Spotlight Essay: Public Education's Dangerous Silence

Editor's Note: The author is Gordon MacInnes, who is a fellow at The Century Foundation in New York and previously was a lecturer at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. He served as the assistant commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Education and was a member of the New Jersey State Senate and General Assembly.

Welcome to New Jersey and to the 18-month street fight waged by Gov. Chris Christie against public education. By this time, the governor's attacks against teachers and their unions, superintendents' associations and local school board are almost pro forma. (Christie seems to actively dislike everything and anything to do with public education -- except charter schools.)

If Christie's comments have lost much of their ability to surprise (though not to sting), what is truly shocking is the weak defense against these attacks offered by the very people who've committed their lives to public education. True, the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) denounces Christie's attack, but it is dismissed as a predictable opponent by the press and most legislators.

Suffering in silence, especially in this case, is very dangerous. Christie is the master of the soundbite. He is passionate, if almost inevitably wrongheaded in his comments about public schools. And if he is allowed to monopolize the microphone, those passionate misinterpretations will start to sound like the "truth."

Let's take a look at what Christie isn't saying:

There are about 1.53 million students attending K-12 schools in New Jersey. In the past school year 1.35 million attended public schools, an impressive 88.4 percent of kids ages five to eighteen. There may be 986 nonpublic schools registered with the education department, but their "market share" has been declining since the 1960’s.

The takeaway: New Jersey relies on public schools to educate its kids.

But how well do public schools do educating those students? The short answer: "better than any state except Massachusetts."

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is the most reliable and widely accepted measure of academic achievement. Called the "Nation’s Report Card," it has conducted random tests of fourth and eighth graders beginning in 1969. On the 2009 tests, New Jersey scored second on the fourth and eighth grade reading test, fifth on the fourth grade math test, and third on the eighth grade math test. 

When those results were released in 2010, they were greeted with a disinterest bordering on disdain by the Christie administration.

One more thing: New Jersey has the highest graduation rate in the nation.

Taxation for Education

Something else that gets lost in the soundbite: New Jerseyans put their money where their public schools are.

Taxpayers do not like taxes, but residents of New Jersey have demonstrated their support for public education by devoting most of their annual $25 billion in property taxes to pay for local schools. And public schools are, by far, the largest beneficiary of the state budget and have been for many years -- under governors and legislatures of both parties.

It's not all good news, as Christie is quick to point out in his rallying cry of "failed schools."

Students from poor families, concentrated among blacks and Latinos, do not achieve at acceptable levels. And while research is available to prove just about anything, one thing is certain. The socioeconomic status of a kid's parents and classmates are the most reliable predictors of how that student will perform academically. More particularly, we know for sure that the most difficult educational problem is how to educate children of poor families when they go to school only with other poor children.

Persistent Failure?

Christie uses the performance of schools in poor neighborhoods to attack all public schools. Read the governor’s education "reform" package and you'd think he’s running one of the poorest states in the nation rather than one of the wealthiest.

"The governor's reform plan is critically important to ensure failure no longer runs rampant in public schools across New Jersey” hardly sounds like a plan to deal with the eight percent or so of public schools deemed "persistently failing."

The governor knows better. He has demonstrated this knowledge by his support for high-quality preschool in his first two budgets, for which he deserves credit. Closing the gap in vocabulary and general knowledge before kindergarten is crucial to putting poor kids on the path to literacy in the primary grades. Yet, he exploits the underperformance of schools in the state's poorest neighborhoods to hurt public schools in every neighborhood.

But Christie's attacks on public schools goes far deeper than words. Let's take a look at just three examples:

First, the governor's superintendent salary caps have crippled the ability of the state’s elite districts to attract the strongest possible leadership.

The pool of educators that can lead a district in a high-income community, where most parents seek to see their kids to the nation’s most selective universities, is not deep. New Jersey towns, particularly those in north Jersey, must compete with New York suburbs like Scarsdale, New Canaan, Bronxville and Cold Spring Harbor for leaders who understand pedagogy, politics, the selective college market, budgets and sports. When New York and Connecticut towns pay their superintendents $100,000 or more than towns like Mt. Lakes, Westfield, Princeton, Rumson or Summit, the whole state suffers.

New Jersey's economy relies on attracting smart, highly educated, affluent families who seek comfortable towns with convenient transit to New York and excellent public schools. The reason that the state's best lacrosse and field hockey teams are found in such towns is simple -- selective universities emphasize those sports above football or wrestling.

The fact that elite districts are losing an alarming number of superintendents would not be known by checking the websites of the school boards or superintendents associations. The salary cap and its effects are hardly mentioned. Neither organization seeks to overturn the regulation via legislative nullification. And no legislator has stepped up to lead the charge.

The governor likes a good fight, but public educators apparently do not.

Continue reading this story in NJ Spotlight.

NJ Spotlight is an issue-driven news website that provides critical insight to New Jersey’s communities and businesses. It is non-partisan, independent, policy-centered and community-minded.