Democrats for Education Reform’s Shavar Jeffries on how to fix his own movement

Shavar Jeffries is the new president of Democrats for Education Reform, as the Los Angeles Times reported late Wednesday.

The former candidate for mayor in Newark, N.J., was in Los Angeles this week to meet people associated with his new job. DFER is an influential group that has steered Democrats who favor the tenets of the education reform movement — more charter schools, school funding and tougher teacher evaluations, among others — to electoral victory.

Jeffries, a fifth-generation Newark native whose single mother was murdered when he was young, ran against Ras Baraka in Newark and lost, despite DFER’s help.

He was raised by his grandmother, a public school teacher, then enrolled in private school thanks to a scholarship. He ultimately landed at Columbia University’s law school and litigated civil rights cases in New Jersey before serving as president of the Newark Public Schools Advisory Board.

Jeffries sat down to talk with Education Matters on Thursday morning. We’ll have more soon, but here is Jeffries’ take on the problems with education reform:

“We’re working to dramatically change systems that have stultified over many decades,� Jeffries said. “We need to do a better job of getting our message out.�

For example: “If communities hear that charters are some Trojan horse and hedge funds are going to make money off the backs of our kids, people are going to distrust that,� he said. “The schools exist to educate babies, not to make money.�

We asked him whether the reform movement’s problems run deeper than messaging, given the level of distrust. This is what he said:

“The reform movement is new, and a lot of its leadership is new. Now, I’m not new. I’ve been there my whole life. I’ve worked in Newark.

“[Former Newark superintendent] Cami Anderson is new, some of the charter operators are new and it takes time to build relationships. If you’re new and you’re coming in closing schools, and if you’re coming in disrupting things that people had gotten used to, they don’t know who you are. And [if] you’re not spending sufficient time to explain to them what it is you’re doing and why it’s good, then of course there’s going to be distrust. They don’t know you.

“They’re doing big things, and it’s not clear to them how it will benefit their children.

“It’s also affecting constituencies they do trust. As charters have grown, there’s been increasing layoffs in the traditional public schools. Parents and communities have relationships with teachers. They’ve been in the community. They’re communicating a message of: We have these outsiders coming in; they’re taking jobs.�

As Jeffries takes the helm at DFER, he says he is serious about engaging the communities the organization is trying to help.

Stay tuned for more from Education Matters.

You can reach Joy Resmovits on Twitter @Joy_Resmovits and by email at [email protected].