Jersey Jazzman Jammin' All Week
Miami-Dade's Charters Don't Serve the Same Students
The series from the SunSentinel on Florida's charter schools is well worth the read: it's the Wild West down there, with some of the craziest stories of charter school malfeasance, corruption, and incompetence you could imagine.What's missing, however, is some hard data on student population characteristics and academic results. I want to try to fill that in over the next few posts.Data here is fr
Charter School Cream Skimming Doesn't Always Pay Off
There's a bit of a "he said/she said" thing going on in Jersey City between the school district and a charter school:After telling Jersey City parents two weeks ago that the school district was investigating a possible data breach of personal student information, and then saying two days later that there was no data breach, school officials now allege that a local charter school did inde
JUN 26
America: Stunningly Incoherent on Teachers & Tenure
There's a new poll, just out yesterday, that details the thoughts of California's citizens when it comes to education and tenure (the text is here). The biggest conclusion?California's citizens are suffering from an extraordinary level of cognitive dissonance when it comes to their schools:41. California Public school teachers who receive a positive recommendation from supervisors are currently aw
Why Do We Need Tenure? Ask Elizabeth's Teachers
My post about Mike Mignone, the brave teacher and union leader in Belleville, NJ who is up on tenure charges, went viral this week. Mignone has been on unpaid leave pending his hearing; he alleges it's because he asked dared to question his school board about an outrageous surveillance system that includes a camera and microphone in every teachers lounge. That system cost $2 million, money teacher
JUN 23
Why Do We Need Tenure? Ask Belleville's Teachers
In the wake of the truly awful Vergara decision, there have been plenty of reformy types crowing that we just don't need teacher tenure any more. "There are more than enough protections for teachers against vindictive administrators and school boards!" they claim. "Tenure just isn't necessary!"These people need to take a trip up the Garden State Parkway and visit Belleville, NJ
Who Gets the Shaft When Schools Are Underfunded? Ask Paterson's Teachers
Paterson is one of the most impoverished cities in New Jersey. In my last post for NJ Spotlight, I gave some detail about how so many of city's children suffer under crushing poverty:According to U.S. Census Bureau data for 2012, nearly 40 percent of Paterson’s children live in poverty. Unemployment is about 15 percent, nearly double the statewide average. Paterson also has the eighth-highest viol
JUN 22
Charter School Reality: Hoboken, NJ Edition
Let's return, once again, to the Northeast's home of charter school segregation denial: Hoboken, NJ.As I've stated before, the local charter school cheerleaders may try to deny the obvious, but the evidence is quite clear: the three charter schools in Hoboken do not serve nearly as many students in economic disadvantage as the public schools. It's pointless to argue otherwise because the evidence
The real path to quality, equitable and adequate schooling (hint – It’s not Vergara!)
The blogging has been sparse lately because my head is buried in really cool and important projects these days. My apologies to those anxiously awaiting glib, sarcastic updates and smackdowns on issues such as the Vergara case (where the logical fallacies run wild – more later if I ever get the chance) or the multitude of nonsensical reports that continue to flow out of beltway think tanks. Here’s
Cami insults top Newark high school principal and he says he is leaving
Late Wednesday afternoon, Lamont Thomas politely excused himself from a meeting with central office administrators and returned to his inner office at the ultra-modern Science Park High School building on Norfolk Street. He picked up the microphone he used to make school-wide announcements and then said something that shocked the faculty and staff and a […]
JUN 25
State policy in Newark: Racism. Face it.
The eighth-grade graduation ceremonies at the Hawthorne Avenue School this morning–the last of their kind–provided an island of sanity and goodwill in the ocean of madness that is state educational policy in Newark. One of the best-achieving schools, not just in the city, but also in the state, has ben stripped of its leadership, declared a […]
JUN 22
Hespe offers Cami a contract: Has Baraka been “played” already?
Cami Anderson–will she sign? Cami Anderson, the controversial state-imposed superintendent of Newark schools, has been offered a new one-year-contract, that, despite restrictions on her freedom to act, will allow her to continue imposing the “One Newark” plan that has become a severely divisive issue among residents of the state’s largest city. Several […]