Christie Releases New Post-No Child Left Behind School Rankings

While things seemed to have gotten off track with Supreme Court nominee hearings, university mergers, budget battles, and tax cut debates, education reform is still a top priority in 2012 for the Christie Administration.

Example?

The NJEA and Democrats attempt to paint Christie as anti-public education, but the fact is that his latest budget spends more on public education than the state ever has before, and the administration’s continuous approval of additional charter schools in high risk areas will be an incredible help to thousands of kids who otherwise would have had no chance simply due to their zip code…

Earlier this year New Jersey received a waiver from the No Child Left Behind rules so that it could exercise some flexibility in its effort to reform the public school system and make some positive changes. New Jersey has some of the best performing schools, which is great, and then some of the very worst in the country. This achievement gap would not be shrunk by simply continuing on the previous course.

Yesterday, the Christie Administration released a list of 370 schools that will now be lumped into one of three categories. The vast majority of our nearly 3,000 schools in New Jersey are not being ranked, as they fall in the middle. However, these 370 will now be grouped in one of three designations

1. Priority Schools (75) – the lowest of the lowest performing
2. Focus Schools (183) – where there is one or few specific deficiencies to be focused on
3. Reward Schools (112) – the best of the best performing

Each designation includes both public and charter schools, all the way through the scale, which should stem the screaming from critics who claim that Christie overly favors the charter schools in the system.

Creating these labels is a solid step forward in identifying where the problems truly are in our system, rather than simply relying on court appointed districts from decades ago. Now specific plans can be drawn up for each group, or even each school, to increase performance. The list is listed as the “April 2012” list, so I hope that it is periodically updated and that the ranking system can demonstrate fluidity. Bringing the priority list as close to zero should be a priority in itself.

If you would like to see where your school district fell on the list (if it is ranked in these categories at all) I have attached a PDF document here.

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