N.J. acting schools chief faces questions about transparency, imperiling his confirmation

Fans tout Christopher Cerf's talent, but critics contend he's lacking in candor

TRENTON — In February 2007, Christopher Cerf was a newly hired deputy chancellor in the New York City school system when he was asked at a public forum to describe his financial interest in Edison Schools Inc., a for-profit education company he once headed.

"I’d be delighted to do that," Cerf replied, according to a published account of the meeting. "I have no financial interest in Edison of any kind. Zero."

Asked by the president of a parents group when he had relinquished the shares, Cerf said he would be "delighted" to provide his financial disclosure form.

Then he clammed up.

What Cerf declined to volunteer is that he had given up the shares just the day before.

In fact, Cerf was under no obligation to rescind his stake in Edison. But his unwillingness to fully answer the question that day would lead to unflattering headlines, public criticism and an investigation by the school system’s Special Commissioner of Investigation.

Four years later, the man who represents perhaps the most important nomination of Gov. Chris Christie’s tenure is again facing questions about his openness, imperiling his confirmation as education commissioner at a time when the governor has made education reform one of his top priorities.

A Star-Ledger examination encompassing dozens of interviews, along with a review of public and private documents, shows Cerf is known as a gifted educator, a strategic thinker and a tireless advocate for children. His fans include a retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice and the union head he sparred with over several years in New York.

But the reporting also shows Cerf can be thin-skinned, quick-tempered and, at times, less than forthcoming, even when the answers to questions could hardly be seen as damaging. Late last month, when The Star-Ledger found that Cerf had formed a consulting company that received a $500,000 contract, paid for by private donations, to perform an assessment of the Newark schools, the acting commissioner said he severed his relationship with the firm "literally right after its formation."

"I never actually did anything with it, so I’m not in any way, shape or form related to it," he said at the time.

Cerf has since provided a fuller accounting of his role with the company, Global Education Advisors, acknowledging he did some work on the assessment.

He maintains he received no compensation for his brief period of work and calls his association with the company a "trivial and inconsequential part of my background."

Separately, state Sen. Ronald Rice (D-Essex) says Cerf lied to him in a conversation, contending the acting commissioner denied having close ties to Newark Mayor Cory Booker, with whom Rice does not get along. Cerf has long had an interest in the Newark schools and has been described as an informal adviser to Booker on education issues.

In a series of telephone interviews and in dozens of e-mails to Star-Ledger reporters and editors, Cerf said he has done nothing inappropriate, bristling at the suggestion he would ever leverage public office for private gain. He also denied misleading Rice, saying the two have had several "open and candid conversations about a range of issues."

"I have always been forthright with the senator," Cerf said.

Asked about Booker, Cerf declined to characterize his relationship with the mayor.

Christie has accused Rice of playing politics with the nomination, and a spokesman for the governor said Christie stands firmly behind his pick.

Cerf, for his part, said that while he has found the negative publicity bruising and "profoundly unfair," he has no plans to step down, describing his motivation to reform education as something "spiritual."

"We live in a country where the founding principle is equality of opportunity," Cerf said. "What we say is, ‘Let everyone get an equal shot.’ Public education is intended to be the great catalyst of that noble principle, and it is a great big lie for impoverished children, typically children of color and typically children in the urban core, and for whatever reason, I feel I have something to offer. I’m committed to doing it."

HIS OWN EDUCATION

Cerf said he learned the value of education from his family, which included a number of teachers and professors. His father, Jay H. Cerf, earned a doctoral degree from Yale University and taught courses in American government there. He later held several posts with the federal government, including a stint as a deputy assistant secretary in the Commerce Department.

Around 1970, the family left Washington, D.C., for Cambridge, Mass., where Jay Cerf established a successful consulting firm. A teenage Christopher Cerf enrolled at the Commonwealth School, a small, private academy in Boston with an emphasis on diversity and community service.

He later studied history at Amherst College, graduating near the top of his class, before landing his first and only teaching job at the prestigious Cincinnati Country Day School, a private prep school in Ohio.

Fred Carey, Cerf’s former student and now senior dean of students at the school, called him a "natural teacher" who connected quickly with students, engaging and pushing them at the same time.

"He’s one of those guys who would clearly make his mark," Carey said.

