Is it too late to shut Cami down and save Newark public schools?
The state-operated Newark public school system faces a deficit of from $50 million to $100 million this year. It will need to lay off scores, if not hundreds, of teachers. Its state-appointed superintendent, Cami Anderson, is once again seeking state approval of a plan to ignore seniority in the dismissal of tenured teachers. Meanwhile, Anderson’s primary reform plan—“renew” or “turnaround” schools–has failed by its own terms, yet she is pushing for its expansion. Anderson’s tenure, by all rational and traditional measures, has been a failure.
Or has it?
It would be considered a failure if the point of it were to improve the performance of neighborhood public schools. She certainly has failed to do that.
But that hasn’t been the point of Anderson’s control of Newark’s schools, has it? No, the point of what she does—with the backing of Gov. Chris Christie and Education Commissioner David Hespe—is to ensure the failure of traditional public schools.
Paranoia? No. Conspiracy theories? No.
Take a look at this and ask yourself if it sounds at all familiar.
“As chartering increases its market share in a city, the district will come under growing financial pressure. The district, despite educating fewer and fewer students, will require a large administrative staff to process payroll and benefits, administer federal programs, and oversee special education. With a lop-sided adult-to-student ratio, the district’s per pupil costs will skyrocket.
“At some point along the district’s path from monopoly provider to financially unsustainable marginal player, the city’s investors and stakeholders—taxpayers, foundations, business leaders, elected officials, and editorial boards—are likely to demand fundamental change.
“That is, eventually the financial crisis will become a political crisis.”
This scenario was written a few years ago, just as Anderson was taking control of the Newark schools in a devil’s bargain among Christie, former Mayor—and, now, thanks to Christie, senator– Cory Booker, and state education Commissioner Christopher Cerf. Booker has said he expected the city to go through a few years of hardship and crisis but emerge at the other end as the charter capital of New Jersey.
The scenario was written by Andrew Smarick, then New Jersey’s deputy state education commissioner.
His plan—which was to become Christie and Cerf and Anderson’s plan—was to bankrupt the public schools by promoting charter expansion. Charter expansion sucks both students and funds from the public schools. It sucks out funds because the public money follows the students. And because, with fewer and fewer students, per student costs rise, buildings empty, and faculty members become redundant.Someone recently sent me Smarick’s plan. It has been published before, both by himself in an article for a conservative think tank and by Seton Hall professor Christopher Tienkin in the book he wrote with Donald Orlich of Washington State University, “The School Reform Landscape: Fraud, Myth, and Lies.”
In their book, they call Smarick’s memorandum “the smoking gun” and they are Is it too late to shut Cami down and save Newark public schools? | Bob Braun's Ledger:
