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Thursday, August 2, 2012

Chris Christie’s Plan to Privatize NJ’s Low-Performing Schools « Diane Ravitch's blog

Chris Christie’s Plan to Privatize NJ’s Low-Performing Schools « Diane Ravitch's blog:


Chris Christie’s Plan to Privatize NJ’s Low-Performing Schools

The Education Law Center at Rutgers obtained a copy of a proposal that the Chris Christie administration made to the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation in Los Angeles.
The plan calls for aggressive state intervention in the state’s lowest performing schools. Acting Commissioner Chris Cerf wants to set up an “achievement district” for the low-performing schools. These schools would likely be closed and handed over to private managers as charter schools. The state plan calls for eliminating collective bargaining in these schools.
The amount requested was $7.6 million, of which the Broad Foundation has thus far supplied $1.6 million.
This should not be a difficult sell for Cerf. He is a “graduate” of the Broad Foundation’s unaccredited