Schools

Patch Interview: Cerf Says 'We Can Do Better' on Education

The NJ Acting Commissioner of Education talks about issues that affect parents and kids in local communities and across the state of New Jersey.

New Jersey’s Acting Commissioner of Education, Christopher Cerf, oversees 2,500 public schools, 1.4 million students, and 110,000 teachers in over 600 school districts.

Prior to being sworn in to his new role by Governor Chris Christie in January, Cerf was CEO of Sangari Global Education. Between 2004 and 2009, he was Deputy Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education. 

Throughout his career, Cerf has been a passionate advocate for educational change in New Jersey. This week, he spoke to Montclair Patch about some of the big issues on his agenda, including charter schools and their impact on local communities, as well as long-term educational goals for a new generation of students in a competitive global economy.

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Livingston Patch is running excerpts from that interview, which includes Cerf’s views on . He is asked specifically about charter schools in Montclair, where the issue – like Livingston – has been debated.

Note to Readers: The school Cerf mentions, Renaissance, is the newest middle school in Montclair -- one that offers longer school days than other middle schools.

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Patch: I know the charter schools issue has been talked about endlessly, but it’s a hot button in Montclair. Why do you think it’s such a controversial subject? 

Cerf: This issue is, I think, unnecessarily controversial. A charter school is one that's open to all, tuition free, publically funded, no admissions test. It’s a not-for-profit entity that’s accountable for a certain set of results. When people say it’s draining money from the public schools, that’s false. A charter school is a public school in every sense of the word.

Patch: But the argument against charter schools persists.  There's a perception that a charter school in Montclair will effectively “rob Peter to pay Paul.”

Cerf: What you are articulating on behalf of others is a false dichotomy. This is not about, ‘we are going to focus on charter schools and therefore we are not going to focus on traditional public schools.’  

At some point someone said, ‘let’s open a great school called Renaissance.’ Well, that’s “draining money” from other public schools in the district, just like when Newark opened Science High or History High. It’s the same idea. They took kids from the traditional public school system and put them into special public schools. 

Imagine a school district as a portfolio of options. The function of the superintendent and the school board is to embrace the development of innovative options. 

Patch: Can you describe the fiscal impact a charter school would have on a town like Montclair? 

Cerf: The economic impact of charter schools gets a little complicated.  Essentially the bigger a school is, the easier it is to manage [certain] finances. Both have a superintendent, which is a fixed cost. So if three hundred kids go to a charter school, the school will lose the revenues associated with those three hundred kids—not all of it, but a big chunk of it. They still have the fixed cost of a superintendent, but that cost is spread out over so many more children in a large district, it’s much easier to manage.  

I do think that charter schools present a significantly larger cost to smaller districts; I think that’s a legitimate consideration.  So [parents] have to ask, “Who owns the money?’  The public school systems are saying, ‘We own it. It’s presumptively ours.’  What I am saying is, the parent does. 

Patch: What do you feel parents should bear in mind when considering educational options for their children?

Cerf:  If I think the best school for my kid is, say, Renaissance, I’m going to send my kid to Renaissance. If I think the best school for my kid happens to be a charter school, I’m going to send my kid to a charter school.  

So much of this is framed on the assumption that there is something sacrosanct about the existing order, about the public school system. 

Patch: At a  last month you made the comment that public schools “humming along” in affluent suburban communities are not necessarily in need of a charter school. Would you classify Montclair as one of those communities? 

Cerf: Let’s not go there (laughs). What I got in trouble for saying is that highly specialized schools – those that have been called “boutique” schools – that focus on a particular language or orientation, is all part of an equation. Does that really fill an unmet need? How do you balance costs and benefits? I think the size of a district is relevant because of the differential economic impact.   

My fondest hope is that when there are discussions about whether charter schools make sense or not, that they’re based on those kind of considerations, and not based on the idea that the choice of a parent to go elsewhere is an insult to the current public school system. 

Patch: Is it possible people are threatened by the idea that charter schools may offer a better alternative but that there’s not enough room for everybody? 

Cerf: In Newark alone there are 40,000 kids on waiting lists for charter schools. So our response to this is to take away those options?

