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I publish a lot of posts about school choice — the movement to offer alternatives to traditional public schools — and consequences of choice policies, but this is a little different from most of the others. This is by Newark teacher Ryan Heisinger, who writes about the effects that years of pro-school-choice reform efforts have had on him, his colleagues and his students.
Newark, a long-troubled urban school district, has been under “reform” for years under Republican Gov. Chris Christie. In 2010, Christie and Cory Booker, who was then the Democratic mayor of the city and is now a U.S. senator, persuaded Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to donate $100 million to transform Newark’s long-troubled public school system into a national model of school choice. Christie hired a superintendent named Cami Anderson.