NJ Business Matters: The Blog of the CIANJ

NJ Will Pursue Race to the Top Funds by January Deadline

Two quick hits on education policy came across the desk this morning. First, the The Center for Education Reform graded New Jersey a "C" in terms of rules governing public charter schools. That placed New Jersey 19th out of 40 states with charter laws on the books.

"New Jersey drew a lower grade because its statute sets up only one authorizing agency -- the state Department of Education -- for charter schools, said Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform.

She said in some other states, universities or independent boards also approve and monitor charter schools.

Allen said New Jersey's laws also create "unnecessary processes" and "burdensome" paperwork requirements."

CIANJ has long-argued that the power to authorize charters being placed solely in the hands of a commissioner was detrimental to the growth of a vibrant public charter school system. For example, in 2008 the New Jersey DoE approved a single charter out of 22 applications. Changing the law to give authorizing ability to institutions such as Rutgers University would add stability and predictability to groups seeking to establish a charter school as an alternative for students in a given district.

Incentives for charters are slo part of President Obama's Race to the Top pool of grant money for educational innovation. Today, the Corzine Administration announced the state would pursue that money by a January deadline afterall. The state is eligible for up to $400 million in federal grants, but last week the Governor's Office announced New Jersey would not make the first application deadline. The move was roundly criticized because it put the state in jeopardy of never seeing the funds. From NorthJersey.com,

On Monday Education Commissioner Lucille Davy said her staff would now work with the transition team to get the application ready for January.

“It is very clear they want us to move forward,” Davy told the state senate’s education committee, where she had come to answer questions about Race to the Top. Davy said the department aims to hire a consultant this week to help prepare for the deadline six weeks away.

Kudos to the Department of Ed for working closely with the Christie Transition Team to ensure education funds aren't dropped in the hand-off.

Senate Education Committee Advances Public School Choice Program

The Senate Education committee yesterday advanced legislation that would create an inter-district public school choice program. It would allow districts with excess capacity to voluntarily participate in a program in which they could accept students from outside their district who wish to leave their local school.

S-2982is supported by CIANJ and was unanimously approved by the committee. A similar pilot program existed from 2000-2004, and you can read the annual reports here. The sneak preview is that the reports usually discuss the benefits of increasing the cap of 2% of students in a grade that are allowed to participate. S-2982 would do just that and increase the maximum percentage of participating students to 10% for a grade and 15% for each district.

Cue the standard NJEA response of how they support school choice, but just not this program,

"The concern we have is ... if enough kids were to move out of a district in one grade or school ... it could lead to a cut in services or programs for kids left behind," said NJEA spokesman Steven Baker. "It was never intended to harm the students who were not taking advantage of the program."

By noting students would be "taking advantage" of the program while others would be "left behind", it appears that the NJEA says public school choice is a positive thing. If it is the case that some kids get an "advantage" by leaving a district that does not meet their needs while others are "left behind", then why have a cap at all?

While passing this bill is important, it is still only part of a menu of options that must be made available to parents and students. Having the ability to attend your local public school, or an out-of-district public school, or a public charter school, vo-tech, or private school will allow parents to make the best decisions for their child's individual needs and desires.

Lame Duck Watch: Forbidding Subcontracting at Schools

Yesterday, the New Jersey School Boards Association released results of a survey which reports on taxpayer savings realized when school districts use subcontracting for non-instructional services. In total, 238 of New Jersey's districts reported saving a total of more than $38 million in the last year by subcontracting for services such as maintenance, cafeteria work and transportation.

On June 22, A-4140 was introduced and passed by the Assembly Education Committee within the same day. The legislation would effectively disallow subcontracting as a cost savings option for local school districts in difficult budget times. It would tie the hands of school districts (and therefore, taxpayers) by forcing them to keep non-instructional staff members as public employees - with all the well-documented costs associated with that.

The measure, strongly supported by the NJEA, was introduced and approved without thorough public review. Now, some in Trenton are considering pushing the bill through during the lame duck session. Keep checking back throughout the lame duck session to see if this lamest of ideas gets additional consideration in the remainder of this session.

Cutting Gov't By Reshaping Institutions

Earlier this year, we pointed readers to a groundbreaking study produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University - Institutions Matter: Can New Jersey Reverse Course? Today, that study's co-author, Eileen Norcross, takes to the op-ed pages of the New York Post to offer a bold plan for Gov-elect Chris Christie.

