Behind the Headline: Newark Superintendent Cami Anderson Deserves Support, Not Vilification

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Newark Superintendent Cami Anderson Deserves Support, Not Vilification
2/9/14 | New Jersey Star-Ledger

Behind the Headline
Newark’s Superintendent Rolls Up Her Sleeves and Gets to Work
Winter 2013 | Education Next

In New Jersey, the editorial board of the Star-Ledger mounts a strong defense of Cami Anderson, the Newark superintendent.

Superintendent Cami Anderson is answering decades of failure in Newark with an ambition and urgency that’s long overdue. She negotiated a groundbreaking teacher’s contract to help reward the best teachers while getting rid of the worst. She’s taken the right attitude on charter schools — not resisting their inevitable growth, but insisting they take their fair share of special needs students. And now she’s planning to repurpose chronically failing schools and recruit successful charters to occupy others, part of her new restructuring plan called “One Newark.”

While some opposition to change is to be expected,the editorial continues,

Anderson is being vilified, and even physically threatened, with a ferocity that is entirely unjustified. Yes, she could be a more graceful politician, and has hurt herself on occasion by walking out of unruly meetings and by making unilateral decisions that have alienated natural allies. Her recent suspensions of several principals, even if justified, have predictably further inflamed her critics. So the danger for Newark children is that Anderson could lose control of the politics, and reforms could grind to a halt.

Peter Meyer wrote a profile of Cami Anderson in the Winter 2013 issue of Ed Next.

-Education Next

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