Texas Testing Could Be Toast

Looks like those Texans are turning out to be a lot smarter than the Big City Folk here in Jersey !

Click Here for a better view of the article.

Am I A Conspiracy Theorist ? Maybe !

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I had lunch with a friend last week. 
He said he had been cleaning out his filing cabinet and found this!
I found it both shocking and depressing. I have underlined some of the purported returns of the 1998 TPAF. 
I am a frequent viewer of the TV show"American Greed" on CNBC. Many of the shows are about Ponzi Schemes that are foisted on the public.
When I first looked at the returns on this pension report they immediately reminded me of the returns promised by the fraudsters shown on the aforementioned shows.
Then I began to think about this a bit more. I wonder if this these reported returns were really valid at the time or if they were artificially concocted to those seemingly impossible levels?
You might say " You must be a conspiracy theorist! "
(Well, I don't think I am a  conspiracy theorist but maybe!)
"Why would anyone want to inflated those numbers? "
Someone who wanted to "borrow" (steal) money from the fund so as to give tax breaks and thereby enhance his/her reelection chances and just might like to use these return numbers to justify the "theft", that's who !

Talk About Waste

I read the following replies on the local message board pertaining to the granting of school insurance contracts to companies who doled out campaign contributions. The word "waste" was used and when I thought about NJ "waste" it  raised my BP to all time highs. I just had to write my reply. I guess "waste" is a relative term but below are the postings from the Internet and my reply.
*************
So in our state there may just be bigger fish to fry than prosecuting the teacher's union in the court of public opinion. Of course, no one would ever get the governor to admit that at a town hall meeting would they? Along with his fake enemy Sweeney. You can't make this stuff up. In this area I'm sure Jersey is a national stand out, while still being 47th in job growth. The new Trenton, yeah OK!!!!!!!!

Perhaps the Teachers Union should be making a big stink about these areas of waste that directly effect their members.
***************
Talk about waste -
The RU football coach (Shiano- record 68-67 - salary $2M + plenty of bennies) suppose a teacher had barely half his kids pass NJ testing? I kind of think he would be labeled "ineffective, lose tenure and not be paid $2M a year)
The RU basketball coach - salary $650 and a "firing bonus" of over $400K.
The RU AD is given a "quitting bonus" of $1M.
The RU "athletic lawyer" (whatever that means) - $400K a "resigning bonus".
The new basketball coach - salary $1M per year for five years.
The women's basketball coach - $900K per year (at least she's winning).
The retired college Prez - $335,000 per year for teaching 15 hours per week.
The football stadium renovated for $102M with a capacity of 54,000 and the largest attendance ever was 47,000 five years ago.
The tuition at RU doubled over the past 10 years.
Where is the Governor in all this? Why isn't he very good at addressing these issues??
He was very good at capping school Superintendent's salaries.
He was very good at "reforming" (maybe deforming is a better word) public employee's pension and health benefits.
He was very good at losing hundreds of millions of Fed education aid due to incompetence in filling out paper work.
He was very good at handing out "no bid" contracts for the shore clean up (kind of like the insurance contract situation).
He was very good at handing out tens of millions to companies for the incessant testing of school children,
He was very good at capping the funding of public education.
He is very good at promoting tax breaks for the wealthy.
He is very good at eliminating property tax rebates for the average guy.
I thought public criticism, derision and castigation were his forte. I guess he's just lost his touch!!

AND NOW THIS!

AND

AND

AND 

I spoke with someone the other day about the outrageous salaries of college coaches. He told me that the reason was that successful athletic programs brought alumni dollars to the school. He said that he had been to a Penn State football game a few years back and the alumni there were throwing money at the school hand over fist.
Well, I happened to look up some info about Penn State and it seems that they are not only number one in athletics but also number one in tuition costs for in-state students. In-state tuition is over $17K. 
Doesn't it make you wonder where all that alumni money (if it is really being donated as he claims ) is going ??
PS

 75%  - a  C grade with an A+ salary !! Where Gov. Big Mouth on this ??
Sorry. I'm kind of embarrassed about my careless math ! 257/(257+343) * 100% = 43%
He actually has a 43% win average. 

