NJ Education Commissioner Chris Cerf Pushes Corporate School Reform As He Leaves His Position
Christopher Cerf will leave his position as Governor Chris Christie’s New Jersey state school commissioner this coming Friday, February 28, to join Amplify, the school assessment, consulting, and tablet division of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. Cerf is leaving to work for his former boss, Joel Klein, who served as New York City’s school chancellor when Cerf was an assistant. Perhaps because of Cerf’s pending departure, there is much scurrying around by those wanting quickly to solidify New Jersey’s steps toward so called “school reform” undertaken during his tenure. Here are two changes being pushed through in this final week.
Newark is a school district operating under state control. Cami Anderson, Newark’s state-appointed, Broad Academy-trained, caretaker superintendent, has asked Cerf to waive the seniority rights of perhaps 700 teachers to pave the way for mass firings and replacement of half of them, it is speculated, by cheaper Teach for America (TFA) recruits. Anderson is a former TFA teacher and an executive with TFA.
Longtime New Jersey journalist Bob Braun reports that the mass firings are confirmed by sources in the teacher’s union and on the website of the Walton Family Foundation, which has “announced that they will support the recruitment, training and support of nearly 370 Newark area teachers over the next two years.” Anderson’s request for Cerf’s approval is to be discussed at a meeting of the Newark School Board later today. Cerf’s signature “would permit their firing without resort to the detenuring process.” “To fire tenured teachers she (Anderson) must gain state approval of a ‘waiver’ of seniority rules. Cerf, a strong backer of