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Njspotlight.com ‘Three Key Questions About the Opportunity Scholarship Act’
The Record ‘Scholarship act clears legislative hurdle’ Star Ledger ‘Braun: Vouchers hearing is latest political gimmick masquerading as school reform’
The Philadelphia Inquirer, Op-Ed ‘Setting New Jersey students free’Op-Ed, G Norcross
Njspotlight.com ‘Filling the Top Slot for Newark's Troubled Schools’
Star Ledger ‘N.J. education chief Chris Cerf, Mayor Cory Booker present findings on Newark schools reform’
Star Ledger ‘Speaking at NJEA conference, U.S. Sen. Menendez says it's time to stop blaming teachers’
Njspotlight.com ‘Three Key Questions About the Opportunity Scholarship Act’
The state's first private school voucher program is gaining backers, but several essential issues remain to be sorted out
, February 4 in Education |3 Comments
The question is looking to be more "when" than "if" the state legislature will pass the proposed Opportunity Scholarship Act.
The legislation that would effectively create New Jersey’s first private school voucher program yesterday passed a key Assembly committee, adding another boost to the sudden and bipartisan momentum the bill has gained in the past month.
But while agreement on even the concept has been noteworthy after decades of heated debate, the next challenge is working out the details that both Senate and Assembly, Republican and Democrat, can agree upon.
"As we walk away, I tell everyone there are still a few more steps in the process, and this is not done yet," said Assemblyman Albert Coutinho (D-Essex), chairman of the commerce and economic development committee that unanimously endorsed the measure yesterday.
"There are still some serious and legitimate concerns," Countinho said.
Among them, three fundamental questions that are not yet fully answered.
How many kids and for how much money?
After initially considering a vastly different version of the bill, Coutinho’s committee yesterday embraced a measure that is essentially the mirror image of the Senate version now heading to final vote in that chamber.
The new bill would create a five-year pilot program in 13 districts, offering vouchers -- or scholarships -- for low-income students in low-performing schools to go to public or private schools outside their districts.
But there was a big caveat. The Senate bill would allow for a program that would serve 40,000 students at Year 5 at an estimated cost of nearly $1 billion over five years. The Assembly bill passed yesterday would cap the figure at $360 million, or roughly 19,000 students at Year 5.
Others in Assembly leadership have said the bill should be tightened even further, reducing the number of pilot districts to maybe half that. There also are other details within the cost that have yet to be resolved, including how much would be set aside for administration.
Will private schools need to follow public school rules?
Under pressure from critics, the bill passed by both Assembly and Senate committees is considerably more restrictive on the schools accepting the scholarship students.
They would have to be approved by the state or other accrediting agencies, for instance, and they would need to test students with state assessments.
But as private or parochial schools, the schools would be exempt from other regulations that legislators have said leaves them more than uncomfortable.
One that has raised the most concerns is a waiver in the bills that would free the schools from providing special education services for students with disabilities, as long as parents grant them permission.
What is low income?
A contentious point in the bills is a provision that would set aside 25 percent of the scholarships to students already enrolled in private schools, a share that critics contend could go even higher because of technicalities.
But another cutoff has also raised concerns among legislators, one that would set fairly generous income limits for eligible families. Under both versions of the bill, the income limit would be 250 percent of the federal poverty level or roughly $55,000 for a family of four.
Some advocates have pressed to set it higher, but even at the current level it exceeds the federal standards for students to receive subsidized meals in school, and some critics have contended that half the state's families could conceivably be eligible by their incomes.
Coutinho is among the legislators who said the priority should go to the poorest students.
The bill moves next to the Assembly’s budget committee, where many of these issues are expected to resurface. Assemblyman Louis Greenwald (D-Camden) said yesterday that he is open to the bill, but still has much to work out himself.
And back in the upper house, Senate leaders yesterday weren’t ready to sign off either. When told of the Assembly committee’s endorsement, Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester) said of its Senate prospects: "We’re still looking at it."
