Perth Amboy: Lots of Questions
Let's see what's happening these days in Perth Amboy, the new center of reformyness in New Jersey.
When we last visited, superintendent and anti-tenure crusader Janine Caffrey was ratcheting up the war between herself and the Perth Amboy Board of Education. The majority of the board wants to fire her, but NJDOE Commissioner Chris Cerf has stepped in and stayed her termination while a mediator reviews the case. As I've pointed out, it's more than a little hypocritical that Caffrey, who calls tenure "...the single greatest impediment to education improvement in New Jersey, without a doubt," is using an appeal to an outside third party to keep her job.
But there was another wrinkle to all of this: during the early days of her troubles with her board, Caffrey was defended publicly by B4K, New Jersey's premiere reformy advocacy group. B4K paid for ads supporting Caffrey that ran in the local newspaper and on websites like PolitickerNJ:
Here's what I said at the time:
When we last visited, superintendent and anti-tenure crusader Janine Caffrey was ratcheting up the war between herself and the Perth Amboy Board of Education. The majority of the board wants to fire her, but NJDOE Commissioner Chris Cerf has stepped in and stayed her termination while a mediator reviews the case. As I've pointed out, it's more than a little hypocritical that Caffrey, who calls tenure "...the single greatest impediment to education improvement in New Jersey, without a doubt," is using an appeal to an outside third party to keep her job.
Here's what I said at the time:
In fact, I wonder if, in their zeal to defend Caffrey, B4K has accidentally open a big