>
Category: Village of Ridgewood
>Motorcycle crash results in two deaths in Warwick
>WARWICK – Two New Jersey men were killed Sunday afternoon when their motorcycles collided on Long Meadow Road near the entrance to the property owned by King’s College, town police said.
Warwick police Sgt. John Rader said the men — one from Mahwah, one from Ridgewood and both in their early 20s — were pronounced dead at the scene. Their names were withheld pending notification of their families.
Warwick detectives – with the help of the state police’s accident reconstruction team – are still investigating the cause of the crash, which occurred around 4 p.m. Rader said it appeared that one motorcycle was broadsided by the other as it was making a turn.
Anyone who may have witnessed the crash should call Warwick police at 986-3423.
kgoldberg@th-record.com
https://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081013/NEWS/81012013
>the Fly ponders our district’s very bad math program and the use of the word "balanced" to excuse it
>As the Fly ponders our district’s very bad math program and the use of the word “balanced” to excuse it, we were struck by the similarities in the naming of a very bad reading program, “Balanced Literacy,” the subject of today’s NY Post Opinion. So Mrs. Botsford, if the Chancellor of New York City’s public schools can fall for a poor program and then scrap it when it fails to deliver, then I guess there’s hope for you. Or is there? He didn’t need to “partner” with a university either. He just got rid of it. Guess he’s a big boy.
RIGHT ON READING
By DIANE RAVITCH
September 1, 2008 —
LAST week, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein announced the start of a pilot program that will introduce a new way to teach reading to children in kindergarten, first grade and second grade in 10 low-performing schools. Good for him!
The program, developed by the Core Knowledge Foundation, stresses the importance of content knowledge, along with phonics and vocabulary. Most of us learned to read with some form of phonics – that is, by learning the sounds of letters and then “sounding out” new words.
So the Core Knowledge Program may not sound revolutionary to most parents – but it’s a stark contrast to Balanced Literacy, the reading program that Klein mandated across more than 800 elementary schools in 2003.
Balanced Literacy remains the city’s standard today – after all, Mayor Bloomberg and Klein awarded multimillion-dollar contracts to train thousands of the city’s elementary teachers in this unproven method.
Yet Balanced Literacy doesn’t stress content knowledge, vocabulary or phonics. And we now know that it didn’t work.
Last fall, the federal government released the latest test results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress – and they showed that New York City students made no progress in reading in fourth grade or eighth grade from 2003 to 2007.
When the city Department of Education gives letter grades to schools, it bases the marks mainly on whether the schools made progress in their test scores. By this measure, Balanced Literacy gets an F.
On the federal test, there were no significant gains in reading for black students, white students, Hispanic students, Asian students or lower-income students. Forty-three percent of fourth-graders in New York City were “below basic” – the lowest possible rating.
Worse yet, the year before Balanced Literacy was imposed citywide, our fourth-grade students did make significant gains on the national test. But those gains ceased once Klein installed his program.
The launch of the Core Knowledge program suggests that Klein has finally recognized the failure of Balanced Literacy.
In contrast to Balanced Literacy, which has no specific curriculum, Core Knowledge teaches specific content knowledge. For example, children in kindergarten will learn nursery rhymes and fables while learning about Native Americans, plants, farms and seasons. Children in first grade will learn about astronomy, Mozart, Mesopotamia and Egypt and colonial biographies. Children in second grade will learn about ancient Greece, Greek myths, insects, holiday stories, westward expansion and civil rights.
And while they’re learning to read, they will gain important knowledge about the world through activities and projects, not rote memorization.
Some may well wonder whether little children can understand such big topics, but the experience of Core Knowledge schools for the last decade shows that they can.
Indeed, they not only can do it, but mastering all this knowledge prepares them to become better readers as they move on to the next grade. The more children know, the better prepared they are to read more challenging subject matter and to understand it.
