On Wednesday at the State Board of Education’s public meeting, Kathy Goldenberg and Andrew Mulvihill were re-elected as President and Vice President. Mulvihill was appointed by Gov. Chris Christie in 2011; he has been one of the more outspoken members of the Board. He kindly agreed to answer these three questions.

What would you do to make the State Board of Education more effective?

I’d halt all the resolutions praising all of the various groups involved in education. I find them a distraction from the mission at hand, for which we are failing miserably: educating our children. You don’t give out awards and heap praise on yourself as you fail your constituents.

Further, this obsession with woke ideology, as well as the indoctrination that comes along with it while we have children who can’t read or write, seems like a completely misguided agenda. We can have these discussions once we can get 80% of our students performing at grade level rather than as low as 10% in some districts.

It’s a matter of priorities. 

Do you consider the DOE effective at overseeing school districts?

Unfortunately the Department of Education has proven itself to be highly ineffective in oversight of school systems, including the ones that are failing students.  Even the state monitoring we supposedly provide to such districts as Asbury Park and Paterson have done nothing to improve those districts. 

Furthermore, the lowering of standards which was recommended by the Department for our high school graduation test and approved by the majority of the State Board— I voted “no”— is, from my perspective, precisely what we shouldn’t be doing to address falling scores. We’ve made that mistake before: low expectations produce low results. Shouldn’t a graduation certificate from a NJ school mean something? 

What should the DOE be doing instead?

The only proven successful strategy I’ve seen in my decade on the board is school choice for failing districts. The incredible success of the vast majority of charter schools should cause the DOE to look for ways to increase their numbers. The solution is at hand. Unfortunately, the Murphy administration has chosen to limit their expansion, though I do want to recognize the recent smart decision to allow for some expansion after five years of denials. 

I know it’s difficult when you have many interests like the NJEA that oppose charter expansion but one really needs to decide who you are serving. To me it’s a no-brainer. I’ll stand with the children above all else every time.