Another One Bites The Dust

Politicians,"educrats" and corperations will say and do whatever it takes to privatize public education. If you want to see how "privatization" improves public institutions take a look at "prison privatization"!!

My Three Rs of Public Education Privatization - Ripoff , Robbery and Repugnant

"Committee for Our Children", "B4 Kids", "Students First", etc. -
How do they constantly come up with these flowery, lofty titles. 
They must lay awake all night thinking these up!
I'm sure that I can come with more apt titles for these organizations.
How about: 
"Committee for Stealing All We Can From Public Education" or
"Students Second Profits First" or
"B4 for My Kids at Home" or
"Committee to End Tenure So We Can Get Cheaper Teachers" ?

Notice the words "private schools" and "hedge funds". 
Those two phrases appearing in the same article is certainly telling!

Did You Know That W.C.Fields Was a Jersey Politician?

In light of these revelations, I've got an awful lot of questions and comments about the continual squandering of New Jersey monies and the antics hatched in Trenton.
*The tuition at RU has doubled over the last 10 years!! 

(Rutgers University in New Brunswick costs $13,073 in tuition in fees for state residents, now making it the eighth most expensive flagship campus. Penn State in State College, Pa., is first with an annual cost of more than $17,000.
Nationally, the average for tuition for state universities is $8,655)
*Schiano (the ex football coach) was paid over $1M a year + housing and perks!  (All this with a barely winning record of  68-67 record in 11 seasons. Let's pretend for a minute that a teacher had barely half of his students pass the NJ testing barrage over an eleven year period. What would be his reward under the new "tenure reform" laws? Don't you think he might be labeled "ineffective"? ) *RU built a giant football stadium which is rarely (if ever) filled!  (A $102 million stadium expansion project. The highest attendance home game of the season came on November 19, 2011, when 47,447 fans. Rutgers Home Attendance Declined 6.9% per Game in 2011.)
*The ex RU prez got a $335,000 a year job for teaching 15 hours a week! (The aforementioned coach's contract and stadium renovation as well as the doubling of tuition was all "accomplished" under his watch!)
*The state is spending millions on testing children over and over and over!
* RU is a State institution run by the State and  evidently not very well run but now they want  to run Camden Public Schools along with Newark, Paterson and Jersey City which also hasn't been run well by them over the past 20 years.
*The Essex County Executive gets to retire at full pension and still work at full pay.
*Why have we not heard a word out of the "Mouth That Roared" (Christie) about any of this RU situation?
**And despite all this waste, the state still has no money to properly fund the pension!

W.C. Fields was once asked what he did with all his money. His reply was "I spent most of it on wine, women and song - the rest I squandered!"
I never knew he was part of New Jersey government!!

Testing Gone Wild !

I have added numerous captions to the above video.

 

And the point of all this testing and expense?

To help justify eliminating tenure thereby enabling the firing of the higher paid teachers.
To help set the stage for low employee pay when schools are finally privatized.
To justify the privatization of public education.
To justify the state takeover of urban schools.
To allow shoveling money to test creators and publishers.
To help in the attempts to eliminate collective bargaining for public employees.
To destroy what little power the teacher's unions did possess.
Just my humble opinion!

I'm Already Ready To Quit !

I recently read a post on Linked In - High School Chemistry Teachers Group - it was as follows:

"Came into a teaching situation 8 weeks ago and am ready to quit already!
I was hired to teach chemistry at a local high school.
I have previous experience teaching the subject (to a student body with similar demographics)
plus a number of years of actual lab work. I had been working in this district for a year and
a half as a sub while in grad school so I thought I was familiar with the climate of the school
and that this endeavor would be something I could handle. After 8 weeks, I have discovered that
many of the students apparently have been conditioned to "not care" so they think it is ok to eat,
use cell phones, sleep etc no matter what I attempt to do to correct the problems. I've had AP's
come through and obviously the problem corrects itself momentarily but nothing permanent. I am so
frustrated with one class in particular, I nearly walked out today. I've never seen such apathy in
students in my life and am wondering if anyone has similar experience and/or suggestions as to how
to at least make it to the end of the school year. Thanks!
Lorraine"

