26 States Apply for Second Round of NCLB Waivers

New Jersey got there in the first round, along with 10 other states. Now PoliticsK-12 is reporting that another 26 states have applied to the U.S. DOE for waivers from the unrealistic benchmarks of the No Child Left Behind federal legislation. Those states are Arkansas, Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Iowa, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin, along with D.C.

Quote of the Day

Newark Mayor Cory Booker on educational choices for children:

I hold no allegiance to a school delivery model. I really don’t care if you’re a charter school, a magnet school, a traditional district school. The question is: Are you providing quality education?

Sunday Leftovers

The Star-Ledger has the complete list of the 465 school districts that will move to November Elections, far more than anticipated.

In other school budget news, Mark Magyar, today's guest columnist in the Star-Ledger, disputes Gov. Christie’s rosy budget projections while The Record catalogs the charges by other Republicans that Christie’s proposed increased spending makes him a RINO (Republican in Name Only).

Hamilton Public School District is once again in the news: this time because the interim Superintendent, James Sheerin, recommended three new elementary principals who didn’t come up through the ranks, so the Board fired him. At the last meeting, a former board member, Olga Dixon, accused the Board of not accepting the ex-superintendent’s recommendations because the candidates are black. From the Trenton Times: “Did [Sheerin] not carry out district policies? Did he breach them? If so, how? Was it a moral or criminal nature? Or was it simply that he did not bend over to what is likely the largest employment agency in Hamilton Township?”

The NJ DOE announces that 372 LEAs -- both districts and charter schools -- have enrolled in the $38 million Race To The Top award. These districts will now help pilot data-driven teacher evaluations and move the State closer to implementing the Common Core Standards. See Star-Ledger for more details.

The Press of Atlantic City looks at the increasing role of county special services districts in serving kids with the most severe disabilities.

Parents worry that the proposed narrowing of the definition of autism by the American Psychiatric Association will increase their challenges in procuring necessary services for their children. (Star-Ledger)

Dr. Bruce Baker takes down the NJ DOE’s “Education Funding Report” for politicizing the achievement gap and positing that giving more money to Abbott districts serves no useful purpose.

NJ Spotlight has an interactive map so you can see how your high school students do on the state standardized assessments.

The Princeton International Academy Charter School, now the unfortunate symbol of charter schools in suburbia, is back before the South Brunswick Zoning Board. (South Brunswick Patch)

Department of Paranoia: Here’s GOP Candidate Rick Santorum on the “real reason” President Obama wants more Americans on college campuses.

"That's why he wants you to go to college. He wants to remake you in his image," Santorum said to more applause. "I want to create jobs so people can remake their children into their image, not his."

NJ State Aid Numbers and "The Education Funding Report"

The big education news today is the release of state aid figures to school districts, along with the release of a report from the NJ DOE, “The Education Funding Report.”

Here’s a handy-dandy gadget from The Record to see your district’s aid numbers, and here’s the State PDF file. Here’s local coverage from the Star-Ledger, The Record, NJ Spotlight, and PolitickerNJ.

The bottom line on the dispersal of state aid is that suburban districts did better than urbans, particularly Abbott districts. From PolitickerNJ: “Of the state's 31 Abbott Districts, 23 will lose funding in the next school year, two will see flat funding and six will see increased funding.”

David Sciarra, head of Education Law Center, told the Star-Ledger, “This is really bad news in terms of providing funding for poor students regardless of zip code, regardless of community."

On the other hand, Lynn Strickland, head of the Garden State Coalition of Schools, told NJ Spotlight, “Seeing not only the plus column next to our members, but also the echo of an improved aid picture for the suburbs in the future feels good. It has been a long time.”

Once you get beyond the actual number, Comm. Cerf’s report is far more interesting, both educationally and politically. In this paper he proposes changes to the School Funding Reform Act (SFRA), a creation of the Corzine Administration and the focus of a number of Supreme Court filings, and the reasons for the Christie Administration's advocacy (seen most recently in the Budget Address on Tuesday) for tenure reform and expanded school choice.

Here’s some highlights.

On the justification for modifications to SFRA:

In writing this Report, the Department began with a single question: Why has New Jersey’s achievement gap proven so resistant to the combination of Robinson, Abbott, and tens of billions of dollars? The Department quickly found the answer: New Jersey courts, the Legislature, and past Governors only got it half-right. They took an inarguable proposition – namely, that a school must have sufficient dollars to succeed – and twisted it into the wrongheaded notion that dollars alone equal success.

