Jersey Jazzman Jammin' All Week
Once Again, @GovChristie Just Makes Stuff Up
America, as you come to know our governor, please remember this one, immutable rule about Chris Christie:It's never his fault.It was Gov. Chris Christie who unilaterally instituted New Jersey’s salary limits on school superintendents, and it will likely be governor who either ends or extends them when the caps expire in 2016.Christie yesterday wasn’t much showing his hand, first deriding educators
Why Won't @NJSenatePres Sweeney Allow a Transparent Debate About Charter Schools?
From our friends at Save Our Schools New Jersey:Senate President Stephen Sweeney is poised to pass S2264, legislation that amends the 2013 Urban Hope Act in order to accommodate illegally approved renaissance charter schools in Camden. Senator Sweeney is bringing this legislation to a full Senate vote on Monday, September 22, without first introducing it in committee. This legislation was already
The Fine, Reformy Whines of @ConorPWilliams & @campbell_brown
As Paul Krugman recently opined: when you can't win an argument on the merits, whine about "tone":I’m far from convinced by everything that gets done today in the name of education reform. But Rhee’s and Brown’s examples are indicative of a troubling pattern for reform opponents: anti-reformers are prone to shooting any reform messenger. Anti-reform has an ad hominem problem. In part thi
SEP 18
David Boies's Flim-Flam on Tenure
I suspect that celebrity lawyer David Boies -- recruited by celebrity education non-expert Campbell Brown to lead the fight against teacher tenure -- has begun to realize he can't possibly win his case against educator due process on the merits. So he's doing what all lawyers do when they find themselves with a dud of a case: obscuring the issue at hand by conflating it with other unrelated matter
SEP 14
Once Again, @tomamoran Gets Charter Schools Wrong
So long as Tom Moran, Editorial Page Editor of the Star-Ledger, insists on publishing pieces about education full of omissions and half-truths, I have no choice but to continue to set the record straight and correct him.Today's piece from Moran is about Hoboken Dual Language Charter School (HoLa), a dual-language immersion school I have studied previously and know quite well. Says Moran:The core d
Anatomy of Educational Inequality & Why School Funding Matters
There continues to be much bluster out there in ed reformy land that money really isn’t all that important – especially for traditional public school districts. That local public schools and districts already have way too much money but use it so inefficiently that any additional dollar would necessarily be wasted. An extension of this line of reasoning is that therefore differences in spending ac
NEA President Lily Eskelsen Garcia has no time to be diplomatic – Part II
Part I of this series on the round table discussion between NEA President Lily Eskelsen Garcia and NJ education bloggers and activists focused on the devastating effects of high-stakes testing on special needs children, and how edu-preneurs are profiting from the testing boom. Part II focuses on the mainstream media blackout.As with Part I, unless otherwise indicated, all quotes are Lily's.When yo
NEA President Lily Eskilsen Garcia has no time to be diplomatic – Part I
"This is a test. This is only a test. If this had been an actual emergency..." Yea, you know the drill. More on this later...This is Ethan Rediske and his parents. Ethan is an 11-year old Florida boy who was born with cerebral palsy. He is also blind and brain damaged. He is perhaps the poster child for all that is toxic and outright dangerous in education 'reform'—especially standardiz
BETRAYAL, Part 2
There was hope in the spring. In March and April when the anti-privatization forces took to the streets, even in Trenton, and Wendell Steinhauer, the president of the 200,000-member New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) declared Newark’s fight was the fight of everyone who wanted to save public education. Remember that? Steinhauer even came to Newark […]
Majority of Newark board promises legal action against Cami
Seven of the nine members of Newark’s elected school board said they would go to court to seek the end of the city’s school reorganization plan known as “One Newark,” the dismissal of state-imposed school superintendent Cami Anderson, and the return of local control of a district seized by the state in 1995. The board members contend […]
Lying with numbers in Newark
Here’s the core of the problem in Newark schools: Cami Anderson, Gov. Chris Christie’s agent in Newark, has the numbers that reveal how well or how poorly she is doing. No one else, including the city’s elected school board, has them. So she can make outrageous statements–like the first day of school had 90 percent […]
SEP 16
How the media help spread Cami’s lies
You have to hand this to Cami Anderson–she knows how to control the main-stream media. And not just her besotted swain at The Star-Ledger who often acts as if she were the Lady Guinevere and he was Sir Lancelot galloping to save her from burning at the stake. On NJTV, the Adubato/Christie television enterprise that won’t […]
SEP 15
Another Cami disaster–chaos at Barringer
Chaos hit Barringer High School in Newark yesterday after scores of students and parents marched out of the North Ward school–the oldest high school in Newark–to protest teacherless classrooms, foodless lunch hours, and class sizes reaching into the sixties. “The hallways are dangerously crowded with students–and so are the classrooms,” said Marco Huertas, a junior. […]