 I sent my reply -
"The sad part is that the "educrats" that run the public schools keep telling teachers that they must
be "engaging" and "make the subject fun" in order to be a "good teacher".
I did forty years of chemistry and physics teaching and performed many exciting demonstrations such
as the dust explosion, the wax explosion, etc.
After these events I would always ask the class - "Why do you think that happened?" and the constant
reply was "Let's see it again!" and rarely an attempt to explain why.
Essentially then, the students wanted more entertainment, not more understanding !
I think children have been convinced that the teacher's job is to entertain and cajole them into
learning on a daily basis and if the teacher can't do that he is a "poor teacher" and undeserving of
their attention.
My concluding comment about this situation is "If you can use a piece of chalk and make pH as interesting
and exciting as a Rolling Stones concert you certainly shouldn't be a high school chemistry teacher, you
 should be on Broadway !
Walt"

What do you think?

Can Someone Please Explain This to Me ?

How can the State control the schools for twenty years and then when the district asks for control to be passed back to them the State claims the district is not performing well enough ?
If the State was in charge for twenty years and now the district is not performing well, how can that be the district's fault? I don't get it.  
Can someone please explain this to me ??
It appears to be a Catch 22 engineered by the "educrats" at NJDOE !

Confronting The "Educrats" NJEA Style ?

I sure hope there's a better  NJEA  Plan C because Plan A (a lot of whining with little action) didn't work too well and if this is Plan B (essentially cuddling up into a fetal position), it won't work either!

An Education in "Educational Testing"

Deep Throat & Deep Pockets Made Deeper

I discovered this article the other day and found that if it is true, it completely substantiates my suspicions. I have posted the abstract of the article here.

For the complete article go to:

 http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/02/15/1187346/-So-why-do-hedge-funds-so-favor-charter-schools

Let's Privatize Everything and Get It Over With !

The paper is recently full of the news about the US Post Office ending Saturday delivery due to ever increasing deficits. The crux of the problem is explained as the dramatic increase in electronic communications usurping the first class letter business of the 
USPO. Much of this is, of course
true, but there is another major factor accelerating the Post Office's demise. That factor is a law passed by the Congress relating to the postal employee pension fund. It requires the prefunding of the pension seventy five years out over a ten year period. This is monumental financial challenge and most probably an unattainable and unnecessary one at that.
    Now, you might say "Why do you care. You're writing about education, not the Post Office?"
    Well, call me cynical (I don't know why you would), but I think the whole thing relates strongly to public education. I view the current bureaucratic, educational "reform" movement in this country to be a guise for the attempts at privatization. The demands placed on the Post Office are another manifestation of the same kind of mentality, that is, demean, destroy, and "reform" public agencies and services and then eventually privatize them.  
   I guess you might ask, "Why would politicians be interested in privatizing public institutions and services?" My answer would be:
   "How many lobbyists for Fedex, UPS, DHL, etc. do you think there are in Washington?"

   "How much money in campaign contributions is doled out by these people?"
"How many cushy, high paying jobs are waiting for them when they leave office?"
   "How many free, 'working' vacation trips are taken by our public officials on the corporation's dime?"
   And the same kind of questions are appropriate for those companies and public officials, both state and federal, seeking to privatize the public school system. I've included some excerpts below from an article relating to the Post Office situation and America's future if the rush to privatization continues unchecked. I also show a rate schedule for Fedex delivery. The rate is for a one pound package, the least weight they will carry.  
 It aint cheap! I wonder what the price for sending a letter via private carrier will be once the Post Office's termination is complete?
   I'm pretty sure it won't be forty six cents !
x

"Your mother wears army boots"

    "Your mother wears army boots" - that's what we used to say in my school days. 

