6-7-14 Jersey Jazzman NJ Ed News Round-up Jammin' All Week

Jersey Jazzman:

Jersey Jazzman Jammin' All Week

So Why Didn't the Police Ever Investigate Michelle Rhee?

Remember the "amusing" story of how Michelle Rhee, in her first year of teaching in Baltimore, taped her students' mouths shut? How she tried to find the "humor" in making her second graders bleed? Remember when Alex Russo told us, when he heard about the story: "I'm not so sure I'm all that worried."I wonder what might have happened had Rhee been a teacher in Elizabe

33 by Duke / 18h hide  //  save

JUN 05

Reformy Billionaires and the Money They Waste

Perhaps my favorite bad reformy argument -- one favored by Tom Moran, among others -- goes something like this:We should listen to billionaires when they opine about education because: 1) Well, they're billionaires, so they must know what they're talking about. 2) They don't have a direct stake in the outcome, so you can trust them.I often harp on the absurdity of Point #2: even though a plutocrat

33 by Duke / 1d 

JUN 01

One Newark is a Bad Plan. REALLY Bad.

This past week, State Superintendent Cami Anderson went on the offensive, making the case for her plan to restructure Newark's schools, One Newark. For Anderson, the problem isn't that her plan is illogical, innumerate, secretive, and ill-conceived.No, the problem, apparently, is "politics":Anderson: Political season is always tough. People say a lot of things, but my job was and always

100+ by Duke / 5d 

Stronger than the Scorn: How do NJ schools really stack up?

This is my end of school year review for New Jersey schools. Indeed much of the data in this post is from years prior. Nonetheless, these data affirm a long standing strong position of New Jersey schools either in the U.S. or international context. On many occasions I’ve pointed out better and worse uses of national and international assessment data – of Mis-NAEPery and PISA-Palooza… wherein the m

41 by schoolfinance101 / 3d hide  //  save

JUN 02

On Teacher Effect vs. Other Stuff in New Jersey’s Growth Percentiles

PDF: BBaker.SGPs_and_OtherStuff In this post, I estimate a series of models to evaluate variation in New Jersey’s school median growth percentile measures. These measures of student growth are intended by the New Jersey Department of Education to serve as measures of both school and teacher effectiveness. That is, the effect that teachers and schools have on marginal changes in their median studen

53 by schoolfinance101 / 5d 

Note to Cami: 100 excellent ways to create 100 excellent schools

Jersey Jazzman delivered yet another blistering critique of Cami Anderson's disastrous One Newark plan calling it "illogical, innumerate, secretive, and ill-conceived". Sir Duke once again fills his post with charts, graphs, data, links to studies—you know, actual proof—that this will probably go down as the biggest public policy boondoggle in NJ history. He pointed out that Cami likes t

64 by noreply@blogger.c... / 4d hide  //  save

JUN 01

My open letter to Gov. Christie

In the spirit of fellow educator, and journalist, Melissa Harris Perry, I bring you my version of her open letters to leaders:Dear Governor Christie,It's me, Marie. I heard you recently gave your staff huge raises. That's fantastic! I'm sure they worked very hard to help get you re-elected, and are very deserving. And now that they are back on the public payroll, you can reward them on the taxpaye

2K by noreply@blogger.c... / 6d 

Is Hespe lying? Afraid of Cami? Disrespectful of parents? All three?

Nearly a month ago, the parents of Newark’s Hawthorne Avenue School petitioned acting Education Commissioner David Hespe to ensure the school would not be closed without compliance with state administrative regulations that have the force of law. Hespe, a lawyer who is charged with a special obligation to uphold the law, has not only ignored […]

100+ by Bob Braun / 1d 

JUN 04

Good news, for a change: Watson-Coleman wins

Good news for those who remember when the Democratic Party championed causes other than those of George Norcross, his doppelganger Chris Christie, and his poodle, Steve Sweeney, the anti-union union guy. Bonnie Watson Coleman won the Democratic primary for the 12th Congressional district. Other commentators have made a point of saying she will–if we’re lucky–become the first African-American woman

99 by Bob Braun / 2d 

JUN 02

NJEA, AFT: How about a robo-call apology for backing Cory Booker?

    The New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) spends a fortune of members’ dues money on what loosely could be called “communications”–advertising, promotion, public relations, marketing, and other methods of getting its message out. And, last year, it put a lot of that effort behind the election of Cory Booker as United States senator despite Booker’s […]

100+ by Bob Braun / 4d 

JUN 01

A vote for Booker is a vote for Christie

                  New Jersey’s top Democrats are cowards. New Jersey’s top  Republicans are cowards. That is why Cory Booker, who did nothing for Newark but divide it, preside over unprecedented bloodshed in its streets, and form a diabolical alliance with Chris Christie to suppress its people, will walk to his re-election in November. I mourn for […]

500+ by Bob Braun / 5d 

6-7-13 Curmudgucation Week

CURMUDGUCATION:

Curmudgucation Week

PA Newest State To Assault Teaching Profession

This week the PA House Education Committee pushed forward the latest assault on the teaching profession in Pennsylvania.Following the template pushed by StudentsFirst (a piece of naming genius right up there with "Peacekeeper Missile" and "jumbo Shrimp"), the bill proposes stripping teachers of most meaningful job protections and seeks to line PA up with North Carolina on the l

9 by Peter Greene / 31min 

Data-Driven Discrimination

If you needed any more reason to be wary of the massive upsuck of student data from the education system, The Weekly Wonk offers more reason to fear our Data Overlords.  Seeta Peña Gangadharan, and Samuel Woolley, a pair of data wonks, have written "Decoding Discrimination in the Digital Age," a brief overview of some of the concerns raised by the massive data mining going on all around

