Ten reasons why the feds shouldn’t be trusted to help Newark children. Ok, eleven.
Later this morning, PULSE–a Newark grass roots organization–will be holding a press conference to discuss what appears to be a rare victory in the struggle of city parents to retake their public schools from pro-privatization reformers. PULSE members—it stands for Parents Unified for Local School Education–are elated at the outcome, but the “voluntary agreement” reached between the US Department of Education and the state-run Newark schools leaves far too many questions to allow unalloyed joy.
Here are just a few:
1. Nowhere in either the document outlining what the Christie Administration must do–generally assessing the damage to children from its “reforms” and correcting it–nor in the transmittal letter from the federal government is the state administration of the Newark schools criticized. Nowhere does the state admit responsibility. I defy any reporter to come up with a sentence that quotes the fed as critical of the state-run schools.
2. Okay–but the district is now required, under federal supervision, to find students who may have been harmed, assess the “adverse effects” and then remedy them. So the state administration must have done something wrong, right? You would think so, but it’s not there in black and white.
3. And who will be doing the assessing? Organizations like PULSE with deep roots in the community? NOPE. The very state administrators–starting with Christopher Cerf who was Gov. Chris Christie’s state education commissioner when these alleged violations began–that’s who. People like Peter Turnamian and Vanessa Rodriguez and Valerie Wilson and Charlotte Hitchcock, who signed the agreement for the state. Does anyone really trust Cerf and his high-priced assistants to find evidence that he and his creature, former state superintendent Cami Anderson, pursued policies that hurt children? I don’t think so.
4. That is, after all, what the feds were supposed to do in response to PULSE’s civil rights complaint. They were supposed to investigate and find out whether children were harmed. They didn’t and now they won’t. The feds are leaving it up to the local district–which is to say, they are asking Cerf and company to investigate themselves. Good luck with that.
5. Indeed, PULSE is all but out of the picture now. It’s a great organization and it has quietly done work no one else has done to remedy the harm caused by charter schools and other Christie-backed “reforms.” The feds settled with Christie without input from the local organization. While that is permitted by federal regulations, it leaves a big whole in enforcement–the very people who know about the damage to children are excluded from playing a role in making sure that damage is remedied.
6. The deadlines imposed by the feds are absurd. Today, according to the Ten reasons why the feds shouldn’t be trusted to help Newark children. Ok, eleven. | Bob Braun's Ledger:
