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.

NYPD Spies on Newark Muslims; Arizona House OKs Bible Classes for Public High Schools

The Republican Party's presidential candidates are having a televised debate this evening, and its two front-running candidates are right in the middle of religious controversy. Rick Santorum has essentially embraced a militant Christian mantle as his calling card for the presidency. Mitt Romney is the first significant Mormon candidate for high office. I wish I could ask each of them a question about two stories that appeared in today's news.

Exhibit A is the release of a secret report compiled by a clandestine unit of the New York Police Department. (The story appeared in The Star-Ledger of Newark and in Associated Press reports.) The focus of the report was Newark, New Jersey's Muslim community. Apparently, this police activity did not identify any criminal suspects, produce any arrest warrants, or bother to respect the civil liberties of an entire community. Those under surveillance were being watched on the basis of their religious beliefs. Much of the police activity occurred during the Bush-Cheney years, when the liberties for which our nation's Founding Fathers fought a revolution were aggressively violated.

Apparently, the NYPD was given the green light by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to undertake this domestic spying. Newark and New Jersey state officials have publicly denied knowledge of the snooping, although one wonders if they are indulging in "plausible deniability."

Contrasting with the revelation about the Gotham police's creepy, profoundly illegal profiling of law-abiding Muslims is a Los Angeles Times story from Arizona. That state's House of Representatives recently passed legislation permitting Bible classes to be taught in public high schools and charter schools. Of course, this measure disrupts the wise separation of church and state. In effect, the Arizona House has made Christianity the de facto government approved religion. Taxpayer dollars can be dedicated to the instruction of Christian precepts in a currently secular environment. Presumably the New York City police department will not find these religious fanatics as "suspicious" as Newark's Muslim population.

I wonder how former US senator Santorum would approach the two episodes. How would his stance on religious freedom dovetail with the NYPD's investigatory zeal? How would his perspective on Christianity play for those non-believers whose children attend public schools? And I would be very curious how Mitt Romney would approach both incidents, especially as his "home" state of Michigan includes a significant Arab population.

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.

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.

University Faculty Asked to Sign Time Sheets

University faculties, which have gotten a free pass during the turmoil over American public education, just received the first whiff of a trend they will decidedly dislike.

Kean University of New Jersey, a commuter school whose graduates frequently become public school teachers, has requested its faculty to complete weekly time sheets. The story from nj.com (the Internet version of the Star-Ledger of Newark) notes administration rationale as well as faculty response.

For some time, the education "reformers" had the wrong focus. They should have focused on the universities, where so much is misguided, wrong, corrupt. I don't think time sheets are the way to bring academia back to reality. What's needed is the end of the faculty tenure system, an end to annual tuition increases that are routinely, insultingly double or triple the inflation rate, and the churn of "papers" that accomplish next to nothing toward intellectual development.

Just don't ask the reformers to sign a time sheet.

Atheist Billboard at Gateway to Midtown New York

Once again, New Jersey has produced a surprise from its collectively tricky sleeve. Its most recent example involves a billboard near the Garden State entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel. The Star-Ledger of Newark published a brief story about the billboard in today's edition.

For those readers unfamiliar with this entrance to New York, the Jersey-side roadway is lined with billboards touting goods from mini-cams to casinos. The joker in the current billboard deck comes courtesy of an organization called American Atheists. The outdoor advertisement's content, which questions the religious basis of year-end holidays, is a curious contrast with the barrage of holiday gift-buying and vacation messages.

It takes chutzpah to position a challenging atheistic message in the midst of the Christmas season. One wonders how much web traffic will be generated from the billboard, and how many perspectives will be altered by the advertisement's message.