Scrap the “Newark Education Success Board”–it will only impede local control
The so-called “Newark Education Success Board”–a governmental fiction with no legal standing–was created as a consequence of the same deal cut between Gov. Chris Christie and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka that brought former state Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf to Newark as the school system’s superintendent to replace the disgraced Cami Anderson. The board, dominated by Christie appointees, most with charter school ties, has met only once since its creation more than a month ago–and the result of that meeting did not bring good news for those opposed to state control. A ” report” outlining a “roadmap” for a return to local control won’t even be ready for another year–and the district may even be farther away from local control than it was last year.
State Education Commissioner David Hespe–once Cerf’s chief of staff–ran the meeting and made it clear he would act as a 10th member of the “success board,” given even greater weight to the Christie appointees who dominate the panel.
But that wasn’t the worst of what happened. The committee members were given data showing that Newark’s score on the scale of the state’s judgment of the district’s readiness to return to local control had actually dropped, suggesting the local school system was even less prepared–at least in the eyes of its state masters–than it had been a year ago.
A legislative source who asked not to be identified called the downgrading of Newark’s score on the “governance” scale from 76 to 72 “raised a lot of questions about the state’s sincerity.”
The score appears on a complicated scale known as the “Quality Single Accountability Continuum,” or QSAC. There are five measures of local district readiness imposed on a district and it must reach a score of 80 on each to “pass” the accountability system.
Newark actually reached a passing years ago but the state education Scrap the “Newark Education Success Board”–it will only impede local control | Bob Braun's Ledger: