If selling [education] reform is like selling a car, you can’t get people to buy it by showing them a list of features. They have to get in the car and drive it. And right now, reform for many people in Newark is still a car on the lot with the doors closed.

Derrell Bradford on the Newark community’s distrust of outsiders and top-down educational initiatives in today’s New York Times. Also see today’s Wall St. Journal’s discussion of how the “deep narrative in Newark is that government and decision-making is closed, no matter how hard Mr. Booker tries to change perceptions.”

For more on Cami Anderson’s appointment as Newark Superintendent, see PolitickerNJ, which recaps the challenges of leading a district where 55% of the kids actually graduate from high school and 98% of those who proceed to college require remedial courses. NJ Spotlight quotes Newark Teachers Union President Joseph Del Grosso on collaboration with the new superintendent: “There will be no honeymoon or time to acclimate,” he said. “And there will be no neutrality from us, either. It will be either war or peace.”