Carl Golden at New Jersey Newsroom depicts the “epic struggle” between Gov. Christie and NJEA leadership: “The rancor between Christie and the NJEA which defined so much of 2010 will repeat itself this year as both do combat on behalf of their agendas. Just as the Governor made it clear last week he intends to “stay the course”, so does the NJEA. There’s little doubt it will turn out to be a collision course.”

The Assembly Education Committee just announced that it will hold a special hearing tomorrow “to discuss issues surrounding the development and authorization of charter schools in New Jersey.” It’s at 1 p.m. at the State House Annex or you can stream it live here. “Invited guests” include reps from Education Law Center, Save Our Schools, NJSBA, NJ Charter Schools Association, and others.

One of NJ’s 23 newly-approved charters schools is Forest Hill Charter School in Newark, which will enroll 50 children with autism in September. The founder is Michele Adubato, daughter of Steve, Democratic party macher and founder of the highly-regarded Robert Treat Academy.

The Star-Ledger looks at the process reviewers used to approve (or not) the new authorized charter schools.

NJ Spotlight co-sponsored a conference on teacher evaluation and value-added models at ETS this week. Here’s the Press of Atlantic City’s take on the proceedings.

The New York Times reports on new research that shows that “taking a test is not just a passive mechanism for assessing how much people know.. It actually helps people learn, and it works better than a number of other studying techniques.”

Clifford Janey, Newark’s superintendent, is leaving next month and Toms River is replacing Superintendent Michael Ritacco, recently arrested on bribery charges, with Frank Roselli.

Higher Education Dept.: Peter Thiel, interviewed in the National Review, says that education is in a “bubble” – much like the recent housing market and last decade’s tech stocks.

It’s basically extremely overpriced. People are not getting their money’s worth, objectively, when you do the math. And at the same time it is something that is incredibly intensively believed; there’s this sort of psycho-social component to people taking on these enormous debts when they go to college simply because that’s what everybody’s doing.

And USA Today reports that “Nearly half of the nation’s undergraduates show almost no gains in learning in their first two years of college, in large part because colleges don’t make academics a priority, a new report shows.”