News Corporation May Face Corporate Charges In U.K. Over Hacking, Bribery
This news won't help the bottom line at Joel Klein's Amplify:Rupert Murdoch's British newspaper division could face corporate charges in relation to the Metropolitan police's phone-hacking investigation, it has been claimed in a report in the Independent. Two "very senior figures" at News International, now renamed News UK, have been interviewed in relation to the corporate aspect of the investiga
What Happens After Parents Get Their Children's Common Core Test Scores?
Two weeks ago, NYSED Commissioner John King And Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch gleefully released the scores on their vaunted new Common Core tests.They had been bragging for months that the scores would plummet and, sure enough, they did.That's what happens when you rig the cut results to show a 30% fall in test scores, which is what the Merry Men and Women in Reform at NYSED and the Regents did
YESTERDAY
The Move To End The Common Core And Race To The Top Mandates In New York
NYC Educator posted that 25 Republicans have co-sponsored an interesting bill in the New York State Assembly:After having written my local Assembly person, Brian Curran, to fire Reformy John King, he wrote back the following:Thank you for your recent email. I appreciate and encourage your initiative and participation in the legislative process. The Assembly Bill A.7994 was referred to the educati
Bloomberg Plans To Lease NYCHA Land To Private Developers To Get Money For "Repairs" In The Projects
In between his rants about stop-and-frisk and his belief that all NYCHA people should be fingerprinted, the mayor said he's going forward with NYCHA privatization plans:During his radio show today, Mr. Bloomberg also announced this morning that the city plans to move forward today with a controversial plan to open NYCHA land for private housing development to raise extra money for repairs.“We have
NY Times Poll: 2/3rds Of New Yorkers Say School System Same Or Worse after 12 Years Of Bloomberg's Control
This poll is a clear repudiation of Bloomberg's education "legacy"In a stinging assessment of the mayor’s priorities and effectiveness, however, two-thirds of New Yorkers say they believe that the quality of the city’s long-troubled school system has stayed the same or become worse since he took office in 2002, despite his vigorous pledges to improve it....There is equally strong opposition to the
Bloomberg: People Living In Housing Projects Need To Be Fingerprinted
As he gets closer to the end of his reign of error, he gets more and more authoritarian:In a bid to boost security at public housing complexes, Mayor Michael Bloomberg this morning suggested fingerprinting residents so they can access their homes. “What we really should have is fingerprinting to get in. And of course there’s an allegation that some of these apartments aren’t occupied by the people
What's Wrong With Bill Thompson That So Few People Know Him?
The NY Times looks at Bill Thompson's struggle to get noticed in the mayor's race:There were a lot of reasons to believe that this would be the year for Mr. Thompson. He was the Democratic nominee in 2009, when he stunned many by coming within five percentage points of unseating Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, despite being outspent by more than $100 million. He is the only African-American candidate
Obama Administration Warns Three States To Tie Teacher Evaluations To Test Scores Or Lose NCLB Waivers
The Obama administration threatens three states who they say are not complying with their teacher evaluations tied to test scores dictates:The Education Department said Thursday that three of 40 states granted waivers from the No Child Left Behind law were at high risk of losing them, because they either have been slow to link teacher evaluations with student achievement or had adopted programs th
AUG 15
Allegations That Anthony Weiner Had Relationship With Congressional Staffer
Inevitable - more allegations involving Anthony Weiner:Before he married his wife, Anthony Weiner had a previously undisclosed relationship with an on-again-off-again congressional and campaign aide nearly two decades his junior. In pushing back against the publication of this story, the spokeswoman for his current mayoral campaign, Barbara Morgan, phoned The New York Observer‘s editor in chief. P
New Marist Poll Out Tonight Shows Momentum For Bill De Blasio
The de Blasio momentum is for real:The topsy-turvy race for New York's Democratic mayoral nomination has shifted again, with Public Advocate Bill de Blasio surging to a statistical tie with City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and former comptroller Bill Thompson in striking distance, a new poll shows.Disgraced former New York Rep. Anthony Weiner, meanwhile, has been unable to stanch the fallout f
Free Hot Dogs From The Weiner Mobile
Story here.Alas, the Weiner Mobile is not giving out any vegetarian dogs...
