Key Murdoch Minion Tapped for Top Newark Public Schools Job

Newark, New Jersey has a long history of "troubled" public schools. All the king's men and all the king's horses have not been able to put the Garden State's largest K-12 system together into something approaching satisfactory performance. It got to the point where the state took over the school system. Local voices were pushed away, while Newark's public education efforts attracted the attention of political opportunists and wealthy "we-know-what's-best-for-you" ideologues.

Cami Anderson
(Image: state.nj.us)

Ironically, bellicose GOP governor Chris Christie and liberal media darling Cory Booker found common ground regarding Newark's schools. During Booker's tenure as Newark's mayor, Christie installed Cami Anderson as Newark's superintendent of schools. This was done with Booker's blessing. Ms. Anderson was no stranger in the night in the movement to "reform" K-12 education. She had served in executive capacities with Teach for America, an organization which used marginally trained, well-intended college grads as instructors in some of the nation's most desperate urban schools. (The teachers work like dogs, last about a year or two, and then in the vast majority of cases find another career.) This 21st Century version of a children's crusade also provided administrators with leverage against teachers' unions. Later, Anderson worked in New York for Wireless Generation, which later became Amplify, a Rupert Murdoch-owned enterprise whose ostensible purpose is K-12 "reform" via data-driven imperatives (supplied and managed by Amplify). Murdoch's education biz, through former NYC Education Commissioner Joel Klein, established a lucrative beach head in Gotham. Among Klein's key associates was Chris Cerf.

Chris Cerf
(Image: nj.com)

Cerf supervised Anderson's work with the NYC Department of Education. He later crossed the Hudson and worked as Governor Christie's Acting Commissioner of Education. His key hire was...ta da...you guessed it, Cami Anderson, as Newark's K-12 boss.

In 2014, according to The Star-Ledger reporter Bob Braun, Amplify Education (one of Amplify's corporate entities) received three contracts totaling about $2.3 million contract from the Newark public school system. At the time, Cerf was in the midst of a transition between his role as the state's top education dog, and jumping onto Amplify's payroll.

Recently, Ms. Anderson decided to call it quits in Newark, about eight months before her contract would have expired. A new mayor, a pissed off community whose wishes were consistently ignored by Booker and Christie, and a governor who would be king were three strong reasons for her departure. The new superintendent? Chris Cerf. He'll get a three-year deal to run the system his way. Cerf, to no one's surprise, advocates more charter schools, defanging the teacher's union, installing data-driven "solutions," and lots and lots of electronically-based testing. He'll also feel at home with "concerned" billionaires who have their own education "solutions." As it happens, Newark is an ideal petri dish for these social experiments.

Chris Christie, Oprah Winfrey, Corey Booker, Mark Zuckerberg
at the announcement of the Facebook boss' $100 million stock "donation"
to improve Newark's public schools.

We'll see if Cerf engages the parents of Newark children, something Anderson did not manage to accomplish to anyone's satisfaction. It will also be interesting to follow the money. Power brokers, notably Booker and Christie, have stonewalled any attempt at transparency regarding the Newark school system's finances and program decisions. Will Cerf be different? His political and corporate connections suggest that will not be the case.

Christie and Cuomo Deliver Tag-Team Veto to Port Authority Reform Drive

Batman vs. Penguin mayoral election debate
(Image: dtvusaform.com)

Just before midnight on a holiday Saturday, the political patronage machine known as the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) received, figuratively speaking, two governors' pardon. The issue was the reform of the bistate agency in the wake of the Bridgegate scandal. Curiously, the Republican Chris Christie and Democratic Andrew Cuomo, both of whom have presidential ambitions, found common ground in their respective vetoes. They cited their alternative reform plans, which critics asserted would water down the effort to shine light on the PA's often opaque award and management of lucrative contracts.

According to The New York Times' report on the vetoes, the far stronger reforms had received unanimous approval votes from each state's respective legislatures. Due to the arcane nature of the PA's charter, change requires approval from both states' governors and legislatures. Unanimously positive votes are extremely rare. However, the shadow vote -- the fixers and deep pockets who appear on the PA's board of directors and executive positions -- was most likely unanimously negative.

Recently, I've been reading Italian crime fiction. The works often offer a window into the corruption that characterizes the Italian political process. Unlike Italians, Americans largely remain in denial of its embrace of a wink-and-nod society. While "networking" has become a watchword in American life, the implications of that concept, especially in relation to back-door deals and opaque transactions, has largely gone unexplored. The Port Authority reform episode demonstrates that "networked" crony corruption remains very alive and well, and transcends left-wing or right-wing rhetoric.

