Christopher Cerf Archives

Anyone who’s been paying attention to New Jersey politics and education should have seen this one coming from a mile away: the resignation of Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf. What makes it even more predictable is that he’s taking a job with his good buddy, and former Education Chancellor of New York City, Joel Klein. Those two might be the only people currently working in education today who are making big time money. There’s a reason for that, and it has nothing to do with improving schools.

Governor Christie is talking a good game about extending the school day and year and is making noise about having public workers contribute more to their pensions and benefits than they are now, but those proposals won’t become law as long as the focus is on Sandy funds and the George Washington Bridge. The same is true of a new Charter Schools bill, vouchers and weakening employee sick day policies. Done. Over. Not going to happen. The new teacher evaluation system is up and running and is working just as poorly as those who know about the teaching profession said it was going to work, so there’s not much more a Commissioner can do. Cerf is smart enough to see this, so it’s goodbye for him. And I can’t really blame him.

My interaction with Commissioner Cerf came last January, and I wrote about it at length here and here. In short, I was not impressed with either his answers to my questions or his attitude towards education. His main point throughout our discussion was that the state Board of Education supported him, and as long as that was the case there wasn’t anything he needed to change. He had little to say about the mechanics of teaching, because he never was a teacher, so the subject was foreign to him, and he seemed to be a completely political animal, which didn’t surprise me. So when the Christie Administration scandals began piling up, I figured he would be one of the first to leave because, really, there isn’t going to be much else to do on education.

Whoever becomes the new chief will essentially be a caretaker for the rest of Christie’s term. They’ll get to oversee the implementation of the Common Core Curriculum Standards and the PARCC tests and all of the mischief that those will bring. The test scores will ruin some teachers’ careers and of course there’s all that Facebook money to spend in Newark, but otherwise, I don’t see the Democrats caving the way they did in 2011. It will be up to the next administration, presumably, OK, hopefully, a Democratic one, to undo some of the damage. By that time, Cerf will be on to a new adventure.

Meanwhile, education professionals will be left to comply with rules that don’t make sense, that don’t contribute to the education of children, that saddle districts with unfunded costs associated with unproven and dangerous policies, and that reflect an attitude that doesn’t trust educators to, you know, educate. That’s hardly a legacy to be proud of.

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I Went to Trenton to Govern, But All I Got Was This Lousy $38 Million

Governor Christie has had some major legislative accomplishments over the past two years including a 2% cap on property taxes and a public worker pension and benefits overhaul. Mind you, these laws have not necessarily made life better for New Jerseyans, as taxes have still risen and thousands of experienced public workers have either retired, fled or have been laid off because of them.

The past six weeks, though, have been another story for the guv’nor.

Despite his general popularity, the Republicans actually lost seats in the November legislative elections. Now Christie will need to rely even more heavily on the Democratic majority in the legislature and the Democratic power brokers in Essex and Camden Counties. Add in the disdain that Senate President Steven Sweeney has for Christie and you have a recipe for gridlock sprinkled with a tablespoon of revenge.

Then, the general consensus was that the lame duck legislative session was going to be one of the most active in years, with bills flying around State Street on teacher tenure and evaluation, property taxes, jobs, budget cuts and patronage. What’s happened? Nada. Almost every issue was pushed to the formal session that begins in early January, and won’t probably get any steam until the Governor’s State of the State message in the middle of the month.

And in the spirit of the holidays, Christie picked a fight with Senator, and former Governor, Richard Codey over the permanent appointment of Commissioner of Education Christopher Cerf, accusing Codey of (gasp!) feeding information to reporters. Christie canceled Codey’s security detail and fired Codey’s cousin from the Port Authority board. That’s politics through and through and shows that Christie will never be the warm, fuzzy leader he sometimes pretends to be.

But the true state of the Governor’s clout was uncovered when New Jersey was actually awarded $38 million dollars in Race to the Top funds by the Obama Administration so it could implement a speculative teacher evaluation system based on student standardized test scores. Getting money should be a positive, but this award only dredged up the previous failure to even qualify for $400 million dollars in education funds because of the Governor’s attitude towards the New Jersey Education Association. Not only did it cost the state money, it also cost Commissioner of Education Brett Schundler his job and showed that Christie would blame everyone but his leadership for the error. It’s a pattern that he’s repeated in every misstep since, and it’s one reason why he would not make a good president.

He’s ending the year by essentially becoming Mitt Romney’s pit bull and possible vice-presidential running mate. Granted, he did only say that he would keep the door open, but that will only serve as a distraction in the coming year, as his flirtation with the presidency proved throughout the fall, because every time he doesn’t get what he wants, the media will remind us all that he’s got his eye on the national ticket. The Governor should just say no this time around and focus on the state.

It’s still very possible that Christie will get some of his reforms through the legislature, but many in the state are tired of his outbursts and outlandish statements. Prosecutors like him are convinced that they are always right and that they have the ultimate truth on their side, so why compromise? We need to remember that the next time one runs for statewide office.

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