After four years in Cincinnati, Cerf left teaching for Columbia Law School. He said he misses teaching and often regrets the decision. If he had misgivings then, it didn’t translate into a lack of success.

Cerf won academic prizes at Columbia and, in his final year, claimed the coveted position of editor at the Columbia Law Review.

The lofty post helped Cerf secure a plum clerkship assignment with a U.S. Court of Appeals judge, James Skelly Wright, in the nation’s capital.

'JUST EXCELLENT'

A year later, in 1985, he became one of four clerks for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, researching cases and hashing them out verbally over Crock-Pots of chili on Saturday afternoons in the justice’s chambers.

O’Connor called Cerf "superb" and engaging, with a good sense of humor.

"I just wanted a hard worker, a sensible worker, and he was just excellent," she said. "You can’t find any fault with him."

Cerf worked as a lawyer for a decade longer, first with a pair of Washington firms and then as an associate White House counsel under President Clinton.

But he said education kept calling him back. In 1997, he took the job of general counsel for Edison Schools, which had been founded five years earlier with the guiding principle that a private, for-profit company could better educate students — and do it more cheaply — than public schools. By 2001, Cerf was the company’s president.

Under Cerf’s tenure, Edison grew into the largest private-sector manager of public schools, educating some 77,000 students in 150 schools around the country. But its legacy has been decidedly mixed.

Some studies showed stronger achievement gains among Edison-educated students. Others did not. In 2007, a Rand Corp. study that examined Edison’s control of 20 schools in Philadelphia found "no statistically significant effects," positive or negative, in reading or math in the four years after Edison stepped in.

One by one, districts canceled their contracts with the company, which lost tens of millions of dollars. Its stock price, a record-high $36.75 in 2001, later fell to pennies per share.

Three years ago, Edison changed its name to EdisonLearning. Today, it manages 17 district schools and 42 charter schools across the country. It makes much of its income through tutoring services and educational software.

Cerf said Edison employed a successful education model, though perhaps not a stellar financial model. He also called it a victim of politics and teachers unions.

"The unions basically put out a kill order on Edison," Cerf said. "They manipulated the press, so any time anything went wrong or there was a controversy, it would be magnified."

At the least, he said, Edison laid the groundwork for successful charter-school management organizations that followed.

CAREER IN CONSULTING

Cerf left the company in 2005, forming a consulting firm he called the Public Private Strategy Group. In short order, he was hired as a full-time adviser to Joel Klein, chancellor of the New York City school system and Cerf’s former law colleague in Washington.

Dubbed the "chief adviser on transformation," Cerf assembled a team of experts to assess the schools and make recommendations. In little more than a year, he was named deputy chancellor, the second most powerful figure in a district with 1.1 million students.

Cerf moved to give principals more autonomy over their schools, pushed for a teacher evaluation system that took student test scores into account, shuttered 100 failing schools and opened dozens of new charter schools.

Some of the initiatives led to battles with New York City’s powerful United Federation of Teachers, but the union’s president at the time, Randi Weingarten, credits Cerf more than any other member of the administration with having the flexibility to work with teachers and not against them. Cerf also always made clear that children were his first priority, Weingarten said.

"Chris and I have had in our times some fierce ideological fights, but what we agree on is that kids deserve a shot in life," said Weingarten, now president of the American Federation of Teachers, with more than 1 million members nationwide. "I found him to be smart and caring and a terrific problem-solver."

She said Cerf also could be overly sensitive, reacting strongly to criticism.

"He wears his emotions on his sleeve," Weingarten said, recalling frequent calls from Cerf early in the morning and late at night. "That can be very endearing, but also very jarring initially."

ISSUE OF OWNERSHIP

Cerf had a less cordial relationship with Tim Johnson, a former chairman of the Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Council, a volunteer group that serves as an umbrella organization for parent associations in the city’s roughly 1,500 public schools.

In February 2007, it was Johnson who challenged Cerf about his ownership of Edison stock.

Johnson said Cerf’s comments that day, when he theatrically declared he was divested from Edison and declined to say when he relinquished his shares, struck the parents’ advocate as disingenuous.

"He didn’t actually lie, but he didn’t tell the truth either," Johnson said. "To me, it’s Nixonian. Being disingenuous may be worse than anything he actually did."