E.D. Hirsch Jr., the founder of the Core Knowledge Foundation, has long maintained that children in the United States suffer from a “knowledge deficit.” Children need to know lots about science, history, geography, the arts, the world and their society so that they can understand new words and new ideas. The content knowledge that children acquire in the Core Knowledge reading program will enable students to learn more in science, social studies and other subjects. As children learn more about science and history, they also improve their vocabulary and comprehension.
The other aspect of the Core Knowledge reading program that is a significant difference from Balanced Literacy is its emphasis on phonics.
Forty years ago, the eminent reading expert Jeanne Chall demonstrated in her book “Learning to Read: The Great Debate” that beginning readers need to learn the connection between letters and their sounds, as well as the alphabet. A generation of research into reading has proven her right. “Decoding skills” – understanding how to sound out letters and words – should be learned early, as a foundation for lifelong reading.
Congratulations to Joel Klein for recognizing that New York City’s children suffer from a “knowledge deficit.” Ten of the city’s elementary schools will benefit. Meanwhile, though, most of the city’s children will continue to use the failed Balanced Literacy method.
We can only hope that Chancellor Klein will insist that all schools begin to teach history, geography, science, civics and the arts and do it soon.
Diane Ravitch is a research professor at the New York University School of Education, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a trustee of the Core Knowledge Foundation (for which she receives no compensation).
>Dont Forget Santa is Coming 2nite
>
Downtown for the Holidays!
Sponsored by Chamber of Commerce
All day events – 8:30 & 9:30AM – Breakfast with Santa – Winberies 10:30AM – Warner Theater – Free Holiday Movie for chldren. 10AM – 4PM – Trolley on E. Ridgewood Ave. 11AM – Art of Motion Show at North Fork Bank 1 – 4PM Sants’s Trackless Train at Van Neste sponsored by Ridgewood News 10AM – 9PM Whole Foods – free raffle for Holiday Food Basket Citizen’s Community Bank & Backyard Living – Moving Train Display Free Gift Wrapping Center at Bookends FREE PARKING on Satrudays 12/1, 8, 15, 22 5:30PM Tree Lighting and Music Information: 201/445-2600
All day events – 8:30 & 9:30AM – Breakfast with Santa – Winberies 10:30AM – Warner Theater – Free Holiday Movie for chldren. 10AM – 4PM – Trolley on E. Ridgewood Ave. 11AM – Art of Motion Show at North Fork Bank 1 – 4PM Sants’s Trackless Train at Van Neste sponsored by Ridgewood News 10AM – 9PM Whole Foods – free raffle for Holiday Food Basket Citizen’s Community Bank & Backyard Living – Moving Train Display Free Gift Wrapping Center at Bookends FREE PARKING on Satrudays 12/1, 8, 15, 22 5:30PM Tree Lighting and Music Information: 201/445-2600
>The fly reminds everyone that this Monday’s up-coming BOE meeting agenda
>Dr. Brennen will discuss the progress report on math.
The Fly encourages any interested people to tune in and listen to what our illustrious administration has to say. Make sure to have an extra cup of coffee, this item is scheduled towards the very end of the meeting.
>Ms. Elizabeth Gnall Ridgewood Math Mom gives public comment at the National Mathematics Advisory Panel in St Louis.
>
Our nation is in need of mathematically skilled citizens. On April 18, 2006, President Bush created the National Mathematics Advisory Panel. The panel will advise the President and Secretary Spellings on the best use of scientifically based research on the teaching and learning of mathematics. The hope, to raise the level and production of home grown mathematically skilled citizens. Thursday, September 6th, 2007, the panel is holding its 8th meeting in St. Louis, Missouri. Ms. Elizabeth Gnall of Ridgewood New Jersey has traveled to St Louis to give public comment. We would like to sincerely thank New Jersey State Assemblyman David Russo for his office’s help and assistance in getting us our public comment timeslot at the National Mathematics Advisory Panel. The content of the speech is appended below. It was applauded after it was given.
Liz Gnall, Sarah-Kate Maskin, Joan O’Keefe
https://www.vormath.info/
National Math Advisory Panel Website and Information
https://www.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/mathpanel/index.html
“What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children”. So stated John Dewey in The School and Society.