The two-step agenda involves scrapping the existing Property Tax Relief Fund, which has failed to produce property tax relief or increase performance in urban school districts, and alleviate local governments of unfunded state mandates regarding personnel.

By rejecting the state Supreme Court's Abbott funding requirements, the new executive can restore the Legislature's proper role as the state's chief policymaking body. After all, on matters such as spending and education, it's the elected bodies of state government, not the courts, that are best placed to act accountably.

On top of rubbing out the PTRF, the new governor should focus on the other cause of New Jersey's economic tailspin -- unfunded state mandates. Rather than top-down rule from Trenton, he should afford local governments a greater role in charting their own fiscal course.

For too long, unfunded mandates have stifled New Jersey's localities. The most costly of these are state-negotiated binding-arbitration agreements that impose police salaries and benefits on local governments. Offering municipalities greater flexibility and control over their own spending and budget priorities will encourage innovation in the delivery of public goods and reduce the need for extraordinarily high property taxes.

The entire piece is a must read and available here. Marginal changes will not fix a fundamentally dysfunctional system.

Moving Away from Diploma Mill Pay Raises

We pasted the actual headline from today's Asbury Park Press because of its "only-in-New-Jersey" flare.

Yesterday, the Senate Education Committee advanced legislation that establishes statewide guidelines for tuition reimbursement of educators. The legislation became necessary after several administrators were found to have been given reimbursements and pay increases based on degrees from phony "universities".

Guess what position the NJEA took,

Codey, D-Essex, told Gannett New Jersey that the New Jersey Education Association, the state's largest teachers' union, had approached him to argue the use of the so-called "matchbook" degrees should be negotiated in contract talks.

"Can you believe that?" Codey asked. "I said, "No way.' And that was the end of it."

Vincent Giordano, executive director of the NJEA, confirmed he had met with a Codey staffer, where the union executive said he laid out what his position would be when he went before the Senate Education Committee later in the morning, which is that the issue should be bargained locally at the school board level.

Except that the systematic failure occurred locally at the school board level because of a lack of due diligence when issuing reimbursement checks. The legislature is right to step in and protect the taxpayer.

Financial Literacy Bill Back in The Assembly

Update at 4:09 p.m. - The financial literacy program was approved by the legislature with an overwhelming majority: 77-2.

Last year, CIANJ supported a bill introduced by Assemblyman Gary Schaer (D-36) that would have established a financial literacy program for New Jersey high school students. The program was designed to teach the basics about credit card debt, savings, investment, and interest. You know, the tools needed to help students live financially responsible adult lives.

The bill never became law because of Assembly and Senate haggling. However, it has been reintroduced this year, passed by committee and gets its final vote in the Assembly today. A copy of the new legislation, which will create a pilot program in six districts, is available here. It deserves the support of the entire legislature and New Jersey's high school students deserve the immediate opportunity.

Higher Standards is Not Reform

During the summer, the State Board of Education raised the standard for what qualifies as a passing grade on standardized tests in New Jersey. Prior to the change, scores as low as 33% were considered proficient. The new metric (while still too low) means passing rates will surely decline, but that New Jersey policymakers will have a better understanding of the problem.

While an accurate diagnosis is important, it still does not address the underlying concern: the value of a New Jersey high school diploma. In today's Courier-Post, Derrell Bradford - rather pointedly - reminds readers that 30% of NJ STARS students are forced to take remedial courses once in college, and that the real issue is the quality and cost of a New Jersey education, not just the low bar.

Despite what the teachers' union and others assert, low standards are the norm. And when these standards are used as context, the picture of student achievement is frightening.

Take Newark, where 60.8 percent of seventh-graders were unable to score a 33 percent on the math assessment, despite nearly $1 billion in school spending and an average teacher salary of nearly $80,000 annually. Look at Camden where a $220,000-salaried superintendent and a $340 million budget for about 13,000 students only enabled 23.8 percent of eighth-graders (barely 1 in 5) to score above 55 percent in language arts.

Even the state's inflated graduation rate -- which includes 11,000 to 15,000 students who cannot pass, after three tries, the High School Proficiency Assessment -- draws the gap between the perception of student achievement and the reality of it in high relief. The HSPA is often described as a middle-school level test.

The state Education Department says it wants to raise standards across the board to address this disconnect -- which is laudable.

