Jersey Jazzman Jammin' All Week
Hey, Mr. Mayor–face down Christie’s gangbangers!
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka got a lot of media attention Friday when he called a press conference to talk about the school enrollment debacle. He probably faced more cameras than at any time since his election. He also faced growing outrage and skepticism from parents growing weary of having the state use their children as guinea pigs in […]
The Myth of The Burned-Out Senior Teacher: Part II
In my last post, I questioned the idea of the senior, burned-out teacher being a major policy concern, simply on the basis of the fact that there really aren't that many senior teachers to begin with.But what does the literature say about relative teacher effectiveness late in a career? What do we know about teachers who enter the late stages of their professions, and their effect on student outco
AUG 19
The Myth of The Burned-Out Senior Teacher: Part I
Non-teacher David Boies is absolutely convinced that we are plagued by old, bad, burned-out teachers; that's why we need to get rid of tenure, see, and replace them with young, inexperienced, poorly-trained teachers, like the ones at TFA, the vast majority of whom will leave teaching after three years. Makes complete sense...Non-teacher Jonathan Alter is also gravely concerned that all of these ba
AUG 13
Book Review: This Is Not a Test, by José Luis Vilson
Let me start with the easiest part of this review:Buy and read José Luis Vilson's This Is Not a Test.@TheJLV is one of the better known teacher-bloggers around, and a prodigious tweeter. He asks hard questions and gives little quarter when it comes to issues of race and education (although I've noticed he also has greater patience with those who are willing to engage in a sincere, respectful dialo
Revel Without a Cause
Christie's big gamble on the Revel Casino comes up snake eyes for NJ citizens and pension funds.The headline says it all. The gleaming new jewel of Atlantic City, the hoped-for savior of a town that makes its living off of hope, off of worshipping golden—and silver and green—idols will sink slowly into the sunset on September 1, and along with it thousands of jobs, millions in lost tax revenue, an
Cami’s Newark enrollment plan collapses in the heat
The implementation of the deeply flawed “One Newark” student-dispersal program all but collapsed yesterday as the state administration’s highly paid bureaucrats kept hundreds of angry and frustrated parents and children waiting in un-airconditioned school rooms or outside in 90+ heat to register their children for the few remaining public school seats. Just hours into the […]
AUG 18
Newark residents sue to stop “One Newark,” create integrated school district within Essex County
The five children of George Tillman stood with him in front of what had once been known—and, to some in Newark’s South Ward, will always be known—as the Bragaw Avenue School. Above their heads, newly installed air conditioners hummed quietly and, from a discreet distance, armed private security guards warily kept watch on a hundred […]
AUG 17
How Hespe and Anderson scammed Newark’s children to help charter school friends
New Jersey and local school officials have been involved in a conspiracy to evade laws governing the operation of charter schools in order to allow the wholesale “charterization” of public schools in Newark, the state’s largest city. State Education Commissioner David Hespe allowed the city’s charter schools to ignore legally-mandated lotteries while, at the same time, […]
