An astonishing admission from a controversial school reformer
Cami Anderson is the former schools superintendent in Newark who was relentless in pushing highly controversial education reforms from 2011 through 2015 and became one of the faces of the corporate school reform movement. She abruptly left the job last summer after her “One Newark” program sparked serious community unrest. As I wrote last June:
One Newark, which eliminated neighborhood schools in favor of a citywide lottery that ostensibly gave parents more school choices, wound up leading to the closure of numerous schools, mass firings of teachers and principals and a rise in charter schools. At least seven complaints of civil rights violations have been investigated by the U.S. Education Department. Last year, dozens of clergy in Newark warned [N.J. Gov. Chris] Christie that school reform was causing so much “unnecessary instability” that they were “concerned about the level of public anger” over the issue.
Anderson is also an alumna of Teach For America, the organization that has made itself a star in the school reform constellation and that is holding its star-studded 25th anniversary summit in Washington this weekend. President Obama even sent a welcoming video to the thousands of TFA alums attending the event, declaring, “There are even TFA alumni working for me in the White House.”
According to this story by my Post colleague Emma Brown, Anderson made some remarks at one popular summit session Saturday about the school reform movement in which she was prominent. In fact, her comments — at a session to discuss the school-to-prison pipeline — were essentially a tough critique:
“Here is the inconvenient truth: Education, including education reform, is part of the problem,” said Cami Anderson, theAn astonishing admission from a controversial school reformer - The Washington Post:
