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 Next governor gets the hard task of improving schools
Originally appeared in the Star Ledger on 11/01/01
This year's race for governor offers voters stark contrasts on education, one of the campaign's dominating issues.
Republican Bret Schundler, a former Jersey City mayor, wants to radically shake up the system. Jim McGreevey, the Woodbridge mayor and two-time Democratic nominee, wants to make changes within the system.
For whoever wins, though, one thing is sure: The next governor will face key decisions next year over how to improve urban schools and ensure quality in all of the state's public schools.
The plight of urban schools will rank particularly high on that agenda. Four years ago, the state Supreme Court ordered substantial additional aid for 30 "special needs" districts to pay for universal preschool, reduced class sizes, massive new construction and top-to-bottom instructional reforms.
But the state is still struggling to implement those Abbott vs. Burke mandates in the special needs districts, including Newark, Jersey City and Paterson, which the state runs following their takeover.
More than $1.6 billion in additional aid has gone to those 30 districts since the ruling, but preschools have been slow to catch hold, districts are still waiting for their first major school construction money, and the success of reforms in instruction and curriculum have been scattershot, at best.
Dissatisfied with the pace, the Supreme Court has set new deadlines that will come due for the next governor in his first few months in office.
SCHUNDLER'S PROPOSALS
Schundler, as mayor of the state's second largest city, has shown little sympathy for a public education system that he says has "failed our children" in the cities and seen more than half of its inner-city students drop out.
The heart of his urban school plan is to provide alternatives. He would expand charter schools, like the one he founded in Jersey City, and seek to replicate their successes in mainstream schools. More controversial, he would push for tax incentives to create a network of scholarships for private schooling to as many as 80,000 students.
Schundler has been an outspoken critic of the state's $12 billion school construction plan and has argued that his scholarship program would reduce much of the need for new schools by encouraging students to attend private and parochial schools.
Even so, Schundler has said he would abide by the court's preschool order, though he thinks the justices went to far in ordering new construction and in mandating instructional changes
"Let's make Abbott work," he told a Newark school leader last month. "We have the rulings to provide equitable funding, and now it's a matter of getting the money to the classroom."
Yet a week later, when asked for possible areas of savings in state spending, he cited a windfall of Abbott funds going to Jersey City schools as an example of what could be tapped.
"I don't think there is a physically possible way to spend that money," he said. "If you have money that is impossible to spend, that would be a good place to cut."
McGREEVEY'S PLANS
McGreevey, who has been endorsed by the state teachers union, has been far more conciliatory toward the ruling, pledging to work with districts and other advocates to ensure the court's mandates are fulfilled.
The Woodbridge mayor offers several proposals in line with the Abbott mandate, including in-school health clinics and a $40 million plan to provide reading "coaches" in an estimated 800 underperforming elementary schools.
McGreevey has vowed to create an assistant education commissioner's post solely responsible for Abbott reforms. He wants to improve the standards for preschools and boost recruitment of preschool teachers.
"Part of it is clearly a failure in leadership by the state," he said. "In many respects, the Department of Education has taken the proverbial bureaucratic approach. It's mainly been to ensure their backside is covered and not driven by performance and accountability."
Yet he is murky on how he would ensure accountability and performance. Beyond vowing to work with districts, his main suggestion for failing schools is to "send in SWAT teams to determine what isn't working and develop a plan for improvement."
NEW TESTING STANDARDS
Whichever man is elected, changes will be profound in how the state measures its students and schools. New Jersey is revising its standards for what every child should learn, and the system of testing in the fourth, eighth and 11th grades will change with those revisions.
Meanwhile, Congress is close to approving legislation that will require annual testing in elementary and middle schools in language arts and math.
Schundler supports the federal requirement and said he would go one better. His proposal is to require annual testing in reading, writing and math, but at both the start and end of each year to measure student progress.
From those results, schools would also better gauge a teacher's performance, he said. Those who see gains in their classes would be eligible for additional pay. For those who don't, student scores would be counted in the teacher's evaluation and potential dismissal.
"If you see children not progressing in reading or an entire class not moving ahead," Schundler said in June, "you have to make it possible to replace a teacher."
McGreevey's campaign has hedged on whether he supports the federal testing legislation, but the candidate said he has several changes in mind for New Jersey's system.
"I am a strong supporter of testing, but the goal of testing is not an end in itself," he said. "They should be a diagnostic tool of whether a child is learning."
He supports the state's current review of the standards as "moving in the right direction," and would scale back the tests to core areas of language arts, math and science. He also has said that he would free top-performing districts from certain testing or other academic oversight.
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