By Max Pizarro | Insider NJ
“TRENTON – Denied the presidency, hampered by scandal and slogging through his final year in office with a dreadful job approval rating, Gov. Chris Christie this afternoon took pains to emphasize the positive and burnish his record as a tough guy anti-tax boss even as the state bumps up against a $135.7 billion public pension system shortfall.
He also made a plea to lawmakers in both parties for late in the game reform of public schools funding.”
By Natalie Gross | The Atlantic
“Latino students in kindergarten trail their white peers in math by approximately three months’ worth of learning, a new study by Child Trends Hispanic Institute has found.
Researchers drew a nationally representative sample of students from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-2011 who were followed through the end of their fifth-grade year. Sixty-two percent of the 2,199 Latino students studied had at least one foreign-born parent, and 45 percent spoke only Spanish or predominantly Spanish at home. Nearly half lived in poverty.”
By Solvejg Wastvedt | MPR News
“School superintendents from around the Twin Cities metro are holding meetings to ask parents, students and communities how to create more equitable schools.
The meetings are set for February and March and aim to create a list of steps to improve racial integration and outcomes in schools.
The plan was spurred by a lawsuit against the state that claims segregation leads to inadequate education at some metro-area schools.”
By Pioneer Press Editorial Board
“Regardless of how a lawsuit over Minnesota’s teacher tenure and layoff laws plays out, the issues it raises are worth a closer look.
The suit was dismissed last fall by Ramsey County District Court Judge Margaret Marrinan. She said it failed to make a connection between teacher-union rules and the achievement gap, and wrote that the issues should be resolved in the Legislature, rather than in court, according to a Pioneer Press report.”
By Melissa Klein and Susan Edelman
“Despite a rising citywide graduation rate, the number of students with the skills to succeed in college is alarmingly low — even at some schools that hand out the most diplomas, a Post analysis found.
College readiness sunk to 1.9 percent last year at the FDNY HS for Fire and Life Safety in Brooklyn, which had an 83 percent graduation rate in 2016, city reports show.”
By John Mooney | NJ Spotlight
“It was a long-shot bid to begin with: Gov. Chris Christie’s petition to the state Supreme Court asking it to strike down teacher seniority and rewrite its landmark Abbott v. Burke school-funding rulings.
Yesterday, the high court announced it would not hear the case, saying the administration would have to start at a lower court with the seniority challenge and not even indicating an avenue for the Abbott challenge.”
The New Jersey Supreme Court today denied the State’s September 2016 motion to re-open the decades-old school funding lawsuit, Abbott v. Burke. As part of their broad motion, the State had asked the court to grant the State Commissioner of Education – a political appointee – the authority to waive enforcement of the State’s “last in, first out” (LIFO) teacher layoff law, among other education laws and negotiated policies.
In response to the State’s motion, six Newark parents also filed a motion with the Supreme Court against the State’s legal tactics to address LIFO. These same parents instead are fighting the LIFO statute on its own in the trial court. Their case, HG v. Harrington, asserts that New Jersey’s quality-blind LIFO law violates students’ constitutional right to a “thorough and efficient” education by allowing ineffective teachers to remain in classrooms while effective teachers are let go. The plaintiff families have asked the court to declare LIFO unconstitutional and render it unenforceable in Newark and similar districts.
The Supreme Court’s denial of the State’s motion today means that the lawsuit filed in November by six Newark parents is the only case pending to address New Jersey’s outdated LIFO statute.
The following is a statement by Ralia Polechronis, Executive Director of Partnership for Educational Justice:
“This ruling is a big win for New Jersey parents and schoolchildren. The Supreme Court has echoed the position of a group of Newark parents, who argued to this court that the state’s unjust quality-blind teacher layoff law must be evaluated on its own, and not in connection with a decades-old school funding lawsuit. Concerned about looming school budget cuts, these same parents – the plaintiffs in HG v. Harrington – will continue their fight in the state’s trial court to invalidate the “last in, first out” law that prevents the retention of Newark’s best teachers during funding crises. These brave parents are leading the charge for students’ rights in New Jersey, and they will not back down until the harmful impact of this law is revealed and deemed unconstitutional.”
By JT Aregood | Observer New Jersey Politics
“New Jersey will not be reopening a landmark case on school funding for the state’s poorest districts. The state Supreme Court issued an order Tuesday denying Governor Chris Christie’s motion to reopen Abbott v. Burke in an attempt to change the terms of collective bargaining agreements with teachers and freeze state aid at current levels while the legislature devises a new school funding formula.”
By John Reitmeyer | NJ Spotlight
“School officials in communities all over New Jersey have complained for years about state education-funding inequities, and now lawmakers are holding a series of hearings on the issue — giving clear indications that they plan to address the school-aid problems in the next state budget.”
By Sarah Butrymowicz | The Hechinger Report
“Each year, when they get to campus, more than half a million American college students have to take so-called remedial or developmental education classes to teach them basic math and English skills they should have learned in high school. And that’s not even the full story. The full story cannot be accurately told, because of problems in how states collect the data — if they collect it at all.”