The Record ‘Scholarship act clears legislative hurdle’
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Last updated: Thursday February 3, 2011, 11:28 PM BY LESLIE BRODY
TRENTON — A bill that would give tax credits to companies that pay for poor students to attend private or parochial schools passed an Assembly committee Thursday after six hours of impassioned debate.
Supporters of the Opportunity Scholarship Act argued children trapped in chronically failing schools deserve better options, but critics countered the program would drain resources from a public system that desperately needs the money.
The commerce committee hearing was packed, with some backers of the bill wearing clerical garb or yarmulkes, while some opponents wore yellow buttons bearing the name of their loose grass-roots coalition, “Save Our Schools.’’
Committee chairman Albert Coutinho, D-Essex, acknowledged that the pilot program would not solve the bigger problems afflicting troubled public schools, but he said it was time to give new ideas a chance. He noted the proposed $360 million in scholarships, to be awarded over five years, account for about one-third of one percent of anticipated state and local education spending over the same period.
The backstory
Back Story The Christie administration is a big supporter of the Opportunity Scholarship Act, which would provide tax credits to corporations that pay for poor children to attend private and parochial schools. The children must live in failing public school districts to qualify. The business gets back every dollar it spends though the tax credit. Supporters say children trapped in awful schools deserve better options, but opponents argue against using public money to support private schools when public schools are seeing cuts in state aid. This week, the New Jersey Education Association sent urgent notes to parent leaders asking them to lobby lawmakers against the bill. A Senate committee approved the measure last month, and critics worry it is on a fast track to passage.
“We need to try everything possible because this is a crisis,” Coutinho said before the committee approved the bill 5-0 vote.
The five-year pilot program would cover 13 districts, including Paterson and Passaic. The numbers involved keep changing, but the Assembly version would grow yearly to cover up to 19,000 children in its fifth year. The Senate bill covers more than double that number for $800 million in scholarships. Companies would provide grants of $6,000 to $9,000 per student, and earn tax credits equal to the full amounts of their donations.
Newark Mayor Cory Booker, the first speaker, pleaded with legislators to “liberate” thousands of children from the “deep dark quicksand of despair” that comes with being stuck in awful schools in a city where only about half of public school students graduate. While critics complained the bill lacked sufficient accountability measures to ensure that private institutions would do a better job than the public schools, Booker said parents know which schools work well.
“Don’t infantilize my parents and tell me they don’t know how to make choices about what’s best for their kids,” he said.
Critics of the bill lambasted it as “un-American” for violating the separation of church and state by giving taxpayer resources to religious schools. Several speakers predicted that many private schools would either discriminate against special-needs students or not be able to serve them, leaving the most vulnerable children behind. Some also said it wasn’t truly targeted to help the poorest students, because children from families that earn up to 250 percent of the federal poverty threshold — $55,125 for a family of four — would be eligible to participate.
“This voucher scheme would hurt struggling public school districts by removing both funding and the easiest-to-educate students,” said Julia Rubin, a Save Our Schools member. The SOS coalition also included the Education Law Center, American Civil Liberties Union, League of Women Voters and the Paterson Education Fund.
Walter C. Farrell Jr., a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said he had researched voucher programs in Milwaukee, Cleveland, Florida and New Orleans. “Studies by those supportive of and opposed to vouchers confirmed that voucher schools do no better at educating low-income children than do public schools,” he said. “Most often they perform worse.”
Several representatives of Catholic schools, however, said their schools taught children better for less money.
Germaine Fritz, president of Benedictine Academy in Elizabeth, said tuition for its roughly 150 students is $6,525 – which doesn’t cover the full cost of educating a child – and that 100 percent of its students graduated and 98 percent went to college. She rejected critics’ claim that parochial schools would cherrypick the top students.
“We take children who are three or four years behind grade level,” Fritz said in an interview. “We have a number of kids who have impairments. We work very hard with them and they stick it out. One of the advantages is we’re smaller.”
One of the bill’s sponsors, Assemblyman Gary Schaer, D-Passaic, said four Catholic schools had recently closed within four miles of his home, adding hundreds of additional children to struggling public schools. He said helping children stay in private schools through the scholarship act would cost less than having them switch to the city’s public schools, which often don’t serve them well enough.
