Jersey Jazzman Jammin' All Week
Hey Professor: There IS a War On Teachers
Speaking for myself, one of the most frustrating things about being a teacher is when non-teachers in positions of influence tell me that my profession isn't really being targeted -- it's all just in my head, silly!Take the intellectual godfather of reforminess, Eric Hanushek, speaking here of the Vergara decision, which struck down California's tenure laws:The five statutes in question were struc
JUL 02
In Newark, As Everywhere, Experience Matters
So Cami Anderson will be the State Superintendent of Newark's school district for at least another year. As John Mooney at NJ Spotlight notes, the announcement came at 5:23 on Friday evening: the time when all politicians dump unpopular news on their constituents.And even Chris Christie has to acknowledge that, at this point, Anderson is deeply unpopular. The Newark clergy held yet another rally y
JUN 30
Are Miami-Dade's Charter Schools Really "Impressive"?
Picking up where I last left off, let's take a look at some test score results from Miami-Dade, FL and see if the charter schools there -- which are, according to the local press, running wild while making their operators boatloads of money -- are really living up to their hype.For this post, we'll keep it simple (for now): let's leave aside the glaring differences in student populations between t
JUN 29
The REAL Objection to Adequate School Funding
Every once in a while, the school defunders give away the game:[NJ State Senator Mike] Doherty [R- Tea Party] also brought up what he said was another broken promise from Christie. He said the governor had promised to make equal school funding a key theme of the 2013 campaign, in which all 120 seats in the Legislature were up for grabs. He expanded on that when I spoke to him Friday. "It was
JUN 28
UPDATED: Miami-Dade's Charters Don't Serve the Same Students
UPDATE: I really try hard to get this stuff exactly right; in this case, I made a small mistake, and I'm replacing the graphs. Honestly, you would hardly notice the difference if I put the graphs side-by-side, but I try to set the bar pretty high here, and I don't want stuff out there that isn't completely bulletproof.While I was at it, I decided to add the numbers for another charter management o
The VergarGuments are Coming to New York State!
And so it goes… The VergarGuments keep-a-comin… spreading their way from California to the Empire State, from Albany to Buffalo. And what are VergarGuments you say? Well, a VergarGument is a fallacious form of legal reasoning applied in the context of state constitutional litigation over causes of inequities and inadequacies of schooling selectively suffered by disadvantaged children. Yeah… that’s
JUL 02
On “Access to Teacher Quality” as the New Equity Concern
A short while back, the Center for American Progress posted their take-away from the Vergara decision. That takeaway was that equity of teacher quality distribution is the new major concern, or as they framed it Access to Effective Teaching. Certainly, the distribution of teaching quality is important. But let me set the record straight on a few major issues I have with this claim. First, this is
Robes of oppression: words & pictures on the Hobby Lobby decision
Hiding behind robes of oppressionA picture is indeed worth a thousand words. I'm still reeling from the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby decision Monday. I've tried to put words together to express my outrage over this continued assault on women's bodies and reproductive rights, but there are just too many racing through my head. As I always say, when all else fails, make art. So, here's my visual reac
JUL 01
Christie can't take the heat in Paterson
Apparently Gov. Christie heeded the old saying, "If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen" and high-tailed it out of the Silk City after uttering about 25 works in his swearing in of Mayor Jose Torres. But I don't think it was the typical Jersey-style summer-in-the-city, +90° hazy, hot and humid weather that forced him out. No, I think it was the approximately 50 Paterson educa
JUN 30
The Year of Living Danielson
Education professionals across New Jersey just finished their first year under the new evaluation system that was part of the landmark bipartisan TeachNJ law signed by Gov. Christie in 2012. My school district uses the Danielson rubric developed by Charlotte Danielson. It evaluates everything from the way educators greet their students at the door to how well students can actually teach themselves
Newark: It’s time to decide to fight or to surrender.
Newark’s leadership and its people face an extraordinary challenge in the next few weeks. They either will collapse in the face of Chris Christie’s wily plan to save his phony reputation as an educational “reformer” in time for the presidential primaries–or they will stand strong and use whatever means are necessary to force the state to return local […]
Have the people of Newark become invisible?
The renewal of Cami Anderson’s contract as state-imposed schools superintendent in Newark reveals some unpleasant truths many in the city and state may not want to face. The progressive wing of the state Democratic Party is all but dead. Support for public education among elected officials is waning. The political power of both the city’s […]