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New Jersey and Camden: giving it the ol' college try–again

After decades and billions of dollars, New Jersey state education officials are once again going to attempt to reform Camden public schools:

Saying, "We have to deliver," the state’s top education official pledged to the Camden school board last night a plan to refocus education in the district after a tumultuous school year marked by the superintendent’s resignation and state criminal and test-cheating probes.

Acting Education Commissioner Lucille E. Davy and her chief of staff, Penelope Lattimer, said in a rare appearance that they would form a new team to focus on literacy and math during the next three years and to help coach teachers.

Davy called an overall drop in the district’s standardized test scores for 2005-06 "alarming." Districtwide, fourth-grade scores dropped 19 percentage points in reading and 14 in math, and some schools showed drastic drops. The biggest was 77 percentage points in math at H.B. Wilson.

Davy said yesterday that she was not prepared to say whether there had been previous cheating. A state report will soon be complete, she said.

"The scores this year are much, much lower," she said after the meeting. "They are alarming to us."

She told the board: "Quite honestly, the results of the tests… indicate to us that we need to think about doing things a little bit differently." (emphasis added)

Now there’s a candidate for understatement of the year.  (And maybe our lawsuit’s slogan!)  For more information on Camden’s horrific education legacy, check out the Philly Inquirer’s links or E3’s hair-raising white paper.)