As an example, the report notes that only a combined 11.2% of students in Camden, Newark, and Asbury Park graduate high school by meeting College-Readiness benchmarks. While we’ve bridged spending gaps, we’ve failed to bridge achievement gaps. Some Abbott districts have demonstrated meaningful learning gains – the report singles out Vineland City, Middle Township, Orange City, Trenton – but many are stagnant, despite increased spending per pupil. “Spending in Camden rose 17% over this period [2002-2007], but its proficiency rate declined by 1 point.”

On the reasons to eliminate Adjustment Aid:

Adjustment Aid was a political add-on to the PJP process. [PJP: Professional Judgment Panel, comprised to build SFRA]. It served no purpose other than to hold all districts harmless in the transition from the old funding formula to the SFRA. It is a symbol of the old Trenton; a paean to the longstanding tradition of refusing to make hard choices even when hard choices are in order and failing to make hard choices will cost taxpayers greatly.

Poor schools won’t improve unless we reform tenure and eliminate LIFO, or last in, first out:

If New Jersey is to achieve the ultimate goal of Abbott – equal educational outcomes for all – several significant policy barriers must also be removed. Again, it is simply not reasonable or ultimately effective to continue to invest in our disadvantaged schools at these extraordinary levels while disregarding the embarrassing reality that New Jersey has actually codified practices that inhibit our collective ability to ensure that every student has a top-flight teacher in front of his/her class. If the ultimate goal is to graduate all children from high school ready for college and career, a rational observer must fairly ask why the urgent demands for additional funds are not accompanied by an equally strong insistence that we reform laws that demonstrably prevent us from meeting that goal.

Why we need tenure reform:

There are approximately 94,218 tenured teachers in New Jersey. That means that over the past ten years, .00022% of tenured teachers have been removed for incompetency or inefficiency. Whatever the number of teachers in our highest-needs schools who are not up to the job of adequately serving their students – and we should assume that it is low – it is certainly higher than .00022%. So long as we lack the political will to address this issue, no amount of resources is likely to bring about the improvements that these children deserve.

Why we need to eliminate LIFO:

To give one example, investing millions in reducing class size or adding teacher aides while ignoring State law that requires districts to preserve the jobs of demonstrably ineffective teachers and dismiss superior ones will not yield a different result for students. The research could not be clearer that great teachers are more important to learning outcomes than class size. To go one step further, we would have done more to preserve the true purposes of Abbott – reducing the achievement gap – by enjoining laws that actually inhibit student achievement than by merely demanding higher and higher spending. If we want to ensure that all students succeed, we need to start pursuing a slate of bold reforms and stop chasing the promised, but mythical, funding formula that will solve our educational woes.

The “final set of options” to improve educational outcomes of poor kids includes the Urban Hope Act (which allows independent non-profits to start up to four schools in Camden, Trenton, and Newark). Also,

The State’s inter-district choice program can play an important role
here. Through this program, the State can help direct students in troubled schools to higher performing schools in neighboring districts. Nonpublic schools could also become options; the Administration strongly supports the Opportunity Scholarship Act, a tuition tax credit program that would help low-income students in failing district schools transfer to higher performing private schools

The SFRA formula isn’t a fine enough tool when determining district attendance counts because districts only report on enrollment once a year, on Oct. 15th. (The Commissioner’s press release points out that only 10 other states in the country rely on “single count” days to determine actual enrollment.)

The single count day policy breeds a number of perversities and inequities, including: both under-funding and over-funding of districts when mid-year enrollment changes are not considered, and a lack of concern for encouraging attendance because districts receive funding based on their October 15th enrollment, regardless of attendance rates before or after that date. It is this last statement that is the most troubling.

The way we determine economic disadvantages is through the free and reduced lunch count. Here’s the problem:

Recently, the Office of the State Auditor released a report estimating that as many as 37% of the participants in the federally-administered Free and Reduced Price Lunch Program are fraudulently enrolled in the program. An even more recent Star-Ledger article seemed to confirm the fact when it reported that the President of the Elizabeth Board of Education, along with the spouses of two Elizabeth school officials, were arrested for misstating their incomes to qualify for the Program. Such a high error rate in a program so consequential for educationfunding gives the Department considerable pause.

