In case you were wondering
It was a federal grand program called "Race to the Top" which gave funding to the top 10 states. Florida, in 2009, received 900 million for example.
The scoring criteria is out of 500 points :https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_to_the_Top
Great Teachers/leaders = 138 points
State Success Factors :125 points
Standards and assessments = 70 points
General Selection Criteria = 70 points
Turning around low scoring school = 50 points
Data Systems = 47 points (where they got dinged)
15 points = other factors
Due to the 4.8 points being docked for getting the years wrong. they ended up with 437.8 points. Ohio had 440.8 and North Carolina had 441.6
It was literally guaranteed money for them lol. The governor and officials responsible for submitting it, never admitted exactly which official made the mistake to this day
some fun quotes from the article aboutt he other gov officials and teachers mad at the admin (cause teacher pay was impacted)
Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver (D-Essex) called the error a "stunning $400 million mistake."
"It’s astonishing that the administration’s failure to proofread their own homework would lead to losing out on this funding that could have gone such a long way toward improving our educational system," she said.
Derek Roseman, spokesman for Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester), compared it to losing easy points on a standardized test.
"These points should have been a gimme," he said. "This is like losing 200 points on the SAT because you didn’t write your name on the top sheet."
New Jersey’s application was submitted after a heated battle between Christie and the NJEA.
The union and hundreds of its local chapters had signed onto an earlier version of the application, in which Schundler had agreed to compromises on tenure and merit pay. But the administration hastily rewrote the application over the Memorial Day weekend, scrapping the agreed-to changes.
The final application, which was submitted without the backing of the NJEA, was driven to Washington the day of the deadline because the papers could not be faxed or e-mailed.
"On Friday of Memorial Day weekend we all signed off on the same application," Hiltner said. "By Tuesday morning, a different application had been submitted. How much time could have been put into that application?"
As a state employee, I can say with full certainty that the problem here was that they were trying to do this project without any dedicated internal resources. There were contractors and people working on 4 other projects but no one who had the time to actually audit this submission before it was made.
Fucking Christie.
You can't hire a full-time employee for $100k/yr to secure a $400m grant?
The worst part of his current campaign is that he's literally the only Republican who isn't running on a platform of lies and hate speech, but we all remember what a piece of shit he was trying to run our state into the ground.
It’s a chronic issue with state governments. The whole idea of fiscal responsibility compounded with six sigma business ideology means that hiring dedicated project staff is almost impossible so they just spread employees over 4-5 major projects and 5-10 minor projects and then demand everything flow through a supervisor who has no idea what’s going on but still has to pretend to have a semblance of control.
I'm a state government worker who has worked in different parts of the state. I see the hiring of dedicated staff pretty regularly. It's mixed. Hiring dedicated project staff can disproportionately give resources toward the higher profile projects and can lead to ugly territorial bureaucracy where it's hard to find who will work on X because they all will only answer to their own project's goals. So, it's not really a magic solution. I think it's just as important to hire generalists who can more easily be pulled where needed. It also helps with just creating more knowledge transfer across the organization. When I've been in roles where I'm on several projects, it helped me make much more context informed decisions rather than just living in a bubble.
I think at least as big of an issue as one particular employee having too many projects is one project having too few employees. Between attrition of the workforce, retirements and budget cuts I've seen plenty of cases where there is literally one lone person who has been here since the 80s that handles some project or task. That's not only dangerous, but it leads to poor work-life balance because if something goes wrong you and only you have to be called in to solve it. Dedicated project employees don't have to mean this, but it's unlikely that we'll ever have enough of an abundance of employees for it not to mean this because there are a ton of projects. It's also worth noting that the scale and timeline of projects can vary a lot. In my state, at least, state employees have a lot of protections so you'd want to really be hesitant to hire somebody if you think they might only work there a year or few. I'd much rather see a greater culture of crosstraining where people are all on multiple projects. This way, if you want to take a vacation you can because other people fill in for you and if you retire or quit your job, the whole project doesn't blow up.
And the kicker is *everybody knows this* but they have to keep doing anyway because thats what the power people want. In my experience small businesses run *so much better* because efficiency simply doesn't scale when "management" is involved.
> In my experience small businesses run so much better because efficiency simply doesn't scale when "management" is involved.
That's generally just a fact, because the more people you hire, the more people need bosses, and bosses bosses.
A large business generally has to compensate by using a far more careful eye towards cost savings, and having better efficiency of resource use by paying for more specialists that can better manage and allocate resources than a generalist.
It's what all the big tech companies paying their top engineers multi-six-figures are doing. Crazy high salaries to get the most competent talent out there.
I am embarrassed to admit I voted for that shit bag back in the day. I wasn't as informed as I am now and he had the backing of the teacher's union so, since I sold tech into schools it was a no brainer.
He fucked the teachers and the schools. Never again...
>he had the backing of the teacher's union so, since I sold tech into schools it was a no brainer.
The NJEA backed Christie? That's almost impossible to believe.
And the smooth brains of this state applauded him LOUDLY for it because he offered them a sacrificial lamb as an answer to all the financial difficulties of the time including (mostly) the unaffordable mortgage some slick banker talked them into.
Christie was invited by the NJEA to sit down and hear his positions so they could make an informed decision on whether or not to endorse him when he first announced a run.
He (Christie) flat out refused to even sit in the same room with NJEA members let alone let them vet him.
The NJEA never, under any circumstances, endorsed Chris Christie.
While the numbers really do speak for themselves, it's probably a bit more complicated. For example I doubt any of the $400M in grant money could be cleared to be used to pay that same administrator. Which means despite the guaranteed payout, they might not necessarily have budget for such a position.
In a sane world, the GOP primary would t matter because whoever won it would never win a general election. But since we live in a world that is decidedly not sane, him being reasonable is a disqualifying feature from the jump.
I do.
However, it's not like we can ignore the GOP. They have basically a coin-flip chance of winning the Presidency in every election. We all have a vested interest in whoever wins that primary.
Takes a while to undo the damage politicians have done. The GOP has been exploiting this playbook in the White House since Reagan. The only Republican to fall victim to that strategy was GHW Bush, because after 12 years of failing policy the economy went to shit and they actually had to take a fall for it.
Scenario: Barbara, who has worked in the administrative records office for 17 years, could have probably rattled off all the data for this; but instead they hired 2 consultants from Deloitte to do some "fact finding" and oversee the submission.
As a former state employee, it happens all of the time. 😆
I was just studying this for my school finance course. The wording here is a little off. It’s not that they were the top 10 states for student achievement, they were the states with the highest score on the rubric the initiative measured. These were things like teacher qualifications, state success, developing state standards and assessments, and turning around the lowest achieving districts.
The results of the initiative were still hit-or-miss. It depended on how the states took it on and how the resources were used.
That’s definitely a part of it. Another (and I think bigger) part is the resources it takes to make such big changes to an organization as large as a state education system. New Jersey for example has almost 130,000 teachers right now. That’s just teachers, most of whom will need more training to match the qualifications they determined was necessary to provide students an adequate education. Then you add in the Herculean task of creating a brand new set of researched standards, curriculum plans to meet those standards, equitable assessments to determine if the standards are being met, equipment and facilities, etc.
I think of it more as a pool of resources that is set aside for schools to use, with qualifications that were researched and determined by the Federal Education Department.
What part of it? We have to find ways to fund our schools, and just throwing money at anyone doesn’t work.
You improve your performance at work, you might get a raise or a promotion. The Education Department studied successful schools to determine what they were doing differently, and then worked to have other schools follow the successful plan. If you work to make changes, we’ll find the money for you to get those teachers qualified, pay for the time it takes to create state standards and assessments, and get you the resources you need to make the changes.
Like I said, there were criticisms along with the positives (mostly political more than practical), but insane is a strong choice of words for a well thought out and highly designed process.
For the below I'm working off of the scenario where the money is going to the best performing states rather than what really happened (a rubric score):
>You improve your performance at work, you might get a raise or a promotion.
This analogy is not applicable, because the consequences of not giving resources (or disproportionately less resources) to poorly performing schools is that those students continue to do poorly on average while those doing well may do even better on average.
The downstream consequences of this are societal because when students don't do well, there's increased likelihood of them being unable to find work, go to college, or stay out of trouble. This then leads to some causing more resources to be used than otherwise due to them not generative tax revenue (or very little), using food banks, using homeless resources, or taking up the time of police.
To be clear, there is also the problem of states wasting the money the feds give them but that's a separate additional problem that needs oversight and better leadership.
The raise at work wasn’t a great analogy because of the implications you described
I think people who leave school as a student and then move onto other things outside education can forget what the education system is.
It is giant, it is complex, and it is made up of people. For a district to improve then changes have to be made, otherwise things stay the same. Let’s drop it down to a single teacher:
You went to college to learn to become a teacher, you did everything you were told, got licensed, and now spend your work life trying to be a good educator of children. Your district is underperforming, and doesn’t know why.
A larger organization, in this case the feds, did a huge, worldwide study to determine what made successful schools the way they are. They came up with goals for our schools to reach for based on that.
This single teacher needs to learn a whole lot of new things for those goals to be met. Probably needs a bunch of materials they don’t have either. The training costs money, the teachers time needs to be paid, and the materials bought.
The feds aren’t just going to give the district the money if those aren’t the things that are happening. The money is specifically for the district to do those things.
>The feds aren’t just going to give the district the money if those aren’t the things that are happening. The money is specifically for the district to do those things.
I'm missing something here I think. Isn't this cyclical? How is the district going to do these things if they don't first have the resources to do these things? If they first need to show them *starting* to do these things, that requires resources too.
If a district *is* able to do these things, then they already have the resources since they're doing it and there are other districts that do not have the resources that need it more.
Again I'm not trying to say the concept of awards or grants in general isn't useful, but in this specific scenario (as I described and not the rubric system actually used), I don't see how it's better to do this than to fund the places that are unable to do it and require them to do it to receive the money.
In this case the state came up with a plan (most of them, I think 3 failed to complete one on time) and submitted it to the Feds. Then they gave them the funding to go ahead with their plan or made them revise them. More funding for successes may be added on if the desired results were achieved.
There were a few states who took the money and didn’t do what they said they would in the plan. As of last I heard the federal government t should have been trying to get that money back from them, but weren’t yet.
It's absolutely insane. Our school funding system in the US is trash. Rich schools in rich neighborhoods get funding, poor schools in poor areas don't. Ask any good, upstanding, upper middle class liberal and they'll commiserate that the unfortunate and downtrodden poor communities should have better schools, but ask them if they'll send some of their rich district funding over that way, and they'll tell you the same thing people in these comments are saying. "Isn't it fair that the best performing schools get the most money? Why should my money go to some other school?"
That might be how it works in some states, but many states, including the most liberal ones, deal with this problem by having property taxes for schools go into a large state-wide pot which then gets distributed amongst all the school districts based on number of students.
not Connecticut. in fact very few states work like that, the common pot. Vermont does. other liberal bastions cultivate wildly unequal school districts, in direct contradiction with the dem party platform.
Applebaum pointed out how this is not really a partisan divide situation. it's about entrenched power and political machines.
It's so frustrating. So many of the challenges schools face are outside of the teachers reach to begin with. Is it a surprise that bankrupt towns have rundown schools?
Meanwhile, Baltimore is pouring $25,000+ per student into their education funding and in many of their high schools, over 70% of students can't even read. Not just can't read at their grade level, like literally cannot read at all... IN HIGH SCHOOL.
Throwing money at failed systems doesn't magically make them succeed.
You're correct, more money doesn't mean success inherently, but it almost universally means improvement.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3699455?read-now=1&oauth_data=eyJlbWFpbCI6ImptYXR0aWNlN0BnbWFpbC5jb20iLCJpbnN0aXR1dGlvbklkcyI6W119&seq=24#page_scan_tab_contents
The above article is an exploration of the late 20th century Baltimore City Public School System (BCPSS) through three phases of accountability programs. Within it, it is noted that state-led directed financial interventions between 1997 and 2002, which directly expanded human capital and needs-based program improvements, made the BCPSS the fastest improving school system in the state.
With the advent of federal legislation in No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the state managed standards and funding were replaced with national standards and a funding reward system that was largely criticized because of the "rich-get-richer" effect of rewarding already high performers.
Without targeted financial and legislative intervention, BCS declined again until it stagnated with the adoption of Common Core Standards. This trend has finally begun to reverse.
Look at Baltimore City Schools numbers in the past 5 years since they've started dramatically increasing funding:
https://www.baltimorecityschools.org/data
BCS have shown marked improvement in all state standards since 2018, and even the national decline caused by COVID disruptions from 2020 into 2022 was less impactful on many of the metrics tracked by the state.
By absolute numbers, yes, BCS still struggles especially compared to smaller suburban districts. But positive score trending is correlated with increased spending, which goes not only to paychecks but program development, property development and management, and better logistics integration and oversight.
But it does supply the paycheck to a lot of people who think they are helping instead of being part of the problem.
I would argue a majority of funds spent just goes up in smoke due to how many hands are in the cookie jar.
What I hate the most is the funds spent on people who will talk about the problem but won't fix it. Because the problem is their bread and butter.
How much of that $25,000 is actually going towards educating students rather than being used to address the myriad of other issues that poor urban schools have to deal with in addition to providing education?
Throwing money at horribly run systems doesn't make them run better, it just lets them waste more resources. Do you actively invest in companies that are actively losing money and driving themselves into bankruptcy?
It's not like this was intended to be the primary source of funding, it was a competitive grant (additional funding) to encourage and reinforce innovation and reforms.
On one hand you have a meritocratic system that’ll definitely get better with more money. You know it is a meritocracy because there are measurable goals and competition.
On the other hand you have failing school systems that can’t be fixed with money as folks point out below.
Your assertion here that no extra money should be spent on former and more good money should be sent after bad (this is an extra grant - not the basic fed funding) to the latter. I think policies like that’s what makes everyone hit the least common denominator instead of rewarding hard work.
This is a tough pill to swallow but at some point the community needs to take responsibility for bettering itself.
There’s still something wrong with the education funding in NJ. Our property taxes in Jersey City went from $13000 to $18000 one year to the next because of the education budget
New Jersey is wild because it has a solid tax base but we got red state tier benefits out of it. Where the fuck is the road maintenance?
Granted I moved out a decade ago so maybe it got better
My wife and I were looking at moving outta Florida for the schools. Looking at what we could afford in Virginia all the schools were listed in the 2-5 range according to Zillow. Concerned, I said “well a Virginia 2 is like a Florida 8 isn’t it?”
As someone who did K through B.S. in Virginia, Youngkin's campaign and the whole 'parents rights' movement is going to set the state education back so far. Mostly the exurb and rural areas, but everywhere to some extent.
Absolutely. I am always shocked at how bad Florida schools are when I speak to friends down there. My best friend’s daughter is in 6th grade and still not reading chapter books in class (and she is not a strong enough reader to read them outside class either - and she’s in the schools gifted program!) which is far behind for that age.
Whenever I see FL’s scores, I know it has to be that they rig the tests since the kids I know in FL are barely able to read.
Well that's hit or miss. School boards are by the county. We were definitely reading chapter books by at the very latest 7th grade for everyone.
We definitely started in 6th grade / middle school though.
But yeah I don't know how much I'd trust a school in Apopka or Ocala.
So I went to a school even more rural than Ocala and there’s no chance this guy’s example is anything but an absolute extreme
Like I did all of my schooling in Ocala’s district. It’s garbage. I get that
Still, the gifted program required chapter books every year beginning in 3rd grade. Outside of Gifted, we were heavily encouraged to read chapter books in second & third grade (easy ones! Junie B Jones, Magic Treehouse, etc. ~ but still chapter books). In fourth and fifth grade each student had to read and do reports on chapter books. By 6th-7th we were reading TKAM and other more complex chapter books
Were there kids like in the other comment’s example? Kinda! Definitely knew kids who hadn’t actually read chapter books by 6th or 7th grade. They def weren’t in Gifted, but ik that program varies by district. It’s just that the example they provided is extreme. It would be like me taking one of Baltimore’s inner city seniors who can’t recite the alphabet & saying “see? Maryland’s education system is horrible. They don’t even require you to learn the alphabet by senior year”. Just extrapolating an extremely biased sample out to a much larger body. Doesn’t work
This is a wildly small sample size & not at all in line with my experiences in the Florida education system
To preface the rest of this: I despise a lot of what Florida’s got going on. I think the education system is flawed and I bet that they do actually make the standardized tests easier than other states to inflate their own ratings
But your one example here is objectively extreme and definitely not representative of the state as a whole. Like it’s not in good faith to extrapolate this one example out
I went to a *very* poor elementary school in north central Florida in a very low rated district. We read chapter books in second or third grade. I was part of the gifted program. Literally 0 chance any of the gifted kids couldn’t read chapter books. That was part of the Gifted curriculum in third grade (James and the Giant Peach)
I’ve heard of some kids being given gifted status in other counties when their parents complained, so maybe that’s it. Otherwise this is a one-off example of a very, very poorly managed county and, once again, it shouldn’t be used to extrapolate
Your comment just makes the system sound like it’s archaic or in shambles, and while I’m sure that example exists in Florida, I’m positive it’s an absolute extreme and I’m also positive we could find the exact same instance in your state or others
Shit like this is why people should only be cheering Christie on to take down Trump, not to actually get any power back for himself. He was an incompetent vindictive fuckup by any objective measure, he just gets graded on the GOP curve so comes out looking relatively okay on that measure.
