Jersey Jazzman Jammin' All Week
A Reply To A Reply from @tomamoran
Tom,Contrary to your beliefs, no one called you a racist. You know this: you put our other criticisms of you in quotes, but not the one where you allege we call you racist.What we said was that you support One Newark, a racist school reorganization policy. Which it is.You say:Maybe you folks should take a pill, and engage people who disagree with you in a civil manner. You might find that I'm not
SEP 02
Is "One Newark" Racist?
Is One Newark, the school reorganization plan for New Jersey largest city, racist? Well...- Under One Newark, "Schools assigned the consequential classifications have substantively and statistically significantly greater shares of low income and black students." That's racist.- Under One Newark, "NPS’s black teachers are far more likely to teach black students; consequently, these b
An Open Letter to Star-Ledger Editorial Board Director @tomamoran
Note: Shortly after I read Tom Moran's piece in the Star-Ledger this past Sunday, I got an email from fellow teacher-blogger Marie Corfield, who suggested we write a response together with our friend and colleague Ani McHugh. We're posting this at all three of our blogs simultaneously, and over at Blue Jersey.Moran has ignored us individually; he's going to have a much harder time ignoring us coll
SEP 01
Sinatra, Carlin, Inequality, Education, and America: Happy Labor Day
Frank Sinatra held his fair share of self-contradictions. For a guy who espoused such working-class sentiments, his endorsement of Ronald Reagan was more than a little incongruous. And JFK, the one politician Sinatra really went to bat for, was such a neo-lib that he would have felt right at home in the Obama White House.That said, Sinatra had his truly progressive moments: Boing Boing reminds us
AUG 31
Correcting the Education Punditry of @jonathanalter
Jonathan Alter and Bob Braun went man-to-man a few weeks ago in the pages of NJ Monthly over the subject of education reform. From my perspective, Braun cleaned Alter's clock, and I said so on Twitter. The sad fact is Alter got many things wrong in his piece, but that's understandable: the conventional wisdom he traffics in is largely a fact-free zone when it comes to education (and what else, I w
Charter Schools: Student Mobility Is Not Student Attrition
Going to get a little wonky here, but since we're already deep in the weeds on the issue of student attrition in charter schools, I don't think I've got much choice...I had a little Twitter exchange with Ryan Hill of TEAM Academy Charter School, the Newark branch of the national charter chain KIPP, last week. He and I seem to see the issue of student attrition differently.I define "attrition&
AUG 29
Once Again: There Are No Miracle Charter Schools
Relinquishers gotta relinquish:It’s not a stretch to say that charter schools are some of the biggest winners in this year’s high school rankings list. Even though charters educate just five percent of American students, they represent 30 percent of the top ten schools in this year’s rankings. What’s more—and this is really the kicker—they’re the only ones in the top ten that do not use selective
My Response to Tom Moran
In case you missed it, earlier this week fellow educators and bloggers, Ani McHugh (Teacherbiz), Mark Weber (Jersey Jazzman) and I wrote a joint open letter to Star Ledger editorial director, Tom Moran, regarding his continuous support of the racist policies of Newark Superintendent Cami Anderson's One Newark plan. In addition to posting on all three of our blogs, it also ran at Blue Jersey and on
SEP 02
An Open Letter to Star-Ledger Editorial Board Director Tom Moran
(Note: This piece was co-authored by Ani McHugh, aka. TeacherBiz, and Mark Weber, aka. Jersey Jazzman, and is cross-posted on both their blogs.)Dear Tom,This week, you crossed a line. Until now, your pieces in the Star-Ledger about Newark’s school system and the reorganization of the district have been ill-informed and reckless. You’ve ignored the warnings of teachers, parents, community leaders,
The Illusionist
Cami Anderson, Chris Christie’s overseer of the Newark schools, spent a good part of the first day of school traveling to schools she knew would be orderly, stopping along the way to give impromptu news conferences in which she praised her “One Newark” plan. She apparently missed the scores of empty buses roaming the streets in search of […]
SEP 01
Betrayal
On Labor Day, the day we celebrate working men and women and their unions, the Newark Teachers Union said this to the anxious parents of New Jersey’s largest city: “We cannot be seen as aiding or abetting anything that would disrupt the operation of the Newark Public Schools. ” In short, the NTU told Newark’s parents […]
AUG 30
It’s Sunday–pray for the children of Newark
A state administrative law judge has postponed a hearing on the litigation brought by Newark residents to block the state-imposed “One Newark” plan that has disrupted the lives of thousands of Newark families. Barring some last-minute effort in another court, the decision by Ellen Bass ends any chance of stopping the effort by state superintendent […]
