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Njspotlight.com ‘Charter Schools Still Struggling, Despite Governor's Enthusiastic Backing’
Philadelphia Inquirer ‘Christie airs plan to ease charter-school creation’
Star Ledger article, plus two columns 1)‘Gov. Christie seeks private companies to operate charter schools’, and 2) ‘Tom Moran: Public support is integral to Newark schools reform’ , and 3) ‘Bob Braun: Idea of failing N.J. public schools promoted by privatizers, celebrities’
Njspotlight.com ‘Charter Schools Still Struggling, Despite Governor's Enthusiastic Backing
Njspotlight.com ‘Charter Schools Still Struggling, Despite Governor's Enthusiastic Backing’ New Jersey's charters face funding inequities, facilities shortages and sometimes resentment from suburban host districts – for starters
By John Mooney, October 1 in Education |1 Comment
Charter schools in New Jersey have long complained that they have a series of financial obstacles stacked against them. Related Links Charter and Choice, the Second Piece of Christie's Education Agenda NJ Charter Schools Association They receive only a portion of what a local district spends for the same child, sometimes a small portion, and they get no public funding for facilities at all. Then add in the new issue that New Jersey’s 72 charter schools are unlikely to get any of the $268 million in emergency federal stimulus money for New Jersey public schools. Yesterday, Gov. Chris Christie spent more than an hour before a full house at a Hoboken charter school praising the work of New Jersey’s charters and promising more technical support and less state regulation for their expansion. But hardly unnoticed in parts of the charter school community, Christie didn’t say much to solve the charters’ cash problems. “The governor has amazing vision for public education and we applaud his support,” said Shelley Skinner, who sat on the stage with the governor as a charter school leader in Jersey City and statewide. “But until the funding inequity is addressed, it will be hard to implement,” said Skinner, development director of the Learning Community Charter School in Jersey City. “For a community like ours, we’re facing extinction without that support.” May You Live in Interesting Times It’s an interesting time for charter schools in the state. A pro-charter governor is seeking to open up more of them, and Newark especially has become a hotbed, with one in 10 students already in charter schools and the new $100 million gift to the city meant at least in part to seed them further. But there is a growing resentment in suburban districts to the checks they must write to charter schools they host, some contending the charters provide no better an education. And the tensions are all exacerbated by the continued fiscal crisis that has put the pinch on all public schools. With Skinner among the most outspoken, the charters have lately been speaking up on their own to a governor sympathetic to their cause, trying to address what they see as long-running problems with how they are funded. On average, according to the state’s data, they spent in 2008-09 about $13,200 per student, about $2,000 less than district schools. Ryan Hill, founder of the TEAM Charter Schools in Newark, one of the state’s highest performing, said much is rooted in the school funding formulas that preceded Christie. “It’s not just some regulatory fix,” he said. “And this is administration is so pro-charter, if it was easy to fix, they would have probably done it.” And Christie’s administration said they are listening, although somewhat hamstrung by their own fiscal constraints. At the presentation yesterday, one top Christie aide said that the inequities are real and efforts are underway to try to address at least some of them, although he said he couldn’t provide much detail as yet. “We’re definitely looking at the per-pupil amounts and the facilities issues,” said Gregg Edwards, Christie’s policy director and currently the acting chief of staff in the state education department. “The governor said in his campaign that the charters are not getting their fair share,” he said. “There’s no question about it.” Funding Formulas The disparities come in the complexities of the New Jersey charter school law of 1995 and a series of funding formulas since then, all the products of political process that has not always looked fondly on charter schools. In short, the charters are supposed to receive from districts 90 percent of what the local schools spend per child. But how that is calculated is where it gets complicated. Charters in urban districts have historically only received a portion of the base funding, and none for supplemental or extra costs. That improved a little in the last formula, but it still left them out of a large pot of so-called “adjustment aid” coming to some of the districts. Jersey City has been the most notable example, and that leaves Learning Community getting little more than half of the $17,000 that the district spends per pupil, Skinner said. “We’re seeing high-needs kids, and at $8,900 per student, it’s nearly impossible to serve them,” she said. More onerous to all charters is that the law also prohibits them from spending the public funds for facilities, an especially burdensome cost in the start-up stages. New Jersey is one of many states where such facilities money is not provided. Christie yesterday stopped short of offering direct facilities aid, but he did throw them some help and said he would support new rules in the law to allow charters to more easily use underutilized district space. That was no small thing to Hill, the TEAM director in Newark. “Free buildings, if it happened, would be $1,500, maybe $2,000 per student,” Hill said. The controversy over the new federal money has only added to the tensions, this one borne out of the federal guidelines that accompanied the funding last month. In this case, the $268 million earmarked for retaining school jobs must be distributed through the state’s school funding formula. But New Jersey is one of the state’s where charters are funded through districts, and they in turn received none of the extra aid at all. New Jersey is hardly alone with this, since the differing charter funding systems have each run headlong into the federal rules, with varying results. For some, like Florida, the money has reached the charters. Connecticut’s charter schools have been left out, like New Jersey’s. “Hopefully there is still some chance this money can be accessed, but charter schools have had a difficult time, even though they are public schools like everyone else,” said Brooks Garber, vice president of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. “With a mish-mash of how we pay for charters, it means they are often again getting left out in the cold,” he said.
