Cerf gone? The viper may be leaving, but the venom lingers on: Guest blog
By Becca Field
Chris Cerf may be leaving as education commissioner but the toxins he brought to the state education department remain—as will his Broad-financed flunkies who will obediently carry out the policies that will help companies like his and Joe Klein’s Amplify prosper.
So it’s important now to follow the legislative consideration of the Common Core and high stakes testing. The hearings held by the Assembly Education Committee this week on the (CCSS) and accompanying standardized tests (PARCC) reveal the state is still careening toward the edge of a cliff without brakes.
Some might give the benefit of the doubt to the architects of this free fall, but it seems more likely our public schools have been set up to fail. There’s nothing like public school failure to provide arguments in support of the privatizers and their profit-making friends. Implementation of the new high-stakes standardized tests (PARCC) that align our testing to the CCSS is the greatest single statewide threat to our public education system – from urban to suburban, elementary to high school.
It is up to us to unite to apply the brakes.
New Jersey “voluntarily” adopted the CCSS in 2010, as a prerequisite to apply for Federal Race to the Top funds, those engines of education “reform.” Objections to