have throttled charters, disguised failure as success with the Special Review Assessment cover-up, and given lip service to nurturing school reform while strangling it in its crib. Indeed, they have taken vast sums of money, nearly bankrupting the state, while our children have paid the price of poor education with dim futures.Irony resounds. We understand NJEA’s opposition; the bill would ostensibly redirect funds from public schools to private and parochial schools (though check out the amount of bandwidth on its website devoted to anti-voucher ravings, some of it directed right at E3.) It’s the ELC’s opposition that triggers cognitive dissonance. Here we have the primary advocates for NJ’s poorest Black and Hispanic children swept into the dust heap of the “educational establishment” by none other than the Rev. Jackson, sloughed off with those who would, in fact, camouflage failure as success, who would cravenly value money over student achievement. ELC’s somewhat flippant press release called “LET'S FOLLOW THE LEAD OF ILLINOIS LEGISLATORS AND DUMP VOUCHER BILL” doesn’t ease the headache.
Now the NJEA and ELC oppose the bipartisan Opportunity Scholarship Act, a bill that increases choice for children in the state’s lowest performing 205 schools and drives reform in a manner similar to President Obama’s Race to the Top program through competitive grants aimed at turning these schools around...
Still, the NJEA and ELC oppose this bill, which puts children ahead of the next collective bargaining agreement or lawsuit to extract more money for less education reform. Indeed, they damn our children for their failure even as they drive the state to the edge of insolvency. They oppose this bill because it will enable low-income parents to choose the best schools for their children.
Labels: Education Law Center, NJEA, Rev. Jackson