Common Core Proponents Terrified Tea Party Right And Anti-Test Left Will Join Together To Kill The Common Core
The NY Times has an article about the "rocky debut" of the Common Core.The article takes a look at the opposition to the national standards that is coming from both the right and left that threatens to derail the standards movement.In the piece we get the following statement from a prominent education reformer:“The danger here is that you have two kinds of problems going on,” said Kati Haycock, pr
Is De Blasio's Momentum For Real?
Bill de Blasio vaulted from fourth place in the last Quinnipac poll to first place in the Q poll released this week.He had been generating some good press prior to the poll release and getting some good notice for his first campaign ad, which featured his 15 year old son, Dante.But there are some who are questioning the leap in support de Blasio made in the Quinnipiac poll and wondering if he real
NYSED Commissioner John King Looks To Take Total Control
It's John King's way or the highway - there's no other way to read this story:BUFFALO, NY - New York's Education Commissioner wants the state legislature to pass a bill, giving the Board of Regents the authority to take over school boards in districts failing academically and/or financially. Under the proposal, there would be benchmarks for state intervention, involving a three-step approach, with
Why Is Obama So Desperate To Improve Internet Access In Schools?
President Obama has decided to tack on a $5 a year fee to every cell phone account for the next five years in order to raise funds to increase high speed internet access in schools around the country.The fees are expected to generate $6 billion dollars in three years and sunset in 2017.The move has generated a lot of criticism, but according to the NY Post, the Obama people just don't get why it h
Andrew Cuomo And His PAC Took $576,000 In Campaign Contributions From Real Estate Investors In Return For Tax Breaks
On top of the news from last week that Andrew Cuomo took $400,000 in campaign donations from a real estate develop and his affiliates in return for giving $35 million in tax breaks comes this new report from the Daily News: ALBANY — The deep-pocketed real estate investors who own a landmark former stock exchange building in lower Manhattan lavished Gov. Cuomo with $76,000 in campaign donations jus
AUG 14
John King Thinks New York Has "Very High-Quality Common Core Assessments"
Yeah, he really does.He said so when he was asked by Gotham Schools if New York would be moving to the PARCC consortium assessments any time soon: “I suspect that we will perhaps move more slowly than some other states since we know that we have in place very high-quality Common Core assessments,” King said. Let's see, what were the complaints about those state tests last April?(NOTE: I refuse to
Assemblyman Steve Englebright Calls For NYSED Commissioner John King To Be Removed
Joining Diane Ravitch and Mark Naison in calling for John King's ouster is Assemblyman Steve Englebright:While Comsewogue Superintendent Joe Rella asked last week that his state legislators either help him change the state testing system, or remove him from office, his elected Assemblyman, Steve Englebright, would prefer that someone else be removed: the state Education Commissioner, John King. "T
Will The State Senate Hearings Into The NYSED/Regents Education Reforms Matter?
I missed this story from last week, but it looks to be an important one:The chairman of the New York State Senate Education Committee will hold hearings next month on the state's controversial educational reforms. Sen. John Flanagan, a Republican from Long Island, said he will hold several hearings across the state, starting in Long Island in mid-September. He said the topics will include, among o
Pearson Screws Up Again - This Time In Virginia
The incompetents at Pearson do it again:Pearson, the world’s largest education and testing company, provided incorrect scorecards for more than 4,000 students in Virginia who took an alternative assessment last school year. That mistake led to many parents receiving news this summer that their children had passed the test when they had failed it.“We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this
Diane Ravitch Calls For NYSED Commissioner John King's Resignation
Send this call for King's removal around to everybody you know.Ravitch calls for him to resign but gives the Regents contact information, knowing that King will not go without pressure applied.I would add the contact information of the New York State Assembly and Senate members, along eith Speaker Sheldon Silver's contact information.Silver is very close to Merryl Tisch.If Shelly and his members s
AUG 13
Teen's Bad Grades Used As One Reason To Not Place Him On Heart Transplant List
This doesn't seem like a real story, but it is:Doctors at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta estimate that without a heart transplant, 15-year-old Anthony Stokes will die within three to six months from heart failure. Yet despite his prognosis, they refuse to put Anthony on the transplant list, telling his family he doesn’t qualify due to “a history of non-compliance” characterized by “low grades an
Where The Mayor's Race Now Stands
Less than a month ago, we were looking at a Christine Quinn/Anthony Weiner race with Bill Thompson and Bill De Blasio as also-rans.With today's Quinnipac poll showing Bill De Blasio in front with 30%, Christine Quinn mired in the mid-twenties and Bill Thompson barely behind her in third place, we are now looking at an extremely interesting race.Quinn is in trouble. She loses big in a runoff to De
