Christopher Cerf

Christopher D. Cerf (born ) is an American education administrator and attorney who previously served as the state-appointed Superintendent of the Newark Public Schools in New Jersey.

Early life Cerf was born in Illinois but grew up in Washington, D.C. Around 1970, he and his family moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, where he attended Commonwealth School. He earned his undergraduate degree in history from Amherst College in 1977. He later graduated from Columbia Law School where in his final year he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Columbia Law Review. After graduating from Columbia Law School, Cerf served as a clerk to J. Skelly Wright, a judge in Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In 1985, As a clerk, former Justice O'Connor later described Cerf as "a hard worker, a sensible worker, and he was just excellent. You can't find any fault with him." and efforts to protect prisoner's rights to petition for habeas corpus.

After working at another Washington firm, Wiley Rein and Fielding, in 1997, he was hired as general counsel to Edison Schools Inc. (now known as EdisonLearning). In 2001, As of at least 2006, While at Edison Schools, he was responsible for the handling of the backlash stemming from company's administration of public schools in Philadelphia After leaving the company in 2005, Cerf joined the consulting firm Public–Private Strategy Group. On December 21, 2006, New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein announced that he was appointing Cerf, who had assumed the role of Chief Transformation Officer, as deputy chancellor. Cerf is a longtime friend of the chancellor as they both worked together at the White House and Klein's law firm Onek, Klein & Farr in Washington. He later relinquished "all equity interest" but was questioned by the city's Conflicts of Interest Board for soliciting a charitable contribution from executives at Edison in an email at the same time he relinquished his financial interests in the company. The Conflicts of Interest Board took no disciplinary action. and Sangari Global.

New Jersey schools He was appointed New Jersey State Commissioner of Education by Chris Christie in 2010. In February 2014, Cerf announced that he would be leaving his post as Commissioner of Education at the end of the month to become chief executive of Amplify Insight, a division of Amplify.

In June 2015, Cerf stepped down from his executive post at Amplify in anticipation of his appointment to head the Newark City School District. The same month, he also resigned from his membership to the board of directors of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, a lobbying group supporting charter schools, which he had just joined in April 2015. On July 8, 2015, the New Jersey Board of Education, which at the time had direct control over the Newark schools, voted 6 to 4 to appoint Cerf as superintendent of the district school system, replacing Cami Anderson.

According to a February 2018 editorial in The Star-Ledger, Cerf closed the worst schools, fired the worst principals, and used a new contract to pay the best teachers more. By the end of his tenure as superintendent, the graduation rate had risen to 77 percent, a 20 percent increase. He was able to improve students' results in state standardized tests and increase the graduation rate while maintaining a balanced budget. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Cerf were able to end the pugnacious relationship between the city's leaders and state's Department of Education.

In December 2017, Cerf announced his resignation as superintendent effective on February 1, 2018, a few months ahead of the end of his contract and the same day as the state returned control of the city school district to local control.

Personal life Cerf resides in Montclair, New Jersey.