| |||||||||||||||||||
Star Ledger - State takeover of Camden schools is a necessity: Editorial… “It is in some ways a shotgun wedding, this partnership between Christie and Camden. But it had to happen. And for the sake of kids in this state’s most desperate city, let’s hope it works.”
Star Ledger - State takeover of Camden schools is a necessity: Editorial… “It is in some ways a shotgun wedding, this partnership between Christie and Camden. But it had to happen. And for the sake of kids in this state’s most desperate city, let’s hope it works.”
By on March 27, 2013 at 5:59 AM
The Camden school district spends more than $22,000 per student, and more than half of them drop out.
Its central office is the most bloated in the state when measured against the student population.
More than 90 percent of its schools are abject failures, in the bottom 5 percent statewide.
And yet the school board still won’t allow successful charter schools to use the vast number of empty classrooms in the city. And it initially voted against a plan to expand Newark’s most successful charter school chain into the city. They are simply not taking this crisis seriously enough.
Given all this, Gov. Chris Christie deserves nothing but praise for his decision to take over the district and start fresh. If ever a spirit of bold experimentation were called for, this is it.
The move will allow Education Commissioner Chris Cerf to bring Camden some of the progressive reforms taking root in Newark. The state will pick a new superintendent and reorganize the central office, a move that will probably result in layoffs.
It will negotiate new contracts with principals and teachers, no doubt aiming for a contract that rewards the best teachers with extra pay and gives the district new power to remove poor teachers who cannot or will not improve. That’s the model in Newark, where teachers overwhelmingly approved the new deal last year.
By now, we know state control is no magic wand, and that fixing urban schools is tough work no matter who is in charge. The state runs three districts today — Newark, Paterson and Jersey City — and the results have been disappointing on the whole.
The administration’s work in Newark is showing promise. The city has several very successful district schools, along with the state’s most successful crop of charter schools. Reforms put in place by Superintendent Cami Anderson are starting to show results, giving more kids in the city a shot at a successful life. It is disappointing that Jersey City and Paterson are not showing the same promise.
But you simply cannot defend the status quo in Camden, any more than you could defend the status quo in Newark back when the state took over in 1995. At the time, board members were vacationing in Hawaii on the public dime while their students dropped out in droves. Reading the state’s report on the district’s performance back then makes you want to cry, and then to join a revolution.
One risk is that the state’s heavy footprint in Camden could provoke the kind of resistance to sensible reform that we’ve seen in Newark. Christie is aware of that, and during his announcement he was smart to put his usual bombast on hold and emphasize the state’s eagerness to work with locals.
It is in some ways a shotgun wedding, this partnership between Christie and Camden. But it had to happen. And for the sake of kids in this state’s most desperate city, let’s hope it works.
