8-2-14 Jersey Jazzman NJ Ed News Round-up Jammin' All Week

Jersey Jazzman:

Jersey Jazzman Jammin' All Week

Campbell Brown: Lame

I can only hope that Campbell Brown's appearance last night on The Colbert Report is typical of what she is going to bring to the debate over school workplace protections. Because if this is the best the anti-tenure side can muster, we teachers will easily win the debate -- provided we ever get a chance to participate.The Colbert ReportGet More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,

200+ by Duke / 22h hide  //  save

JUL 27

@StarLedger Editorials: Consistently Wrong About Newark Education

I reached the end of my rope with the Star-Ledger Editorial Board and its chief, Tom Moran, a long time ago. When it comes to education -- particularly in Newark -- both the paper's unsigned editorials and Moran's columns have displayed massive ignorance. Frankly, I'm tired of having to address their nonsense when it's clear that Moran and his board lack the journalistic integrity to engage in goo

96 by Duke / 5d 

JUL 25

@GovChristie: Education Politics, Not Education Policy

Remember Chris Christie's big idea from this past winter? He was going to lengthen the school day and the school year. It was urgent that we do this immediately: "This is a key step to improve student outcomes and boost our competitiveness. We should do it now."So, how's that going, Governor?It was one of the centerpieces of Gov. Chris Christie’s State of the State address in January: a

100+ by Duke / 7d 

UARK Study Shamelessly (& Knowingly) Uses Bogus Measures to Make Charter Productivity Claims

Any good study of the relative productivity and efficiency of charter schools compared to other schools (if such comparisons were worthwhile to begin with) would require precise estimates of comparable financial inputs and outcomes as well as the conditions under which those inputs are expected to yield outcomes. The University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform has just produced a follow

60 by schoolfinance101 / 11d 

Saving New Jersey's children three zip codes at a time

Yesterday the mayors of New Jersey's three largest cities, Ras Baraka of Newark, Jose Torres of Paterson and Steven Fulop of Jersey City, announced a bold move to collaborate on reducing violent crime in all three cities. The proposal evolved from the Passaic River Corridor Initiative along Route 21, which has involved as many as 80 municipalities sharing police intelligence, according to Tom O’Re

by noreply@blogger.c... / 3d 

Christie, bully and punk, puts down a Newark teenager

  Gov. Chris Christie, arguably the most powerful man in New Jersey, yesterday ridiculed a high school senior for asking a perfectly reasonable question: Why won’t he come to Newark to hold one of his “town hall” meetings? He dismissed the question as “ridiculous” and then mocked the student for asking it. The encounter occurred […]

400+ by Bob Braun / 2d hide  //  save

JUL 26

Star-Ledger: Discrimination in Newark is “bogus.”

The Newark public schools have been stripped of their assets by the state.  The city’s children have been resegregated through a process of selection that leaves the neediest behind in the schools with the least assets while skimming the less needy students for charters. The people of the city have been stripped of their power […]

100+ by Bob Braun / 6d 

8-2-14 Curmudgucation Week

CURMUDGUCATION:

Curmudgucation Week

CCSS Myths That Won't Die, Already

You may think that certain Common Core bunk has been debunked so many times that it would finally crawl back to the PR cave that it crawled out of and, if not die, at least spend the weeks eating twinkies and watching AMNTM marathons. But no.Here comes Cynthia Dagnal-Myron over at HuffPost with an article that looks as if it were written in the summer of 2013. But no-- August 1, 2014. It's a sober

7 by Peter Greene / 1h 

Writing News Re: Me

I have a bit of news to share.You may have heard that Anthony Cody I leaving behind the world of Education Week blogging to pursue other projects and spin "Living in Dialogue" onto some new platforms. That should be going live sometime this week. You can stay caught up with his progress at the Living in Dialogue page on Facebook. I think that whole enterprise is going to be pretty cool.I

3 by Peter Greene / 11h 

Accountability vs. Responsibility

Folks keep demanding accountability in education. I'm pretty sure what we want is responsibility. We often use the terms as if they're interchangeable, but they aren't.Accountability is about giving an accounting, reporting, proving to someone that you have done what they require of you, and proving it in the manner of their choosing. Responsibility is about having a duty, a personal requirement t

92 by Peter Greene / 23h 

How Lovable Is New NEA President?

