Dive Brief:
- About 40 Newark parents and students followed Cami Anderson, the Newark Schools superintendent, from New Jersey to DC to protest a speech she was giving on school reform at the American Enterprise Institute.
- In light of the tense environment, a staffer announced that Anderson would give her speech two floors below the designated area without an audience.
- Anderson has become a controversial figure as leader of the the One Newark Public School Plan, which rolled out this September. The plan, which calls for an overhaul of the city's schools and the erasure of district boundaries, has meant relocation and privatization for some of the traditional public schools in Newark.
Dive Insight:
Anderson and One Newark have received criticism from both sides of the school reform debate, with opponents disliking the plan's reorganization of the city's schools and advocates struggling to get behind Anderson, who is being pegged as an ineffective leader. In April, the Newark clergy penned a letter asking Gov. Chris Christie to place a moratorium on the One Newark plan. The bipartisan clergy explained in the letter that they were writing Christie because they were "concerned about the public anger" they saw "growing in the community." The current plan creates both instability and controversy, they wrote.
Some of the biggest issues with the plan have been high teacher turnover rate and low morale of families and other school stakeholders.
But beyond the minutia of the plan, there are some that fear it doesn't address the bigger issues like race and inequality. In May, on the eve the 60th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, The New Yorker released an article by Dale Russakoff that analyzed the inequalities persisting in Newark's education system despite reform efforts and big-name funders like Mark Zuckerberg. According to Russakoff, the reform movement in Newark is missing community engagement and the current top-down approach lacks "an understanding of the contours of poverty and racism in America."