WHAT'S 400 MILLION?

Last night I began this blog with " 400 million dollars lost. The sad fact is that not only is the loss of a grant detrimental in the education of our children, but more importantly it has become political fodder".

Nothing that I have read since has changed my impression that once more New Jersey's children and residents are the true victims of power and political agendas.

Only 3 points are alleged to have separated New Jersey from Ohio. The missing of 4.3 points caused by human error was catastrophic. That in its self is inexcusable. But so was the Plainfield's loss of thousands of dollars for the 2009 FY due to a typo error. Locally that was ignored administratively by assuring that the money could be made up from a "surplus fund", and the problem promptly vanished into the unknown. There was no political damnation.

To be honest not providing the requested year's data is a visual attackable error. There were far greater loss of points that were due to failure to meet the same goals required in the "Race" that other states met. In New Jersey only 59% of the school districts agreed to implement Race to the Top reforms. In New York 100% of the districts signed on. Worse there was agreement by only 1% of the unions, by inference local unions not specifically NJEA although its leadership must have influenced the locals. That was a big loss of about 14 points.

Another 16 points were lost in the statewide failure to make progress in student and teacher data systems in comparison to other states. 14 points vanished by failures to make changes in the evaluation and certification of educators.

If the New York Times report is accurate any decrease in those 44 lost points would have put New Jersey in the select 10. Since these are subjective and not a hard core mistake they are being completely ignored by the political and NJEA opponents of Governor Christie.

Christie, as Governor of the State and responsible for the 1000 page(?) document sent to Washington rightly does not have the luxury of whitewashing mistakes . His Administration made that error. But consider that New Jersey would not have been on the bubble if much larger number of points were not lost by the State's failure to implement a student progress computer program, for a clearly expressed educational reform agenda, and the lack of programs support from enough school districts and the various teacher unions. Too, some of the blame should fall on the Corzine administration as well as the State Legislature for placing the State in such a negative position that New Jersey failed to make the cut for the first phase of the Race to the Top.

NJEA's unrelenting union position that seniority is more important that educational efficiency resulted in a major portion of the deficit. It is essential the deadwood be eliminated, on the other hand experienced high salary teachers have to be protected from being fired by a cost saving administration. How to rid a district of teaching under performers and inefficient or surplus administrative personnel is a problem that must be solved.

The fact remains that sufficient credit was not given to NJ for the gain between Phase 1 and Phase 2 scores. Only 4 other States made bigger score gains. A question remains about the arbitrariness of the various score components. They have to be artificially determined and the criteria could be faulty. That is not unknown in bureaucratic federal agencies.

The newly released tapes of the Washington hearings must be taken in context not convenient interpretation. The Commissioner of Education were away from their base. The material they had with them, among over a thousand pages of the document and support material did not contain the missing report the panel wished.

No Agency can be faulted for sticking to the rules. However, if Washington was truly interested in up grading educational levels an adjustment could have been made to correct a "clerical error". There is no evidence that such an intent existed. In that respect Christie is right.

Perish the thought that a division of the Obama Administration Department of Education could possibly be punishing a traditional Democratic State for electing a Republican Governor.