I live in the affluent public school district of Ridgewood New Jersey. But my district has a dirty little secret. Ridgewood Public School district is segregated – on one side of town, elementary school-aged children are taught math following a logical sequencing of topics, honoring the scholarly body of mathematics.
In another part of town the math is not taught but instead it is left for the children to discover and to construct. The math where for grades beyond Kindergarten the use of scissors, glue, paperclips, and any other object now defined as a manipulative, are deemed acceptable and encouraged. Sadly, this is the side of town where my children attend school.
One of my children was struggling to learn within that environment. As any parent would do, I raised my concerns to the school system but those concerns were met with “Our math is for ALL the children”. Outside of the school, I found a teacher and using a traditional math program, presented to my child math concepts sequentially, logically. My child practiced, practiced, practiced or as a fellow math mom called it, “drill & skill”. Lo’ and behold, my child learned math, understood math.
My other elementary school age child has a knack for math, readily grasps the concepts. Yet in the same school, I found he was bored. Once again, I raised my concerns, but because I live on that side of Ridgewood, the reform math side, the TERC math side, my concerns were once again met with, “Our math is for ALL the children”.
The same traditional teacher, using the same traditional program that helped my struggling child to no longer struggle, embraced my mathematically inclined child and advanced his skills, fed his thirst to learn and understand more, celebrated his intellect rather than leaving it behind.
From speaking to teachers, seemingly handcuffed by curriculum policy and fuzzy standards, to communicating with superintendents blinded by their ideology so as to NOT hear valid parental concerns, to emailing and confronting elected Board of Education officials with a preponderance of evidence that their reform math policy is not educating ALL of the children, to being interviewed by reporters who still erroneously cover the math wars as a battle of rote memorization verses critical thinking, to writing editorials to inform parents unaware because grades seem fine but hide what little is really being taught and learned, to writing government officials as mathematically capable citizens are needed to lead our nation in the 21st century, to creating a website and authoring a petition, and to having flown to St Louis to speak before this panel, all to advocate for a math education for my children, for their voices to be heard, for the same education that is available on another side of my town.
Across this nation, parents just like me, will ultimately triumph in the math wars because it is OUR children, not the children of the state.
And for OUR children, their education is more important and held more dearly than any social, political, economic or ideological driven agenda. In Ridgewood New Jersey reform math programs are on the agenda.
Parents in Ridgewood have been given no information to misinformation to biased information, and it has all been delivered as if it was truly “scientifically research based” information. The findings of your panel can hold great significance but only if what you present is crystal clear information.
My husband and I are the best and wisest parents for our children. Give us a choice in math education and we would choose a math education that is rigorous, focuses on content, is not driven by constructivist pedagogy, emphasizes the learning of mathematical facts, principles, and algorithms, uses the proper language and symbolic notation of math, and defines mathematical reasoning as the interconnections within mathematics. It is the kind of math that is being taught in other parts of this nation, the world, and in other parts of my town of Ridgewood New Jersey. It is the math I believe that will provide a solid foundation for my children so if they desire, if they dream, to become a scientist, an architect, or like their dad, a Wall Street finance executive, or like their mom, an engineer, they can.
Thomas Jefferson would have wept at the thought of a mathematically illiterate United States of America.
But I stand before you today, in recognition that I will provide to the future of this great nation three mathematically capable citizens that I have educated. And their success will be in spite of reform math.
Thank you.
>CONCERNED RESIDENTS OF RIDGEWOOD ANNOUNCE A SPECIAL PRESENTATION SEPT 17TH AT 7:30 PM
>FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
CONCERNED RESIDENTS OF RIDGEWOOD ANNOUNCE A SPECIAL PRESENTATION SEPT 17TH AT 7:30 PM BEFORE THE VILLAGE PLANNING BOARD AT BEN FRANKLIN MIDDLE SCHOOL
RIDGEWOOD, September 5th / Stop Valley News/ Concerned Residents of Ridgewood/ News Release (www.stopvalley.com) – Concerned Residents of Ridgewood will be presenting at a Special Meeting of the Ridgewood Planning Board on September 17th, 2007 – 7:30 p.m. at the Ben Franklin Middle School auditorium, 335 North Van Dien Ave Ridgewood NJ. Members of the resident group will be making a comprehensive presentation on the impacts of the proposed H- zone changes and detail what actions the Village should take.
