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Gov-elect Christie names Bret Schundler as education commissioner

Any thoughts the NJEA had of continuing business as usual under Governor Chris Christie went out the window today. Mr. Christie announced that he will nominate former Republican gubernatorial candidate Bret Schundler to lead the department of education.

Mr. Schundler is a staunch proponent of school choice and school vouchers, teacher merit pay, and charter schools. He's also advocated drastic revisions to teacher tenure in order to make it easier for districts to fire or demote ineffective or incompetent teachers. The governor-elect lauded Mr. Schundler as a passionate champion of education.

"We agree on the type of significant reform that needs to happen in our educational system here in New Jersey," he said. "I want a strong, reasonable, bold leader, who's going to help me implement those policies."

Even more impressively, Mr. Schundler has the backing of the Reverend Reginald Jackson, the powerful Chairman of the Black Ministers Council, and a school choice advocate.

"It looks good in terms of reforming public schools and implementing school choice," Jackson said said. "And I don't think you can have one without the other." Jackson said the NJEA needs to "wake up to the fact" that poor and urban families want more school choice.

But alas, as the death of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program has demonstrated, the teachers unions want nothing to do with school choice. Their lust for power has yanked 3,000 poor and minority children in our nation's capital out of private schools and consigned them to the failing public school system from which their parents thought they had escaped.

The NJEA is no better. They fight every charter school application tooth and nail, and the mere mention of vouchers gives them hives. I imagine that hearing the name "Bret Schundler" sends a chill up their spines.

Good.

There are tens of thousands of kids trapped in our failing urban schools. For far too long our government has done the bidding of the teachers unions, or worse, followed the goo-goos at the Education Law Center down the rathole of throwing money at every problem. Bret Schundler won't accept the status quo. More money isn't the answer; spending our money more wisely is the answer. It's time to wrest control of our schools away from the NJEA and give it back to the parents; it's time for our schools to serve the children and not the union hacks.

Chris Christie has made a firm committment to the future of New Jersey's children by selecting Bret Schundler as education commissioner. Godspeed Mr. Schundler, and don't let the turkeys get you down.

Posted at 21:31 by Chris Wysocki   [/nj_politics]   Comments | Archived | Perm Link |
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