The Outsiders
James Osborne at the Philadelphia Inky had a great piece on the secretive, unaccountable charter application process in New Jersey. I want to add a few things to his report:
It's worth noting that the only reason we know who screened the charter applicants is because the ACLU and the Education Law Center filed a lawsuit to get the names released. Officials in the NJ DOE reported said they would "go to the mat" to protect the names of the reviewers. This is what passes for transparency in the word of Chris Christie and Chris Cerf.New Jersey education officials had a dilemma last summer: Following the approval of a record number of charter schools, questions were flying about how closely the applications had been screened.
The National Association of Charter School Authorizers, a Chicago nonprofit, had
