The New York Times marks the midway point of Newark mayor Cory Booker's first term with a supportive editorial. Meanwhile, Booker spent yesterday evening at Metropolitan Baptist Church in Newark to welcome incoming superintendent (and former D.C. schools chief) Clifford Janey.
The well-seasoned Janey (he's 61) sounded the right notes. For instance:
"It makes no sense and is actually harmful to move students along and provide them with a phony diploma," he said to one burst of applause. "We will not only look at the standards but the promotion policies from elementary right through high schools."
That's a highly worthwhile undertaking. As Checker and Liam pointed out in Gadfly a few weeks ago, most states and districts struggle to maintain meaningful academic standards when lots of students can't meet them. Holding back or denying diplomas to 50 percent of your pupils is not very palatable, politically or otherwise, so typically you end up either watering down tests so more kids can pass or simply waiving the exams altogether and accepting a "portfolio of work," or some such empty alternative instead. The result of which, of course, is that graduating or moving on to the next grade in no way signifies that a student has reached a certain level of skill or proficiency.
The problem for Newark, though, is that Janey promised the same thing in D.C., and his plan never blossomed. In 2004, Gadfly reported that the incoming supe was keen on implementing high school graduation exams and "replacing the city's lax academic standards with fine models from Massachusetts or California." He never did either.
Maybe it's not entirely his fault; life as a big-city superintendent is precarious, particularly when one is pushed into the ring without a powerful mayor in his corner--a luxury that Janey's successor, Michelle Rhee, enjoys with Mayor Fenty. But the situation doesn't favor him much more in Newark, where the schools are run from the more-of-the-same state capital instead of by the everything-must-change Booker. One wants to believe Janey will deliver on his promises, but it's hard to imagine he'll be able to follow up a tepid tenure in troubled D.C. with a revelatory reign in shattered Newark.