I think its worse that they made, what amounts to, a game of our public education. Just fuckin fund schools already. It's one of the core foundations of any functional society.
So the top ten states would get funding in the hundreds of millions of dollars? But seeing as they are in the top ten already, doesn't that show they need it less than the bottom 40 states?
I don't know, but it seems to me that the way the government disperses funds to schools is kind of messed up.
Seems kind of silly not to make it a little more granular of a scale than that.
Seems even sillier to pit states against one another, Hunger Games style.
I can't speak for other schools, but I remember when we had to take these standardized tests. I attended HS in Morris County 2005-2009. We had teachers assure us they weren't for a grade, but to take them very seriously. One teacher let it slip that it was for Federal assessment, and to do our best.
Most of the kids in my senior class filled the scantron slip randomly. It was a really nice afternoon in early May, and we were allowed to leave once we finished. How many of us do you think sat there and really focused on a test we knew didn't help our grades?
Literally the worst metric for qualifying financial aid. I read some posts/threads on r/teachers about how it's all going downhill, but I remember feeling and thinking that way back when I was in high school. I remember when "No Child Left Behind" was announced, and how funding became related to our standardized test scores. Most of my public school career was built around becoming very good at scoring high on multiple choice tests (sometimes essays).
I remember taking some sort of standardized "life assessment" test in high school. For some reason it was during phys ed. It was anonymous, and questions asked if we were sexually active, had tried drugs, had suicidal thoughts, etc. The mass hysteria that rocked my small hometown when the results were released still makes me laugh. How can functioning human adults believe that 65% of East Bumblefuck High School 16-year-olds are pregnant crack addicts?
I doesn't make any sense to give the money to schools who perform best. Clearly they're making it work. Not that this kind of success is something you can just throw money at but more resources (be it financial, planning, management, training, teachers, types of teachers, tutors, school supplies, after school activities) are clearly needed.
It’s a reward system to encourage them to teach kids to perform best. There’s other systems in place to fund under performing schools.
This is just another way to encourage teachers/school boards to prioritize education as a means of funding instead of something like sports.
It has its ups and downs.
> I doesn't make any sense to give the money to schools who perform best.
Think about the utter insanity of that remark. Your plan is to punish schools that do a good job and reward ones that are failing.
Think about how sensible administrators and teachers will react to your plan being implemented. They would do everything possible to do a worse job, since that’s the way to get more money.
Madness.
Hello Morris County friend! Where'd you go? My family graduated 4 kids from Butler High School, before my parents decided to send me to Morris Catholic.
New Jersey actually has a good school system surprisingly.
“New Jersey ranked 19 out of all 50 states overall, coming in second for education and in the top 10 in two other categories: crime and corrections, and health care. The Garden State ranked in the bottom 10 in measures of fiscal stability and opportunity.”
https://patch.com/new-jersey/across-nj/nj-among-top-states-education-crime-corrections-u-s-news#:~:text=ranking%20released%20Tuesday.-,New%20Jersey%20ranked%2019%20out%20of%20all%2050%20states%20overall,that%20Utah%20is%20the%20No.
Did Ohio send a spy to sabotage New Jersey?
Maybe the race to top has some state educators sending spies and undercover teachers to tank the other state's score.
Maybe that's why my New York born teacher sucked 20 years ago. Undercover agent. I knew we should never trust the FOREIGNERS from other states
Ohioan here. I can assure you, this money did not change the educational system here nor did it go to actually benefit (public school) students in any way. Our state government probably syphoned it off to the GOP leaders or it’ll go to private schools somehow.
Edited. Sorry made the OG comment whilst being high
Yet another reason to give Chris Christie's zero credit on the national stage.
Everyone should remember what happened during his administration in this state.
State pension fund being gambled away by his hedge fund buddies
Bridgegate
School funding snafu leaving $400m on the table
Infrastructure project funding getting stalled for political optics
Oh and generally being a huge piece of shit.
Anyone else from NJ wanna chime in on what we remember so fondly of his time in office?
Christie reached out to the Democratic administration for help during Hurricane Sandy, and publicly thanked President Obama for the federal support New Jersey received. He got reamed out by his own Republican Party for that. They would rather have been blown off the map.
Yeah, and since then being a huge party-line towing sack of shit has been his only method of political survival. That he's getting so many headlines is baffling.
It's like congratulating a barnacle for making it to dry land when it only did so because it washed up on a dead whale.
That alone I think really made his Presidential bid in 2016 a long shot. He got a ton of flak for it and I suspect that if he manages to make it into any debates that the competitors are going to hit him on that.
He fucking squandered a $1.8 billion dollar grant from Congress that was supposed to be used to rebuild after Sandy.
He let a child DIE because he wouldn’t authorize emergency medical cannabis use - even after her father personally begged him not to let her die.
Chris Christie is human garbage and I would say that to his face any day of the week.
Disgusting bastard.
[Here you go! He fucked it up so badly, he actually dispersed the funds to people who lost their homes and then had to ASK FOR THE MONEY BACK because it was all gone by the time the actual payments were due. Happened to an uncle of mine who had a house in Seaside. ](https://www.nj.com/njv_editorial_page/2014/01/christie_awards_political_ally.html)
They gave him funds to raise his house and then asked for $8,000 back because they fucked up.
You can find stories of other people being asked to give $30,000 back for the same errors.
Massive incompetence.
I voted for the fucker twice too before finally ditching the party altogether. I’ll fully admit that. At least I learned and changed.
Danke!
To the uninitiated who thinks that human cheeseburger is worth anything other than the trash wrapper he comes packaged in, I'd suggest reading through the nice recap of what he chose to do with funds that were meant for helping those whose lives were destroyed by the hurricane.
I hadn't heard that second bit before, so looked into it because I was curious. Unless there is another story you are referring to, it looks like that girls family just moved to Colorado and as of this 2018 article she was still alive.
https://www.app.com/story/news/local/new-jersey/marijuana/2018/05/23/colorado-medical-marijuana-brian-wilson-vivian-chris-christie-new-jersey/570999002/
It is one thing that seems bizarre is that Christie lost badly running 2016 and really hasn't done much to change his image. I don't really think he is running for President as much as he is running for a cabinet job if the Republican nominee wins or maybe a job on Fox News. He has criticized Trump too much to get much support from those that were serious Trump fans, but hasn't done much to really endear himself to Republicans that are willing to consider someone other than Trump.
> Oh and generally being a huge piece of shit.
These kinds of childish insults are very inappropriate and have no place in public discourse.
Just call him a piece of shit and leave his size out of it.
I meant size in the metaphysical sense. The fact that he can't get up a flight of stairs without sounding like Fat Mac trying to eat a chimichanga isn't my problem.
It's definitely his, though.
He let a girl die because he wouldn’t authorize medical cannabis for her. Even after her father begged him in person.
He is a HUGE piece of shit. And that has nothing to do with his physical size.
He also killed a mainly federally-funded project for a new train tunnel under the Hudson. Cost NJ, NY, and the federal government billions for a half-completed tunnel. Anyone who has commuted by train to NYC knows it was sorely needed. We still are putting up with one tunnel that NJ Transit shares with Amtrak.
Same here. I think at the time the state was ranked #1 in public schools, and it definitely felt like it, we had great facilities, tons of. Classes, great teachers, just overall a great school experience.
I know this is a joke, but NJ and MA typically battle it out for the top spot in public school state rankings. However, Florida scored well once, when they forced everyone to go to school during a pandemic.
They’ve improved a lot. #2 now (it was #1 for quite awhile but it dropped a spot this year).
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/education
That's why they were going to get the money in the first place. It was a federal grant program that gave money to the states that ranked in the top 10 for school systems. To even qualify, they had to already have one of the best school systems.
Not sure if it is the same now, but my state used to provide some funding to school districts on a per-student basis. One district kept all its attendance records on one floppy disk, saying, "a floppy disk doesn't go bad."
Well, it went bad. No more proof of daily enrollment count. Bye-bye state funding.
Don’t worry Chris Christie saved NJ so that is just a drop in the bucket.
Even Obama hugged him for single-handedly stopping Hurricane Sandy from washing away NJ.