New Quinnipiac Poll Puts Bill De Blasio In The Lead
Okay, now this is news:Public Advocate Bill de Blasio has catapulted to first place, with 30 percent of the vote, according to latest Quinnipiac poll. The surprising new lineup puts City Council Speaker Christine Quinn in second place with 24 percent of the vote and former Comptroller Bill Thompson in third with 22 percent, a month before the Democratic primary. Former Congressman Anthony Weiner,
Bloomberg: Let The Peasants Bathe In Porcelain, I Shall Bathe In Copper With A Nickel Finish
Bloomberg is more and more like Marie Antoinette:New York's billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg has splashed out on a bespoke hand-made copper bath at a cost of around $13,300.Built to fit the mayor's exact specifications, French craftsmen have hand-molded the vast tub - the latest addition for his five-storey Manhattan townhouse which he is in the process of renovating.The finished piece is expec
McGraw Hill Loses Regents Exams, NYCDOE Makes Students Retake The Tests
Just outrageous:Students from a Chelsea high school have to retake their English Regents exams today after their original tests fell off the back of a truck on their way to be graded, the teachers union said last night. The United Federation of Teachers said about 75 11th-grade students from Chelsea Career and Technical Education HS have to retake the test after education company McGraw Hill lost
AUG 12
Bad Filmmaker Thinks He Has Solutions For Public Schools
M. Night Shyamalan is one of the worst filmmakers in contemporary movie making.He had one successful film about 15 years ago and hasn't made a decent film since.Ha has, however, managed to win a "Worst Director" award in 2006 for Lady in the Water and a "Worst Screenplay" award in 2010 for The Last Airbender.Shyamalan's name is so tarnished these days that Sony didn't want to publicize his involve
NY Post: Andrew Cuomo Views Eliot Spitzer As The Enemy
From Fred Dicker:An increasingly nervous Gov. Cuomo is considering his options to prevent the “very real’’ possibility that disgraced former Gov. Eliot Spitzer will win the Sept. 10 Democratic primary for city comptroller — and turn into Cuomo’s worst political nightmare.With polls continuing to show the once- hooker-happy Spitzer holding a lead over uninspiring Manhattan Borough President Scott S
Mayor Bloomberg Gets Frothy Over Stop-And-Frisk Ruling
A judge said NYC shouldn't be like Pretoria in the 80's and placed limits on how the NYPD can carry out its stop-and-frisk policy.Bloomberg had a temper tantrum at his press conference over that ruling, as well as at the City Council for passing a law providing oversight for the NYPD:At a press conference littered with grisly imagery, Mayor Michael Bloomberg ripped apart a federal court ruling tod
The Anti-Weiner
With Anthony Weiner's favorability rating in the toilet, the media have gotten around to asking who is going to replace him as Quinn's opponent in the runoff.Bloomberg shill Bill Keller wants it to be Bill Thompson.Michael McLaughlin at Huffington Post thinks it could be Bill de Blasio. We are now a month away from Primary Day.The candidates have gone up with their ads, people are starting to pay
Bloomberg's "Legacy" In Tatters
In the past two weeks, Michael Bloomberg has seen his education legacy and his crime fighting legacy implode before his very eyes.On Wednesday, the state released test score data that exposes Bloomberg's test-based education reform program as a failure.Today a judge declared his stop-and-frisk policy unconstitutional.These are huge blows to Bloomberg's ego and Bloomberg's so-called legacy.Even Blo
Bloomberg's Stop-And-Frisk Policy Declared Unconstitutional
Excellent news:A Manhattan federal court judge today ruled against the NYPD’s controversial stop-and-frisk practices, saying the city acted with “deliberate indifference” to these “unconstitutional” stops.“I find that the City is liable for violating plaintiffs’ Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights,” US District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin wrote.“The City acted with deliberate indifference towa
80% Of New Yorkers View Anthony Weiner Unfavorably
The numbers are not getting better for Anthony Weiner:About two-thirds of New York voters say the publicity circus sparked by Anthony Weiner and Eliot Spitzer makes the Big Apple look like Clowntown, a new poll finds. “Although 16% of New Yorkers think the national attention from the Weiner and Spitzer candidacies is ‘no big deal’ and eight percent find it entertaining, 68% – including 62% of New
Newark Star Ledger: Chris Christie And Cory Booker Share Same Key Donors
The corporate education reformers are coming out for both Christie and Booker: Five dozen wealthy donors from Wall Street to Silicon Valley have placed their bets on both of New Jersey’s big political stars — Republican Gov. Chris Christie and Democratic Newark Mayor Cory Booker — this campaign season, a Star-Ledger review of state and federal records shows.When the governor and the mayor hit the
AUG 11
Christine Quinn And The Legal Drop-Out Age
From Daily Politics:Kids would be legally barred from dropping out of high school until they turn 18 under a proposal announced Sunday by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.The mayoral hopeful is pushing to raise the legal drop out age to 18 from the current minimum of 17. “As a government, we give students permission to drop out of school at 17. When they’re children, we give them the permissio
Why Is The Daily News Going Light On Sheriff Andy Cuomo?
