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.

Alleged DC Charter School Scam: Who Says There's No Money in Education?

The mantra about how "there's no money in education" keeps encountering inconvenient details which question the chant's veracity. Elements of the for-profit world, which has eyed the taxpayer funded education funding as so many chickens to be plucked, has entered the K-12 school arena. Its alliances with politicians, "committed" millionaires, and dim media reporting (The Today Show, come on down) offer formidable clout, especially against a fragmented collection of interested parties, such as local interest groups like the characteristic school district PTO.

According to a report in The Washington Post, attorneys for the District of Columbia Office of the Attorney General have filed new allegations against a local charter school enterprise. The filing claims corporate officers of Options Charter Public School (OCPS) "diverted more than $3 million from the Northeast Washington school for at-risk teens to companies they founded." The brief noted a parade of self-dealing including a school bus "ridership bonus" of $100,000.

J.C. Hayward
(Image: wusa9.com)

The accused apparently owned a firm called Exceptional Education Services (EES), which effectively served as a shell company designed as a collection device for skimmed funds. One key player in the OCPS/EES scheme was J.C. Hayward, a very visible DC television personality who happened to be board chair and part-owner of EES. The TV talking head's attorney has claimed his client had no knowledge of any illegal activity. That's a curious claim for someone deeply connected to DC's power structure and is presumably worldly wise.

LAUSD students using iPads
(Image: ktla.com)

The larger issue in this story goes beyond a cautionary tale of local corruption. The K-12 education "reformers" have made a case that strong CEO-style business management and teacher "accountability" would lead to improved K-12 education. All of this would be accomplished through increased online content, data-driven teaching and supervision, and relentless testing. The goal of redirecting the flow of public funds to private gain goes unstated. Meanwhile, the imperative to make technology and its products a key educational tool has gone forward without any serious vetting.The stampede into gadget purchases has led to some troubling situations, such as the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) purchasing hundreds of thousands of iPads at consumer market rates. At the same time, LAUSD did not buy keyboards for the devices. Oops...that would be "an extra expense," which the school district had to add on after the fact. Software? Well, various programs were sold as a three-year lease, after which LAUSD would have nothing to show for its rental costs.


Where was the strong CEO management in the LA and DC episodes? How did these initiatives advance the cause of K-12 education "reform"? Where was the senior management accountability? Where was the "community input" reformers are so keen to advance as one of their positive developments?

Image: mainepressherald.com

Bottom line: who says there is no money in K-12 education? The record suggests there's plenty of gold in the K-12 hills, and it's being mined now. The fact that the gold is taxpayer money, largely committed without genuine transparency or community participation is kept largely quiet. (Cory Booker and Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg's money to the Newark, New Jersey schools comes to mind as Exhibit A. It took a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain any useful information about this situation.) The understanding of the profit motive in the K-12 world could illuminate inconvenient details, the knowledge of which would interfere with profitable revenue streams that could continue for a generation. Now, who would want that situation brought to light?

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."

Judge Rules Newark Must Produce Facebook Donation E-Mails

According to a story in today's Star-Ledger of Newark, a Superior Court judge ruled earlier today that the city of Newark produce e-mail correspondence related to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's $100 million donation to the New Jersey city. The suit, brought by the ACLU on behalf of an organization called the Secondary Parents Council, had its genesis in the intransigence of Newark mayor Cory Booker's administration toward requests for the correspondence. Booker's team was an equal opportunity snubber, as it refused information requests regarding the Facebook largesse from The Star-Ledger and the Associated Press.

At issue is how local residents have been excluded from having any insight or say into the distribution and use of Zuckerberg's donation. For all the flapdoodle about how the money would help Newark schools and the community, the management of the funds has been extraordinarily secretive.

Keep in mind Facebook's wunderkind's highly publicized contribution came as the film The Social Contract, with its highly unflattering portrait of Zuckerberg, was released. Some saw the donation as intended to distract the public from awareness of the Facebook creator's unseemly personality. It also was tied into the politically motivated restructuring of Newark's schools and the emasculation of the city's teacher's union. However, to believe the unlikely quartet of Zuckerberg, Booker, New Jersey governor Chris Christie, and Oprah Winfrey, the donation was all about education, opportunity, and community. For more on this topic, you're welcome to explore my three-part blog post about it.

Too bad no one bothered to ask the city's residents their opinion on the matter.

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....