5-24-14 Jersey Jazzman NJ Ed News Round-up Jammin' All Week

Jersey Jazzman:

Jersey Jazzman Jammin' All Week

How To Destroy the Teaching Corps: Use Charter Schools

Charter schools have proven very useful to plutocrats for a variety of reasons:- They help make already wealthy people even more money: see here, here and here for just a few examples. Those of you on newspaper editorial boards who live in denial of money making potential of charter schools are willingly obtuse.- They provide an excuse for not raising taxes on the wealthy to full fund urban school

20 by Duke / 1h 

"One Newark": A Market For "Lemons"

I've got a new brief over at the NJ Education Policy Forum out today about One Newark. As usual, I present my geekspeak-free (mostly) version of this brief here.Here's the background: Cami Anderson, the state-appointed superintendent of Newark, has put out a plan to restructure the district's schools. Bruce Baker* and I have written a lot about the flaws in this plan, called One Newark: see here,

71 by Duke / 20h 

MAY 21

Why Didn't Anyone Ask Christie About the Pensions in 2013?

If you are at all shocked by this, you just haven't been paying attention:In a stunning reversal, Gov. Chris Christie today announced plans to grab, over two years, $2.43 billion meant for public workers' pensions to balance New Jersey's ailing state budget. The plan threatens to derail one of Christie's signature accomplishments in Trenton — a series of reforms to replenish New Jersey's strained

100+ by Duke / 2d 

MAY 18

Chris Christie: Lying Liar, or Completely Clueless?

Give The Auditor, the Star-Ledger's weekly political insider column, credit for catching Chris Christie's latest lie - although, in my opinion, this merits much stronger language:Gov. Chris Christie joined an exclusive club last week — governors who get shellacked with six downgrades of their state’s credit rating. The only other member in the entire country? Democrat Jim McGreevey.The most recent

400+ by Duke / 5d hide  //  save

MAY 17

Another Day, Another "Miracle" Charter School Debunked

Some of you who read this blog might think I've got something against charter schools. I really don't; I started my career in a charter. There are some good charters out there, and a few really excellent ones. We can even have a discussion about the similarities between urban families who enroll their children in charter schools and families who move to the suburbs to enroll their children in low-

100+ by Duke / 6d 

The Cami cover-up

  The chairman of the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Public Schools has asked the state education commissioner, the state attorney general, and the state comptroller to coordinate an investigation into the state’s operation of the Newark school district. He asked many of these questions before–and, so far, the Christie Administration and its legislative allies, including […]

100+ by Bob Braun / 1d 

MAY 21

Is Cami leaving?

The president of the Newark Teachers Union  has sent an e-mail to its membership predicting state-appointed schools superintendent Cami Anderson will soon leave ker position. Joseph Del Grosso said he and other union officials met earlier this week both  with Acting Education Commissioner David Hespe and legislative leaders. He said he came away from those meetings […]

500+ by Bob Braun / 2d 

Hespe to meet with Newark students

Acting state Education Commissioner David Hespe has agreed to meet with representatives of the Newark students who shut down a Newark school board meeting Tuesday night with their demands for the resignation of the state-appointed superintendent, according to sources in the city. The meeting, if it occurs, would represent a major coup for city forces arrayed […]

400+ by Bob Braun / 2d 

MAY 20

Cami wanted disruption–and, last night, she got it

Newark’s school superintendent belongs to that tribe of self-proclaimed and irresponsible school reformers who contend public schools must be “disrupted” before they can be improved–and she has done so much disrupting that scores of clergy have warned of “catastrophic” consequences. Last night, she faced  disruption aimed at her, a group of high school students who stopped a board meeting […]

500+ by Bob Braun / 3d 

MAY 19

Choice–or child abuse?