Following the news that Governor Andrew Cuomo received $400,000 in campaign donations direct into his account or to a Democratic Party account that his campaign could tap for ad money from a real estate developer and his affiliates in return for $35 million in tax breaks, the Daily News is kinda sorta calling for an investigation into Cuomo:The commission investigating Albany’s outrageous tax give
Can Spitzer Buy His Way Into The Comptroller's Office?
The NY Post reports that Eliot Spitzer has spent more than 10 times what Scott Stringer has spent in the comptroller's race:It looks like Eliot Spitzer will be a financial “steamroller” this time around. Spitzer, who’s self-funding his campaign, has put in $3.7 million since declaring his candidacy for comptroller on July 7.What’s more, the former love gov spent $2.6 million on the race for comptr
Don't Worry, We'll Fix The Low Test Scores With More Test Prep!
Buried in this New York Daily News story about how the "achievement gap" between white and Asian students and black and Latino students widened with the new Common Core tests and how schools they had more high needs students did worse on the tests than schools with fewer high needs students is this doozy:Despite launching several reforms to close the achievement gap, like Mayor Bloomberg’s Young M
Bronx Success Academy 2 Ranks 3rd In State On Test Scores
In the middle of this Michael Goodwin propaganda piece on Eva Moskowitz in today's NY Post, we get this:The numbers tell the tale. Success Academy Bronx 2 was the top-performing nonselective school in the city and ranked third out of more than 3,500 schools across the state. Some 97 percent of its students passed math and 77 percent passed English, despite a poverty rate of 85 percent. The school
AUG 10
Common Core Questions Meant To Confuse
Take a look at this math question from the 3rd grade Common Core test in NY State and the comments made afterward by various commenters on Michelle Malkin's Twitchy blog:If you’re wondering why the scores were so bad, check out one of the questions for third-graders from the New York State Common Core Sample Questions (page 8):There were 54 apples set aside as a snack for 3 classes of students. Th
Daily News: Cuomo Has Bon Jovi Concert Canceled At State Fair So As Not To Interfere With His Fundraiser
There is just so much wrong with this:ALBANY — Bon Jovi fans hoping for a concert at the New York State Fair have been shot through the heart — and a fundraiser by Gov. Cuomo might be to blame.State officials mysteriously scrapped plans for the New Jersey-based band to appear at the fair, in Syracuse, on Aug. 28, citing “scheduling conflicts.” On Aug. 25, band leader Jon Bon Jovi is scheduled to g
Add The SLO's And The City Tests To Next Year's Battery Of State Tests
A parent made the following comment on the Newsday article about the Opt Out movement:My son gets almost 90's on every one of his "real" tests. He doesn't need to sit for 420 minutes of standardized testing in April, nor countless dozens of other hours for SLOs, benchmarks, field test questions and what every else they throw at these kids that is NOT used to determine a report card grade.While out
Cuomo Took $400,000 From Real Estate Developer In Return For $35 Million In Tax Breaks
The Daily News first reported on Thursday that Governor Andrew Cuomo took $200,000 from a real estate developer in return for providing that developer with tax breaks totaling $35 million - $100,000 to his campaign account, $100,000 to a Democratic Party account that the governor used to run ads to tout his agenda.The DN reported Cuomo officials vigorously denied on Thursday any quid pro quo betwe
First Slave Labor, Now This
From the Post:The billionaire widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs’ has reportedly hooked up with the divorcing, former mayor of Washington DC.Laurene Powell Jobs, 49, and Adrian Fenty, 42, got their romance rolling in January when the former DC mayor announced his separation from wife Michelle, the Washington Post reported today. The new power couple met in 2011 at an education conference.Then in 20