Cerf minces no words about Johnson. In an e-mail, he called him a "pathetic, two-bit player" and a "stooge" for the United Federation of Teachers.

By the measure of the law, Cerf did nothing wrong regarding Edison. He had already disclosed his stake to education officials and recused himself from all matters involving the company. Moreover, at the time the meeting took place, a ruling from the city’s Conflicts of Interests Board was pending on whether he could keep the shares.

He said he deserved praise, not condemnation, for relinquishing the shares without compensation and that his actions were motivated by the desire to avoid any kind of distraction for the department and the chancellor.

"I don’t consider that disingenuous," Cerf wrote. "It wasn’t any of his business — and certainly not legally germane — to know when I had relinquished them. …. I completely stand by my actions and decisions on this."

Despite his stance, the department’s investigative arm, the Special Commisioner of Investigation, opened a probe into the matter. It found that when Cerf gave up his shares in Edison via e-mail, he asked that in return, a charitable contribution of $60,000 be made to the Darrow Foundation, a nonprofit group that runs a wilderness camp for disadvantaged children. Cerf serves on Darrow’s board.

After he was interviewed by the investigator, Richard Condon, Cerf rescinded the donation request, which had not yet been filled, according to Condon’s report.

Condon forwarded his findings to the conflicts board, which took no action against Cerf. The board’s chairman, however, wrote to Cerf as a "formal reminder of the importance of strict compliance with the city’s conflicts of interests law," according to a New York Times account.

Cerf said he "absolutely rejects" any notion of impropriety, adding that he did not ask for the donation in his capacity as a public official and that he was recused from business involving Edison in any event.

"It’s a trivial thing," he said.

Cerf left his city post in 2009 to help run Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s re-election campaign, which was seen as a referendum on his restructuring of the school system.

Soon after, he took a position as president and chief executive officer of Sangari Global Education, a private, Brazil-based company that sells science curricula to school districts, mainly overseas.

It was in May of last year, while still president of Sangari, that Cerf and a partner, Rajeev Bajaj, formed Global Education Advisors, the consulting company based at Cerf’s home address in Montclair. Bajaj, whom Cerf met in the New York City schools, also is a Sangari executive.

Booker, using a $500,000 grant solicited from a California foundation, hired the consulting firm to perform a comprehensive assessment of the Newark district’s enrollment figures, test scores and facilities.

The firm also issued a set of recommendations to close some failing schools and, in their place, open 11 charter schools and five new district schools — a proposal that has caused an uproar among parents. Cerf, as education commissioner, would have final say over the proposal in the state-run district.

A MATTER OF TIMING

In response to questions, Cerf provided his most detailed account yet of his association with Global and its involvement with the Newark schools, saying he didn’t begin work on the assessment until Nov. 29 and that he verbally resigned from the company some three weeks later, shortly after he was offered the commissioner’s post.

A corporate change-of-ownership document filed with the state — officially severing Cerf’s ties with Global — is dated Dec. 29.

In between those dates, Cerf said, he was on an unrelated, six-day business trip to Qatar, beginning Dec. 4. He said he did little or no work on the assessment after his return.

At no time, he said, did he work on the recommendation to close some schools and open new ones, adding the proposal was developed after his resignation from Global.

Cerf maintains that his initial comments on the topic, that he "never actually did anything" with Global, are substantively accurate and that he has not revised his account.

"The characterization that my story has evolved is just not right," he said.

Cerf’s disagreement with Rice is possibly the most damaging.

Declaring Cerf a "prevaricator," Rice has invoked "senatorial courtesy," an unwritten rule that allows New Jersey’s senators to hold up Senate confirmation of nominees who live in their counties or home districts.

Last week, Rice said he will "never" allow a hearing for Cerf, leaving him an "acting" commissioner indefinitely. To Cerf’s old friend Weingarten, the former New York City union president, the questions about transparency are unfortunate and to some extent, she said, of his own making.

"I think he should be more forthcoming about these kinds of things, because he’s a very gifted education reformer and very gifted in his ability to problem-solve," she said. "None of us is perfect, but it would be better if he were more forthcoming."

By Jessica Calefati, Susan K. Livio and Mark Mueller/The Star-Ledger

Staff writers Jeanette Rundquist, Chris Megerian and David Giambusso contributed to this report.