To the stupidity, unworkability, and sheer arrogance of Cami Anderson’s “One Newark”  school enrollment plan, add yet another trait—cruelty.  Cruelty to children and their parents.  And nothing  is crueler than the plan’s alleged “appeal” process for those parents unhappy with the choices made for their children by faceless bureaucrats using an algorithm the public is not […]

200+ by Bob Braun / 4d 

MAY 18

Hey, Ras–you’re not going to rock the boat, are you?

The hedge-fund managers, the mainstream media, Cami Anderson’s friends in Montclair and Glen Ridge–during the election, they all tried to depict Ras Baraka as a revolutionary, as a radical, as a dangerous man with “fiery” and “incendiary” ideas and close ties to gangs. This was racist libel, of course, and it didn’t work but Newark’s […]

200+ by Bob Braun / 6d 

5-24-13 Curmudgucation Week

CURMUDGUCATION:

AP Now Stands for Assessment Prep

In Which I Have To Take Back Some of the Nice Things I Said About AP Courses When I last wrote about the AP courses (this morning), I praised the looseness of the course design. I should have known better. Alert readers pointed me at the news from AP-land; apparently the looseness is now seen as a design flaw to be fixed.Some courses, like the Literature and Composition, still sum up the basics in

by Peter Greene / 3min 

Ap A-Ok?

The US DOE, among its many promotional and marketing activities, has been pushing hard for AP classes. This week they aimed loud praise noises at the state of Colorado for increasing AP participation in the state. The laudatory article declares success because more students take and pass the AP courses.But before parents and students get too excited about the spreading and blooming of AP courses,

by Peter Greene / 8min 

What! Already?

The end of May is always hard. Tests, prom, yearbook distribution, my birthday, and suddenly it's finals and summer vacation. Already? Seriously?I know there are teachers who count down to the first day of summer vacation like it's Christmas morning. I am not one of those teachers. For me it's more like the countdown of a ticking bomb.There has never been enough time in the year. When I started te

by Peter Greene / 1h 

YESTERDAY

Pearls, Triggers, Exonians & Checker

The trigger warnings issue has now reached a massive level of pearl clutching all around.What's the Issue?We know that trigger warnings are a thing because the New York Times wrote about them last Sunday. The basic idea seems to be that certain works of literature, classroom subjects, even statues, should come with warning labels attached because they might trigger a traumatic memory or reaction o

4 by Peter Greene / 19h 

Tyranny of the Test

When Michelle Obama spoke up in support of the arts this week, I was not moved. In fact, I was bummed. Because her "defense" of the arts was simply one more sign that we live under the Tyranny of the Test.The bottom line here is very clear: Arts education isn't something we add on after we've achieved other priorities, like raising test scores and getting kids into college. It's actually

30 by Peter Greene / 1d 

Why Students Drop Out

This pooped up on twitter a few days agoTo ensure every student graduates HS, 1st we need to understand why some don’t. New Grad Nation report helps explain http://t.co/5xS6f1m2ep— Arne Duncan (@arneduncan) May 22, 2014And, because I'm always interested in what Arne has to say, I followed the link. And I think Arne maybe didn't actually read it.The link goes to a report from Gradnation, a project

27 by Peter Greene / 1d 

MAY 22

Did President Obama Ruin CCSS?

It's Obama's fault.The state-led initiative was chugging right along, moving forward without any interference from the feds, when somehow, they decided to leap in. Or as Kentucky Education Commissioner Terry Holliday recently put it, things were fine "until the President and secretary of education took credit for the Common Core."This is part of the current conservative CCSS support narr

17 by Peter Greene / 1d 

Happy Birthday, CCSS

It seems like just yesterday that the Common Core shambled out of its cave, wearing a tissue-paper cape emblazoned with "State Led" and flexing its big rigorous baby muscles.But it has been four years, give or take a bit (because gauging its birthday is hard, depending on which backroom deal, which protean form, which lunch meeting between Achieve and its buddies, or which Memorandum of