But raising standards is not reform. Higher standards will help diagnose the K-12 public school problems better, but the problems will still remain.

You Won't Believe This

Down in Florida, the former President of the teachers union is now the head of the school choice movement. Go figure.

The new head of the leading voucher group in Florida is a former teachers union leader who once said vouchers were "based on false assumptions and faulty logic."

His hiring may be another sign that the bitter political lines over vouchers are not as hard and fast as they were just a few years ago....

People say, " 'Gee, Doug, you suddenly flipped your position on school choice.' That's not true," Tuthill said.

Tuthill said he heard many of the same arguments now raised against vouchers when he helped set up the International Baccalaureate program at St. Petersburg High School in the early 1980s. "Our argument was all we're trying to do is create more learning options (for kids)," he said.

Bingo. Different children will excel in different environments. This includes traditional public high schools, vocational schools and yes, private schools. Yet somehow, the teachers union here in New Jersey continues to argue that the best interest of education does not include offering poor children all possible options.

Also joining the movement is a St. Petersburg Times columnist who now acknowledges that vouchers do not undermine public education.

Good for them.

Company Considers Jersey Because of Talented Workforce - Who'da Thunk It?

Earlier this summer on a radio discussion about the UEZ Jobs Scholarship Act, the hosts assailed supporters of the bill calling it a giveaway to big business. Their logic was that the 100% tax credit was only supported by business because it could help the bottom line, and the hosts found it impossible to believe that businesses gave much thought to local schools.

First, there continues to be a fallacy in the public discussion that the tax credit somehow "saves" companies money. It does not. If a firm has a CBT tax obligation at the end of the year of $25,000, this legislation simply allows them to take a portion of that (say, $5,000) and donate it to scholarship organizations for poor kids. Either way, $25k is still coming out of the company's bottom line.

Second, businesses do care about local education. The reasons should be intuitive - a high quality school system helps attract parents to an area, and trains the future workforce. As evidence, check out this week's feature in NJBiz on how New Jersey is seeking to lure companies,

The EDA incentive has not yet convinced Soft Tissue Regeneration of Charlottesville, Va., to move to New Jersey as the company weighs incentives offered by Virginia and Connecticut, says Joseph Reilly, its president and CEO. Reilly currently works from his Chatham home.

Soft Tissue is considering relocating to New Jersey mainly because the state offers access to the talent Soft Tissue needs, says Reilly.

“We would have a better opportunity of finding them [highly skilled employees] in northern New Jersey than we would in Charlottesville or in the Hartford, Conn., area.”

There you have it - access to talent. A high-quality K-12 school system helps attract and keep parents in an area while simultaneously training qualified new workers. It is one of the advantages New Jersey has over other states - even Virginia with its Forbes #1 business-friendly ranking.

Try to remember that the next time you hear a radio host screaming about "big business" in their board rooms.

Real Education and Reality

Last night, your blogger sat down and read Charles Murray's latest book, Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality. Murray, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, argues that America's educational system is designed to ignore the fundamental truth that ability varies, and that a four-year BA degree may not be the best option for all high school graduates, despite the need for further training. He argues that the decline of options such as vocational education, and the priority shift at America's community colleges have ignored some talents and de-emphasized others.

It's a simple, yet fascinating perspective. It also says things that very few parents and educators wish to hear.

From Murray's Wall Street Journal op-ed on the same subject,

Outside a handful of majors--engineering and some of the sciences--a bachelor's degree tells an employer nothing except that the applicant has a certain amount of intellectual ability and perseverance. Even a degree in a vocational major like business administration can mean anything from a solid base of knowledge to four years of barely remembered gut courses.

The solution is not better degrees, but no degrees. Young people entering the job market should have a known, trusted measure of their qualifications they can carry into job interviews. That measure should express what they know, not where they learned it or how long it took them. They need a certification, not a degree.

Murray also strongly advocates for school choice; not because it will necessarily increase test scores, but because schoolhouses can reform in ways that are politically impossible for districts, and because of proven private school success in providing a decent learning environment.

Here's a link to the book's listing on Amazon. It is a welcome voice in the education reform movement.

Update at 2:03 p.m.: Carter Wood at The National Association of Manufacturers offers his comments on the book and a lecture by Charles Murray that was delivered last night. The NAM's blog commentary is available here.