The Day Chris Christie Lost His Presidential Bid

Jerry Jones (left) and Chris Christie
at yesterday's Cowboys-Eagles game in Philadephia
(Image: cbssports.com)

One had the hope that New Jersey governor Chris Christie would abandon thoughts of running for the land's highest office. The Soprano state's caudillo didn't seem to project global gravitas. Severe doubts about how his bellicosity would play with, say, Vladimir Putin, suggested that surely the Republican Party could do better than the Man from Mendham. A little over a year ago, some of Christie's senior operatives, a number of whom came from the Rudy Giuliani camp, embarked on the act of political thuggery known as "Bridgegate." Once the governor's aides' shameless hardball actions were outed, Christie's star dimmed. However, a rehabilitation campaign skillfully denied the governor's culpability while quietly reassuring Christie's backers that the opera would not end until the fat man sings.

Thus, Chris Christie has again emerged as a presidential player. I think he blew his chances yesterday, when he attended a Dallas Cowboys-Philadelphia Eagles game in The City of Brotherly Love. The governor sat in a luxury box with Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, openly rooting for the Texas team. Well, them's figthtin' words in Philly. For Philadelphia fans, and many others throughout the nation, the distaste and visceral contempt for the Cowboys runs deep. If you support Dallas, well you've just lost those fans' votes. And yes, many of them are white males, the core GOP constituency.

An argument could be made that the Cowboys have a strong, vocal national following, and they vote, too. Just don't offer that proposition in the Northeast, Wisconsin, or both Washingtons, during what promises to be a rough GOP presidential primary in 2016. Football fans have long memories, and loyalties to their teams. Would voters choose another candidate other than Citizen Christie on the basis of a pro football preference?

As Sarah Palin said (remember her?), "You betcha."

Chilled Words on a Cold Election Night

American conservatives are happy tonight, as most of their candidates for legitimately contested political office are winning. What could this event bring to the United States? Well, a lot of depressing actions. Here's an upcoming GOP menu for your digestion:

• Turning pregnant women into potential felons
• Dismembering health care fairness
• Voter repression campaigns aimed at minorities (why are conservatives afraid of people of color?)
• The evisceration of many environmental protections
• The disintegration of church-state separation
• The spectacle of Southern Republicans denouncing the federal government while pitching for increased defense spending in their respective districts

Of course, there are GOP presidential candidates to consider:
Scott Walker
Chris Christie
Rand Paul
Ted Cruz
Marco Rubio
Mitt Romney (!)
and the "moderate" Republican's great white hope, Jeb Bush

I'm trying to imagine any of this group in the same room with Vladimir Putin. If there's a wager in play, take Putin and the points against any of these right-wing lightweights (Bush excepted).

Tonight's voting let me to think about writers, in the belief that words can still sway minds to specific paths of thought and action. For books such as Albert Camus' La Peste, Leonardo Sciascia's Il Giorno della Civetta, Andrea Camilleri's Il  Cane de Terra-Cotta, Edna O'Brien's Country Girls, Chester Himes' Cotton Comes to Harlem, Anais Nin's diaries, and all other works that attempt to explore and depict reality, I take hope and, with them, defy tonight's vote that unfortunately delivered a profound ignorance upon our land.

Proposed 2015 Calendar of the Seven Deadly Sins

Around the year-end holidays, consumers purchase calendars. Some of them feature popular travel destinations. Some showcase either domesticated or wild animals. Certain others flaunt the bodies of domesticated or wild humans. The calendars from non-profit enterprises tend to be dull commercials for their worthy activities.

However, I propose a new product for 2015 calendars: the Seven Deadly Sins. Here's a list of these universal vices:

• avarice
• envy
• sloth
• pride/vanity
• wrath
• lust
• gluttony

The Seven Deadly Sins and Four Other Things
by Hieronymus Bosch

Selected months or days would be associated with a particular deadly sin. My list is hardly thorough, but it's a start.

Avarice -- December. That's the bonus month for many firms, including some hedge funds, Wall Street banks, and private equity firms. Second place goes to the United States Congress. Images of individual members or a team shot are available for all 12 months of the year.

Envy -- Pick any repellent celebrity gossip television program, magazine, blog, or book for the usual and unusual suspects. Again, this delivers 12-month pleasure.