The live presentation is the latest round in a battle between Ridgewood Resident’s and Valley Hospital. The hospital has been attempting to have Ridgewood’s zoning ordinances and Master Plan changed in the Hospital’s favor.
Audience members are asked arrive 15-20 minutes early.
Opportunity for public comment will be provided on a separate night; date to be announced.
About Concerned Residents of Ridgewood (CRR)
CRR is a group of hundreds of Ridgewood Residents that are concerned about the proposed expansion on the Valley Hospital Ridgewood Campus. CRR is in favor of quality healthcare. They have a comprehensive website at www.stopvalley.com that provides an excellent overview of the proposal before the planning board and includes a link to the hospital expansion website. For more information visit www.stopvalley.com
Source: Concerned Residents of Ridgewood
September 5th, 2007
Contact: helpdesk@stopvalley.com
Concerned Residents of Ridgewood
P.O. Box 150
Ridgewood, NJ 07450
Website: www.stopvalley.com
CBN News Covers Ridgewood Math Debate
>https://eclectic-educator.blogspot.com/2007/09/ridgewood-featured-on-cbn-news.html
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Ridgewood featured on CBN News
“The tide is turning too slowly for parents.” That’s just one pithy comment in Heather Sells’ report for CBN News in a news story that features Ridgewood’s math woes.
Disillusionment with reform math seems to cut across race, religion, political affiliation, and even one’s stance on reform math, as evidenced by a shocking quote from pro-reformist Joe Rosenstein.
The segment airs multiple times throughout today on the 700 Club program, carried on ABC Family Channel cable network, FamilyNet, Trinity Broadcasting Network, and other U.S. television stations
In NYC – CBS Family Channel 14 at 10:00 am – 11:00 am; 11:pm – 12:00 am
Text of the story is reprinted below:
The Math Debate: When Johnny Can’t Count
By Heather Sells
CBN News
September 4, 2007
CBNNews.com – RIDGEWOOD, New Jersey – A new survey shows three out of four high school graduates aren’t ready for college even though they’ve taken the recommended classes. The problem for many students is math.
But math is an issue for teachers too because many educators can’t even agree on the best way to teach it.
Eleven-year old Rebecca Lucas is a modern-day ice princess. After two years of lessons, she can spin and jump. She’s also a talented student. But in the fourth grade last year, she wasn’t even sure how to subtract, let alone multiply.
Her mother, Nicole Lucas, remembers the stress.
“[There was] a lot of crying, arguing,” she recalled. “I was pushing her.”
And there was also the confusion.
Nicole said, “She would get lectures from me ‘Are you paying attention?’ ‘Why aren’t you getting this?’ And then, of course, we find out later it’s because she just didn’t know it.”
Rebecca joins countless students across the country whose lack of basic math skills may hurt their college career.
That’s why one group of fifth-graders is practicing their multiplication. Their immediate reward is a lollipop. But experts like NYU’s Dr. Sylvain Cappell say the long-term benefit is mastering the fundamentals.
“If you can put aside the technical steps and just do the calculations automatically then you can go on to advanced material,” Cappell said.
But how much emphasis should be placed on “the basics” versus lessons that emphasize conceptual thinking and self-discovery?
That question has been the subject of an almost 20-year math debate that began when the National Council of Math Teachers endorsed so-called “reform math.”
It began because of a concern about future competitiveness for tomorrow’s jobs. Reform math emphasizes hands-on learning and real-world situations.
The textbooks are heavy on story problems and light on numbers, equations, and practice sheets for kids.
“They need to become engaged. And if they don’t become engaged they don’t learn, they don’t retain it,” said Dr. Joseph Rosenstein of Rutgers University.
In the last several years, Rosenstein, the council, and others have shifted somewhat, admitting that perhaps schools should focus more on skills such as arithmetic, multiplication, and division.