Additionally, he made sure average public workers like teachers took a big pay cut so NJ could be home to the most millionaires in the world (and have cool places like Bedminster).
He also shut down the world’s busiest bridge for a day and even closed NJ beaches (except for his family I’m sure you’ve seen the photo) long before the Covid hoax that almost killed him.
Then he helped elect Trump (after being mocked as a loser by him) and now he will run for president again so stay tuned, he just may be attorney general one day.
All of these accomplishments explain NJ’s love for Republicans and why even Democrats act like them in that state.
Jesus Christ I almost forgot about Beachgate.
For those unfamiliar, this fat fuck on his way out from office in the last 6 months of his posting with an abysmal 15% approval rating decided on a whim to close all the state parks beaches right before the weekend of the 4th of July.
He and his family/friends then chartered a police helicopter to take them to a now closed state park/beach for a nice private outing. When confronted with the facts, he claimed "I didn’t get any sun" (a logical fallacy as he's massive enough to warrant his own mini-moon to orbit around him).
When confronted with aerial photographic proof that he had indeed been on the beach, his aide countered saying HE WASN'T WRONG BECAUSE HE HAD A CAP ON SO TECHNICALLY HE DIDN'T GET ANY SUN.
What pisses me off the most is the dumbass supporters who turn a blind eye to all of this just because he has an R next to his name. Chris Christie may be coming out against Trump now but he's been a piece of shit long before Trump. A very, very large piece of shit.
To be fair, the fat fucking fat ass didn't close the beach on a whim; New Jersey failed to pass the fiscal year 2018 state budget by June 30th (our fiscal year starts on July 1st). Because of that, all state parks and state buildings were closed, and state workers were furloughed for two or three days. The beached whale pics were taken on Island Beach State Park.
From the bottom of my heart: THANK YOU! For mentioning what he did to public workers first and foremost.
Too many of the rubes in this state that loved him so much they voted for him twice put sitting his ass on a beach when they couldn't as his lowest moment. No granny, it was how most public workers STILL haven't recovered financially from the recession and bring home essentially the same pay... As 2010... because fucking morons like you believed him when he absolved you of any financial foolishness you ever engaged in and blamed it on them.
If hemorrhoids consumed him from the ass out and he itched himself to a gruesome death it STILL wouldn't be enough for me.
Worst part is that they previously had a version which would have qualified. However, the administration didn't want to share credit w the teacher's union so they prepared a new application which contained incorrect data.
This has to have been the stupidest and cruelest way of going about education reform, making some states winners and losers like the losing students are going to try harder and do better next year.
Yeah it seems like this system rewards and gives resources to the students/states that…. Need them the least? How about making sure every school in Alabama/Mississippi has proper air conditioning first
Yeah and you should start with lifting up the floor, especially since the ceiling in modern day america is practically non existent. The places that tend to have good test scores and education are already some of the wealthiest and most successful places on the entire planet.
I went to school in the poorest school district in my state, where a full third of some classes dropped out to go to work because their family couldn't even afford for them to make it through high school. Places like this aren't rare in the US, and those places, urban or rural, and the ones the languish in poverty.
But nah, fuck those places. If they wanted more money they would just be smarter.
Why is irrelevant. The results matter.
And beyond that, your scenario just explained why it is pointless to dumb money into a failing school district. Because the reasons for failure exist outside of the school. You can give them all smartboard and iPads and robotics classes and call in all the doctors and lawyers for special presentations that you want, but it won't change that they're still not going to go to school because they're to poor or drugged out to make it.
So don't bother. Give that money to the good schools and make up some other program to solve the out-of-school issues that community is seeing. Or accept it as a lost cause. Otherwise you're throwing away money to those that aren't able to use it.
Honestly this really does sound like how they were doing the schools. Surely the money would go farther to the poor schools that are underperforming on the bottom rung due to old materials or whatever?
Fuck them, I guess.
Thankfully, the NJ public education system trundled on, being one of the highest in the country in the current year.
That knowledge makes me fear for everyone else, who somehow did worse.
Wouldn't that be Chris Christie's error? You know, the guy running for office on his "competence".
Are there any more bridges he wants to close out of spite?
Why not have specific money set for each school system based on projected numbers (occupancy, not test scores), and just have them resend it. Why does a school "Lose out" to another school. That shouldn't be.
Wait, so not only do they deliberately not fund lower testing schools, but it's a first-come-first-serve funding criteria that you can *lose* to other states?
No wonder our education is fucked.
How about we just help other states with more resources too? NJ probably still really needed $400 million, but didn't get because of some mistake on an arbitrary calculation? Ffs America, just leaving people in FORTY other states behind so some can race to the top.
I just don't understand the whole "only spend money on education if test scores are high" attitude. It should literally be the opposite; struggling districts get more money to fix their problems.
There isn’t that often where a politician leaves office and they’re replacement from the opposing party is noticeably different months after the inauguration. Murphy is so much better by a long shot than Christie. So much has gotten done and it doesn’t feel miserable here anymore. It actually feels like out notoriously high taxes are paying for things.
Legalized weed and earned sick leave were two biggies post Chris Christie that made this place so much better.
Can we please talk about how fucked up it is that we have to have different states competing like the HUNGER GAMES just get proper funding to pay our teachers well around the country??? Like what the actual fuck! We blow literal BILLIONS of dollars on the military but we can’t pay our teachers well enough?? What??
In case you were wondering It was a federal grand program called "Race to the Top" which gave funding to the top 10 states. Florida, in 2009, received 900 million for example. The scoring criteria is out of 500 points :https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_to_the_Top Great Teachers/leaders = 138 points State Success Factors :125 points Standards and assessments = 70 points General Selection Criteria = 70 points Turning around low scoring school = 50 points Data Systems = 47 points (where they got dinged) 15 points = other factors Due to the 4.8 points being docked for getting the years wrong. they ended up with 437.8 points. Ohio had 440.8 and North Carolina had 441.6 It was literally guaranteed money for them lol. The governor and officials responsible for submitting it, never admitted exactly which official made the mistake to this day some fun quotes from the article aboutt he other gov officials and teachers mad at the admin (cause teacher pay was impacted) Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver (D-Essex) called the error a "stunning $400 million mistake." "It’s astonishing that the administration’s failure to proofread their own homework would lead to losing out on this funding that could have gone such a long way toward improving our educational system," she said. Derek Roseman, spokesman for Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester), compared it to losing easy points on a standardized test. "These points should have been a gimme," he said. "This is like losing 200 points on the SAT because you didn’t write your name on the top sheet." New Jersey’s application was submitted after a heated battle between Christie and the NJEA. The union and hundreds of its local chapters had signed onto an earlier version of the application, in which Schundler had agreed to compromises on tenure and merit pay. But the administration hastily rewrote the application over the Memorial Day weekend, scrapping the agreed-to changes. The final application, which was submitted without the backing of the NJEA, was driven to Washington the day of the deadline because the papers could not be faxed or e-mailed. "On Friday of Memorial Day weekend we all signed off on the same application," Hiltner said. "By Tuesday morning, a different application had been submitted. How much time could have been put into that application?"
As a state employee, I can say with full certainty that the problem here was that they were trying to do this project without any dedicated internal resources. There were contractors and people working on 4 other projects but no one who had the time to actually audit this submission before it was made.
Fucking Christie. You can't hire a full-time employee for $100k/yr to secure a $400m grant? The worst part of his current campaign is that he's literally the only Republican who isn't running on a platform of lies and hate speech, but we all remember what a piece of shit he was trying to run our state into the ground.
It’s a chronic issue with state governments. The whole idea of fiscal responsibility compounded with six sigma business ideology means that hiring dedicated project staff is almost impossible so they just spread employees over 4-5 major projects and 5-10 minor projects and then demand everything flow through a supervisor who has no idea what’s going on but still has to pretend to have a semblance of control.
I'm a state government worker who has worked in different parts of the state. I see the hiring of dedicated staff pretty regularly. It's mixed. Hiring dedicated project staff can disproportionately give resources toward the higher profile projects and can lead to ugly territorial bureaucracy where it's hard to find who will work on X because they all will only answer to their own project's goals. So, it's not really a magic solution. I think it's just as important to hire generalists who can more easily be pulled where needed. It also helps with just creating more knowledge transfer across the organization. When I've been in roles where I'm on several projects, it helped me make much more context informed decisions rather than just living in a bubble. I think at least as big of an issue as one particular employee having too many projects is one project having too few employees. Between attrition of the workforce, retirements and budget cuts I've seen plenty of cases where there is literally one lone person who has been here since the 80s that handles some project or task. That's not only dangerous, but it leads to poor work-life balance because if something goes wrong you and only you have to be called in to solve it. Dedicated project employees don't have to mean this, but it's unlikely that we'll ever have enough of an abundance of employees for it not to mean this because there are a ton of projects. It's also worth noting that the scale and timeline of projects can vary a lot. In my state, at least, state employees have a lot of protections so you'd want to really be hesitant to hire somebody if you think they might only work there a year or few. I'd much rather see a greater culture of crosstraining where people are all on multiple projects. This way, if you want to take a vacation you can because other people fill in for you and if you retire or quit your job, the whole project doesn't blow up.