Sloth -- Summer months seem best suited for this vice. Local television newscasters provide ample subjects for this underrated vice.

Pride/Vanity -- The Academy Awards are made to order for the calendar's thematic concept. That takes care of March, when the Oscars are shown to a worldwide audience.

Wrath -- This is best associated with birthdays. Former vice president Dick Cheney, for example, celebrates his birthday on January 30th. New Jersey governor Chris Christie blows away birthday candles on September 6th.

Lust -- Bill Clinton has his birthday candles blown on August 19th. Former president Jimmy Carter, who once acknowledged having lust in his heart, will clebrate his 90th birthday on October 1st. And who could let a year pass without acknowledging Charlie Sheen's contribution to vice?

Gluttony -- Feel free to double down on Chris Christie's sins, thanks to his evidently excessive interest in food and drink. Also, movie director and XXXL fellow New Jersey native Kevin Smith receives "honorable" mention for his well-publicized hassling of Southwest Airlines in 2010 for its "Customer of Size" policy.

The beauty of the Seven Deadly Sins calendar is that each month brings a new, worthy member of vice's poster children to one's attention. Now that's much more fun than associating photographs of penguins or pinup models with a specific month!

The Seven Deadly Sins
by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Zuckerberg to Host Chris Christie Mixer in Palo Alto

Mark Zuckerberg
(photo: forbes.com)

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg will host a campaign fundraiser for New Jersey governor Chris Christie next month, according to a report in siliconvalley.com. The handshake-and-handout fest will continue Mr. Facebook's puzzling connection to the Garden State and its politics. Zuckerberg initially linked to New Jersey around the time the movie The Social Network flashed across American movie screens. As you may recall, Zuckerberg offered many millions to "help" the cause of "school reform" in Newark. If you are asking for evidence of the "school reform," you're not alone. Few have seen any changes in the Newark schools that warrant the donation and subsequent secrecy surrounding its use. Newark mayor and liberal media darling Cory Booker have worked overtime to squash inquiries about the funds and their utilization. It took a successful ACLU lawsuit on behalf of a Newark community organization to compel the Booker administration to release e-mail about the funds, Booker's role in their distribution, and the mayor's plans to "reform" the school system.

Sheryl Sandberg
(photo: theatlantic.com)

Meanwhile, conservative media darling Christie (well, he was beloved by the right-wing until the governor experienced his St. Paul at Damascus moment during Hurricane Sandy) is working to position himself as presidential material. Why Christie believes Silicon Valley is a more appropriate venue to test the DC waters than, say, Seaside Heights, is a fascinating question. On the other hand, what's curious about Zuckerberg's tango with the New Jersey GOP's capo is the visible political connections the company has with the Democratic Party via Facebook's resident brain, Sheryl Sandberg.

My gut tells me Christie doesn't have a chance in the presidential sweepstakes. I don't think he'll survive the primaries. VP? Maybe, but only if the top of the ticket says "Bush."

Voting American Style

Election Day for the presidency, many US senate seats, a posse of House reps, state and local offices is two days from today.

Early voting line/Miami
(photo from The New York Times)

In a number of states, early voting has commenced. Not surprisingly, Florida's early voting is already controversial. Officials of Florida's Republican governor says the early voting process is operating smoothly. That's true if your standard of a well-run process is a seven-hour wait for the opportunity to vote, as some south Floridians have experienced, according to a Miami Herald report.

In New Jersey, where I live, early voting became something of a necessity for many people whose lives were disrupted by the effects of Hurricane Sandy. Voters could go to the county seat and cast a ballot. The obvious problem is that the Garden State is experiencing gasoline rationing and many people are afraid to drive in this fuel-challenged situation. In fairness, New Jersey's GOP governor Chris Christie is trying to do the right thing for voters, something Florida governor Rick Scott's administration cannot honestly claim.

Sign on Milwaukee's East Side,
October 2012
(photo by Tim Hoey)

What's striking in this presidential election is the rendering of the electoral garment into two roughly equal pieces. My wife and I were recently in Wisconsin, a so-called "battleground" state. Really, the Badger State was the 2012 election's version of the Spanish Civil War, courtesy of the election of Scott Walker to the governor's office, his subsequent evisceration of public workers' collective bargaining rights, and a failed recall vote. Walker's victory in the recall balloting has not diminished the electoral fervor this fall. Wisconsin is home to the GOP's vice presidential candidate, borders Barack Obama's home base of Chicago, and has a very tight US senate race that features an openly lesbian candidate.

