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Saturday, November 6, 2010

Gov. Christie tells Trenton teens teachers union is to blame for lack of school supplies, aid cuts | NJ.com

Gov. Christie tells Trenton teens teachers union is to blame for lack of school supplies, aid cuts | NJ.com

Gov. Christie tells Trenton teens teachers union is to blame for lack of school supplies, aid cuts

Published: Friday, November 05, 2010, 8:45 PM Updated: Saturday, November 06, 2010, 8:29 AM
gov-christie-trenton.JPGGov. Chris Christie answers a question during a question and answer session with the Governor at the Boys & Girls Club of Trenton & Mercer County in Trenton.
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TRENTON — Gov. Chris Christie took his fight with the state’s largest teachers union directly to the kids today, telling a room full of Trenton students their schools were short on supplies because of greedy teachers union officials — not state aid cuts.

"There’s a lot of really great teachers in the state," said Christie. "But their union cares more about how much they get paid than they care about how well you learn."

A spokesman for the New Jersey Education Association said the remark was ironic considering the governor’s April statement that teachers were using students as "drug mules" by discussing state aid cuts with them.

"The governor apparently has a double standard, because he claimed that teachers were using kids as drug mules," said NJEA spokesman Steve Wollmer. "Now he’s speaking directly to children about matters political."

Christie spoke to about 100 teens at a Trenton Boys & Girls Club, which he visited in 2009 and promised to return to after the election. The kids asked pointed questions, most often about the

Seattle Public Schools community blog: TFA Contract not Needed

Seattle Public Schools community blog: TFA Contract not Needed

TFA Contract not Needed

Nevermind whether or not we need Teach for America in Seattle, I don't see why we need a contract with Teach for America.

The Teach for America corps members will have conditional certifications, which function identically to traditional certification. In Phase III of our hiring process the District accepts applications from certificated teachers who are not already employed by the District. Consequently, we don't need a contract with Teach for America for their members to be allowed to apply for jobs as teachers in our District. Their conditional certification, granted by the state, allows it.

The contract does oblige the District to pay Teach for America $4,000 for each one that we happen to hire out of

Build the New Integrated Mass Student and Youth-Led Civil Rights/Immigrant Rights Movement to: | Dailycensored.com

Build the New Integrated Mass Student and Youth-Led Civil Rights/Immigrant Rights Movement to: | Dailycensored.com

Build the New Integrated Mass Student and Youth-Led Civil Rights/Immigrant Rights Movement to:

NATIONAL CONFERENCE
of the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN)

Build the New Integrated Mass Student and Youth-Led Civil

Schools Matter: Tom Nida, DC Bankster and Charter School Board Chair

Schools Matter: Tom Nida, DC Bankster and Charter School Board Chair

Tom Nida, DC Bankster and Charter School Board Chair

The open sewer of charter school corruption will be a major challenge for Mayor Vincent Gray's new administration in DC. Having been run for years now as a source for loan portfolio building by the bank where the DC Charter Board President, Tom Nida, is employed, Gray must decide where to draw the line between public funding of zero tolerance charter schools and the private profits by banksters and charter school CEOs.

In 2009, alone, the collective net profit by DC charters was $29,000,000. In the meantime, DC children go to these total compliance corporate madrassahs without the benefit of school libraries, clinics, gyms, or even cafeterias.

Bill Turque has the latest installment on the continuing scam, and here is a clip that captures the moral

Queens Teacher: Pretty Woman Ending

Queens Teacher: Pretty Woman Ending

Pretty Woman Ending

Popout

It's Saturday Movie Madness!! I can't keep thinking about the education deform, even on weekends. The very

New Jersey Charter Schools Association gets angry over… data? � School Finance 101

New Jersey Charter Schools Association gets angry over… data? � School Finance 101

New Jersey Charter Schools Association gets angry over… data?

