Teacher Evaluation Without Research Backing: SGOs
Tomorrow, NJ Education Commissioner Chris Cerf will address the membership at the NJEA's teachers convention. He is supposed to be taking questions. Perhaps someone will ask him why we NJ teachers are wasting our time with these ridiculous Student Growth Objectives or SGOs (also known as Student Learning Objectives or SLOs). Because there is no evidence that they work: There is little evidence
No One Manipulates the Press Like TFA
In general, I like Leslie Brody of the Record: she's smart and fair and usually does a good job. Which is why I found this puff piece on Teach For America in New Jersey so frustrating: Teach for America got a major public relations boost in September when a federally funded study found that on average, its “corps members” slightly outperformed teachers who entered the profession after traditiona
What Happened Tuesday?
I've listened to a fair bit of punditry and read a fair bit of opinion about Tuesday's election results. And it still doesn't make sense to me. I'll leave Virginia out of this because I really didn't follow the race. But here in Metro NYC, we had two big, contiguous races. Both ended in landslides - but for candidates who couldn't be more different: Bill de Blasio is an unreserved progressive wh
11-6-13 Jersey Jazzman: Marie Corfield: An American Hero
Jersey Jazzman: Marie Corfield: An American Hero: Marie Corfield: An American HeroThere's a lot to say after yesterday, and a lot to do starting tomorrow. But before all of that, let's get one very important thing out of the way: Marie Corfield - proud to be a mother, a teacher, and a real Jersey girl - is a genuine American hero. We teachers are generally not a very outgoing or outspoken lot. We