Jersey Jazzman: Jersey Jazzman: Year 9

Jersey Jazzman: Jersey Jazzman: Year 9

Jersey Jazzman: Year 9

I keep of list of stuff I'm supposed to blog about, and right now that list is long. I've yet to give my thoughts on Bruce Baker's excellent report on New Jersey school funding, which you really need to read. There's also the tax incentive nonsense happening here in Jersey, which is a cautionary tale for the rest of the country. There are the great reports about charter school abuses in New Jersey and California we need to examine.

I still haven't discussed my own work on how charter school growth negatively affects the finances of public school districts. I want to talk about my field trip to Kansas City to party/parry with labor economists. And it's time to go back and look again at all the problems with measuring student growth and attributing that growth to teachers and schools.

But before I get to all that, let me take a minute and talk about this blog on its ninth anniversary.

When I told Mrs. Jazzman last night I've been at this for nine years, she didn't believe it. But in my mind, it makes perfect sense: I started this thing in response to the nonsense coming from the Chris Christie administration way back in the spring of 2010. Now Christie's gone, after wreaking havoc on the state for two terms. Nine years seems just right.

At the time, Christie was running around the state demanding teachers take a pay freeze and pay more toward their health care. He claimed this would make up for a $800 million shortfall, which was largely caused because he refused to renew a millionaire's tax that had been in place for years. Of course, his claim wasn't true, and he forgot that freezing teacher pay would bring down income tax revenues for the state.

What frustrated me at the time was that no one in the press appeared interested in asking about the specifics of Christie's plan -- and yet the specifics were what made the plan viable CONTINUE READING: Jersey Jazzman: Jersey Jazzman: Year 9