54 by Peter Greene / 1d 

Flunking Geography

If you want to find the grubby handprints of Rich People on education, look at the issue of geography.It has become fashionable for Reformsters to decry the influence of geography, to say that students should not be stuck with a school based on zip code, that community schools are quaint and all, but their time has passed. From Denver to Newark, Reformsters are taking deliberate aim at community s

9 by Peter Greene / 1d 

MAY 21

Relationships & Other Missing Links

Even I can be amazed at how far off track we've gotten.I just came home from our high school choir concert. It was particularly bittersweet because our young choir director has had quite a year. She delivered a child with some complications, including the complication that led to surgery a few weeks ago (for her-- the baby is doing well now). Somewhere in the midst of all that, administration call

75 by Peter Greene / 2d 

Common Core Cement

It's easy to get lost in the big picture or the strained minutia of Common Core, so let's for a moment just focus on one simple, clear, fatal flaw in the CCSS. If your civilian friends can't understand anything else about the fuss, help them understand this.The Common Core State Standards are set in stone.Not just stone, but stone mounted in cement crazy-glued to bedrock all sealed in amber.Let's

73 by Peter Greene / 2d 

EWA Holds Common Core Pep Rally

The Education Writer's Association has carried lots of water for the pro-test, pro-corporate, pro-Core, anti-public ed crowd, so there's no real surprise when it was time for a discussion about the state of CCSS, their convention panel of "experts" includes six CCSS shills and one actual voice for public education.Monday's panel included Dennis van Roekel (NEA president and CCSS fan), Te

15 by Peter Greene / 3d 

MAY 20

Go Home, Gramps!

In the ongoing battle to get older, more experienced, and (most importantly) more expensive teachers out of schools, the only surprise is that the latest push didn't come sooner.Education Next, the magazine by and for the discerning corporate conservative educrats at the Fordham Institute, Harvard Kennedy School, and the Hoover Institution, brings us an article about incentive programs for early r

26 by Peter Greene / 3d 

Further Proof Researchers Don't Understand Humans

Most of us suffer from employment bias, the belief that we are doing work that is self-evidently important. On that list of Things They Don't Teach You In Teacher School is the realization that while we can see how obviously important our work is, not everyone shares that belief.Our employment bias simply sets us up for discouragement. But the employment bias of the folks who work with surveys and

58 by Peter Greene / 4d 

MAY 19

Rigorizing Eight Year Olds

One of the most odious policies to emerge from the Reformster swamp is the mandatory retention of all third graders who don't pass the Big Test in reading. And now Mary Laura Bragg, the director of Florida's program, has popped up to help us all understand just how anti-child this policy is.She has popped up in North Carolina (motto: Strapping schools to a rocket and shooting hem back into the 19t

100+ by Peter Greene / 5d 

MAY 18

FEE & FL Spew Out More Silly Test Advice

Are your students worried about big stupid standardized tests? Well, Jeb Bush's shiny ed initiative has some help for you.You may recall that Jeb Bush has been scaling up the Learn More Go Further campaign. The educational reformy initiative has been scaled up for a national audience-- it's almost as if Jeb is trying to prepare for some sort of national campaign of some sort. Learn More Go Further

57 by Peter Greene / 5d 

Serious People

Why is it that I'm so hard on some people I disagree with here and so gentle with others? Because I have a hard time taking people seriously when they aren't serious people.Certain positions in the current debates indicate clearly how serious a person is. I don't support the idea of national education standards; I think it's a bad idea, doomed to failure, that will not yield any of the benefits it

38 by Peter Greene / 6d 

MAY 17

PA Charters Don't Want To Die By Sword

In Philadelphia, Irony has collided with Karma, casing an explosion of hilariously tragic tears.First, some history. Philadelphia schools have suffered from financial and political issues (PA's school funding system is messed up, but we'll save that for another day), as well as questions about how well it was actually teaching children. In the late 1990s this resulted in some lawsuits against the

26 by Peter Greene / 7d