   Based on the article below I supposed that the school should have been held liable for not punishing us in the severest fashion for our obvious "bullying".

    Now, before I begin my short rant, let me say that I never appreciated nor condoned anyone being "picked on". I never allowed it in my class or in the teams which I coached. Most often all it took was a stern - "I want you to leave him alone" - and the harassment would immediately stop.

I certainly am not in favor of "bullying" of any child or as a matter of fact, any adult either.

   But, my questions are:

What is the definition of "bullying"?

Is the occasionally childhood teasing really "bullying"?

Is a teacher's criticism of a student's poor performance "bullying"?

Is a teacher's insistence that a child do his homework "bullying"?

If a coach tells a player that he should have done better is that "bullying"

How about a parent nagging a child to take out the garbage?

   I think, like many things in America that are designed to improve society, the "Bullying Law" is being taken to unreasonable extremes.

   As I read the article it says "the incident" which implies that it occurred once. Does that comprise "bullying" or  is it just occasional, childish name calling?

   Additionally, it says "A.C. (the accused) is not a chronic troublemaker". I think that might suggest that he is not a "bully" but merely acting as children often do and without any malice.

   I also noted that the parent demanded $50,000 for "emotional damages" plus legal fees from the school. It seems that when there is the smell of money in the air, lawyers flock to a situation like bees to honey. Could that be the case here or is there legitimate indignation on the part of the parents who really think their child has been "bullied"?

   And lastly, if we care to take the "Bullying Law" to the extreme, as I think may have been done here, then how about this:

If a teacher is harassed and interrupted (and possibly insulted) while trying to teach a class is that "bullying" by the students.

Does the teacher have the right to press charges against those disruptive students?

Can the teacher sue for "emotional damages"?

Must the administration report the incident to the state?

   Let me reemphasize, I am not defending bullying, but I certainly think a rational approach to the situation and a reasonable definition of "bullying"  is required. If not, we soon may see almost every child (and possibly adult) in every school in the land being accused of "bullying" based  on every inane, occasional comment.;

It Sure Makes Sense to Me ??

New Jersey Pension "Deform"!

Republican Christine Todd Whitman, running on a tax-cutting platform, defeated Florio in the 1993 governor's race. To help pay for her promised tax cuts, Whitman, like her predecessor, turned to the pension fund. In 1994, at her urging, the legislature adopted another pension "reform" act that allowed her to reduce state and local contributions to the plan by nearly $1.5 billion in 1994 and 1995, according to the task force report. Florio's and Whitman's accounting changes were "the one-two punch from which the retirement system has never recovered," says Douglas Forrester, who was the assistant state treasurer under Kean.

For all the miscues, New Jersey's pension woes can't be blamed on particularly poor investment results. An examination of state reports shows that the fund's returns have more or less tracked the broad stock market's. The real problem has been the underfunding.

If union concessions, cost cutting, and higher taxes are not enough, then what? Inevitably, New Jersey and other states would turn to Uncle Sam for help. The pressure on Congress would be great. "How will they say no to state workers when they've said yes to bankers?"

(*Congress is very good at funding foreign wars, occupations and "rebuilding" - Maybe it's time to "rebuild" the good old USA!)

"The pension obligations could spark a huge problem for New Jersey," says Thomas Kean, a former Republican governor. "They must be paid because they are absolutely an obligation of the state, but as it is, the budget is balanced with chewing gum and sealing wax"

(*"must be paid" because they are an "absolute obligation" - How then can the COLA be eliminated and call the pension obligation being paid?)

Sources -

http://money.cnn.com/2009/05/12/news/economy/benner_pension.fortune/index.htm
Star Ledger - January 2013 

Evaluation By the Evaluated?

   

When I taught at Middlesex County College, student evaluation forms were always issued along with the final exam.

   I thought, by enlarge, the results were a fair distribution of positive and negative remarks.