He said students in Passaic, one of the poorest cities nationwide for its size, often graduate “unable to write a complete sentence in any language.”
Before the hearing, Senate Majority Leader Barbara Buono, D-Middlesex, made an impassioned pitch against the bill, saying it was a misguided step toward privatizing education. “We can improve our public schools but you don’t do that by abandoning them and disinvesting in them,” she said. “I will fight with every fiber in my being to make sure” the bill doesn’t pass.
Earlier this week, Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver, D-Essex, said that if the bill passed the commerce committee, she expected to assign it to a second committee rather than posting it to a vote by the full Assembly. She said she had several concerns about the bill and didn’t “think something like this can be fast-tracked."
“The biggest question mark is the governor’s budget,” Coutinho said, referring to the 2012 budget to be announced Feb. 22. “Serious cuts to urban public education could complicate the passage of this bill.”
E-mail: brody@northjersey.com
Star Ledger ‘Braun: Vouchers hearing is latest political gimmick masquerading as school reform’
Published: Monday, February 07, 2011, 7:30 AM
By Bob Braun/Star-Ledger Columnist
TRENTON — A man shouted, "Our children are dying" and, after accusing the public schools of "killing" children by contributing to the crime rate in his city, he demanded the state enact a school voucher law. Angel Cordero of Camden said poor minorities had waited long enough.
Cordero, an employee of an organization lobbying for vouchers, was only slightly more emotional than those of Newark Mayor Cory Booker who accused public school supporters of "infantilizing" minorities and no fewer than three times paraphrased Rev. Martin Luther King’s "fierce urgency of now" remark.
A lot of high drama at last week’s hearing on school vouchers. Not just shouts and tears, but also the obligatory, irresistible schoolgirl who tugged at everyone’s hearts as she talked about how her parents worked hard to send her to a Catholic school so she could escape a terrible public school — Newark’s East Side, not a bad school at all. And a suburban mother who wants all children to have the choices she had — as if many poor black and Latino people could move to Bernardsville where she lives.
The drama helped divert people from realities. Like — the fix is in for this bill. The Assembly Commerce and Economic Development Committee held the hearing on an education bill because the Assembly Democratic leadership knew the education committee chairman, Patrick Diegnan (D-Middlesex), opposes vouchers.
"I think it’s un-American — and we can’t afford it," Diegnan said before the hearing. "There was no way the leadership was going to let me have it."
Because it is supported by both Gov. Chris Christie and Democratic power brokers, the voucher bill will be enacted — and quickly. Another slap at public education with its big bad unions and tenure. Another gimmick masquerading as school reform. The hearing was just show, the old razzle-dazzle.
Another reality: Despite a $12 billion deficit, despite $1 billion cut from state school aid, despite $400 million federal Race to the Top funds lost by the governor, New Jersey is about to spend $800 million on aid to Catholic and other religious schools that are dying either because their ecclesiastical hierarchies no longer wish to pay for them or their coreligionists no longer can, or want to, afford them. So New Jersey taxpayers will pay even more.
PREVIOUS COVERAGE:
• N.J. Assembly panel to weigh offering vouchers for students in failing public schools
• N.J. Senate panel advances bill that would offer vouchers for students in failing public schools
• N.J. Senate committee may consider school voucher bill creating 'opportunity scholarships'
• Political wrangling stalls N.J. school voucher bill
• Newark Mayor Booker says Facebook CEO's $100M donation will not be used for private-school vouchers
On the pretense this will somehow improve urban education, despite studies in other states that show the major impact of vouchers is not so much to improve education but rather to keep Catholic schools alive in places like Cleveland and Milwaukee.
Cordero works for E3, an organization pushing for vouchers, and he’s recently been honored by Christie for his work. The frustration he expressed is understandable. Progress has been too slow. That frustration has been fueled by those who embrace a right-wing market ideology that blames unions, public employees, and government generally. In New Jersey, it coincides with an extraordinary political détente between a conservative Republican governor and urban Democrats.
The best reality check came from Walter C. Farrell, Jr., a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His prepared testimony cited the academic studies that panel members missed — showing vouchers don’t make a difference except to funnel public money to church schools.