Philadelphia Inquirer ‘Christie airs plan to ease charter-school creation’ By Adrienne Lu Inquirer Trenton Bureau Gov. Christie outlined a proposal to improve and expand school choice in New Jersey at a town-hall meeting in Hoboken on Thursday, urging lawmakers to overhaul state law to allow charter schools to be established more easily. The announcement followed a speech in Mercer County on Tuesday in which the governor called for changes in the way teachers at public schools are paid, retained, and promoted. Christie, who was joined Thursday by Harlem Children's Zone founder and chief executive officer Geoffrey Canada and Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer, said the need for expanded school choice in New Jersey was clear. "We cannot continue to ask children and families stuck in chronically failing public schools to wait any longer," Christie said. "Quite simply, parents and children deserve a choice. We must be able to fulfill our obligation to provide parents and their children with educational alternative that include expanding high-quality charter schools and providing interdistrict public-school options." Christie, whose children attend private school, said the state laws needed to be revamped to encourage the growth of charter schools. He said he hoped to attract some of the nations' most successful charter-school operators to New Jersey. The governor's ideas for expanding charter schools include removing hurdles for public schools to convert to charter status, approving new charter-school authorizers, allowing single-sex charter schools, allowing charter schools focused on special education, and encouraging cyber and virtual charter schools. He also proposed allowing failing public schools to be closed and converted into charter schools and encouraging charter schools and local school districts to share physical facilities. Christie also reiterated his support for the Opportunity Scholarship Act, a voucherlike program that would allow low-income students in underperforming school districts to receive scholarships, paid for through corporate tax credits, to attend nonpublic schools or out-of-district public schools. He also called for lawmakers to make permanent a pilot program that allows students to attend public schools outside their local districts but in nearby neighborhoods. New Jersey Education Association president Barbara Keshishian pointed out that not all charter schools were successful. She referred to a Stanford University study of 2,400 charter schools nationwide that found less than one-fifth outperformed public schools and that nearly two-fifths performed at lower levels than their public counterparts. And she said, a Rutgers University study found that New Jersey charter schools performed far below the average public schools. "Clearly, there are excellent charter schools – like the Robert Treat Academy in Newark – and excellent public schools," Keshishian said. "Charter schools were meant to be laboratories of innovation, not a replacement for all public schools. If we're really smart, we'll identify excellent schools of all types and replicate their successes wherever we can." Keshishian added that regarding vouchers, the NJEA did not believe that public money should be used for private and religious schools. The Opportunity Scholarship Act gets around that issue by having corporate sponsors pay for the scholarships in exchange for tax deductions. Richard Bozza, executive director of the New Jersey Association of School Administrators, said that although he agreed that changes needed to be made in persistently low-achieving schools, most schools in the state were doing a good job of educating students. "We've got great schools. Let's start to find ways to support their achievement as well," Bozza said. New Jersey has 73 charter schools serving 26,000 students, or 1.4 percent of the K-12 student population in the state, according to the state Department of Education. More than 11,000 students are on charter-school waiting lists. Christie, who has long been vocal about his support for school choice and charter schools, has not yet named a replacement for school commissioner Bret Schundler, another longtime advocate of school choice. Christie fired Schundler amid a controversy over the state's failed Race to the Top federal-grant application, which cost the state $400 million in federal aid. Christie's first budget, totaling $29.4 billion, cut aid to schools by $819 million to help close a nearly $11 billion budget gap. He has frequently targeted teacher unions, arguing that they had declined to be part of the solution to the state's budget problems.
Star Ledger ‘Gov. Christie seeks private companies to operate charter schools’ Published: Thursday, September 30, 2010, 7:07 PM Updated: Thursday, September 30, 2010, 8:16 PM Jessica Calefati/The Star-Ledger HOBOKEN — Gov. Chris Christie today proposed overhauling a current law to expand charter schools and allow private companies to operate them. New Jersey parents should have greater choice to send their children to an increased number of high-quality charter schools, Christie said today In the gymnasium at Hoboken’s Elysian Charter School. “In order to change the status quo, parents must be given options,” Christie said. “It is unacceptable for children to be trapped in failing schools without any hope.” Currently, 73 charter schools serve 26,000 students in New Jersey, a group that accounts for 1.4 percent of the state’s total K-12 student population. To increase this figure, Christie said public, private and parochial schools should easily be able to convert to charter status, something California already allows. Eleven thousand students are on waiting lists to gain entry to the state’s top charter schools. “When I talk about education reform, the costs of inaction are incalculable,” Christie said. “You can’t quantify the cost of lost hope.” More coverage from the Jersey Journal: • Gov. Christie and Harlem school reformer talk charter schools in Hoboken Christie also called for swift passage of the Opportunity Scholarship Act, a bill introduced in March that would provide corporate tax credit scholarships for low-income students to attend private or parochial schools. At full capacity, the scholarship program could serve as many as 19,000 students. The governor’s proposals on charter schools and choice come days after he revealed controversial plans to tie teachers’ raises and tenure to their students’ performance in the classroom. Seated next to Christie during yesterday’s town hall was Harlem Children’s Zone Founder and CEO Geoffrey Canada, a man the governor said “gives us hope that what we want for our kids tomorrow can be better than today.” Canada, a Democrat, said he came to Hoboken because fixing education is not about party politics. PREVIOUS COVERAGE: • Education experts say Gov. Christie's teacher merit pay can do more harm than good for students • Report used to slam schools on 'Oprah' actually praises Newark, N.J. education efforts • Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggests closing failing Newark schools in TechCrunch interview • N.J. Senate panel approves giving colleges authority to regulate charter schools “Businesses have to come to the table, political leaders have to come to the table, union leaders have to come to the table and say ‘Look, we failed. What are we gonna do to save our kids,’ “ Canada said. “I’m rooting for all of you to do what needs to be done for the kids in New Jersey. When asked by the governor what Harlem Children’s Zone schools can do that public schools cannot, Canada said the teachers and administrators running his schools have the flexibility to make changes when things are not working in the classroom. “The other big difference is we make mistakes hiring teachers, but those teachers are not here anymore,” Canada said. “We fire people who don’t work for our kids and we have the freedom to make that decision.” New Jersey Education Association President Barbara Keshishian said charter schools have an important role to play in the state’s public education system, but that she will not support the Opportunity Scholarship Act. “We do not believe that public funds should be used for private and religious schools, and neither do a majority of New Jersey’s residents,” Keshishian said. “At a time when we are cutting more than a billion dollars from state school spending while demanding ever-more accountability from the public schools, the last thing we should be doing is spending $360 million dollars on unaccountable private and religious schools.” Keshishian also noted that not all charter schools are successful. A Stanford University study of 2,400 charters nationwide released last year found that only 20 percent of them outperformed public schools, while 40 percent performed at levels lower than their public school counterparts. Gov. Chris Christie on his continued support for charter schools
Star Ledger ‘Tom Moran: Public support is integral to Newark schools reform’ Published: Sunday, September 26, 2010, 4:50 PM Tom Moran/ The Star-Ledger NEWARK — Shavar Jeffries is one of those miracles you can point to when people ask if the American Dream is still alive. He grew up poor in Newark, raised by a single mother until she was murdered when he was 10 years old. His grandmother took over, and he later won scholarships to Duke and Columbia Law School. In April this year, he shocked the city’s political establishment with an overwhelming win that made him president of the city’s school advisory board, in an election that doubled previous turnout. This guy, in other words, is worth listening to when it comes to the $100 million challenge grant that Newark schools just received. “It’s tremendous, and the mayor and the governor should be applauded,” he says. “But I don’t think money is our primary problem.” Newark spends nearly $1 billion a year, roughly $24,000 per kid if you play games to keep the number low. The real challenge, Jeffries says, is to change the rules of the game. Bad teachers must go. Good teachers must be rewarded with raises. The best schools should be expanded, and the worst shut down. In all things, the focus must be on student performance. To make those changes — and to make them stick — you need to convince people in Newark that it’s time. “If the community does not support it, it can’t be sustained,” he says. “It’s really that simple. It can’t just be a handful of elected leaders supported by national investors.” The resistance to reform in a city where half the kids wind up dropping out of school might seem puzzling. But during his campaign, Jeffries spent months knocking on doors, talking in churches and holding public meetings. And while he won big, and thinks it can be done, he says the resistance to change is understandable. “The middle class in Newark to a large extent was created based upon jobs in the school system and the municipal government,” he says. “So when you talk about having more performance-based accountability, that can be scary.” That’s something that people in the suburbs can miss. Just as earlier waves of Irish and Italians relied on government jobs to break into the middle class, so did African-Americans when their day came. Clement Price, a professor of history at Rutgers University and one of the most respected voices in the city, says Jeffries has put his finger on the central political challenge. “I’m from D.C. and my dad had a government job,” he says. “And on the backs of that job he sent three kids to college. Jobs in the public sector are near and dear to blacks and browns. And once you talk about reforms tied to performance, people do get a bit uncomfortable.” But Jeffries’ big win shows that reform can sell. Because the city is also full of parents who want better for their children. Look at the flood of applications to the city’s best charter schools. The TEAM schools, for example, have 1,250 students and a waiting list of over 4,000. Ryan Hill, the director of the schools, gets a stream of letters from desperate parents and kids who lose out. “It’s awful,” he says. “If the mayor pushes reform he will get a lot of push back. But there are a lot of folks in this city who want reform.” So how does the $100 million gift from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg fit in? First, it can finance some of the reforms. It can help expand good charter schools and good traditional schools. It can finance bonuses for good teachers. It can help attract a star superintendent. PREVIOUS COVERAGE: • Possible candidates for Newark schools superintendent • Newark residents torn by Christie plan to give Booker oversight of city schools on Oprah • Oprah Winfrey backs D.C. schools chief as next Newark superintendent • Facebook CEO pledges $100M to Newark schools, announces campaign to raise $100M mor • Join the live discussion as Oprah hosts Christie, Booker • Facebook CEO Zuckerberg to donate $100M to Newark schools on Oprah Winfrey Show • Oprah to host N.J. Gov. Christie, Newark Mayor Booker for $100M school gift by Facebook CEO But it won’t stick if the political fight is lost. For a cautionary tale, look at Washington, D.C., where Mayor Adrian Fenty just lost re-election after pushing these same reforms under the leadership of Superintendent Michelle Rhee. Rhee fired hundreds of teachers, and promised many more. She closed dozens of bad schools. And student test scores rose steadily. But she says now she feels guilty for contributing to Fenty’s defeat. Polls show that her reforms were far more popular among white voters than among African-Americans. She’s leaving her job soon, with the fate of her reforms in doubt. Fenty is now getting knocked for being aloof and disconnected from city voters. That also happens to be the central criticism of Newark Mayor Cory Booker, an image that wasn’t helped by announcing this gift on Oprah Winfrey’s show in Chicago. “I look at Adrian Fenty, and I see Cory Booker,” says the Rev. Reginald Jackson, head of the Black Ministers Council. “Fenty had so much promise, but he alienated people he tried to lead. The mayor has got to do a much better job connecting to the people of Newark.” Booker vows that he will. He saw Jeffries’ big win, and he was impressed. With this money in hand, he is planning a grassroots offensive to push reform, and to ask for feedback. “Shavar and I are in perfect alignment,” the mayor says. “Money alone is not going to do it.” Jeffries seems excited, but unconvinced. He’s president of the school board, and he found out about this gift by reading The Star-Ledger like everyone else. “I’m optimistic we can create a coalition to support this,” he says. “But we have to do the work. And that hasn’t been done yet.”
