NJ Education: What's Hot, What to Watch

It’s not called "silly season" for nothing, since the next two months leading up to the New Jersey’s legislative elections will surely be more about rhetoric than substance when it comes to public policy.

Education will be no exception, with key votes on topics like tenure reform and charter schools likely to wait until at least Nov. 9, the day after the election.

But with stakeholders and policy-makers returning from their summer breaks, and schools open across the state, that’s not to say there won't be plenty of drama centered on education in the next few months.

Here are a few places to keep an eye on:

NJEA vs. B4K

Politics has a big place in policy, of course, and the legislative election and some developing themes will provide interesting tensions that could carry over into the new year and higher-profile elections to come.

A big one will not be so much about the politicians but their backers.

The New Jersey Education Association (NJEA), the state’s dominant teachers union, has made it clear that it does not suffer gladly what it sees as traitors to its cause and members, and it will make its voice and electoral machine well-heard in the coming months with all 120 legislative seats on the ballot.

This summer, it proudly announced that it supported no candidate, Democrat or Republican, who backed this spring’s pension and healthcare reform, and that left a lot of powerful and usual names off the union’s endorsement list.

How much that matters this year is arguable, with just a half-dozen or so districts up for grabs, but the NJEA has no qualms about flexing its muscle and staking out its position when elections carry bigger stakes, namely the governor’s seat in 2013.

There are some new players on the other side that want to stake their claims as well. Most notable is a group called Better Education for Kids, or B4K, that is being funded by two millionaire financiers and led by prominent school choice advocates.

The group is actually two entities, one a political action committee (PAC) that will be a direct player in the election and the other its advocacy arm that will take the issues to the airwaves.

Able to keep its donors anonymous although pledging to make the biggest ones public, the advocacy group is readying for a large-scale campaign -- especially about teacher accountability and tenure reform that is now being proposed by Gov. Chris Christie.

“Philosophically, there are two ways to approach education reform,” said Derrell Bradford, director of the B4K and former leader of the pro-voucher group, Excellent Education for Everyone.

"One believes that everything is working and only thing we need to do is tinker," he said. "And the other says that in large and small ways, there is a lot more we can do to improve."

Steve Wollmer, communications director for the NJEA and frequent combatant with Bradford, said he expects B4K to be fully engaged in defense of an agenda being otherwise promoted by Christie and his administration.

"They will give Christie all the air cover he needs and take some pressure off him to carry what is a corporate reform movement," Wollmer said. "And that is what this is, corporate-backed reform."

Wollmer played down a direct confrontation between his union and B4K, but didn’t shy away from it, either.

"Everyone wants a storyline, but put it this way, we are not going to let B4K and Chris Christie define us or our members without a discussion," he said.

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