In Wisconsin, my wife and I saw an astonishing number of intense TV political commercials. We expected that. What we were unprepared for was a parade of billboards that mostly featured pro-Romney messages or strongly anti-Obama messages. Nothing seemed very sacred, least of all the politicized churches, the majority of which felt comfortable embracing the GOP message.

Billboards paid for by venture capitalists
Stephen and Nancy Einhorn.
They also contributed $50,000 to
Scott Walker's election as Wisconsin governor.

Last night, we attended a small dinner party a short drive from our home. One of the hosts was an Italian-born painter. The Italian voting system is quite different from the American version, in that Italians have to travel to the town or city of their birth in order to vote. The entire country is literally on the move during the Italian election period. I asked the painter if he could envision Americans mirroring the Italian voting procedure. He laughed and simply said, "Basta, Tim."

If we could only say that for our own country's very screwed up political process.

Education: The Best Show in Town

Yes, we've got trouble my friends, right here in River City. And today's "trouble" focused on events in New York. This morning's abrupt departure of Cathie Black from her role as Gotham's education department boss raised more than a few eyebrows. Black was heavily criticized for her entire lack of education experience throughout her 90-plus-day tenure as Department of Education chief. What Black's hiring demonstrated was the arrogant classist belief that anyone with senior management experience could run just about any organization. A cadre of MBAs and attorneys sincerely believes this line of reasoning. This managerial hubris is a key element to the drive for greater data reporting in school systems. In that sense, New York mayor Mike Bloomberg and President Obama are truly soul brothers. Cathie Black was their sister, in that her prior CEO experience made her accustomed to getting her way. She also notably lacked any empathy with the community she claimed she wanted to serve. She couldn't even get an audience of parents from prosperous, Wall Street-oriented TriBeCa to side with her at a school meeting.

There's more to the Black dismissal than meets the eye. Over time, one hopes those details will emerge. In the meantime, New Jersey's ambitious governor, Chris Christie, crossed the great water to make a speech at a Brookings Institution event in Manhattan. His remarks offered little new insight beyond his boilerplate observations on education. He did manage to characterize the New Jersey teacher's union as an organization run by "bullies and thugs." He did not discuss a case before the New Jersey Supreme Court in which advocates for poor students have challenged the Christie Administration's shifting of funding from schools in low-income areas. One could reasonably suppose the governor, a former federal prosecutor, did not want to publicize the legal muscle being used to bully and screw the needy.

A December to Remember?

The blog's title, borrowed from an automobile's company's annual year-end advertising campaign, made us wonder what would be so memorable about December 2010. Well, there's already enough to fill one's holiday stocking with episodes and incidents worth remembering. The following examples offer some ideas:

1. New Jersey's conservative, Republican governor Chris Christie has discovered YouTube is a very effective propaganda tool. This tactic became evident during a recent town hall meeting, in which a questioner was "escorted" to the stage by a state trooper. Then, in a physically bullying manner, the governor responded to the inquiry without allowing any sort of reply. A trooper removed the questioner and that was that: a perfect YouTube moment available for Governor Christie's fans. The Star-Ledger of New Jersey included the episode in its print coverage (no YouTube, sorry) of the town hall meeting.

2. In fairness, it should be noted Christie did confront a sacred cow of prosperous, typically Republican suburban communities at the town hall meeting. One of his questioners asserted his municipality's right to pay its school superintendent above the $175K cap the Christie Administration has decreed suitable for the position. The municipality used a line of reasoning which must have sounded familiar to its many highly compensated, Wall Street inhabitants: the proposed superintendent's salary was "competitive" with the local school system's perceived peers.

Senior management compensation committees and consultants have used the "peer" ploy to boost key personnel pay schemes for some time. The rationale is usually accepted without complaint, and the top dogs make a killing via compliant corporate boards. The superintendents and local boards of education know this game, and have shamelessly played it. Prosperous suburban communities have rarely hesitated to use financial incentives to land the candidates they want. As long as the school system stayed "highly rated," and the connection between a school system's quality and housing prices remained ironclad, the money would be found. While Governor Christie's politics and public personality are repellent, he's on the mark on this issue.

3. China v. Google -- The WikiLeaks material in The New York Times included some profoundly disturbing information regarding the Chinese government's relentless grip on its domestic information dissemination, its mistrust of Google as a tool of the American government (read the Le Monde summary of this episode for some of the juice), and the sinister efforts of elements within China to conduct cyberwarfare against United States interests. Keep in mind China holds trillions of dollars of United States government debt.

