purchasing materials can make more informed choices.

How does this represent bias?

This week, some in the media have begun to take notice of the effect money attached to an agenda can have. Areport in Current describes what has become the elephant in the editorial room, especially in what is now inaccurately called “public” media:

The [Gates] foundation has supported public radio and TV journalism for years, backing coverage of global health, another priority for its philanthropy, as well as education. Within the past year, it has extended that commitment with $1.8 million in support to NPR for expanded education reporting. It also gave $639,000 to American Public Media for multiplatform coverage of education technology, to be featured on Marketplace’s broadcasts and website. In previous years, the Gates Foundation has also supported Frontline, PBS NewsHour and Teaching Channel, a nonprofit producer of public TV programming.