Last week a report came out,  “False Hope: NJ Kids Aren’t Ready for College,” that shows many students at Rutgers-New Brunswick who got As and Bs in math don’t know basic algebra. Chad Aldeman, who wrote the report (my take here), says the unpreparedness of NJ high school graduates for college-level work is due to the lowering of standards and the multiple pathways to diplomas. Indeed, we rank 20th out of 38 states in academic growth in math (19th out of 35 states in reading), steadily losing ground over the last decade, yet our high school graduation rate is sky-high. There is not a single explanation for NJ’s lack of growth compared to states with much higher burdens of poverty, less funding, larger class size, etc., but one aspect that hasn’t been looked at is how states choose the head of their education agency, what we call here the Department of Education (DOE), and how much turnover there is. After all, if the state education chief has a worthwhile strategic plan but is a short-timer, not much improves. You need continuity at the top, not flash-in-the-pan genuflections to political hot-buttons

So let’s compare NJ’s revolving door of commissioners compared to states which are showing far better improvements in student outcomes. Most of the coverage of high-growth states has been on literacy, with stand-outs Mississippi, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Alabama pulling way out ahead of wealthy states. The same holds true with math (I used fourth grade NAEP scores over the last decade to facilitate comparability) even though far higher numbers of students live in poverty: Mississippi now ranks #1 in the nation for score improvements in math (and reading); Tennessee fourth graders, once in the cellar, now perform above the national average; Louisiana fourth-graders place in the top five nationwide for math growth; Alabama used to be the bottom in the country and is now 32nd. 

Here is one point of comparison:

• Between 2013-2022, Mississippi had one chief education officer, Carey Wright. 
• Between 2013-2022, New Jersey had five chief education officers: Chris Cerf, David Hespe, Kimberly Harrington, Lamont Repollet, Angelica Allen-McMillan.

Why does this happen? One reason is we have the most powerful governorship in the country and when a new governor is elected, he or she appoints their favored education commissioner (or, depending on the governor, the one favored by NJ’s powerful teacher union NJEA. See here for how NJEA vetoed Murphy’s choice of Paula White as assistant commissioner, despite glowing credentials). I can’t find an example where a new NJ governor kept the former commissioner. They all bring in their own people. That’s how Gov. Phil Murphy appointed Asbury Park superintendent Lamont Repollet as commissioner, who made it his mission to diminish the importance of student outcomes through a perverted definition of “equity.” (We’ve barely begun to climb out of that pit, called the 64 Floor, that banned teachers from failing students.) And it was the power of the governorship that, a couple of years ago, led the State Board to spend undue time approving the incorporation of climate change into every subject* taught in K-12 schools, a request of Tammy Murphy who was contemplating a senatorial run. (She declined to run after it became clear Andy Kim would win.)

Sure, public education is political but when our education agency bends like a pretzel to the whims of the governor, you start edging into the territory of the absurd. 

It’s not just Mississippi. 

Louisiana chooses its State Superintendent of Education through an appointment by the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE). That’s how John White lasted from January 2012 through March 2020.

Alabama’s Dr. Eric G. Mackey (May 2018 – present) was appointed as the State Superintendent by the elected State Board of Education. 

Tennessee’s governor appoints the education commissioner but (according to Penny Schwinn, whom I interviewed a few years ago) he or she works closely with the State Senate.

Yes, all these are red states with weak teacher unions. And according to a report by the left-leaning Progressive Policy Institute, “the more powerful the unions, the fewer literacy policy principles the state had adopted.” That’s a thing. 

But it doesn’t have to be this way!

Look at deep blue Massachusetts, which ranks 3d in teacher union strength to NJ’s 4th. Rachel Canter of PPI writes in the Wall Street Journal,

“In late June, Gov. Maura Healey signed new legislation aimed at ensuring that all Bay State public school children receive ‘evidence-based literacy instruction.’ It also codifies and tightens requirements for teacher training, K-3 reading curricula, screening and parental notification, while granting the Massachusetts Department of Education robust powers to enforce transparency and accountability.”

I have hope that our new governor, Mikie Sherrill, who (without consultation with NJEA, as far as I’ve been able to tell) chose Lily Laux, former commissioner of Texas, as her head of the DOE. While NJ parents won’t even find out how their kids did on last spring’s standardized tests until October,** and while the new president of NJEA, Steve Beatty told the New Jersey Assembly Education Committee he  was shocked that his kid couldn’t pass the state tests even though she had high grades in high school,*** perhaps Laux (currently occupied with the state’s broken school funding formula) will bring credibility and transparency back to NJ schools so kids don’t show up at Rutgers with 3.8 GPAs and find out they need to take remedial classes. 

As Chad Aldeman writes in “False Hope,” “The highest-leverage work is upstream in the K-12 system, years before a student ever applies to Rutgers, catching gaps in third grade instead of eleventh, and measuring progress against a yardstick that doesn’t move. New Jersey has spent the past decade doing the opposite.” 

*Indulge me while I include the response of Commissioner Allen-McMillan to a state board member who expressed reluctance to incorporating climate change into every subject, including gym: “The First Lady of the State of New Jersey is a champion for improving the lives of residents.  Your view is myopic and we must broaden our horizons and not leave any disciplines behind.”

**This late date for parent knowledge of how their kids do on objective assessments is not Laux’s fault; the new tests were set up by the Murphy Administration’s DOE. A sneak peak found slight drops in most grades. Also noteworthy: after assuring the public the new tests would allow comparability with the old NJSLA assessments, the DOE now says,

“These results represent a new starting point, rather than a direct continuation of previous years’ data,’ said Lisa Haberl, executive director of teaching and learning at the New Jersey Department of Education. ‘The key question is not whether the proficiency rates went up or down compared to previous assessments. Rather, the most critical question is what these results tell us about student performance under the new assessment framework and how we can use that information to support continuous improvement.'”

Um, no, the key question is whether proficiency rates went up or down; how else can we assess the quality of interventions and the needs of students? Also, the State Board didn’t approve cut scores until last week, waiting to see the results before deciding how many questions students need to get right before settling on what proficiency means.

***I know I’m old but there is a downside to not giving homework, which may have partially led to Beatty’s shock. We used to check our kids’ homework all the time. If teachers don’t give homework, schools have removed one lens into student proficiency. I suppose that’s part of Woke 1 when the Human Restoration Project describes homework as “an inequitable practice that harms certain individuals more than others, to the detriment of those with less resources.” Same thing with the NYT Nikole Hannah-Jones piece that’s getting so much attention; it wasn’t until her daughter was in fourth grade that she discovered she wasn’t reading or doing math on grade level by demanding to see (ungraded) math and reading in-class work.