4. Google Settles "Street View"/Privacy Lawsuit for One Dollar -- A couple sued Google for its unwelcome photographing of their Pittsburgh area home. According to a story based on original reporting in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Google employees drove 1,000 feet onto private property in order to get the photo of the couple's house. Google fought the lawsuit, only to eventually give in and pay a symbolic one dollar settlement fee. However, the couple had to pay their own legal fees. How many people have pockets deep enough, and time substantial enough, to fight Google? The FCC, meanwhile, is looking into allegations that Google's Street View campaign collected passwords and other personal information from unguarded WiFi locations. That information is quite significant in location-based marketing; the commercial leveraging of it by the aggregate information's possessor has the potential for a staggering financial bonanza.

5. Wild and crazy Mark Cuban made a fascinating post on Vator.tv called "The End of Location-Based Apps?" His thesis involves the increasing use of face-recognition software to identify prospects and customers in a specific location. He also makes a chilling assertion: "few people exclude their basic name and picture information from public search, so FB [Facebook] could be the first to provide a database of names and faces to the commercial world of facial recognition."

6. Zero Hedge posted a CNBC segment in which former Reagan Administration budget director David Stockman tells some very unpleasant truths about the American economy. Stockman notes how offshoring strongly and negatively impacted job creation in this country. (Liberals should take note this happened during the Clinton years as well as the Bush 43 nightmare. The corruption runs deep, my friends.) Stockman pointed out the inconvenient fact that most "new" jobs that have appeared during the Great Recession (Stockman's phrase) are mostly part-time jobs. He noted that government jobs will decline, as municipal and state governments are broke. And implicit in his observations is the time line for "recovery" is very, very long.

A December to remember? More likely, you'll want to take a rain check on this month. As Humphrey Bogart said in Casablanca, "I drink to forget."

Facebook Comes to Newark -- Part Two

The "Facebook Comes to Newark" story deeply involves Oprah Winfrey.

Ms. Winfrey has very carefully planned her syndicated television program's final year. She has, for better or worse, embraced the notion of "education reform" and given it plenty of air time. Keep in mind she was one of President Obama's principal media and financial backers during his election campaign. O and O share an educational agenda whose unmistakable, unrelenting goal has been the reduction of existing public school and teacher bureaucracies, and their replacement with corporate-style managements and enterprise-style employer-employee structures. (Yes, I understand there are other goals.) Ironically, the right-wing has shared the Obamians' program and, in fact, has advocated longer and harder for it than the Obamians have. O and O's best political move in 44's two years in office was co-opting the school issue from conservative politicians and their think-tank cohorts.

7. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan comes from the same Chicago world as O and O. He's the point person for 44's education offensive, much the way former New Jersey Commissioner of Education Bret Schundler was envisioned by Governor Chris Christie. (Schundler would have been a very inconvenient person in the Zuckerberg scenario.) Duncan has pushed "reform" at every possible opportunity, while throwing money at the funding crisis engulfing most school district across the country. Guess what? The money runs out next year, and let's see who will pay for these ideas.

8. One report suggests the Harlem Children's Zone, which is being lionized this fall on NBC, The New York Times, and the heavily hyped documentary Waiting for Superman, will be used as the paradigm for Newark school "reform." In case you're keeping score at home, there are already a host of charter schools in Newark. One of them has a teaching staff that would be the envy of a New England private school. Another, connected to the Adubato political/media family, has won deserved plaudits for its achievements. The Zuckerberg contribution, as I understand the initial reports of it, will not reach these schools. The plot thickens here.

9. Enter Newark mayor Cory Booker. Here we have media darling #2, an African-American graduate of Stanford who "returned home" to "make a difference." Booker's political ambitions venture well beyond Newark's poor, tired streets. He's made it a point to make the right media connections, groom himself for appropriate positions that carry statewide appeal and national clout, gather political IOUs, and financial backing for his next step. Where would that be? There had been rumors of a gubernatorial run in the Garden State. However, Chris Christie's blitz of former governor Jon Corzine, combined with the implied threat of Christie's prosecutorial allies, made Booker pause. Booker and Adubato made a very public peace with Christie the day after Christie won the governor's seat. Booker, who has rocky relations with a considerable portion of Newark's politicos, probably has his eyes on Frank Lautenberg's US Senate seat. Lautenberg is 94 years old, and is unlikely to follow the late South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond in the Senate's version of the Century Club.