(BTW - These all were anonymous evaluations and not used by the administration to grade instructors - as far as know anyway)

   One thing I liked about the form was the section asking about the student's efforts. This too, generally resulted in a fair distribution of honest responses. Often a student indicated a serious lack of effort on his part but still didn't criticize the instructor as the reason for his poor grade. I hope that the same kinds of questions  will appear every proposed student / teacher evaluation form (but I'm not confident that they will).

  And , remember, the evaluations of which I'm speaking were written by mature adults, not children!

   Now, let me get back to the editorial.

   One of the statements reads as follows:

"Kids do know what makes a good teacher. And it's not a mystery why they'd know better than trained adults...".

   Well if this is true, than -

   Why do we need well paid administrators to observe and evaluate teachers?

   Why do we need the "Educrats" at the NJDOE to tell teachers when, what and how to teach children.

   Why to we need politicians to continually pass legislation instructing teachers when, what and how to teach children?

   Let's just leave teachers to their task and then accept the children's evaluations as the  indicator of the teacher's success. We would no longer have to spend all the time and money needed by these other evaluation methods and would get a better result than that provided by "trained adults".

   And, since we are talking about evaluations of teachers by their charges, why not have teachers evaluate their administrators and supervisors?

   While we're at it, why not have local administrators evaluate the honchos at NJDOE ?

This way we could a true picture of what's going on in NJ education and in the case of the DOE, I'm not so sure that it would be a pretty picture!

   What do you think?

Understanding Why "RI Teacher Says 'I Quit' "

The Brain Drain and The Wallet Drain

I recently had the poor judgment to log in to the local message board on the Internet. In so doing, I read a post by a town resident regarding the high school.

After reading it, I continued to exercise poor judgment by responding.

I guess I just lack self control! Maybe that's why I continue to write this blog.

Below is the initial statement to which I replied. It is followed by the remainder of the conversation.

I have blocked out all the names of the institutions mentioned because I don't want be accused of spreading disparaging comments about any school system.

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Poster:

Unfortunately, the problem of the brain drain at the high school level in NHS is not unique in Bloomfield and Montclair as well. The movement of students to private high schools in this part of Essex County seems to be common.

[/quote]

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W:

I have worked with many students who attend  private schools and also many who attend the public schools in this area. I hesitate to name the private schools but I will give abbreviations of the  names - Del, New, Kus, SPP, Sol, SHP, SJM. MKA  and you can guess which they are.

I can only speak for the chem and physics programs (and the teaching there of)  at these schools. They are generally inferior to, or at best equal to that of most of the public schools in the area.

Additionally, the school calendar for these private schools is abbreviated. The winter vacations at some is two weeks long, the spring break is two weeks long and the school year ends in early June. The entire year adds up to far less than 180 days (maybe in the 150 range),

You really don't get too much class time for the $15K to $25K tuition.

I would think long and hard before sending my child to a private school.

If you want to send your child to a private school for prestige or to keep him/her away from the "Riffraff" then it's probably a good idea but if you expect a superior education, I'm not so sure it's going to happen there!

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Poster:

With all due respect what are you basing your information on. Have you taught at these schools or sent a child to one of these schools?

I respectfully disagree with your "evaluation" that claims the named schools are inferior. Take a look at the AP exams* from Nutley HS as presented at the BOE meeting in February 2012, they are less than impressive. The SAT Critical Reading Mean and Writing Mean scores in Nutley have been below 500 for the past five years. The Mathematics Mean score in Nutley has not topped 516 in the last five years. This is based on a perfect score of 800. Again less than impressive. So clearly the "extra" days in the class room (based on your numbers) have not helped the students achieve great heights. I will take 150 quality days of quality instruction time to your 180 days of mediocrity any day of the week.

I have two children. Child #1 attended NHS, child #2 did not. Child #2 wrote more essays and papers in a single marking period than child #1 wrote in four years at NHS. Child #1 was completely unprepared for the amount of written work required at the college level.

