Jersey Jazzman Jammin' All Week
Hey, Buddy: Can You Spare $2.5 Billion?
Now that Chris Christie's utterly fraudulent budgeting has been laid bare, we're left with a problem: how will New Jersey make up for its two decade-old pension holiday?It's nice to talk about bi-partisan commissions and proclaim that "everyone must make sacrifices," but that's really just a way for pundits to avoid giving a straight answer. So let's, for once, not waste a lot of time ta
MAY 24
How To Destroy the Teaching Corps: Use Charter Schools
Charter schools have proven very useful to plutocrats for a variety of reasons:- They help make already wealthy people even more money: see here, here and here for just a few examples. Those of you on newspaper editorial boards who live in denial of money making potential of charter schools are willingly obtuse.- They provide an excuse for not raising taxes on the wealthy to full fund urban school
MAY 23
"One Newark": A Market For "Lemons"
I've got a new brief over at the NJ Education Policy Forum out today about One Newark. As usual, I present my geekspeak-free (mostly) version of this brief here.Here's the background: Cami Anderson, the state-appointed superintendent of Newark, has put out a plan to restructure the district's schools. Bruce Baker* and I have written a lot about the flaws in this plan, called One Newark: see here,
Rigor: The death of public education (no really)
Photo CreditWhat's worse than education 'reform'? Educators who drink the reformy Kool-Aid.As a product of 12 years of Catholic education in New Jersey the 60s and 70s I learned a thing or two about the roots of the English language. While I didn't have any art, music, science, PE or health classes until high school, I learned a great deal about phonics and diagramming sentences, and just enough a
In honor of retiring educators everywhere
The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.~ Martin Luther King, Jr.I was a little quiet on Facebook and Twitter the past couple of weeks because I was busy planning and hosting the Hunterdon County Education Association annual retirement dinner, which took place on May 22nd. Retirement di
Cami Anderson is winning
Gov. Chris Christie and state-appointed Newark schools superintendent Cami Anderson are complicit in the evasion of laws and regulations governing the regulation of charter schools. Those are political decisions because they support the privatization of public education. What is incomprehensible to me is why so many organizations and community groups opposed to the […]
MAY 28
GUEST: Top Newark student says time to speak is now
Today’s guest blog was written by Jordan Thomas, a senior at Newark’s University High School where he is valedictorian and earned a 4.5 GPA. He was admitted to Princeton, Harvard, Yale, and Rutgers and will attend Princeton in the fall. He plans to go to law school and become a Constitutional lawyer. He was the student member […]
MAY 27
Massive layoffs in Newark? Never mind. Cami was just joking.
State-appointed Newark schools superintendent Cami Anderson sent out an email late yesterday saying she had all but miraculously found a way to prevent massive teacher layoffs that had been predicted earlier. She also promised to stay in her job at least until next year. While not saying there would be no layoffs at all, she said the firings […]
A day of resistance in Newark
More than 200 students burst out of beleaguered University High School in Newark this morning to protest last Friday’s firing of the magnet school’s principal and six vice principals. Chanting “Save our school!” and “Cami must go!” the students marched around local blocks and then headed downtown toward 2 Cedar Street, the headquarters of the Newark […]