For some time now, I’ve been pulling together data from the National Center for Education Statistics and from the New Jersey Department of Education on New Jersey Charter Schools. Why do I do it? Mainly out of frustration that no-one else seems to be playing a monitoring role. I’ve not seen any good compilations or presentations of the various types of data that exist on New Jersey Charter Schools. That said, the data aren’t great. They aren’t worthy of high level academic research. But they are what we’ve got, and they are from the primary government sources charged with collecting these data. So, here are a series of my slides compiled from the data:


CHARTER SCHOOL DEMOGRAPHICS

Over 100 arrested following Mehserle Sentencing � occupy california

Over 100 arrested following Mehserle Sentencing � occupy california

Over 100 arrested following Mehserle Sentencing

OAKLAND, California – As of 9pm, around 153 people have been arrested around East 18th St and 6th Ave in Oakland following the sentencing of Johannes Mehserle. The former BART cop was given 2 years for involuntary manslaughter – minus time served – for the murder of Oscar Grant. Mehserle may be released in as little of 7 months. The judge presiding over the trial decided not to apply a firearms enhancement charge, which would have added 14 years to the sentence. The police immediately declared the organized march unlawful and began trapping the crowd for mass arrest. At least one National Lawyers Guild legal observer has been arrested. During the march, protesters smashed shop and car windows, and one man was arrested for allegedly

Friday, November 5, 2010

Sacramento Press / COMMUNITY UPDATE FROM THE DESK OF "Superintendent Rock Star" JONATHAN P RAYMOND

Sacramento Press / COMMUNITY UPDATE FROM THE DESK OF "Superintendent Rock Star" JONATHAN P RAYMOND

Dear Colleagues:

Recently, I attended a screening of a new documentary film that has sparked a conversation across the country about the challenges facing our public education system.

I know what you’re thinking, but, no. This isn’t about “Waiting for Superman.”

The movie is called “Race to Nowhere,” and it brings up some important issues about kids and schools. Made by a parent, the film examines what we’re teaching our kids, how we’re teaching them and, perhaps most importantly, why we’re teaching them.

It begs the question: What’s the goal of a K-12 education?

Is the point of our work simply to prepare our children to memorize facts for

AFTERNOON UPDATE: Education Week: From the Wires

Education Week: From the Wires

FROM THE WIRES

Students Are Not Products And Teachers Are Not Social Engineers : 13.7: Cosmos And Culture : NPR

Students Are Not Products And Teachers Are Not Social Engineers : 13.7: Cosmos And Culture : NPR

One of my high school English teachers was macho and abusive. He said he was a poet; and he certainly could read beautifully, in both English and Spanish. But he was cruel. He reduced me to tears twice. And I witnessed him frighten and humiliate others. I haven’t hated many people, but I’m pretty sure I hated him. I think I still do.
But the remarkable thing is that he was, without any doubt, a terrific teacher. Not that I’d wish him on my worst enemies, let alone my children, or that I excuse his sadism. I’d have fired him in a heartbeat. But the fact is, he was remarkable, and what made him such a powerful teacher was not what he said, or even what he did. What made him special was what he was: a passionate, committed, lover of literature and good writing.
He showed us that that was a possible way to be. And so he


White Supremacist Funding Keeps Schools Lily-White and Immigrant-Free | Immigrant Rights | Change.org

White Supremacist Funding Keeps Schools Lily-White and Immigrant-Free | Immigrant Rights | Change.org

White Supremacist Funding Keeps Schools Lily-White and Immigrant-Free

Ever heard of the Council of Conservative Citizens? They're a White Supremacist group that believes "the American people and government should remain European in the composition and character," and that in order to ensure this, even "legal" immigration "must be severely restricted or halted." Not convinced of their "white supremacist" status yet? "We also oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind," says their statement of "principles."

Easy enough to dismiss these folks as a bunch of lunatics taking out their life woes on dark-skinned boogeymen of their own creation. But what if I told you that told you that this group was having a marked influence on the education of young Americans?

The Answer Sheet - Montgomery County admits kids were pushed too hard in math

The Answer Sheet - Montgomery County admits kids were pushed too hard in math

Montgomery County admits kids were pushed too hard in math

The highly-touted Montgomery County Public School system in Maryland has just admitted that it has been pushing a lot of kids to do accelerated math when they weren’t ready for it, and now will stop it. That means that a lot of parents in the wealthy county could lose valuable bragging rights at cocktail parties when the subject of kids comes up, as it too often does in these parts: “You won’t believe what happened to Joey today in algebra. You know of course that my fourth grader is taking algebra.” Or: “What level is Susie on in math? Ohhh. Only on grade level?"