Assembly Education Committee Testimony

[Dollar$ and Sense]

August of 2007, KPMG released New Jersey Department of Education “Performance Report.” It said that the D.O.E. has too much to do, not enough people to do it, and not enough funding to achieve proper results.

To my knowledge, the only way for serious micromanaging to succeed is for the management team to perform in spectacular fashion.

Dollar$ and Sense does not now or ever, speak disrespectfully. We are certain that many improvements have been made since the KPMG report was released. Hopefully though, all recognize that our education management team, in this case the Department of Education and the Commissioner, as the team currently exists, cannot be expected to be spectacular.

As a case in point, the Performance Report states, “DOE has not established a project team to implement CORE.” In response, management states, “ A team to develop regulations has already been formed and has begun it’s work.” That was August of 2007. In May of 2008, we get to see the first draft of the regulations. Now, in June, with a State budget due to be agreed on by month’s end, we are told that we must enact these regulations absolutely ASAP.

S1911/ A2965, as written, allows the Commissioner of Education enormous power to decide about the education of 1,300,000 children. This is too much to ask of one person. We are asking a Department of Education to make specific decisions about districts whose needs vary as much as night and day.

We are all looking for the way to remedy what ails us. It is not strictly a Legislative initiative. Many education advocates have a sense of educational needs, but we also have a sense of the same reality that is motivating this Legislature.

We know that schools must use business judgments to create greater efficiency. However, schools can’t be looked at as if we were a business. We cannot control our inventory. We cannot control the quality of our raw materials. We accept all children, regardless of abilities and needs. Our cost of goods sold cannot be regulated or made consistent. We cannot choose the market we wish to sell. We cannot regulate our mark-ups. Our outcomes are not predictable. Our work force and how we manage them is substantially regulated by legislated mandate. We cannot reward high performance and we cannot eliminate those who perform poorly.

Decisions must be economically practical, but they also must be educationally sound to meet the specific needs of a child. That is simply too much to ask of any Commissioner and any Department of Education that has too much to do, not enough people to do it, and not enough funding to achieve proper results. A 12 months test period for a regulation contains too much risk when the inventory is children.

Constructive solutions has always been the target for Dollar$ and Sense. The CORE plan, along with approval of the Senate, has established Executive Super Superintendents. By design, these are individuals with management skills and hands on in the field experience. Past procedure of regulations approved and issued by the State Board of Education was designed to insure efficiency, not to delay process. A second opinion is considered a good practice and this is what we hope to accomplish. We would like to suggest an amendment to this bill that includes a review of regulations by a panel of Executive Super Superintendents. These people, by design, have the unique combination of insights that provide the best of all second opinions. This panel can reach out to all counties. The county Executive Super Superintendent offers the added advantage of utilizing local knowledge, which will allow them to focus on the specific districts that have been unable to efficiently affect all economies. We are all looking to reduce costs. Focusing on specific areas of need is fiscally more efficient than micromanaging the entire system.