This is not a good start, as far as I am concerned, appointing one of the more conservative Republicans in the state and its biggest advocate for school vouchers as commissioner of education.
Brett Schundler, former mayor of Jersey City, remains an advocate — but then, so is Gov. Chris Christie. But the voucher issue was not one that was front and center during a campaign focused on one issue — taxes — and needs to be explored during the confirmation process.
Schundler needs to be asked tough questions about school choice — not just about how it improves education for some, but what happens to the schools that lose students. It is easy to say that competition will improve all schools, but that is not how it is going to work.
Hank Kalet 
Sorry, but schools, especially in the failed urban districts, need huge improvments now. Additionally, the existing education structure is massively too expensive. It is a legal monopoly run by powerful unions that weak school boards cannot control. Robbinsville's school board is a primary example of weakness and teacher union stewardship. Taxpayers can't afford this system any longer. Children are being failed as well. Throwing money at education has not worked, just look at the billions wasted in the Abbott districts. The current public education system needs competition. It's called school vouchers and charter schools.
Conservatives are rabidly anti-union, they hate unions, any unions and they will do anything and everything to destroy unions, all unions. This whole charter school, school voucher movement is just an effort to destroy unions, it has nothing to do with the kids. Throwing money at schools does help. The best private schools have tuitions of $26,000 to $36,000 with classroom sizes of about 14 pupils. So according to conservatives, teachers have no right to form unions. Blaming any problems schools may have on unions is just bogus right wing crap. Recent studies have shown that charter schools are doing no better than regular public schools and in many cases charter schools are doing worse. Diverting money from the public schools for questionable charter schools are for vouchers is just stupid. NJ public schools are performing well compared to the rest of the nation and they are in the top tier of schools in the country.*New Jersey continues to have the highest graduation rate in the nation.*NJ students' success on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), known as the Nation's Report Card. Our fourth graders achieved the second highest average reading scores and tied for the second highest average scores in math. Garden State eighth graders earned the nation's best writing scores, while also scoring near the top in both reading and math.Public high school students in New Jersey also excel, earning the nation's highest average scores on Advanced Placement exams and outscoring their private school counterparts on those exams.In fact, New Jersey was named one of the nation's four \”Smartest States\” by education researchers Kathleen O'Leary and Scott Morgan. The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education ranks New Jersey near the top for how well its schools prepare students for college.
In August of 2006, the US Department of Education released a report that showed 4th graders in public schools did significantly better on reading and math tests than comparable students in charter schools. These studies undermined a basic tenet of conservative politics — that charter and private schools are better than public schools. Furthermore, because a Republican administration had initiated the studies, their results couldn't be dismissed as liberal distortions. Rather than interject any caution into its pro-charter and pro-voucher stance, however, the Bush administration decided to bury the message. The study, which looked at 7,000 public schools and more than 530 private schools, also found that conservative Christian schools did significantly worse than public schools on 8th-grade math. The charter school study focused on 4th-grade reading and math and found that public school students did better than charter school students. In addition, students in charter schools set up by local school districts did better than independent charters. The most thorough summary to date of charter school studies is a book published in 2005 by Teachers College Press of Columbia University and the Economic Policy Institute. That book, The Charter School Dust-Up, by researchers Martin Carnoy, Rebecca Jacobsen, Lawrence Mishel, and Richard Rothstein, looked at 19 studies in 11 states and the District of Columbia and included data from the 2003 NAEP tests. \”There is no evidence that, on average, charter schools outperform regular public schools,\” the author found. \”In fact, there is evidence that the average impact of charter schools is negative.\” The authors also looked at the conservative claim that charters serve more disadvantaged students than traditional public schools. They found that while charters vary widely by state, on average, charter students are not more disadvantaged. In fact, taking into account race and income, charter schools \”have a more advantaged population among each racial group.\” Looking at the 4th-grade NAEP math exam, the authors found that 76 percent of black students in regular public schools are low-income, compared to 68 percent of blacks in charter schools. Overall, the researchers found that charters do not generate higher academic achievement, nor do they enroll more disadvantaged students. They also found little evidence that charters spur increased competition and force public schools to improve. And they found evidence that charters are associated with increased segregation and student turnover.