14 by Peter Greene / 12h 

Louisiana Showcases Utter Failure of School "Reform"

The New Orleans Recovery School District has proven (again) that Reformsters cannot deliver on a single one of their promises.What I'm reporting today has been reported elsewhere-- in particular I recommend Michael Deshotels' report on his blog Louisiana Educator-- but there are some pieces of news that need to be repeated over and over and over again, and this is one of those. The grand experimen

70 by Peter Greene / 20h 

JUN 05

The NEA Wants To Organize You

Over at EdWeek Seven Sawchuk writes about NEA's new push to reverse a steady decline in membership. It's about time. Membership is down a reported 230,000 teachers over the last three years. And that's before you even start counting the "reluctant" members. As far as I know, NEA doesn't keep track of this (and is probably happier not knowing), but not every NEA member actually wants to b

68 by Peter Greene / 1d 

FEE: A Floridian Trip through the Reformster Swamp

In twenty-one short paragraphs, Patricia Levesque of FEE (Foundation for Excellence in Education)  manages to set a new record for sheer Density of Wrong. This seems to be FEE's specialty; in the vast coal mine of Common Core Carbonized Crap, FEE demonstrates the Supermaniacal ability to squeeze the raw materials of wrong into a shining diamond of dopiness. Today's sweepstakes entry, "Student

16 by Peter Greene / 2d 

An Open Letter To Michelle Labuski

It must have been some time yesterday that you and your colleagues discovered this post, taking you to task for your pro-Common Core post on engageNY. You responded on twitter with a simple "Not okay. And hurtful." A few of your colleagues responded in my comments section. You were all gentler, kinder, and more amenable to reason than I was in the original post. I understand how you migh

67 by Peter Greene / 2d 

JUN 04

Why Your Evaluation Is Dumb

As you contemplate your end of the year evaluation paperwork, you are probably thinking (and not for the first time), "This doesn't make any sense." And you are correct. Current practices in teacher evaluation do not make sense-- if you assume that the purpose of these evals is to actually evaluate teachers accurately and effectively.A good evaluation system gives the employees clear and

100+ by Peter Greene / 3d 

JUN 03

The Least

I have a friend who posits a simple rule for relationships-- the person who has the least concern has the most power. The person who has less interest has more control.I'm not sure how useful the rule is for understanding romance, but it certainly does deconstruct plenty of other relationships. If dishes in the sink don't bother me, I can let them sit well past the science experimenty point at whi

69 by Peter Greene / 4d 

JUN 02

When You're in a Hole...

Valerie Strauss covers the news from OK that one more state is Mighty Unhappy with Common Core. Unlike the pretend rejection of the Core happening in other states, the OK legislature has laid out a set of standards for how it shall be determined that the new standards do not resemble the Common Core Standards. They are rejecting both CCSS and the horse they rode in on.That piece of legislative leg

10 by Peter Greene / 4d 

Civic Irresponsibility

For the true opponents of public education, these are heady times, because as the battle for public education heats up, these folks can see nothing but clear sailing. It's not a question of finding a path to victory-- it's just a matter of deciding which path of many they would like to follow and which allies they would like to invite to the after-party.On the one hand, they could continue to budd

14 by Peter Greene / 4d 

Cato: Why Are Schools Too Expensive?

In 2005, David Salisbury published a paper for the Cato Institute entitled "Saving Money and Improving Education: How School Choice Can Help States Reduce Education Costs." As the title suggests, the paper supports school choice as the solution for a particular problem. I've considered the solution elsewhere, and so today I'm just looking at Cato's conception of the problem. Even though

11 by Peter Greene / 5d 

JUN 01

School Choice Is UnAmerican

When I was busy listing reasons that conservatives should be opposed to school choice, I missed a biggy.School choice is taxation without representation.When some cranky old fart (crankier and older than I am, anyway) wants to complain about having to pay taxes for schools when his kids aren't even IN school any more, I have a standard answer. Schools are not a service for parents. The people who

100+ by Peter Greene / 5d 

School Choice Does Not Reduce the Cost of Education

Neal McClusky at the Cato Institute tweeted that I was wrong in my recent assertion that a school choice system costs more than a single public system. I asked him for an example of a place with a choice system that had lowered the cost of schooling, and he referred me to a couple of articles, the most thorough of which is a 2005 paper from Cato, "Saving Money and Improving Education: How Sch

68 by Peter Greene / 5d 

MAY 31

Democrats: "We Suck Less Than That Other Guy"

Every election and primary cycle brings the same question back around-- do we support the lesser of two evils, or throw support to a non-viable third party candidate? This used to qualify as not-really-a-question. In 2012, lots of Democrats were super-unhappy with Obama's first term. Teachers were already being pretty open about feeling that Obama had implemented education policies that George Bus

200+ by Peter Greene / 6d 

Welcome to Common Core Hospital

Nurse Duncan: Welcome to Common Core Hospital. How may I assist you?Chris: My name's Chris Wobble. I was just in a car accident. My arms seems to be broken in about three places.Nurse Duncan: All righty, then. We just need to do some assessments here to see what shape you're in. As a major health care provider, your health data determines our success rate. Now first we're going to take your blood

300+ by Peter Greene / 7d hide  //  save

Quarter Million Served

Some time this week, this blog passed the 250K mark. A quarter million.I've been up and running since August of last year, but it took me a couple of months to figure out what I was doing, and not till January of this year did my writer's gland really kick in. So I've done a huge amount of business in a short amount of time.There are several takeaways from this, I think. Because I don't think the

51 by Peter Greene / 7d