I attended this
event on privatizing charter schools in NJ. It was interesting and quite
worrisome. In Trenton right now, the
Democratic Legislature is considering Gov. Chris Christie’s education reform
plan, which does not look good for low income students. Here are the panel details:
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Moderator: Stan Karp - Education Law Center
Panelists: Michelle Fine - Co-Author, Charter Schools and the Corporate Makeover of Public Education: What's at Stake, Distinguished Prof of Psychology & Urban Education, The Graduate Center, CUNY Julia Sass Rubin - Save Our Schools NJ Carlos Perez (invited) - New Jersey Charter Schools Association Representative from Emily Fischer Charter School, Trenton |
Tuesday, April 24, 2012 7:00pm until 9:00pm
For some background information, if you would
like to read up some more on these budget issues, these articles were both on
the ED LAW CENTER website and sums up information from the panel very well:
STUDENTS PUT AT RISK FROM GOVERNOR’S PROPOSED SCHOOL FUNDING CUTS High Poverty Districts Could See Reductions of Over $1,000 Per Pupil
March 19, 2012 Governor Chris Christie’s proposed
FY13 State Budget targets New Jersey’s low-income, or “at-risk,” students for
significant cuts in school funding. These cuts will fall hardest on schools
across the state serving high numbers of poor students, according to an analysis by Education Law Center.
LESS AID FOR UNDERFUNDED DISTRICTS WHILE MORE DISTRICTS WOULD SEE CUTS
April 11, 2012 An analysis of the NJ Department of Education's FY13 budget by
the non-partisan Office of Legislative Services (OLS) uncovers the stark
reality faced by NJ school districts if Governor Christie's school aid proposal
for 2012-13 is adopted by the State Legislature. http://www.edlawcenter.org/news/archives/school-funding/students-put-at-risk-from-governors-proposed-school-funding-cuts.html
The OLS analysis confirms the radical, structural
changes to the NJ school funding formula – the School Funding Reform Act of
2008 (SFRA) – proposed by the Governor. These so-called
"modifications" to the SFRA formula include significant reductions in
the cost of educating poor (at-risk) students and Limited English Proficiency
(LEP) students, and the use of the widely discredited "average daily
attendance" method of counting students for school funding purposes. http://www.edlawcenter.org/news/archives/school-funding/governors-school-funding-proposal-a-bait-and-switch.html
Then this next article is about “average daily attendance” and Christies’
move to change funding from per actual pupil to those not absent on any given
day. Great idea. Because cutting our
funds will definitely help us in our quest to make students want to come to
school! http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/12/0424/2220/
________________________________________________
I really enjoyed this panel discussion. Michelle Fine is
such a wonderful speaker. She has a
great sense of humor and talks truth to power.
She was able to name several social problems very clearly without
seeming partisan or angry. It was very
refreshing to listen to her view on things. I plan on buying her book when I have time to
read again!
I think she would have had very clear and concise answers
for some of the comments on the panel we saw at MSU the other night…I really
wished the two panels had been combined, as they had very different view on
charter schools and would have sparked some interesting conversation!
She talked about an “image” from nature taken from her
favorite science writer. This person
studied the trees that survived in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Some were sacrifice trees, but the big strong
oaks had deep roots underground, pushed right up next to each other, supporting
each other. She said that is how she views
education reform.
I think this was a very important event because ultimately they
are warning of huge budget cuts for our schools in the near future that we are
not hearing about. They spoke of doing
several more of these type of events around our state to alert people to the
state governments plan of steep budget cuts. There was an email signup sheet to
alert us to future meetings.
Everyone on the panel now saw charter schools as a tool of the
systematic takeover of corporations, and everyone acknowledged that the
original teacher-driven charters were a great idea. There was concern over virtual charter
schools being completely unregulated and studies showing some were very unsuccessful. There was discussion of all children being
placed in any lottery system, not just those who were savvy enough to know to apply
or those who speak English.
Right now acting Commissioner Cerf can approve or reject any
charter he wants regardless of what the community wants. He is working on closing Emily Fisher School
in Trenton, which works primarily with “troubled” teens. Their test scores weren’t high enough. Several
of these students have children of their own.
They were brought in as the 15 most “troubled”
teens from various Trenton schools (he apologized for that kind of language). There
is nowhere else for these students to go except back to the school that failed
them. Michele Fine said many would never
go back anywhere because “their soul was not nourished there.” But Cerf wants
to close the school anyway.
The founder and principle of Emily Fisher was on the panel, fighting
and advocating for his school, which someone named the “old school” kind of
charter school. He seemed like a great
and hardworking man, blindsided by the state wanting to close his school. He first thought the letter was a mistake,
sent to the wrong address!
An African American woman asked what were the alternatives
to charter schools? She asked what
should we tell the children who look like her, when their district schools were
failing them? There were no clear answers. An affordable housing strategy, one panelist
said. It seems to me there are no easy answers but the number one issue has to
be to stop the defunding of our poor.
I plan to go to more of these meetings, let me know if you
want the alerts?!
________
If you want to read more, here is the newspaper article written
the next day, comparing education in NJ and Finland: http://blog.nj.com/njv_bob_braun/2012/04/braun_nj_school_privatization.html
My favorite parts are these lines:
…Finnish education official, telling American
educators the reason for its success was not the pursuit of "excellence
but equity.’’ Cooperation, he said, was valued over competition. All Finland’s
school children get free meals in their schools. Free health care. Their
parents receive three years’ leave, subsidized day-care…children are not
allowed to sink into isolating poverty.
How un-American. How, well, socialist. How
effective. But, no worries. It can’t happen here. Despite the constitution,
despite our professed love for, and desire to educate, all our children, New
Jersey—this nation—would never do whatever it takes to ensure educational
equity for all children.
And one more news article:
I think we have a lot of work to do in the next years in NJ
for education reform!!! So glad we are not working alone on these issues!
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