Cory Booker may be your friend now

Speeches and tweets are nice, but votes matter.

"Cory Booker is not your friend.

Updated On: 1/22/17 at 06:58 AM

"Most of the funds later went to charter schools. He’s long been a proponent of school vouchers, despiteevidence that voucher programs don’t actually create bettereducational outcomes for students."

My daughters went to a magnet school (grades 6-12) and it was fantastic. The school (Northwest School Of The Arts) required an audition in the arts to get accepted in the school. Every student has an arts major (dance, music, theater, visual arts etc) in addition to their other normal classes. The test scores of students were among the best in the city of Charlotte at the time my daughters attended and this included HS students SAT scores. While not all magnet/charter schools are successful, I feel it is still good to have them to allow students an opportunity to go to a school which may be better than their local school. BTW - this school has had students who have performed on Broadway, been in dance companies like Alvin Ailey and professional musicians. The female lead (Eva Noblezada) in the upcoming revival of Miss Saigon on Broadway went to this school.

Updated On: 1/13/17 at 09:19 AM

yankeefan7 said: ""Most of the funds later went to charter schools. He’s long been a proponent of school vouchers, despiteevidence that voucher programs don’t actually create bettereducational outcomes for students."

My daughters went to a magnet school (grades 6-12) and it was fantastic. The school (Northwest School Of The Arts) required an audition in the arts to get accepted in the school. Every student has an arts major (dance, music, theater, visual arts etc) in addition to their other normal classes. The test scores of students were among the best in the city of Charlotte at the time my daughters attended and this included HS students SAT scores. While not all magnet/charter schools are successful, I feel it is still good to have them to allow students an opportunity to go to a school which may be better than their local school. BTW - this school has had students who have performed on Broadway, been in dance companies like Alvin Ailey and professional musicians. The female lead (Eva Noblezada) in the upcoming revival of Miss Saigon on Broadway went to this school.



That's the fundamental problem. These schools often have admissions requirement and are selective in their admission. They don't take low or struggling students. Their tests scores are higher because they only take the better kids. The struggling students are left in the public schools, who now no longer have sufficient funds. These schools also don't follow the same rules, and can easily remove kids from the school if they're a problem. Can't do that in a public school. To compare the two and suggest that charter schools are "better" because of their "results" is a great folly.

Erik,serious question. do you think that anyone should be allowed to go to schools like Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Tech,or any Public School no matter their grades? Isnt that the same as Charter?

Stuyvesant and Brooklyn Tech are Public Schools that only accept the best graded students. They have difficult science, math and english requirements. that most cannot meet.

So I think your answer is that they should not have any standards. That anyone should be able to go. So someone who is model student with 4.0 is no different than someone with behaviour problems with a 1.9, since they take tax money

Updated On: 1/13/17 at 09:58 AM

Yes..but Magnet Schools can be part of the problem as well.

I have no problem with magnet programs in theory. But I do have a problem when they take resources away from schools in struggling neighborhoods and draw talented students away from their "home" schools.

This leads many schools to become filled with students who don't test well and have other academic/behavioral issues. And in many States, those schools get labled as "failing" and have funding taken away or other punishments. When they are the schools educating the kids with the most challanges.

But that's really not what this thread is about. And Cory Booker doesn't just support Charter Schools, he supports vouchers which are a disaster.

I'm not sure I'm HAPPY with Booker's vote, but I'm surprised that most of the articles covering this are leaving out that fellow New Jersey Senator and Democrat Bob Menendez ALSO voted against this measure, likely because pharmaceuticals are a major New Jersey industry.

From a NJ State website handout:

Biopharmaceutical Life Sciences Industry Cluster

•New Jersey’s biopharma life sciences cluster employment totaled over 115,000 in 2013, or 3.6 percent of the state’s private sector workers. Nationally, the proportion was just 1.9 percent.

•New Jersey’s biopharmaceutical and life sciences cluster employment is comprised of three primary components: pharmaceutical sector (43.5%), biotechnology (35.4%) and medical device manufacturing (21.1%). In 2013, the state’s pharmaceuticals employment accounted for 8.8 percent of pharmaceuticals jobholding in the U.S.

•Establishments totaled over 3,000 in 2013. Despite recent reorganizations by pharmaceutical firms, the drug and pharmaceutical component’s establishment count increased between 2008 and 2013 by 9.4 percent, outpacing growth nationally (+7.1%) over the same period.

•New Jersey biopharma life science employers paid over $15 billion in wages during 2013, or 7.9 percent of the state’s total wages.

•The state’s highly educated workforce is seen in this cluster as more than three-fifths (62.2%) of its workers statewide hold a Bachelor’s degree or higher: Bachelor’s (29.2%), Master’s/Professional (24.7%), Doctoral (8.3%) degree.



I'm assuming at least some of Booker and Menendez's reasoning is not wanting to screw over their constituents by bringing in pharmaceuticals from another country.

"Well if Eva Noblezada went to a charter school they must all be great!"

If you read my complete post, I said that not all charter/magnet schools were good. I just noted she went to this school because it was neat for the school and alumni/parents of that school to see somebody become a "star".

" From what I understand, Stuyvesant is over half minority

Thank you guys for the great explanation."

African-Americans were the majority at Northwest School Of The Arts.

"Now the "traditional" public school kids who live in that neighborhood have lost their library. The new magnet school in the basement has brand new facilities, computers, ipads, etc while half the time the kids upstairs can't even get on the internet."

Like you said in your post, it seems the execution is bad in your area. In Charlotte, magnet schools are generally existing schools not brand new ones. I believe the school my daughters went to was built in the 1960's. Only recently, have renovations been done to the school and that was because the building needed it not because it was a magnet school.

ErikJ972 said: "Magnet School started with good intentions but often the execution is bad.

I run a non profit that deals with public schools. They started a magnet program in one high school in a low income neighborhood here in Jersey City. The magnet took over the basement level of the high school, where the school's library was located.

Now the "traditional" public school kids who live in that neighborhood have lost their library. The new magnet school in the basement has brand new facilities, computers, ipads, etc while half the time the kids upstairs can't even get on the internet. Meanwhile, students from the wealthier downtown area are bussed to the magnet school that many of the kids who LIVE in the neighborhood can't even get into. It's a scam the district uses to inflate test scores while hurting students in the low income neighborhood."

Well Greenville and Bergen-Lafayette have been getting the short end of the stick in Jersey City for quite some time. That's nothing new.

Erik - in Chicago the gifted magnet high schools are oasis created in a desert of awful public schools. An admission is better than winning the lottery.

ErikJ972, oh, I absolutely don't think it's okay. I think it's a disgrace that the development that's happening in Jersey City, and the rest of the Northeast, is as lopsided as it is. I'm no longer in New Jersey, but I did happily support both Booker and Menendez even though I don't agree with all of their stances. I especially do not agree with Booker's public stand with charter schools, and worry that he would allow DeVos through. (I don't actually think he would, but I know he wouldn't press her very hard.)

My concern with some of the criticism Booker has been getting, other than the reasons I outlined for why he probably stood with Big Pharma, is that we JUST saw what happens when Democrats don't think a politician is "pure" enough. It's not my place to say what weight anyone should put on different policy issues, but I worry that people will let separate policy choices impact their whole view of a candidate for the worse. I'm not ready to kick someone off my team because of differences in beliefs on individual policy issues.