New Jersey Charter School Association
Last week the New Jersey Charter School Association filed an ethics complaint against Dr. Sass Rubin, an associate professor at Rutgers University, for being an outspoken critic of charter schools in the state. Rubin uses her association with a major research university to leverage political action against charter schools. And she’s also not always immediately forthcoming about her status as a founder of the anti-school choice/pro-public school organization, Save Our Schools NJ, which she sometimes writes about.
Neither issue is a crime, nor are they worthy of an ethics complaint. She is entitled to opinions, even if they aren’t supported by her own research. But the association ceded the high road, with spokesperson Michael Turner saying about the ethics complaint, “We cannot sit back and allow our accomplishments, our achievements, to be questioned in a way that have been questioned by Dr. Sass Rubin.”
It would have been more appropriate and effective for the association to poke holes in Dr. Rubin’s research (her last paper on charter schools was 36 pages with a meager 10 citations), and/or point out her policy recommendations have more to do with crippling charters than helping impoverished students.
Grade: Needs Improvement
Save Our Schools NJ
To continue the thread above, but re-direct the scrutiny …
A recent report by Save Our Schools NJ shows district schools enroll more students eligible for free lunch (the poorest subgroup of those eligible for free- and reduced-price lunch) than charter schools. Because it is not fair to compare schools if one educates more impoverished students than the other, Save Our Schools believes the state should break data down to this subgroup.
Fair enough. But the group doesn’t apply that same standard to vouchers. In fact, when it comes to vouchers, SOS NJ evidently thinks it’s perfectly ok with apples-to-oranges comparisons – that is, comparing the test scores of low-income voucher recipients to all students, regardless of income level, in the public schools.
Grade: Needs Improvement
Gov. Doug Ducey
Shortly after Doug Ducey won election to become Arizona’s next governor, he appointed education heavyweights Matthew Ladner and Lisa Graham Keegan to his transition team, signaling a potentially strong commitment to school choice and education reform.
During his swearing in, Gov. Ducey promised ‘serious’ reform: “It will be a first principal of my agenda that schools and choices available to affluent parents must be open to all parents, whatever their means, wherever they live, period.”
It’s not clear what exactly is coming for district, charter and private school students in Arizona. But those encouraging words from the top send a good signal.
Grade: Satisfactory