Assemblyman Angel Fuentes (D-Camden), a bill sponsor, shot back at Farrell, wanting to know what his solution was. It allowed Farrell to talk about a reality voucher proponents won’t face:
"We have made a serious mistake," he said, "by placing the burden of what happens to our children at the school house door."
The fig leaf for this bill is the change in name from "voucher" to "scholarship." The legislation will give corporations dollar for dollar tax breaks to give money to Catholic and other religious school students. Farrell noted the irony:
"What has happened to our children is a function of disinvestment in our cities. Many of the corporations pledging scholarships are the very corporations that moved out of our cities and our country, taking jobs with them.
"With the collapse of jobs came the collapse of the community, and with the collapse of the community came the collapse of families, and with the collapse of families came the collapse of the schools."
Yes, he heard Cordero’s impassioned plea, his railing against crime, and Farrell said, "The crime problem is not going to be addressed if you lay off police officers — you can’t improve education in the face of collapsed communities."
Tax breaks to the rich and big corporations won’t fix that. The market won’t fix that. Vouchers won’t fix that.
The Philadelphia Inquirer, Op-Ed ‘Setting New Jersey students free’
By George E. Norcross III
Across New Jersey, tens of thousands of children are being denied the education they deserve, blocking their path to job opportunities and career success. Too many of our urban schools are failing a state with a proud tradition of exceptional universities and academic achievement. And even though taxpayers have poured billions of dollars into the schools, too many students remain trapped in these inferior learning environments.
It's time to offer students and families a way out. It's time to give them the freedom to transfer out of failing schools and to get the high-quality education that's available to other New Jersey families.
That's why I support the Opportunity Scholarship Act, a pilot program that would give children in the state's poorest-performing schools a chance to attend better ones - public or private - that agree to participate.
This program would give parents who want a better future for their children the option to pursue it, while at the same time showing taxpayers results for their dollars. Legislation creating the program, which passed an Assembly committee last week, has won broad, bipartisan support from elected officials, members of the clergy, businesses, nonprofit organizations, and African American and Latino leaders. All of them recognize that it's the kind of meaningful reform New Jersey needs.
The gravity of the problem is indisputable. For decades, too many public schools in Camden and other New Jersey cities have failed to come close to the results of their counterparts in the suburbs. The schools entrusted with teaching the state's students are themselves getting a failing grade. Their students languish in classrooms that don't meet minimum standards, many of them drop out, and many of those who do graduate lack the knowledge and skills to go to college or find a good job.
I have worked for decades alongside community and business leaders and ordinary residents in Camden. And I have seen firsthand the frustration and despair of parents who would give anything for the option to send their children to a high-quality school. No bureaucracy or financially motivated special interest should stand in their way.
Schools are failing not because of a shortage of money or of talented, dedicated teachers who do their best in a dispiriting environment. They are failing because public officials, school administrators, and others in charge of running the schools have refused to embrace meaningful reform.
While the main impetus for reform should be giving all children the high-quality education they deserve, this legislation also makes economic sense. Each student in our cities' public schools costs taxpayers up to $25,000 a year, or about double the average annual cost of sending a child to a private or parochial school. If we use less than half of that $25,000 for a scholarship to send one of those students to a private or parochial school, the balance continues to go to the public school.
Education reform will be the preeminent issue of this decade in New Jersey and across the nation. Those who embrace it will have performed a valuable service to families trapped in chronically underperforming schools, and to taxpayers paying billions of dollars for a failed system.
Public officials, political candidates, school administrators, and others often claim that children are their priority. This legislation is an opportunity to show we really mean it, and to back up our words with bold, creative actions that will produce concrete, lasting results.
George E. Norcross III is the chairman of Cooper Health System/Cooper University Hospital.
Njspotlight.com ‘Filling the Top Slot for Newark's Troubled Schools’
One day after Newark's superintendent stepped down, acting education commissioner Chris Cerf starts talking about the future
, February 7 in Education |Post a Comment
With the latest Newark school superintendent out the door on Friday, the Christie administration and Newark Mayor Cory Booker are moving quickly to select the next superintendent and set their agenda for state’s largest district.
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Booker and acting state education commissioner Chris Cerf took to the stump Saturday, a day after outgoing superintendent Clifford Janey’s last day, and met with local leaders to make their case and lay out a timetable for selecting a new superintendent by March or April.
It will be a tall task for the next superintendent, with Cerf describing a dysfunctional school system that needs “transformative change.”
Early Screening
Cerf said this weekend that he and Booker have begun interviews of candidates, so far with about eight individuals in what he called an "early screening." A national search firm is involved with the process, and members of the district’s elected advisory board have also joined in two of the interviews.
Cerf wasn’t naming names of potential candidates, but said he was soliciting suggestions from throughout the "education reform community."
All in all, the pieces are falling into place for what Cerf and Booker have promised would be some big changes in the 40,000-student district.
Much of the attention has been on the $100 million gift to the Newark public schools from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, but the selection of the new superintendent is likely the more critical decision in what happens with that money and beyond.
But there are some huge challenges in the offing for that next superintendent, led by contract talks with the district’s teachers that have been at an impasse for months.
Auditing the Situation
In the local meetings on Saturday, Booker and Cerf laid out what they called the depth of problems in the district. Cerf presented an "audit" of the district that he said charted languishing student achievement, low graduation rates, dysfunctional personnel policies and top-heavy spending.
"Given the statistics showing the abject failure of the system, we cannot afford to be incremental and must look to truly transformative change, Cerf said in an interview yesterday.
He especially cited the statistic that just one in five ninth graders graduates four years later after having passed the state’s standardized proficiency test. The overall graduation rate is closer to 50 percent, he said, but most of those need an alternative exam.
"We are consigning generation after generation to not having access to the American dream," Cerf said.
The remedies aren’t so easy, though. The audit laid out a variety of obstacles in a budget that sees twice as many administrators as the state average, and personnel policies that give principals little say over their own staffs.
Shutting Down Schools
Cerf also did not hide his own support for totally overhauling the lowest-performing schools, essentially closing and reopening them with new staffs. It was a practice that he led in New York City schools, where he was deputy chancellor and close adviser to Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
"That’s my bias," he said of the controversial strategy. "The research shows it is extremely difficult to turn around a school, rather than phasing it out and starting anew to build a new culture."
Shavar Jeffries, the president of the district’s advisory board, said he was "cautiously optimistic" for the process that lay ahead. He said Cerf and Booker so far have involved the board and promised that it would play a prominent role in the selection of the next superintendent.
"The word we’re given is the full board will have a chance to weigh in before the next superintendent is chosen," Jeffries said.
Joseph Del Grosso, the president of the Newark Teachers Union (NTU), said his union has also been waiting for the new leadership to fall into place.
The talks have been at an official impasse for several months, after the administration first proposed a pay freeze for the NTU’s members, Del Grosso said. That has led to a state mediator joining the talks, although Del Grosso said little new substantive progress has been made.
"I should be meeting soon with the commissioner," said Del Grosso. "Hopefully we can move this forward."
Star Ledger ‘N.J. education chief Chris Cerf, Mayor Cory Booker present findings on Newark schools reform’
Published: Saturday, February 05, 2011, 7:23 PM Updated: Saturday, February 05, 2011, 7:33 PM
By David Giambusso/The Star-Ledger
NEWARK — The perennial problems of Newark’s school district — too many administrators, too little authority for principals and abysmal graduation rates — have bogged the city down for too long, the mayor said today.
"These things are issues we have agreed on for 10 years but just haven’t moved on," said Newark Mayor Cory Booker.
So when he and state schools chief Chris Cerf presented the findings of a privately funded, two-month audit of Newark Public Schools today, their aim was to generate consensus over what needs to change the grim reality in Newark’s schools.
"We should all be here motivated by a sense of moral outrage," Cerf told a group of roughly 200 political and educational leaders gathered at the Willing Heart Community Care Center in Newark. "We have big, bold ambitions — and we are not interested in incremental change."
Today’s presentation highlighted the study Global Education Advisors conducted using money Booker raised from private donors.
Among the study’s highlights:
• The school district has almost twice as many administrators per student than the state average
• Only 22 percent of students entering high school in Newark graduate after four years, having passed the High School Proficiency Assessment
• Principals have very little authority over staff and budgets in their own schools
"You can’t hold people accountable for how much students are learning if you don’t give them the authority to make decisions," Cerf said.
Recently departed Superintendent Clifford Janey laid out many of the problems identified today more than a year ago in his strategic plan, "Great Expectations." Janey’s replacement will be charged with implementing the needed changes quickly, Cerf said.
School advisory board president Shavar Jeffries said he and his fellow board members are taking an active role in finding a replacement.
"What they promised is that representatives of the board will be involved in interviewing candidates," Jeffries said. "And the entire board will weigh in before a superintendent choice is finalized."
Booker said today he had to maintain the anonymity of candidates so they would not be at risk with their current employers.
Junius Williams, director of Rutgers’ Abbot Leadership Institute, said the process should be more transparent.
"When you opt for democracy, then there’s going to be a certain amount of leakage," he said. "But when you don’t have democracy, you risk a deal that was made in a smoke-filled back room."
Star Ledger ‘Speaking at NJEA conference, U.S. Sen. Menendez says it's time to stop blaming teachers’
Published: Saturday, February 05, 2011, 10:37 PM Updated: Sunday, February 06, 2011, 8:33 PM
By Aliza Appelbaum/The Star-Ledger
EAST BRUNSWICK — U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez got something out of the New Jersey Education Association today that Gov. Chris Christie is not likely to see: a standing ovation.
Speaking to union members at their annual legislative conference in East Brunswick today, Menendez (D-N.J.) cemented his position as educators’ answer to what they see as Christie’s policies of "no."
Menendez, raised in Union City by Cuban immigrant parents and a product of the New Jersey public school system, shared stories of his working-class upbringing and tied his eventual success to the dedication of his public school teachers.
"I want to make sure every child has the same opportunities I did, which is why I have been fighting to keep good teachers in the classroom, where they belong," Menendez said. "In my mind, that is where teachers belong: in the classroom, not in the unemployment line."
Since taking office, Christie has pushed to scrap tenure for teachers, criticized an expensive pension system and failed to secure millions of dollars in education jobs funding in time for this academic year.
At the conference, Menendez, speaking to a union that makes up a key part of his voter base, took the opposite position on all the issues. He praised teachers for working hard under less-than-optimal conditions and championed the sustainability of pension and tenure plans.
"It’s time that we stopped pointing a finger at good and decent teachers. It’s time that we stopped blaming teachers for every little thing that goes wrong," he said. "We are all aware that the ‘blame game’ continues. It continues in Trenton."
One of Christie’s main criticisms of the tenure system is that it permits under-qualified and low-performing teachers to keep their jobs while students pay the consequences. Menendez scoffed at the notion that teachers are paid too much, saying "no one is in this for the money."
He also noted the lower starting salaries — less than $40,000 — that most new teachers earn and said the investment in salaries for good teachers would be worth it when students succeed at higher rates.
"It’s not easy during tough economic times to invest in education, but the dividends are enormous," Menendez said.
Christie spokesman Michael Drewniak tonight said the governor has not targeted "good and engaged teachers who do their job well, who care deeply and teach our kids every day."
"It's about their out-of-touch, self-interested union and its leaders," Drewniak said. "Senator Menendez is playing special-interest politics and distorting that message, which the governor has been extremely clear about all along."
Teachers want to be part of the conversation in Trenton and Washington, D.C., said Susan Vigilante, president of the union’s Morris County chapter and a recently retired Morris Plains teacher. "We’ve become the scapegoats for the ills of the state," Vigilante said. "We’re not — we’re its shining stars. And Senator Menendez is making that known."
Steven Beatty, a Bridgewater-Raritan High School teacher, said teachers have to be proactive.
"We, as educators, need to get out there and educate the public about the lies that diminish our profession," Beatty said. "I’m glad there are elected officials who are listening, but we still need to beat back the bully in Trenton."
