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NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie delivered a speech on education Thursday — the latest in a series of national prescriptions as he moves closer to announcing his decision on whether he'll launch a campaign for the Republican nomination for president.
The speech focused on improving K-12 education as well as curbing rising higher education tuition costs.
Here's a look at Christie's record in New Jersey and how the state's performance stacks up.
— Christie's high-profile battles in his first term with New Jersey's largest teachers union drew national attention and helped to cement his reputation as a Republican willing to take on unions. Among his achievements: Reforming teacher tenure protections to make it harder for teachers to earn lifetime job protections and harder to keep them.
— The average in-state tuition and fees at public four-year institutions in the state total $13,002, among the highest in the nation, according to The College Board's Annual Survey of Colleges.
— New Jersey's graduation rate increased to 88.6 percent in 2014, a slight uptick from the previous year, according to state Department of Education statistics. However, while there have been gains, stark racial and economic differences remain. While 93.46 of white students graduated in four years, that number was 78.9 percent for black students and 79.6 for low-income kids. And in the state's community college system, the governor said in a recent speech, between 60 percent and 82 percent of students need remedial education before they can begin to tackle college-level work.
— On the National Assessment of Educational Progress, New Jersey is consistently among the top performing states. But results from that test and others also show a wide and persistent gap between the performance of schools in New Jersey's suburbs and its cities. That's a longstanding and vexing problem in New Jersey — as it is elsewhere. Christie says his policies are aimed at addressing the issue.
— Christie aggressively sought Race To the Top funding, which hinged on adopting the now-contentious Common Core standards. In one of Christie's first major missteps as governor, the state was rejected from one grant because of a botched application. Christie fired an education commissioner over the flub.
— Two years ago, Christie unabashedly supported the national Common Core educational standards. He's since changed his tune, distancing himself from the standards, which are deeply unpopular among many conservative voters and activists. He announced last month that he would be convening a panel of educators and parents to come up with new, state-specific standards that could one day replace Common Core. But he intends to keep Common Core-aligned standardized tests in place, at least for now.
— Christie supports the expansion of charter schools and other kinds of schools that are privately operated but publicly funded. He also has tried to get the state to pay to send students from some places with low-performing public schools to private schools, but that measure has never made it through the Legislature.
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