Former Newark, New Jersey, mayor and current New Jersey senator, Cory Booker, is running for president in 2020.
Booker is a Democrat who will find it difficult to separate himself from Republicans when it comes to school choice. And a major, sustained push it was.
For example, it is unlikely that Newark has forgotten Booker’s school choice efforts, including accepting $100M from Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, in 2010 (an effort that also involved then-NJ Republican gov, Chris Christie), to advance school choice– a decision that Newark parents learned by watching Booker announce it on Oprah. From a 2015 NPR interview with author, Dale Russakoff, on the Booker-Zuckerberg-Christie blindside:
[NPR host, Terry] GROSS: So right from the start, there’s a problem. Booker and Zuckerberg announce this gift of a hundred million dollars to reform the Newark schools. They announce it on “Oprah.”RUSSAKOFF: Yes.GROSS: Which is great, but they hadn’t told the community yet. So parents and teachers learn about this big reform movement that’s about to hit them from Oprah’s show. How did that play in the community?RUSSAKOFF: Well, it played disastrously in the community because, immediately, nobody understood why do we have to turn on “Oprah” at 4 o’clock to find out what’s going on in our own city? And if you want to save the schools for the benefit of our children, why weren’t we told? And, by the way, there’s a very large consensus on the ground in Newark at this time that the schools really need change, that the schools are failing in unacceptable ways. And so there wasn’t really, you know, a roadmap for how to do that, but there were a lot of people, including some very skilled, experienced teachers, who deeply understood the needs of the children in Newark who would have been eager to be part of that conversation. And not only were they insulted that they were left out, there was an agenda that was crafted that didn’t have the benefit of their really important insights into what was needed in Newark.
As Chalkbeat notes in February 2019, Booker’s most notable legacy as Newark’s mayor may well be his promoting charter schools.
Then there’s Booker’s established connection to Republican right, school choice CONTINUE READING: Cory Booker’s School Choice Legacy Could Be His 2020 Undoing. | deutsch29