Star Ledger ‘Bob Braun: Idea of failing N.J. public schools promoted by politicians, privatizers, celebrities’ Published: Monday, September 27, 2010, 6:47 AM Updated: Monday, September 27, 2010, 11:00 AM Bob Braun/Star-Ledger Columnist NEWARK — It’s a newly popular idea: New Jersey’s public schools fail. An idea promoted by politicians on the national prowl, privatizers who’ll sell anything for a profit, and clueless celebrities who live thousands of miles away and believe Tony Soprano really lives here. And it’s preposterous. New Jersey has some of the best public schools in the nation. Ask admissions directors of the most selective colleges — the Ivies and Stanford and MIT and liberal arts colleges like Amherst and Haverford. Check out results from national tests like the National Assessment of Educational Progress — New Jersey ranks in the top five. Some of the best schools — because it has some of the richest communities in the nation. The state also has some of the worst public schools — because it also has some of the poorest and most racially segregated communities in America. Wealth and achievement are inextricably linked. Give the College Board, the agency that produces the SAT Reasoning Test, your family income numbers and your race and educational level of your parents and it will predict your scores and almost always be right. PREVIOUS COVERAGE: • Newark Mayor Booker says Facebook CEO's $100M donation will not be used for private-school vouchers • Tom Moran: Public support is integral to Newark schools reform • Newark Mayor Booker likely to seek third term on heels of $100M schools grant • Newark residents sound off on how to improve city's school system • Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggests closing failing Newark schools in TechCrunch interview • Newark's $100M grant is a result of collaboration, preparation and fate "There is far more to this than programs and buildings, obvious things you can buy with money," says Joseph DePierro, dean of the Seton Hall College of Education. "There are all the issues related to living in poverty." That doesn’t mean poor children can’t learn. They can and do. What it means is educating poor kids is expensive. Anyone who believes poverty doesn’t affect learning hasn’t read Dickens. The best analysis of education now isn’t strictly about schools, it’s evidence compiled by Princeton’s Larry Bartels about the dangerously widening income gap between rich and poor, the worst since the Depression. It distorts our institutions — and our attitudes. But that — to steal a phrase — is an inconvenient truth. Something many, especially in the midst of a grinding, relentless recession, don’t want to hear. Something tax-cutting politicians don’t want to face. Like fighting a war, battling failure in the schools is costly — but we don’t mind going after the Taliban, no matter the cost. So, because we don’t like spending money on schools, we’ll change the subject. Bash teachers, envy their secure jobs and pensions because, in the nonunion private sector, secure jobs with good pensions disappeared without a fight. Teachers went to jail to win those rights. We’ll pretend — as we saw on Oprah Winfrey — that millionaires giving some of their stock away will make up for the lack of public commitment. Mark Zuckerberg’s pledge of stock doesn’t even make up for the state aid cuts imposed this year — and will never match the $400 million lost to a "clerical error." Self-congratulatory cheerleading is cheap. "This is a very dangerous moment for public education," says Paul Tractenberg, the Rutgers law professor who knows the link between money and schooling. "Instead of facing up to our responsibilities to support the schools, we are tearing them apart. We are destroying the very values that created the public school system.’’ Public schooling is a value as well as an institution. Fostering a democratic, egalitarian America. Reject that value and you change the country in unknowable, maybe dangerous, ways. We have lost patience. And confidence. We fear the future — and faith in public schools is faith in the future. We ricochet from policy to policy, never waiting to see what works. Impose a set of standards, a set of tests, a set of curriculum guides, then change it all in a few years. "Every decade or so, a new crisis and we change things around,’’ says DePierro. More than 20 years ago, our leaders decided the state should take over failing school districts. With no Plan B if it didn’t work — and no formal system established to evaluate whether it did and, if it didn’t, why it didn’t. Different governors and different commissioners expected different things of the schools — and then they were gone. "We have made progress," says Richard DeLisi, dean of the Rutgers Graduate School of Education. "But it all takes time and patience and consistency. We don’t seem to want to give reform the sustained commitment it requires."