Jersey Jazzman Jammin' All Week
Charter Schools: The New Battle of Trenton
So you guys have all seen this:On Christmas Day, 1775, George Washington and his troops crossed the Delaware River, starting at what is known now as Upper Makefield, PA. The general led his forces south along the banks of the river, eventually sneaking up on the Hessians, the German mercenary troops of the British who were occupying Trenton. The Germans had been partying to celebrate the season, a
APR 16
New NJ Spotlight Piece: Why Teachers Need To Stand Up For Themselves
I've got a new piece in NJ Spotlight this week. An excerpt:"All this raises a larger point: what sort of people do we want teaching in our schools? Educators who demand that they be respected and treated as the career professionals they are? Or employees who meekly accept frozen pay, diminished benefits, and degraded workplace protections? Who are the better role models for our students? Who
APR 15
Education Law Center Fundraiser, This Thursday
The Education Law Center is having their annual fundraiser, award ceremony, and wine/food tasting reception this Thursday, April 17. I'd like to encourage you all to attend.ELC is the driving force behind equitable funding for schools in New Jersey and elsewhere in the nation. It's only through their tireless efforts that New Jersey has remained one of the most "fair" states in school fu
APR 14
Repost For Tax Day: The Teacher Supply Tax Credit & Why We Aren't Saints
I'm reposting this from December of last year in "celebration" of Tax Day tomorrow.Via Fred Klonsky, here's yet another way to screw teachers out of money:STATELINE (WIFR) -- Local teachers may be forced to spend more of their own money on school supplies next year, now that a federal tax break is about to expire.Teachers are able to deduct up to $250 on what they spend on classrooms sup
APR 13
Sunday Music: Hugh Masekela
I caught Hugh Masekela last Sunday at NJPAC. The younger Jazzboy plays the trumpet (his first instrument is the computer, actually, and the music he makes on it is really quite good), so Mrs. Jazzman and I thought this would be good family outing. It was.Masekela is 75 and is really amazing; he's a ball of energy on stage, playing, singing, dancing, telling stories, and just generally being great.
Data Wars, Episode I
Bruce Baker wrote a post yesterday about the appropriate use of data that really should be read by all engaged in education policy debates:My next few blog posts will return to a common theme on this blog – appropriate use of publicly available data sources. I figure it’s time to put some positive, instructive stuff out there. Some guidance for more casual users (and more reckless ones) of public
The Endogeneity of the Equitable Distribution of Teachers: Or, why do the girls get all the good teachers?
Recently, the Center for American Progress (disclosure: I have a report coming out through them soon) released a report in which they boldly concluded, based on data on teacher ratings from Massachusetts and Louisiana, that teacher quality is woefully inequitably distributed across children by the income status of those children. As evidence of these inequities, the report’s authors included a few
APR 16
Why you can’t compare simple achievement gaps across states! So don’t!
Consider this post the second in my series of basic data issues in education policy analysis. This is a topic on which I’ve written numerous previous posts. In most previous posts I’ve focused specifically on the issue of problems with poverty measurement across contexts and how those problems lead to common misinterpretations of achievement gaps. For example, if we simply determine achievement ga
APR 11
Understand your data & use it wisely! Tips for avoiding stupid mistakes with publicly available NJ data
My next few blog posts will return to a common theme on this blog – appropriate use of publicly available data sources. I figure it’s time to put some positive, instructive stuff out there. Some guidance for more casual users (and more reckless ones) of public data sources and for those must making their way into the game. In this post, I provide a few tips on using publicly available New Jersey s
NPU Parents & NSU Students concur: Superintendent Cami Anderson is destroying Newark’s schools.
Make up snow days! SGO’s! End of third marking period! Summative! Lions, tigers and bears—oh my! No wonder I couldn’t get this blog post done sooner.…Where are all her supporters? I was honored that the good people of the Newark Parents Union invited me to last week’s public education Town Hall Meeting. There were about 50 people in attendance. I’m sure there would have been more had not the NAACP
APR 06
The school to prison pipeline just got a whole lot shorter
Listen… do you hear it? CLICK! Buzzzzz... Whirrr… Do you see it? Locks! Cameras! Action!All across America public schools are looking more like prisons. With every school shooting more and more security measures are being put in place, and that effort ratcheted up exponentially after the massacre at Newtown. But who pays, and at what cost? My school district is spending $300,000 on security upgrad
Who is Benjamin Olagadeyo?
Who is Benjamin Olagadeyo? Or, for that matter, Samuel Taye Olagadeyo? Or Mary Olagadeyo? Or Bematolas Envinronmental Consulting, LLC? Bematolas appears to be an artificial name created out of the personal names–BEnjamin, MAry , Taye, and OLAgadeyo. Don’t you love a mystery–especially when it has something to do with the way Newark schools superintendent Cami Anderson spends […]
APR 16
Is the NJEA waking up?
The struggle to save public schools from private, profit-making scams could well be lost. It will be lost–if it already hasn’t been lost–unless those groups with experience in organizing, resources for getting their message out, a history of lobbying, and a willingness to use the courts, grow some courage and take some risks. Yes, in this state, that […]