NEA president-elect Lily Eskelsen Garcia is, if nothing else, much more lifelike and good with words than her predecessor. We don't have to rehearse the sad story of how Dennis Van Roekel lost my love; the question I'm asking now is, can I be wooed by the new boss?My initial reaction was not full-on delight. LEG has an unabashed love for the Common Core, and consequently extends her love to the Ga

47 by Peter Greene / 1d 

Pushback from the Little People

Campbell Brown's appearance on the Colbert Report included one of the popular reformster mini-themes-- the desire to be insulated from any manner of dialogue.Granted, this is not exclusive to reformsters-- there are many groups of people in American society who have trouble distinguishing between being disagreed with and being oppressed. But among the privileged there seem to be some folks who jus

100+ by Peter Greene / 1d 

JUL 31

What Ever Happened to Learn More Go Further?

In honor of Throwback Thursday, I decided to follow up on one of my favorite reformy intiatives. Mounted by way of Jeb Bush by way of FEE, and the US Chamber by way of the Higher State Standards Partnership, "Learn More. Go Further" was going to set the grass roots ablaze with Common Core love.I first wrote about LMGF back at the end of March (the media program launched March 19), noting

18 by Peter Greene / 1d 

JUL 30

Conservatives Backing Away from Reform

Stephanie Simon's Politico piece "Mom's winning the Common Core war" includes a sort of second breath rededication of purpose from Michael Petrilli at the Fordham Institute and Wes Farno at Higher State Standards Partnership, a group that we've met before working hand in hand with Jeb Bush's FEE and the US Chamber of Commerce. Both Fordham and HSSP are big-fans of the Core (or, at least,

28 by Peter Greene / 2d 

BATS and Arne

There's not a lot for me to add to Mark Naison's account of the meeting between six BAT representatives and several Department of Education reps, including Arne Duncan. You should be giving that a read, if for no other reason than it represents a moment when the USDOE paid attention to teachers that they themselves hadn't chosen to talk to.There are just a couple of moments that I want to highligh

94 by Peter Greene / 3d 

The engageNY CCSS Primer

In which engageNY provides a brief explanation of why the Core is baloney That one-stop-shopping for fully sliced Core baloney, engageNY, has a simple chart that can be used to see why the Core is, along with all its other flaws, not particularly necessary."Pedagogical shifts demanded by the Common Core State Standards" is a handy list of twelve shifts (six math, six ELA) that teachers i

64 by Peter Greene / 3d 

JUL 29

One True Path

In the midst of celebrating Coleman's awesomeness at Aspen, the architect of Common Core explained that he would keep aligning the world to the coreso that we are clearly showing kids and teachers that there's a path to college that extends from Kindergarten through twelfth grade.This is one of the fundamental articles of faith for reformsters-- there is One True Path to a good life, to happy, hea

100+ by Peter Greene / 4d 

JUL 28

David Coleman Is Superman!

Politico dipped into the David Coleman at Aspen Ideas festival file and pulled out a quote in which Coleman admits that “I think then we make a great mistake by caricaturing the opponents of the standards as crazies or people who don't tell the truth." They call this "a big takeaway." They also catch Coleman admitting that it's no sign of great paranoia to be concerned about how ind

48 by Peter Greene / 4d 

Seasoned Teachers Not Getting Filthy Rich

In other news, scientists anticipate the sun rising in the East tomorrow morning.Okay, this might actually be news to some folks. To listen to the merit-based pay crowd, you would think that we are currently throwing bales of teachers based on years of experience. But an issue brief  released last week by the Center for American Progress suggests that in many states that's simply not true."Mi

100+ by Peter Greene / 5d 

JUL 27

Why Teachers Should Be Paid Less ??!!

Over at the Federalist, Jason Richwine has produced a spectacularly bad piece of thought leadership entitled "Why We Shouldn't Raise Teacher Pay." (h/t to Curmudgucator Shannon Jenkins). It's just as bad as you think it will be.So why should we look at it.Often, the bad arguments circulating the world of thinkiness are tucked away, hidden in the midst of not-entirely-stupid things. They

100+ by Peter Greene / 5d 

Pearson Set Cut Scores for NYS

Over at lohud, actual journalists like Gary Stern have been working long hours trying to pry loose some facts from the state of New York, and it's worth the while of folks from all states to see what they've dug up because it's a bright red warning flag about how the CCSS-linked testing program actually works.Gannett Publishing had to pry open the state with a large, legal-sized crowbar just to ge

200+ by Peter Greene / 6d hide  //  save

JUL 26

College Students vs. Faux Journalism

HuffPo recently ran what could be called a graphics-rich story (basically two big graphics plus captioning) that is sure to have some folks sounding the alarm bell, and there's no question that the data are striking.The basic takeaway is this-- in no states in the US do the majority of students finish college in four years. Virginia is up top with 46%, with Nevada and DC bringing up the rear at 8.

30 by Peter Greene / 7d