Jersey Jazzman: File Under: "Shameless"

Jersey Jazzman: File Under: "Shameless":

File Under: "Shameless"

by Duke

Gloria Bonilla-Santiago was a guest columnist in yesterday's Star-Ledger. Here's how the paper describes her (all emphases in this post mine):

Gloria Bonilla-Santiago is the founder of the LEAP University Academy Charter School, which has a STEM curriculum, in Camden. She is also a Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of Public Policy at Rutgers University.

Let me intersperse Bonilla-Santiago's words in her op-ed with some other stories about her and LEAP Academy that have been uncovered this past year.

Bonilla-Santiago:

The state takeover of public schools in New Jersey’s poorest city, Camden, last week is a move long overdue and presents a new opportunity for the local educational system to reinvent itself. 

The numbers are alarming. Of the nearly 12,000 students enrolled in the district, only 49 percent completed their four years of high school in 2012. And, if you can believe it, it has been getting worse, not better. Ninety percent of Camden public schools are among the bottom 5 percent in performance in the