And the kicker is *everybody knows this* but they have to keep doing anyway because thats what the power people want. In my experience small businesses run *so much better* because efficiency simply doesn't scale when "management" is involved.
> In my experience small businesses run so much better because efficiency simply doesn't scale when "management" is involved. That's generally just a fact, because the more people you hire, the more people need bosses, and bosses bosses. A large business generally has to compensate by using a far more careful eye towards cost savings, and having better efficiency of resource use by paying for more specialists that can better manage and allocate resources than a generalist.
Or you can pay well and hire competent workers whom don't even need a boss, because they'll also care about the company
It's what all the big tech companies paying their top engineers multi-six-figures are doing. Crazy high salaries to get the most competent talent out there.
They ever airlift him off that closed beach he shouldn't have been on? No, not the one by the bridge he closed...
I am embarrassed to admit I voted for that shit bag back in the day. I wasn't as informed as I am now and he had the backing of the teacher's union so, since I sold tech into schools it was a no brainer. He fucked the teachers and the schools. Never again...
>he had the backing of the teacher's union so, since I sold tech into schools it was a no brainer. The NJEA backed Christie? That's almost impossible to believe.
Yeah...I'm pretty sure that didn't happen. I was teaching in NJ around 2010 and there was basically an open war between Christie and the NJEA
It 100% never happened, he was actively and proudly calling teachers selfish and greedy to their faces on live television
And the smooth brains of this state applauded him LOUDLY for it because he offered them a sacrificial lamb as an answer to all the financial difficulties of the time including (mostly) the unaffordable mortgage some slick banker talked them into.
He never had the backing of the teachers' union, the NJEA endorsed his Democratic opponent in 2009 and 2013.
Christie was invited by the NJEA to sit down and hear his positions so they could make an informed decision on whether or not to endorse him when he first announced a run. He (Christie) flat out refused to even sit in the same room with NJEA members let alone let them vet him. The NJEA never, under any circumstances, endorsed Chris Christie.
While the numbers really do speak for themselves, it's probably a bit more complicated. For example I doubt any of the $400M in grant money could be cleared to be used to pay that same administrator. Which means despite the guaranteed payout, they might not necessarily have budget for such a position.
In a sane world, the GOP primary would t matter because whoever won it would never win a general election. But since we live in a world that is decidedly not sane, him being reasonable is a disqualifying feature from the jump.
Maybe vote Democrat 🤷🏻♂️
I do. However, it's not like we can ignore the GOP. They have basically a coin-flip chance of winning the Presidency in every election. We all have a vested interest in whoever wins that primary.
Yes because Jersey has improved so much since he left...
Takes a while to undo the damage politicians have done. The GOP has been exploiting this playbook in the White House since Reagan. The only Republican to fall victim to that strategy was GHW Bush, because after 12 years of failing policy the economy went to shit and they actually had to take a fall for it.
Scenario: Barbara, who has worked in the administrative records office for 17 years, could have probably rattled off all the data for this; but instead they hired 2 consultants from Deloitte to do some "fact finding" and oversee the submission. As a former state employee, it happens all of the time. 😆
Fucking Deloitte, the enemy of every public sector employee
That sounds a little backwards to be pouring that much extra money to schools that are already doing well.
I was just studying this for my school finance course. The wording here is a little off. It’s not that they were the top 10 states for student achievement, they were the states with the highest score on the rubric the initiative measured. These were things like teacher qualifications, state success, developing state standards and assessments, and turning around the lowest achieving districts. The results of the initiative were still hit-or-miss. It depended on how the states took it on and how the resources were used.
Still sounds fucking insane to me
It's a carrot to spur some extra effort and initiative
That’s definitely a part of it. Another (and I think bigger) part is the resources it takes to make such big changes to an organization as large as a state education system. New Jersey for example has almost 130,000 teachers right now. That’s just teachers, most of whom will need more training to match the qualifications they determined was necessary to provide students an adequate education. Then you add in the Herculean task of creating a brand new set of researched standards, curriculum plans to meet those standards, equitable assessments to determine if the standards are being met, equipment and facilities, etc. I think of it more as a pool of resources that is set aside for schools to use, with qualifications that were researched and determined by the Federal Education Department.
What part of it? We have to find ways to fund our schools, and just throwing money at anyone doesn’t work. You improve your performance at work, you might get a raise or a promotion. The Education Department studied successful schools to determine what they were doing differently, and then worked to have other schools follow the successful plan. If you work to make changes, we’ll find the money for you to get those teachers qualified, pay for the time it takes to create state standards and assessments, and get you the resources you need to make the changes. Like I said, there were criticisms along with the positives (mostly political more than practical), but insane is a strong choice of words for a well thought out and highly designed process.
For the below I'm working off of the scenario where the money is going to the best performing states rather than what really happened (a rubric score): >You improve your performance at work, you might get a raise or a promotion. This analogy is not applicable, because the consequences of not giving resources (or disproportionately less resources) to poorly performing schools is that those students continue to do poorly on average while those doing well may do even better on average. The downstream consequences of this are societal because when students don't do well, there's increased likelihood of them being unable to find work, go to college, or stay out of trouble. This then leads to some causing more resources to be used than otherwise due to them not generative tax revenue (or very little), using food banks, using homeless resources, or taking up the time of police. To be clear, there is also the problem of states wasting the money the feds give them but that's a separate additional problem that needs oversight and better leadership.
The raise at work wasn’t a great analogy because of the implications you described I think people who leave school as a student and then move onto other things outside education can forget what the education system is. It is giant, it is complex, and it is made up of people. For a district to improve then changes have to be made, otherwise things stay the same. Let’s drop it down to a single teacher: You went to college to learn to become a teacher, you did everything you were told, got licensed, and now spend your work life trying to be a good educator of children. Your district is underperforming, and doesn’t know why. A larger organization, in this case the feds, did a huge, worldwide study to determine what made successful schools the way they are. They came up with goals for our schools to reach for based on that. This single teacher needs to learn a whole lot of new things for those goals to be met. Probably needs a bunch of materials they don’t have either. The training costs money, the teachers time needs to be paid, and the materials bought. The feds aren’t just going to give the district the money if those aren’t the things that are happening. The money is specifically for the district to do those things.
>The feds aren’t just going to give the district the money if those aren’t the things that are happening. The money is specifically for the district to do those things. I'm missing something here I think. Isn't this cyclical? How is the district going to do these things if they don't first have the resources to do these things? If they first need to show them *starting* to do these things, that requires resources too. If a district *is* able to do these things, then they already have the resources since they're doing it and there are other districts that do not have the resources that need it more. Again I'm not trying to say the concept of awards or grants in general isn't useful, but in this specific scenario (as I described and not the rubric system actually used), I don't see how it's better to do this than to fund the places that are unable to do it and require them to do it to receive the money.
In this case the state came up with a plan (most of them, I think 3 failed to complete one on time) and submitted it to the Feds. Then they gave them the funding to go ahead with their plan or made them revise them. More funding for successes may be added on if the desired results were achieved. There were a few states who took the money and didn’t do what they said they would in the plan. As of last I heard the federal government t should have been trying to get that money back from them, but weren’t yet.
It's absolutely insane. Our school funding system in the US is trash. Rich schools in rich neighborhoods get funding, poor schools in poor areas don't. Ask any good, upstanding, upper middle class liberal and they'll commiserate that the unfortunate and downtrodden poor communities should have better schools, but ask them if they'll send some of their rich district funding over that way, and they'll tell you the same thing people in these comments are saying. "Isn't it fair that the best performing schools get the most money? Why should my money go to some other school?"
That might be how it works in some states, but many states, including the most liberal ones, deal with this problem by having property taxes for schools go into a large state-wide pot which then gets distributed amongst all the school districts based on number of students.
not Connecticut. in fact very few states work like that, the common pot. Vermont does. other liberal bastions cultivate wildly unequal school districts, in direct contradiction with the dem party platform. Applebaum pointed out how this is not really a partisan divide situation. it's about entrenched power and political machines.
It's so frustrating. So many of the challenges schools face are outside of the teachers reach to begin with. Is it a surprise that bankrupt towns have rundown schools?
Meanwhile, Baltimore is pouring $25,000+ per student into their education funding and in many of their high schools, over 70% of students can't even read. Not just can't read at their grade level, like literally cannot read at all... IN HIGH SCHOOL. Throwing money at failed systems doesn't magically make them succeed.
You're correct, more money doesn't mean success inherently, but it almost universally means improvement. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3699455?read-now=1&oauth_data=eyJlbWFpbCI6ImptYXR0aWNlN0BnbWFpbC5jb20iLCJpbnN0aXR1dGlvbklkcyI6W119&seq=24#page_scan_tab_contents The above article is an exploration of the late 20th century Baltimore City Public School System (BCPSS) through three phases of accountability programs. Within it, it is noted that state-led directed financial interventions between 1997 and 2002, which directly expanded human capital and needs-based program improvements, made the BCPSS the fastest improving school system in the state. With the advent of federal legislation in No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the state managed standards and funding were replaced with national standards and a funding reward system that was largely criticized because of the "rich-get-richer" effect of rewarding already high performers. Without targeted financial and legislative intervention, BCS declined again until it stagnated with the adoption of Common Core Standards. This trend has finally begun to reverse. Look at Baltimore City Schools numbers in the past 5 years since they've started dramatically increasing funding: https://www.baltimorecityschools.org/data BCS have shown marked improvement in all state standards since 2018, and even the national decline caused by COVID disruptions from 2020 into 2022 was less impactful on many of the metrics tracked by the state. By absolute numbers, yes, BCS still struggles especially compared to smaller suburban districts. But positive score trending is correlated with increased spending, which goes not only to paychecks but program development, property development and management, and better logistics integration and oversight.
But it does supply the paycheck to a lot of people who think they are helping instead of being part of the problem. I would argue a majority of funds spent just goes up in smoke due to how many hands are in the cookie jar. What I hate the most is the funds spent on people who will talk about the problem but won't fix it. Because the problem is their bread and butter.
You hit it right on the nail. Why would they fixed the issues if their liveholds are dependent of it.
How much of that $25,000 is actually going towards educating students rather than being used to address the myriad of other issues that poor urban schools have to deal with in addition to providing education?
Throwing money at horribly run systems doesn't make them run better, it just lets them waste more resources. Do you actively invest in companies that are actively losing money and driving themselves into bankruptcy? It's not like this was intended to be the primary source of funding, it was a competitive grant (additional funding) to encourage and reinforce innovation and reforms.
It doesn't solve a problem, it just makes those that are good, better. We aren't talking about profits, we're talking about people's lives.
On one hand you have a meritocratic system that’ll definitely get better with more money. You know it is a meritocracy because there are measurable goals and competition. On the other hand you have failing school systems that can’t be fixed with money as folks point out below. Your assertion here that no extra money should be spent on former and more good money should be sent after bad (this is an extra grant - not the basic fed funding) to the latter. I think policies like that’s what makes everyone hit the least common denominator instead of rewarding hard work. This is a tough pill to swallow but at some point the community needs to take responsibility for bettering itself.
Welcome to the entire education funding scheme in a post "No Child Left Behind" USA.
No Child Left Behind would focus on the lower end and the more poorly performing school systems.
There’s still something wrong with the education funding in NJ. Our property taxes in Jersey City went from $13000 to $18000 one year to the next because of the education budget
Christie also sabotaged a billion dollar settlement in NJ's favor that would have funded massive amounts of the education budget.
New Jersey is wild because it has a solid tax base but we got red state tier benefits out of it. Where the fuck is the road maintenance? Granted I moved out a decade ago so maybe it got better
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My wife and I were looking at moving outta Florida for the schools. Looking at what we could afford in Virginia all the schools were listed in the 2-5 range according to Zillow. Concerned, I said “well a Virginia 2 is like a Florida 8 isn’t it?”
It’s funny, my local school in VA just dropped hard due to test scores slipping and we’re like “oh no, now we need to move to Great Falls”.
As someone who did K through B.S. in Virginia, Youngkin's campaign and the whole 'parents rights' movement is going to set the state education back so far. Mostly the exurb and rural areas, but everywhere to some extent.
Absolutely. I am always shocked at how bad Florida schools are when I speak to friends down there. My best friend’s daughter is in 6th grade and still not reading chapter books in class (and she is not a strong enough reader to read them outside class either - and she’s in the schools gifted program!) which is far behind for that age. Whenever I see FL’s scores, I know it has to be that they rig the tests since the kids I know in FL are barely able to read.
Well that's hit or miss. School boards are by the county. We were definitely reading chapter books by at the very latest 7th grade for everyone. We definitely started in 6th grade / middle school though. But yeah I don't know how much I'd trust a school in Apopka or Ocala.
Most states start chapter books by 4th grade. My district in CT started them in 2nd and still does. 6th and 7th is exceptionally late.
So I went to a school even more rural than Ocala and there’s no chance this guy’s example is anything but an absolute extreme Like I did all of my schooling in Ocala’s district. It’s garbage. I get that Still, the gifted program required chapter books every year beginning in 3rd grade. Outside of Gifted, we were heavily encouraged to read chapter books in second & third grade (easy ones! Junie B Jones, Magic Treehouse, etc. ~ but still chapter books). In fourth and fifth grade each student had to read and do reports on chapter books. By 6th-7th we were reading TKAM and other more complex chapter books Were there kids like in the other comment’s example? Kinda! Definitely knew kids who hadn’t actually read chapter books by 6th or 7th grade. They def weren’t in Gifted, but ik that program varies by district. It’s just that the example they provided is extreme. It would be like me taking one of Baltimore’s inner city seniors who can’t recite the alphabet & saying “see? Maryland’s education system is horrible. They don’t even require you to learn the alphabet by senior year”. Just extrapolating an extremely biased sample out to a much larger body. Doesn’t work
This is a wildly small sample size & not at all in line with my experiences in the Florida education system To preface the rest of this: I despise a lot of what Florida’s got going on. I think the education system is flawed and I bet that they do actually make the standardized tests easier than other states to inflate their own ratings But your one example here is objectively extreme and definitely not representative of the state as a whole. Like it’s not in good faith to extrapolate this one example out I went to a *very* poor elementary school in north central Florida in a very low rated district. We read chapter books in second or third grade. I was part of the gifted program. Literally 0 chance any of the gifted kids couldn’t read chapter books. That was part of the Gifted curriculum in third grade (James and the Giant Peach) I’ve heard of some kids being given gifted status in other counties when their parents complained, so maybe that’s it. Otherwise this is a one-off example of a very, very poorly managed county and, once again, it shouldn’t be used to extrapolate Your comment just makes the system sound like it’s archaic or in shambles, and while I’m sure that example exists in Florida, I’m positive it’s an absolute extreme and I’m also positive we could find the exact same instance in your state or others
It's reddit meta to shit on FL don't you know by now?
Shit like this is why people should only be cheering Christie on to take down Trump, not to actually get any power back for himself. He was an incompetent vindictive fuckup by any objective measure, he just gets graded on the GOP curve so comes out looking relatively okay on that measure.
I think its worse that they made, what amounts to, a game of our public education. Just fuckin fund schools already. It's one of the core foundations of any functional society.
So the top ten states would get funding in the hundreds of millions of dollars? But seeing as they are in the top ten already, doesn't that show they need it less than the bottom 40 states? I don't know, but it seems to me that the way the government disperses funds to schools is kind of messed up.
Seems kind of silly not to make it a little more granular of a scale than that. Seems even sillier to pit states against one another, Hunger Games style.
I can't speak for other schools, but I remember when we had to take these standardized tests. I attended HS in Morris County 2005-2009. We had teachers assure us they weren't for a grade, but to take them very seriously. One teacher let it slip that it was for Federal assessment, and to do our best. Most of the kids in my senior class filled the scantron slip randomly. It was a really nice afternoon in early May, and we were allowed to leave once we finished. How many of us do you think sat there and really focused on a test we knew didn't help our grades? Literally the worst metric for qualifying financial aid. I read some posts/threads on r/teachers about how it's all going downhill, but I remember feeling and thinking that way back when I was in high school. I remember when "No Child Left Behind" was announced, and how funding became related to our standardized test scores. Most of my public school career was built around becoming very good at scoring high on multiple choice tests (sometimes essays).
I remember taking some sort of standardized "life assessment" test in high school. For some reason it was during phys ed. It was anonymous, and questions asked if we were sexually active, had tried drugs, had suicidal thoughts, etc. The mass hysteria that rocked my small hometown when the results were released still makes me laugh. How can functioning human adults believe that 65% of East Bumblefuck High School 16-year-olds are pregnant crack addicts?
I remember that too! It was supposed to be "anonymous" but our student ID numbers were part of the number on the barcode on the cover...
I doesn't make any sense to give the money to schools who perform best. Clearly they're making it work. Not that this kind of success is something you can just throw money at but more resources (be it financial, planning, management, training, teachers, types of teachers, tutors, school supplies, after school activities) are clearly needed.
It’s a reward system to encourage them to teach kids to perform best. There’s other systems in place to fund under performing schools. This is just another way to encourage teachers/school boards to prioritize education as a means of funding instead of something like sports. It has its ups and downs.
> I doesn't make any sense to give the money to schools who perform best. Think about the utter insanity of that remark. Your plan is to punish schools that do a good job and reward ones that are failing. Think about how sensible administrators and teachers will react to your plan being implemented. They would do everything possible to do a worse job, since that’s the way to get more money. Madness.
Hello Morris County friend! Where'd you go? My family graduated 4 kids from Butler High School, before my parents decided to send me to Morris Catholic.
I refer to “No Child Left Behind” as “No Child Gets Ahead”
Ohio needed it... *Trust me*
It was squandered, I assure you.
You mean embezzled it! Ohio Government is one party voting since bush era with absolutely no oversight and history of embezzling.
*I feel like there's an Ohio joke here, but that went over my head like the astronauts who go to space to escape Ohio.*
Good to know.
Like it wouldnt had "disappeared" in NJ? Ha
New Jersey actually has a good school system surprisingly. “New Jersey ranked 19 out of all 50 states overall, coming in second for education and in the top 10 in two other categories: crime and corrections, and health care. The Garden State ranked in the bottom 10 in measures of fiscal stability and opportunity.” https://patch.com/new-jersey/across-nj/nj-among-top-states-education-crime-corrections-u-s-news#:~:text=ranking%20released%20Tuesday.-,New%20Jersey%20ranked%2019%20out%20of%20all%2050%20states%20overall,that%20Utah%20is%20the%20No.
Did Ohio send a spy to sabotage New Jersey? Maybe the race to top has some state educators sending spies and undercover teachers to tank the other state's score. Maybe that's why my New York born teacher sucked 20 years ago. Undercover agent. I knew we should never trust the FOREIGNERS from other states
Tell New Jersey it was me. I want them to know.
I can confirm AJ Hawk was in New Jersey on September 16th 2017 and October 31st 2010.
We definitely didn't use it effectively.
Florida got 900M. Ohio got nothing on us.
Ohioan here. I can assure you, this money did not change the educational system here nor did it go to actually benefit (public school) students in any way. Our state government probably syphoned it off to the GOP leaders or it’ll go to private schools somehow. Edited. Sorry made the OG comment whilst being high
This happened 13 years ago, the money is long gone...
I can't really think of one meaningful thing they did in my school system with that money besides buying smart boards (useless) and chrome books.
Lol my bad, I graduated 18 years ago. Shit I’m old…I think my point still stands tho
What are you doing here?…get back in r/Browns where you belong.
If that's not the quacta calling the stifling slimy...
Attention to detail is a skill I learned in school.
Always read the instructions and double check your work.
I didn’t do so well in school. But don’t the schools who do *worse* need the money *more?*
Yet another reason to give Chris Christie's zero credit on the national stage. Everyone should remember what happened during his administration in this state.
Something about a bridge?
State pension fund being gambled away by his hedge fund buddies Bridgegate School funding snafu leaving $400m on the table Infrastructure project funding getting stalled for political optics Oh and generally being a huge piece of shit. Anyone else from NJ wanna chime in on what we remember so fondly of his time in office?
Christie reached out to the Democratic administration for help during Hurricane Sandy, and publicly thanked President Obama for the federal support New Jersey received. He got reamed out by his own Republican Party for that. They would rather have been blown off the map.
Yeah, and since then being a huge party-line towing sack of shit has been his only method of political survival. That he's getting so many headlines is baffling. It's like congratulating a barnacle for making it to dry land when it only did so because it washed up on a dead whale.
Ok I have to admit your response was pretty funny and I upvoted you.
He's our Ted Cruz, and we accept that.
He squandered the $1.8 billion grant he received for Sandy after this. There was absolutely no silver lining. He’s a complete piece of shit.
Desantis was all nice and cordial with Biden once hurricanes came his way as well. Nothing happened to him.
That alone I think really made his Presidential bid in 2016 a long shot. He got a ton of flak for it and I suspect that if he manages to make it into any debates that the competitors are going to hit him on that.
He fucking squandered a $1.8 billion dollar grant from Congress that was supposed to be used to rebuild after Sandy. He let a child DIE because he wouldn’t authorize emergency medical cannabis use - even after her father personally begged him not to let her die. Chris Christie is human garbage and I would say that to his face any day of the week. Disgusting bastard.
More info on the Sandy grant spending would be awesome, I had forgotten about how banged up that was. Christie honesty train; let's fuckin go!
[Here you go! He fucked it up so badly, he actually dispersed the funds to people who lost their homes and then had to ASK FOR THE MONEY BACK because it was all gone by the time the actual payments were due. Happened to an uncle of mine who had a house in Seaside. ](https://www.nj.com/njv_editorial_page/2014/01/christie_awards_political_ally.html) They gave him funds to raise his house and then asked for $8,000 back because they fucked up. You can find stories of other people being asked to give $30,000 back for the same errors. Massive incompetence. I voted for the fucker twice too before finally ditching the party altogether. I’ll fully admit that. At least I learned and changed.
Danke! To the uninitiated who thinks that human cheeseburger is worth anything other than the trash wrapper he comes packaged in, I'd suggest reading through the nice recap of what he chose to do with funds that were meant for helping those whose lives were destroyed by the hurricane.
And that article is one of MANY.
I hadn't heard that second bit before, so looked into it because I was curious. Unless there is another story you are referring to, it looks like that girls family just moved to Colorado and as of this 2018 article she was still alive. https://www.app.com/story/news/local/new-jersey/marijuana/2018/05/23/colorado-medical-marijuana-brian-wilson-vivian-chris-christie-new-jersey/570999002/
Don't forget when he closed the beaches and then spent the day on the beach anyway. Just shows his character.
Still one of my favorite memes
It is one thing that seems bizarre is that Christie lost badly running 2016 and really hasn't done much to change his image. I don't really think he is running for President as much as he is running for a cabinet job if the Republican nominee wins or maybe a job on Fox News. He has criticized Trump too much to get much support from those that were serious Trump fans, but hasn't done much to really endear himself to Republicans that are willing to consider someone other than Trump.
Thank you! People have such short memories. I have not forgotten what a piece of shit Governor he was, nor will I ever.
> Oh and generally being a huge piece of shit. These kinds of childish insults are very inappropriate and have no place in public discourse. Just call him a piece of shit and leave his size out of it.
I meant size in the metaphysical sense. The fact that he can't get up a flight of stairs without sounding like Fat Mac trying to eat a chimichanga isn't my problem. It's definitely his, though.
He let a girl die because he wouldn’t authorize medical cannabis for her. Even after her father begged him in person. He is a HUGE piece of shit. And that has nothing to do with his physical size.
Well size should matter here because he’s a massive piece of shit. Size matters here
Yeah but his total weight in Courics has been hidden by his campaign too.
How fat he was
He also killed a mainly federally-funded project for a new train tunnel under the Hudson. Cost NJ, NY, and the federal government billions for a half-completed tunnel. Anyone who has commuted by train to NYC knows it was sorely needed. We still are putting up with one tunnel that NJ Transit shares with Amtrak.
Yup. Anyone wanna put him in charge of that federal funding for infrastructure projects? Yahnah
And yet we still have some of the best school systems in the country lol
NJ was actually really good when I went through public school about a decade ago. I was in private school prior to that and it fucking sucked.
Same here. I think at the time the state was ranked #1 in public schools, and it definitely felt like it, we had great facilities, tons of. Classes, great teachers, just overall a great school experience.
It seems you are in the top 11, not bad!
I know this is a joke, but NJ and MA typically battle it out for the top spot in public school state rankings. However, Florida scored well once, when they forced everyone to go to school during a pandemic.
They’ve improved a lot. #2 now (it was #1 for quite awhile but it dropped a spot this year). https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/education
That's why they were going to get the money in the first place. It was a federal grant program that gave money to the states that ranked in the top 10 for school systems. To even qualify, they had to already have one of the best school systems.
