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Sunday, November 3, 2013

11-3-13 The Answer Sheet Gov. Chris Christie yells at a teacher (again)

The Answer Sheet:

Gov. Chris Christie yells at a teacher (again)

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, center left, is mobbed by Rutgers University fans in Piscataway, N.J. Saturday, Nov. 2, 2013, as he makes a campaign stop before an NCAA college football game against Temple. Christie will face Democratic candidate, Barbara Buono in an election on Tuesday. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, center left, campaigning on Saturday (AP Photo/Mel Evans)
“Why,”  a New Jersey teacher asked Gov. Chris Christie (R), “do you continue to spread the myth that our schools and teachers are failing?”
The teacher who asked this at a campaign rally in Somer’s Point on Saturday (ahead of Tuesday’s gubernatorial election in the state)  is Melissa Tomlinson, an elementary school teacher who also runs an after-school program.  Christie answered in his trademark Christie way: by yelling at her. He pointed a finger at her, as this picture shows, and shouted:
“Because they are!”
He also said:
“I am tired of you people. What do you want?”
Tomlinson’s question seems like a fair one, given that New Jersey public schools overall have long done extremely well on the  metric that school reformers like Christie believe are the most telling about academic achievement: standardized test scores. You can take a look here at some of the stats. By this standard, it seems that most New Jersey teachers are doing their jobs — despite severe education budget cuts of at least $1 billion by the Christie administration (according to this Star-Ledger piece). That of course 
The Answer Sheet 11-2-13
The Answer Sheet:Catholic scholars blast Common Core in letter to U.S. bishopsAbout 130 Catholic scholars around the country have signed a hard-hitting letter to U.S. Catholic bishops denouncing the Common Core State Standards as doing “a grave disservice to Catholic education” and urging the bishops  to ignore the standards or, in the more than 100 dioceses that have already adopted them, to give