10. Christie and Booker have shaken hands on the Zuckerberg deal. Forget about the ridiculous leaking of the "secret" story for a moment, and the unsavory motives behind the leak. What's far more incredible is New Jersey's equivalent of the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. Booker's move is simple: he'll run on school reform in a Senate race (as will Obama in 2012). To accomplish that act, he needs more than Zuckerberg's money. He needs what Christie thought he had with Bret Schundler. That's where The New York Times, pushing "reform," enters the picture again. In the original Times story about the Zuckerberg pledge, Michelle Rhee's name was floated as a possibility to be Newark's next school superintendent. (The local Newark newspaper, the Star-Ledger, ran a story on the Zuckerberg splash and speculated in detail on who the next superintendent might be. The Star-Ledger story characterized Rhee's candidacy as a "longshot.")

To be continued....

New Jersey's "Race to the Top" Flops

New Jersey's Race to the Top application fiasco boiled over yesterday, when Governor Christie fired his education commissioner, Bret Schundler (in the white shirt and in presumably happier times). The episode quickly offered unseemly finger pointing, political posturing that badly backfired, and a sense of bureaucratic ineptness that transcended ideological zealotry.

Much has been made of the Schundler team's gaffe in providing incorrect information on its application. That error cost five points in the Race to the Top's evaluation scheme. Those points greatly mattered, as New Jersey's application was out of the money by three points.

Originally, the Christie Administration called the mistake a "clerical error" that anyone with common sense would have simply adjusted. While one can understand the point, the spin conveniently ignores the reality of documentation requirements in the worlds of grant funding, RFPs, and other legally generated requests for funds. Any grant writer, any attorney (including Christie, a former federal prosecutor who touts his adherence to the letter of the law), any firm preparing business pitches knows that following submission directions is the first rule of proposal writing. It's akin to a golf pro signing her or his scorecard at the conclusion of a round. In short, the Christie administration's thin excuse for an incorrectly managed proposal does not pass the smell test.

Further, the governor's obsession with his ideological struggle with the New Jersey teacher's unions led him to hastily rework Schundler's initial, well-crafted proposal. Christie's revisions, frantically conceived and hammered together at the last minute, and over a Memorial Day weekend, did not include the teacher's unions sign-on to the proposal. This stipulation was part of the Race to the Top conditions. The New Jersey governor's calculated maneuver, according to a story in today's New York Times, cost the Garden State's application more points than providing information from the wrong fiscal years did.

Christie has blamed everyone except himself for his state's equivalent of coming in fourth in a race that only paid for win, place, and show. However, I'm not convinced Christie really wanted to win. Conservatives such as Christie have been uneasy over Race to the Top. His administration was lukewarm to the funding chase from the get-go. The governor publicly screwed Schundler over a sensible deal the then-education commissioner made with the teacher's unions to get them on board with Race's first application. Politically speaking, Christie benefits from continued unrest in the state's school systems. Volatility keeps an unpopular statewide group such as the teacher's unions readily available as a convenient collective scapegoat to castigate for the state's many issues. Does this strategy sound familiar?

Yet, education financing is a volatile issue in New Jersey, as well as other states. Christie's suburban and rural constituencies will feel a continuing pinch in education services, as a combination of diminished property tax revenues and, ironically, decreased federal funding will mean larger class sizes, fewer after-school activities, and declining physical plant maintenance. One "solution" may be a de facto deflationary strategy, in which "expensive" teachers find retirement the better choice of valor. Younger, cheaper teachers will be the fresh meat for the public education grinder. In that way, costs are "managed," and a "new dawn" will rise for New Jersey education.

The "solution" is likely to run aground on standardized testing and "data-driven" teaching. Education funding, and other payment schemes such as merit pay, are chained to test results. Yet, the notion that statistical analysis equals understanding psychological truth goes against the grain of human experience. That has not deterred conservatives and "concerned" liberals from having an almost religiously-held belief in this profoundly flawed premise. Their imposition of their unquestioned, unshakable faith in quantitative analysis as education's salvation has largely gone unchallenged. "The data shall set you free?" That sounds more akin to arrogant hubris than thoughtful spiritual awakening.

Bret Schundler tried to navigate this difficult passage. His spectacular failure to make the "three-point play" for federal funding sealed his bureaucratic doom. However, the larger failure is at the top. That's a race with plenty of horses in it, running hard, running strong, running wrong. In that "race to the top," who would you put your money on?