Charter schools are public schools that operate independently of traditional school districts. They are run by appointed school boards and receive per-student payments from the school districts students leave.
"We are excited to hear that the administration will be moving those proposals forward," said Nicole Cole, president of the New Jersey Charter Schools Association. "They are really meaningful and are going to have a huge impact on our schools.PolitickerNJ: "Governor Chris Christie today announced a series of reforms to New Jersey’s public school system born from input received through meetings with charter school leaders last fall. These changes will ensure students from every community have access to the best possible education, by allowing charter schools more flexibility to operate and expand."
Christie spoke of further expanding the charter footprint, especially in the state’s cities, where waiting lists are in the thousands, he said. More than 50,000 students are expected to be in charters next year, more than double when Christie arrived in office.
He didn’t say how many more were to come -- and two-dozen charter applications are now waiting word from his Department of Education for approval -- the governor very much sounded like the Christie of 2010 whose administration approved more than 20 at once.
“We need to expand your profile in this state over the course of the next nineteen months. We need to open more charter schools. We need to expand more charter schools,” he said. “You need to take risks with me. Sixty-five hundred families in Newark, two thousand in Camden, and countless thousands of others across the state waiting for an opportunity for their children to reach their dreams is unacceptable.”Politico: "“Charter schools in New Jersey have been successful in spite of our regulatory environment — not because of it,” Christie said. “Instead of giving charter schools the autonomy they need to deliver the great education outcomes, we’re regulating them using almost all the same regulations that apply to traditional public schools. … It’s not good for attracting more innovative charter school operators to our state.”
[A]s long as he remains in office, we will fight every day to prevent him from doing even more damage to our public schools. We will consistently oppose his failed policy of charter school expansion. We will fight to ensure that charter schools are held to the same high standards expected of every other public school in New Jersey. And we will continue to tell the truth about New Jersey’s great public schools, which remain among the very best in America despite his cynical efforts to undermine them for his own political purposes.
Labels: charter schools, Christie