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- <text id=89TT2701>
- <title>
- Oct. 16, 1989: State Takeover
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
- Oct. 16, 1989 The Ivory Trail
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- EDUCATION, Page 48
- State Takeover
- </hdr><body>
- <p>New Jersey seizes control of a faili-ng city school system
- </p>
- <p> New Jersey made some unhappy educational history last week.
- With a go-ahead from an administrative-law judge, the state
- board of education voted unanimously to disband the local school
- board in Jersey City and oust all six top administrators. For
- the next five years, the district will be run by an all-powerful
- school czar named by the state. New Jersey thus became the first
- U.S. state to seize total control of a local school district
- because of educational rather than financial collapse. It may
- not be the last: five other states now have laws allowing
- takeovers.
- </p>
- <p> Governor Thomas Kean, who last year rammed through a
- takeover law against tough resistance from teachers' union
- lobbyists, administrators and school boards, said the decision
- would end "educational child abuse" in New Jersey's second
- largest city. State investigators charged that too much of the
- city's $180 million school budget went into corruption and
- patronage instead of desperately needed maintenance and upgraded
- instruction. Among symptoms of distress: 46% of ninth-graders
- manage passing grades on a basic-skills test (vs. 89%
- state-wide), and 46% of the city's 52,000 youngsters attend
- private schools.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-