It seems to me that this is progressive arrogance on the part of school districts to say to parents, ‘we know better what’s best for your kids. Even though you want [the option of charter schools], even though you’re waiting in line, we think the world is better off without that option’.

There is a lot of mythology about charter schools. One of the real whipping boys for folks who are opposed to charter schools is that that they’re creaming the white elite kids but that is simply not borne out by the facts.  This is according to the National trend data. Generally speaking, charter schools serve a significant number of special ed kids, in this state about 9.5%, against about 14% in regular public schools. Also, a lot of times parents don’t even tell a new school that the student is special ed, because they want the kid to have a fresh start.

Patch: Many people are fearful these days because they see programs are being cut and are afraid their children won’t get a good education.  At the heart of it is the worry that their children won’t get into a good college or get a good start in life.

Cerf: Take a hypothetical community – not Montclair, but same demographics, same success, same everything. There are plenty of kids in this town who are not getting the quality education they deserve. There’s too many kids passing through the system who are not college ready or career ready . . . So if a charter school came in and said, ‘we can do better, we can narrow the achievement gap, structure programs around kids who aren’t succeeding', then I say, that’s giving people whose needs are not being met a good option. 

Patch: When we talk about educational reform, the focus is generally on children in failing districts. You have stated your commitment to helping those children. But what about kids on the other end of the spectrum?  Many school districts, including Montclair, have few programs for gifted and talented students, or have eliminated those programs entirely, all the while educators and lawmakers worry about the United States’ ability to compete academically with other high-achieving nations on the global market.   

Cerf:  I think having programs focused on children that are truly gifted and talented is absolutely critical.  Just as critical as having special programs for kids who are special needs. Historically, in communities like Montclair or the upper west side [of Manhattan], the gifted and talented debates are huge because everyone thinks their kids are gifted and talented. But if you really look at the literature, “gifted and talented” is really a very small group of kids.

What we need to ask is, what is the purpose of public education? I was at the tail end of an era where everybody understood that, you know, most kids would do just fine in the vocational ed classes but we had to prepare the master classes for managing the world.  I’m overstating the case of course, but there was never the view that we had to educate all kids to be college-ready.  

Our vision now in public education is captured in those dreaded words, “No Child Left Behind.’  There is a very important message in that, which is, our responsibility is not only to get every kid to walk across the stage in cap and tassel but to be equipped for success in life. That doesn’t mean every kid will go to an ivy school but the days are over where you can have a very successful life in this country working on an assembly line or on the family farm. We’re a knowledge- and service-based economy. It just doesn’t work any more to simply graduate from high school, or not graduate at all. And having a high school degree is only the beginning.

Patch: Recently, at the Newark education symposium, New Jersey Assemblywoman Mila Jasey stated that she feels a complete overhaul of the education system is necessary in order for the United States to move forward effectively and compete academically with other nations.  Do you agree with that? 

Cerf:  The global competitive thing is very alarming.  Absolutely I agree with Assemblywoman Jasey.  Education Weekly just announced that New Jersey has the highest high school graduation rate in the country.  But many kids need a year of remediation after high school graduation. 

Our system is failing lots of kids – even kids who are doing “just fine” might not be where they should be.  We’ve got to stop tinkering around the edges here.  Another program here, another program there, more money here, more money there -- that is not going to create the kind of transformational change commensurate with the need.  

Patch: To that end, what kind of things are being done on the state level to improve education overall? 

Cerf: The single biggest thing to come down the pike is the implementation of the Common Core Standard. It’s a revolutionary and massive project. It’s a collaborative effort of 44 states to come up with standards that are higher, deeper, newer. We really want to develop critical learning skills. Anybody can go in the internet and tell you what the water cycle looks like but to be able to give somebody a data set, and design using experimental methodology, how to think about a problem, how to analyze a problem . . . that what’s really lacking [currently.] The Common Core is already developed, has already been adopted by New Jersey to the tune of about $325 million. If we pull this off, that will have a profound effect on what is taught, and how it is taught, in New Jersey schools.


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