Education in the US, the case of New Jersey

Editorial Observer

New Jersey’s Governor and the Public Education Debate

By BRENT STAPLES

October 24, 2010

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New Jersey’s governor, Chris Christie, has been bludgeoning the state’s teachers and their unions since he took office earlier this year. The name-calling has raised his profile nationally, and made him a darling of the right. It has also made rational conversation on school reform nearly impossible.

Last month, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, seemed to address this problem when he announced that he was pouring $100 million into a school reform plan in troubled Newark, whose schools are controlled by the state. He said from the start that the plan would be a joint project of politicians, civic groups and the very teachers’ unions that Mr. Christie has been demonizing since Day 1.

The deal as it was originally announced called for Mr. Christie to cede some control of Newark’s schools to Cory Booker, the city’s well-liked mayor. But it became clear just days later that state law allowed for no such transfer of power. This meant the governor would remain very much at the center of a delicate situation.

Newark residents who have been put off by his bullying found more reasons to be suspicious at a legislative hearing earlier this month, where Bret Schundler, the former state education commissioner, provided an eye-opening account of how the state had failed to win a $400 million education grant from the Race to the Top program.

The governor fired Mr. Schundler, saying that he had lied about what went wrong. But in Mr. Schundler’s version of the facts, it was the governor who sabotaged the grant application — in the very depths of a recession — to protect his carefully cultivated image as the scourge of the teachers’ unions.

The federal scoring system for the Race to the Top competition allotted a significant number of points to states that got local and union support for their reform plans. Mr. Schundler succeeded in winning that support, while protecting the state’s reform agenda and getting virtually all of the concessions the state wanted from the unions.

By Mr. Schundler’s account, Governor Christie angrily rejected the compromise because a popular radio program accused him of buckling to union pressure. Mr. Schundler countered with reason, pointing out that the federal grant would cement the state’s reform project and help local districts financially for years to come.

But the governor, he said, was “emphatic that the money didn’t matter to him” and found it intolerable that he would be viewed as having given in to the unions.

This portrayal is consistent with the style for which the Christie administration is well known. It was painfully evident earlier this spring in the administration’s response to what should have been seen as wonderful news for New Jersey’s schools.

The state had just finished near the top nationally in math and reading as measured by the rigorous, federally backed test known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The Christie Education Department dismissed the results as “irrelevant” and described public education generally as “wretched.”

Earlier this year, Mr. Christie accused teachers of “using students like drug mules” with the intent of subverting the political views of their families. During the campaign, he referred to the state’s nationally admired preschool program as baby-sitting.

Mr. Christie raises the right subjects — merit pay, tenure, evaluation — but nearly always in an inflammatory fashion.

None of this will play well in Newark, a city that is famously wary of outsiders. Some Newarkers already see Mr. Booker as the governor’s cat’s paw. Others wager that Mr. Christie will hang him out to dry, as he did Mr. Schundler, if it becomes politically convenient to do so. Even if the school reform effort succeeds, the Christie style will have made it that much harder to pull off.