Schundler to NJ Education Commissioner

The New York Post reported today the appointment of Brett Schundler as Education Commissioner for the state of New Jersey. While this isn't exactly "new" news (the word on this had been out for a few days), the Post article seemed to grasp the importance of this appointment:

New Jersey Gov.-Elect Chris Christie's most audacious move so far has been his choice for state education commissioner -- former Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler, a man the National Education Association once dubbed Public Enemy No. 1 for his advocacy of school choice.

Christie rolled to victory last November on the basis of voter discontent with the Garden State's high taxes and its budgetary problems. And it's clear that getting Jersey's spending under control means finding ways to get more bang for the state's education bucks -- which will require reforms like those Schundler has long advocated, but which teachers unions despise.

As the state's largest donor to political candidates, the NJEA is the kind of all 'Special Interests'. While Democrats like to pretend that special interests can only be businesses, citizens have learned to know better. As a matter of fact, the Obama administration has taken union special interest to an entirely new level (pushing a healthcare bill that apparently will only serve to help the SEIU and no one else). But while union politics is often unseemly, the situation in our urban schools is a mess:

Jersey serves as an example of how money alone, absent reform, does little to help failing schools. A series of court orders has forced the state to funnel billions of dollars into 31 urban districts (the total's now about $4 billion a year), with little impact on student achievement. Camden has a whopping $340 million budget for a system serving 13,000 students (more than $26,000 per student), yet 26 of the city's schools failed to make adequate progress last year toward federal education requirements. In Newark, only about 42 percent of eighth graders were deemed proficient on recent state math assessment tests.

Jersey's urban school districts suffer from decades of patronage, waste and a focus on politics instead of education. To take one example, in 1995, the state seized control of the Newark schools because of corruption and has operated them ever since. Though the state's takeover brought some measure of stability to the system, it did little to reform classroom instruction or improve student performance -- prompting an angered Mayor Cory Booker to declare last year, "We have to find ways to expand options for parents and reward innovation" in Newark.

I am with Cory Booker on this one. And let's hope that Schundler can start to make this system work for children instead of the NJEA.

Read the entire article here.

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