An Optimist in Newark
In 1995 the state took over the school system, in which principalships were being sold and so much of schools' budgets went for the salaries of unionized teachers that some classrooms lacked even chalk.Today, per-pupil spending tops $17,000, which is 75 percent above the national average and a (redundant) refutation of the public education lobby's not disinterested judgment that in primary and secondary education, cognitive outputs correlate with financial inputs. Seventy percent of Newark's 11th-graders flunk the state's math test. Booker says that under the previous mayor's administration, every elected official sent his or her children to private schools.
"I'm the Malcolm X of education -- 'By any means necessary,' " Booker promises. He says Newark should reverse the assumption that in education "time will be a constant, achievement will vary." If children are not succeeding, extend their school day, bring them in on Saturdays, extend the school year.
He also favors school choice, although he tiptoes around the word "vouchers," which inflames the more than 190,000 members of the state's teachers union. He advocates giving tax credits to companies for money contributed for scholarships to private as well as public schools. "Who," he has asked, "can object to a pool of money that will give poor children the same opportunities as middle-class kids?"
Who? Start with those 190,000, yet another mob afflicting Newark.
By George F. Will
Thursday, June 7, 2007; A27
NEWARK -- After the fire? Nothing. Nothing in Newark ever again. -- Philip Roth, "American Pastoral"
Cory Booker, 38, has not read Roth's superb novel, which turns on the race riots that raged for six days and took 24 lives 40 years ago this summer. But Booker is bullish on Newark. Roth is a writer of social realism. Obdurate optimism is part of the job description of mayor of this battered city, which was a plaything of the mob before mobs burned it.
posted by Whitney Tilson at 3:52 PM
<< Home