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Thursday, September 17, 2015

Jersey Jazzman: Massive Norcross Hypocrisy: Competition Is Good For Schools, But Bad For Me

Jersey Jazzman: Massive Norcross Hypocrisy: Competition Is Good For Schools, But Bad For Me:

Massive Norcross Hypocrisy: Competition Is Good For Schools, But Bad For Me





Sometimes I wonder why my head doesn't just explode:

With 300 people filling a shiny new auditorium for speeches and cheers, the ribbon-cutting held yesterday at the new KIPP Cooper Norcross Academy in Camden at times seemed as much a precursor of the city’s educational future as it was a celebration of the opening of a school. 
The event marked the opening of the first new “renaissance school” built under the Urban Hope Act of 2012 that brought the hybrid charter schools to New Jersey and, specifically, Camden. 
The speakers were familiar names in Camden circles: Mayor Dana Redd; U.S. Rep. Donald Norcross, who authored the Urban Hope Act when he was a state senator; and Susan Bass Levin, president and CEO of Cooper Foundation. 
Sitting in the front row was George Norcross III, chairman of Cooper University Health Care and the chief driver of the school’s rise from a vacant lot next to the hospital. [emphasis mine]
Because it's now standard operating procedure in America to throw everything down the memory hole, a little history is in order:

The vacant lot that this KIPP school sits on today was supposed to be for a public district school. The state promised that it would build the school to serve all of the students in the Lanning Square area. And as the city school board waited for the state to fulfill its promises, it rebuffed an effort to bring KIPP into Camden, perhaps motivated by the fact - See more at: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2015/09/massive-norcross-hypocrisy-competition.html#sthash.CSUjZ2eI.dpuf