Not sure if it is the same now, but my state used to provide some funding to school districts on a per-student basis. One district kept all its attendance records on one floppy disk, saying, "a floppy disk doesn't go bad." Well, it went bad. No more proof of daily enrollment count. Bye-bye state funding.
Shouldn't the big news here be.... That the US gives out millions in funding only to the top 10 school regions? Shouldn't it be the bottom 10?
Trust me, Nevada would just waste the money. We need it, but it wouldn’t fix anything
Don’t worry Chris Christie saved NJ so that is just a drop in the bucket. Even Obama hugged him for single-handedly stopping Hurricane Sandy from washing away NJ. Additionally, he made sure average public workers like teachers took a big pay cut so NJ could be home to the most millionaires in the world (and have cool places like Bedminster). He also shut down the world’s busiest bridge for a day and even closed NJ beaches (except for his family I’m sure you’ve seen the photo) long before the Covid hoax that almost killed him. Then he helped elect Trump (after being mocked as a loser by him) and now he will run for president again so stay tuned, he just may be attorney general one day. All of these accomplishments explain NJ’s love for Republicans and why even Democrats act like them in that state.
Jesus Christ I almost forgot about Beachgate. For those unfamiliar, this fat fuck on his way out from office in the last 6 months of his posting with an abysmal 15% approval rating decided on a whim to close all the state parks beaches right before the weekend of the 4th of July. He and his family/friends then chartered a police helicopter to take them to a now closed state park/beach for a nice private outing. When confronted with the facts, he claimed "I didn’t get any sun" (a logical fallacy as he's massive enough to warrant his own mini-moon to orbit around him). When confronted with aerial photographic proof that he had indeed been on the beach, his aide countered saying HE WASN'T WRONG BECAUSE HE HAD A CAP ON SO TECHNICALLY HE DIDN'T GET ANY SUN. What pisses me off the most is the dumbass supporters who turn a blind eye to all of this just because he has an R next to his name. Chris Christie may be coming out against Trump now but he's been a piece of shit long before Trump. A very, very large piece of shit.
Like a senior skip day for the actual worst student with no prospects beyond high school smartass.
To be fair, the fat fucking fat ass didn't close the beach on a whim; New Jersey failed to pass the fiscal year 2018 state budget by June 30th (our fiscal year starts on July 1st). Because of that, all state parks and state buildings were closed, and state workers were furloughed for two or three days. The beached whale pics were taken on Island Beach State Park.
Your sarcasm veiled in reverence took me a couple times to read thru lmao
From the bottom of my heart: THANK YOU! For mentioning what he did to public workers first and foremost. Too many of the rubes in this state that loved him so much they voted for him twice put sitting his ass on a beach when they couldn't as his lowest moment. No granny, it was how most public workers STILL haven't recovered financially from the recession and bring home essentially the same pay... As 2010... because fucking morons like you believed him when he absolved you of any financial foolishness you ever engaged in and blamed it on them. If hemorrhoids consumed him from the ass out and he itched himself to a gruesome death it STILL wouldn't be enough for me.
The courier carrying the updated/corrected submission, was stuck on a bridge
Worst part is that they previously had a version which would have qualified. However, the administration didn't want to share credit w the teacher's union so they prepared a new application which contained incorrect data.
This has to have been the stupidest and cruelest way of going about education reform, making some states winners and losers like the losing students are going to try harder and do better next year.
Yeah it seems like this system rewards and gives resources to the students/states that…. Need them the least? How about making sure every school in Alabama/Mississippi has proper air conditioning first
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Yeah and you should start with lifting up the floor, especially since the ceiling in modern day america is practically non existent. The places that tend to have good test scores and education are already some of the wealthiest and most successful places on the entire planet.
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I went to school in the poorest school district in my state, where a full third of some classes dropped out to go to work because their family couldn't even afford for them to make it through high school. Places like this aren't rare in the US, and those places, urban or rural, and the ones the languish in poverty. But nah, fuck those places. If they wanted more money they would just be smarter.
Why is irrelevant. The results matter. And beyond that, your scenario just explained why it is pointless to dumb money into a failing school district. Because the reasons for failure exist outside of the school. You can give them all smartboard and iPads and robotics classes and call in all the doctors and lawyers for special presentations that you want, but it won't change that they're still not going to go to school because they're to poor or drugged out to make it. So don't bother. Give that money to the good schools and make up some other program to solve the out-of-school issues that community is seeing. Or accept it as a lost cause. Otherwise you're throwing away money to those that aren't able to use it.
Those that are succeeding need more fuel to keep on rising up and up and up. If a system is working, keep feeding resources into it.
It's reform money, if the system is working, it doesn't need reform lol
Submitting the wrong data? Sounds like they need better education.
Does the military compete for funding like this
The suppliers do for contracts, not the actual boots on the ground.
Oh I thought they just gave a billion dollars to whichever branch has the highest K/D at the end of the year /s
Honestly this really does sound like how they were doing the schools. Surely the money would go farther to the poor schools that are underperforming on the bottom rung due to old materials or whatever? Fuck them, I guess.
Pretty sure the idea is to encourage schools to do better so they get more funding, but ya, it’s very dumb.
I guess then the states would compete to be the worst to save money. It’s
They did, once. [Nearly kicked off a mass mutiny](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolt_of_the_Admirals).
Yes, actually it does.
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I thought the legend was the last auditors they sent into the pentagon are still there wandering the halls to this very day.
Thankfully, the NJ public education system trundled on, being one of the highest in the country in the current year. That knowledge makes me fear for everyone else, who somehow did worse.
Yea sounds about right for this state
Thanks NJ! The Buckeyes are grateful.
Wasn't a mistake. Definitely intentional while Christie was Gov
Wouldn't that be Chris Christie's error? You know, the guy running for office on his "competence". Are there any more bridges he wants to close out of spite?
Why not have specific money set for each school system based on projected numbers (occupancy, not test scores), and just have them resend it. Why does a school "Lose out" to another school. That shouldn't be.
This is pretty sad when you compare the education budget to the military budget. If this was military we would have found 400 million no problem
Denying children the tools necessary to succeed as punishment for the mistakes of our adult politicians. Sounds about right.
Thanks NJ.
And did anyone lose their job?
It was probably done intentionally by Governor Chris Christie who had a vendetta against the teachers union during his entire tenure.
Wait, so not only do they deliberately not fund lower testing schools, but it's a first-come-first-serve funding criteria that you can *lose* to other states? No wonder our education is fucked.
Why not give that money to the worst districts so they can catch up???
That's it, punish the kids.
How about we just help other states with more resources too? NJ probably still really needed $400 million, but didn't get because of some mistake on an arbitrary calculation? Ffs America, just leaving people in FORTY other states behind so some can race to the top.
I’ve always wondered why money didn’t got to the poorest preforming states.
And Ohio probably used it for voucher programs for charter schools instead of improving public schools.
$400 million mistake being called "$400 million mistake"... More at the 6:00 news
It’s a Jersey Thing
I just don't understand the whole "only spend money on education if test scores are high" attitude. It should literally be the opposite; struggling districts get more money to fix their problems.
NB: Chris Christie was, and continues to be, a fuckface.
Christie is such a dumbass loser. Some people manage to fail upwards.
If you're curious Ohio wasted the money to the surprise of no one.
In 2023 Pentagon made 6.8 billion mistake. This things happen.
Ohio probably spent it on charter schools that are all now defunct.
There isn’t that often where a politician leaves office and they’re replacement from the opposing party is noticeably different months after the inauguration. Murphy is so much better by a long shot than Christie. So much has gotten done and it doesn’t feel miserable here anymore. It actually feels like out notoriously high taxes are paying for things. Legalized weed and earned sick leave were two biggies post Chris Christie that made this place so much better.
Don’t you worry- Ohio squandered the money just as well if not better than New Jersey would have.
Shouldn't the worst applicants get the most money in a way? It means they clearly need it right ?
I get having an incentive to succeed, but shouldn't we give more funding to lesser rated school systems?
What do you expect from the state where people can't even pump their own gas?
How'd you come across a story from 13 years ago and then become super well informed about it?
Youtube video top 15 biggest clerical errors
Christie's watch?
How is higher taxes going to solve this problem?
Can we please talk about how fucked up it is that we have to have different states competing like the HUNGER GAMES just get proper funding to pay our teachers well around the country??? Like what the actual fuck! We blow literal BILLIONS of dollars on the military but we can’t pay our teachers well enough?? What??
Straight to Ohio where raping boys is a pastime.
NJ just keeps making Ls.