Now let's talk about the intangibles, things like character, respect and accountability**. I speak from experience, again having one child at NHS and one child in private school, there is no comparison. Nutley talks about character development and talks about accountability but the follow through is weak at best. Private schools not only have a student handbook, they hold their students to the rules in the handbook

Now let me shatter the small-minded thoughts that parents pay to send their child to private school for athletic advantage. The fact is people send their children to private school for the purpose of a better education. It was not in our family plan to spend money on high school education, but after living through four years at NHS, we deemed it a necessary expense. Our experience at the elementary and middle schools was exactly what we had anticipated, but there was a big drop-off at the high school level.

****************

W:

I can only tell about my experiences having helped many private school students in the area and only about the chem and physics programs.

Admittedly, this is all anecdotal but it is my experience over the past twenty years or so.

As far as character, respect and accountability, again I can only speak from my experience.

I never relied on the school to teach these things to my own children (BTW they both went to NHS and were well prepared - my daughter graduated from engineering school and my son earned an MBA).

Character, respect and accountability were taught at home and I wrote the "handbook" for them myself and adhered to it.

There are handbooks issued in public schools citing rules and regulations pertaining to many of the qualities of which you speak but often the school is unable to enforce them. To remove a child from a public school, even the most disrespectful and troublesome, is next to impossible.

In a private school, expelling a student is simple and therefore private schools can enforce the handbook rules and regulations with ease

.

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More Comments:

* I taught AP physics at the secondary level. The class was often filled with unqualified students who were there strictly for extra GPA points.

During my time teaching the course I asked myself several questions which still beset me.

Firstly, I was teaching a full load of classes and at the same time expected to provide a college level program at the high school for the AP class.

Now, during this time I was also teaching chemistry at an area college. At the college, the situation was different by light years.

 I was provided with a full time lab assistant who set up and supplied each and every lab session.

The full time staff at the college were assign teaching assistants (TAs) to help students out of class time.

Instructors also had offices hours provided to help students.

The weekly teaching load of the full time instructors was but 15 class hours.

Faced with the conditions at the high school as compared to those at the college, was it fair that I  was expected to duplicate the same instruction level and student  help in AP classes, as that provided by college instructors with all the advantages they held?

I did my best to provide a rigorous course but I was always perplexed the this inequity.

Secondly, the AP exam was always given in mid May with almost a month and a half of school left. Therefore, I not only had the disadvantages aforementioned, but also a serious loss of instruction time. In other words, I was expected to prepare students for a difficult exam in a difficult subject in a very compressed time frame. These circumstances exist for all AP teachers throughout the state.

When I called the College Board (the AP people) and asked why the test couldn't be given at the end of the school year, I was told it was because schools in many other states was ended earlier than in New Jersey. I guess that was a correct answer but not one that helped my student nor me!

The answer should have been "we will prepare another test for students who end school in June and administer it at a later date". 

Could it be that they don't want to spend the extra time, effort and money?

** It appears that the public schools are now expected not only to educate the children, give dental checkups, fight obesity, give scoliosis examinations, prevent teenage pregnancy, prevent STDs, do drug testing, prevent bullying, end discrimination, (and I'm sure there's more) but also be the sole instiller of character, respect and accountability.

Wayne's World - Maybe It's Worth a Shot!

Upon hearing of the Sandy Hook tragedy and the NRA's Wayne LaPierre's  solution to the ongoing school carnage, I feel compelled to offer my solution to the ongoing school carnage.

Since the NRA refuses to relinquish its stand on assault weapons being sold to the public, maybe it would be wise to station armed personal at school buildings as he suggests, so as to wart attacks by crazed gunmen carrying military style weapons.

            Who better to protect our children against attack by persons carrying military weapons than the military itself?

            We currently have troops in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. We have thousands of service men stationed throughout the world in Germany, Japan, Korea and so on.

I propose that we bring them all home and have them provide the security that Mr. LaPierre speaks of, at each and every school in the nation.

            The "Defense" Department continually claims to be defending us with our troops in foreign lands, thousands of miles away, fighting endless, futile wars and engaged in perpetual occupations.

            This would be their opportunity to really defend us here at home, where we are actually being threatened.