NJ's Bully Governor Will Not Be "Bullied:" Declares War on Teachers

(Photo by Noah Murray, The Star Ledger) New Jersey consistently ranks among the top performing state education systems in the U. S. in terms of student performance, and it has a very strong union. Maybe that is just coincidence, or maybe it has something to do with the morale, self-efficacy, and performance of teachers who have basic human needs met, such as health insurance, retirement plans, and a decent living wage. Whatever the connection, none of it seems to matter to the increasingly-corpulent Governor Christie, who appears to have gone on an eating binge since his election as he plans war against the NJEA.

Having just announced slashes of over $800 million to the state education budget as a way to force concessions from the teachers (see video), Governor Christie has left untouched the budget lines for the cheap non-union charter chain gangs that provide an increasing amount of the penal pedagogy used in containing and segregating children of the urban poor:

In his address to the annual conference of the New Jersey Charter Schools Association in Long Branch, Christie said he largely left the funding for charter schools untouched when he introduced his controversial budget on Tuesday.

"We will do many good things for charters schools. In fact, I’ve held charter schools harmless in this budget because you already pay enough,’’ he said, "There are going to be more charter schools a year from now than there are today."

See video below.