In what has become an all too familiar pattern New Jersey Education Commissioner Chris Cerf is stepping down to become CEO of Amplify Insight, a part of the News Corp. owned education firm operated by former New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein. If you’re keeping score: Privatization=Big$FatCats-2 (Klein & Cerf); Number of NY/NJ Public Education School Children Royally Screwed-Millions
This recent “coming home” announcement (Cerf previously served as a deputy under Klein) immediately raises a few, delicate questions:
In dollars and cents how much business has New Jersey conducted, with any Rupert Murdoch entity, during Mr. Cerf’s tenure?
Did he personally benefit as a result of his relationship with Klein? How about Governor Christie?
What incentives will be included in his new contract that will pay based on decisions made in New Jersey?
Have achievement outcomes for Black males been better or worse under his leadership? How or why not?
This trend strikes me as the equivalent to a college athletic coach leaving his job for the pros, knowing the institution is about to be penalized or sanctioned for misdeeds under their watch [Remember Super Bowl Champion Pete Carroll & The University of Southern California]. It may not be illegal but all indications point to, at the very least, suspect timing.
New Jersey has been in the eye of a storm for quite a while now. A scandal with the George Washington Bridge and Port Authority has made for interesting revelations on the way politics have been conducted under the present Governor.
I hear ex-Newark Mayor Sharpe James, who not so privately used his office to sustain an extravagant lifestyle with a girlfriend and is completing an eighteen month sentence, has written his memoirs as a political prisoner.
Now Sharpe, POLITICAL PRISONER…Really?!?
During the 1964 Democratic Convention held in Atlantic City voting and civil rights legend Fannie Lou Hamer led a Mississippi delegation that refused to accept that states racist policies. In a speech she asked the simplest question which resonates louder throughout the world today:
“Is this America?”
“Signed…An Educated Brother!”
aneducatedbrother 