In addition, this report recommends a Innovation Fund of $50 million to reward successful districts. This Fund is intended to address the shortcomings of an “education system where success goes unrecognized, innovation unrewarded, and New Jersey’s near 600 school districts serve as mere implementers of State-directed policies rather than incubators of innovation and partners in reform. This system must be changed, and creation of a modest “Innovation Fund” would do much to work that change."

Quote of the Day

It’s referendum mania in Trenton! The governor and Republican legislators want to put same sex marriage to a public vote. Democratic legislators want to put charter school approval to a public vote.

What do they have in common? In each case, the sponsors are opposed to the policy in question. Many believe that thay are using the referendum option as a “democratic” smokescreen for a policy they don’t want enacted.

Not only is this bald-faced politics, but it’s a slippery slope. The public lacks both access to information and the ability to deliberate on these types of issues – issues which our founders specifically said should be left to an informed, deliberative system of representative government.

Patrick Murray in PolitickerNJ

Newsflash: GOP Candidates Debate Education Reform

So I’m in my usual Republican Debate position, cringing in front of the TV as four white men attack women’s access to birth control (Husband: “Isn’t there a Law and Order on?”), when the unexpected happens: an audience member asks Romney, Santorum, Gingrich, and Paul to discuss their views on education reform. Wowza! They’re actually going to talk about this?

Well, sort of. Romney touted Massachusetts’ test scores and his support for charter schools, adding, “We have to stand up to the federal teachers’ unions and put kids first and unions behind.” [Note: I don’t have a transcript so I’m going off my notes.] One might also recall his comments at a debate last October when he said, "education has to be held at the local and state level, not at the federal level. We need to get the federal government out of education."

Santorum apologized profusely for his vote in favor of No Child Left Behind: “It was against the principles I believe, but when you’re part of the team, sometimes you take one from the team for the leader, and I made a mistake.” He then added, ““Look, I’m a home-schooling father of seven; I know the importance of customized education for our children; I know the importance of parental control of education; I know the importance of local control of education."

Gingrich attacked LA Unified: “It’s increasingly clear they care about protecting bad teachers. If you look at L.A. Unified, it is almost criminal what we do to the poorest children of America. If a foreign nation did this to our children, we would declare it an act of war because they are doing so much damage.” He also bashed a perceived emphasis on “learning how you learn,” all that liberal malarkey, and had no kind words for national “bureaucratized” standards. “All kids are unique!”

Paul slammed Santorum, his current whipping boy, for treating Senate votes like a “team sport” and reiterated his call for less government intrusion: there’s “no authority for the Federal government to be involved in education.”

Takeaway: they all hate No Child Left Behind and the U.S. Department of Education, and all genuflect towards States’ Rights. Nothing can compete with local control.

It seems to me that this “local control” business is a matter of convenience. We’ve certainly seen this sort of posturing in New Jersey, and it’s not just a GOP narrative. Sure, there’s Sen. Mike Doherty, blazing red and urging adoption of his flat school funding plan where every kid, regardless of circumstance, gets the same amount of money for education. There’s Gov. Christie, vainly attempting to extract himself from the awkward position of vetoing a civil rights bill by harrumphing, “we need to have a public referendum on gay marriage.” But there’s also SOS-New Jersey, using the same argument for local referenda on charter schools: each district should get to vote on whether or not it wants school choice! Local control!

Certainly the Republican candidates on the stage last night in Mesa, Arizona, where Mormons comprise 25% of the population, found a friendly audience for their united advocacy for the reduction, if not outright elimination, of the federal government’s role in education. But how does that square with the bipartisan understanding that our public schools don’t adequately prepare children for a global economy, our infatuation with Finland (where there’s no local control), and with the general derision expressed towards locally-controlled teacher evaluation systems?

Maybe there’s a Law and Order on.

My New Gig

I'll still be right here, faithfully covering NJ's journey towards education reform, but I'll also be posting a couple times a week at WHYY's Newsworks. Here's my first post, which begins,

Tuesday was budget address day for New Jersey as Gov. Christie presented details of his 2012-2013 fiscal plan. Total spending is projected to be $32.1 billion, with $8.8 billion appropriated to public education.

The speech offered plenty of red meat for those of the education reform persuasion, particularly in the areas of school choice and tenure reform. Indeed, Gov. Christie seemed particularly energized by his recent contretemps with his favorite whipping boy, Vince Giordano, Executive Director of NJEA.

Read the rest right here.