But in many communities from coast to coast, the tide is turning too slowly for parents.
Those worried that reform math isn’t teaching their kids the basics are waging curriculum battles on their local turf.
One of the hottest debates might be in suburban Ridgewood, New Jersey. There, a new superintendent is taking over for a math reformer who left after protests from parents.
Opposing a math curriculum may appear straightforward on the surface. But in towns like Ridgewood the debate has become ugly. Parents here who oppose reform math refused to go on camera with us, fearing harassment or even their own personal safety.
Ridgewood police are even investigating threats against one family, the Carolls, which has publicly opposed the new math.
Kathleen Carroll said, “It’s really sad that it’s become a big deal. It’s very divisive.”
But long-time New York City math activist Elizabeth Carson says it’s no surprise that math is such a big deal.
“We’re talking about a huge industry that’s involved in this reform math, so there’s a lot of money at stake, a lot of professional careers on the line,” she said. “There’s a pride of a school system on the line.
In towns like Ridgewood, parents suspect reform math is the reason for booming tutoring businesses.
“Most of these kids are average or above average IQ that are coming to us,” said Lisa Mlinar of Huntington Learning Center. “They don’t tend to get enough of that core skill and drill. They never really master a single subject like multiplication or division before they move on to the next thing.”
Troubles with math are also surfacing on college campuses, as shown in a new survey by the college testing service act.
“Only 16 percent of the kids who took core courses in math are ready for college-level courses,” ACT’s Cyndie Schmeiser said.
Right now, remedial education costs more than a billion dollars a year.
College math professors say high school teachers are trying to cover too many different kinds of math and many students don’t even know their basic skills.
“Many of the students will use calculators in my freshman calculus classes when they really shouldn’t. They will use it to multiply two times three,” Rosenstein said.
With more jobs demanding math and science know-how, the stakes are higher than ever. That’s a main reason some math professors worry about reform math.
“There may be several generations of students who’ve been brought through that kind of curriculum who’ve been told they know math, who’ve played games with it-all of which is fine-but in the end didn’t have the skills they need to advance into the fields that need it,” New York University’s Dr. Charles Newman said.
And that may make reaching for the stars literally impossible.
Schmeiser said, “We owe them the education we promise in K through 12, and that is to be ready to go out into the world when they graduate.
>Because you keep asking:
>As many of you know much has been made in recent months of blogging and bloggers in the village. It would help to know that there are over 720 bloggers in the Ridgewood Area listed on blogspot.com alone. Some are fun, some cover a specific subject or subjects, some are personnel and some are fake these are called “flogs”.
Many resident and institutions in the village have set up blogs to inform the public about particular issues, some for one thing and some against another. Most of these blogs are an attempt to legitimately champion there cause. As frequent readers of this blog know their are elements in the village that have attempted to silence this and other blogs or attempted through deceit with the help of some village institutions and residents to misinform the public on a particular issues. I can assure you that when the time is right this blog will inform its readership as to the nature and personalities involved in this deception.
Thank you for your support
PJ Blogger
>Reader Says ,"school policies that specifically disenfranchise our male students " are at the heart of the problem
>Any curriculum and school policies that specifically disenfranchise our male students WILL effect male antisocial behavior. Any outsider can look at the K8 curriculum and see how the males in this town are constantly marginalized. The reading materials are unabashedly feminist. Girls are great! Boys are insignificant, at best. The so-called math program is based on lateral “girl” learning patterns while the normal “boy” learns through vertical layered reasoning which is not to be used because it favors boys (and the rest of the world too). Males in Ridgewood are told from day one that the school system is a hostile environment and that they are the reason for everything that is wrong in the world. The State of New Jersey has been using taxpayer’s dollars since the early ninties to fund anti-male curriculums in this State starting with the New Jersey Project run by the misandroids Sheffield and Rothenberg at WPC. That program has been folded this year – thank God! Yet it has morphed into PRISM at Montclair State’ Women’s Studies Department. The deparment is full of third generation man- haters and they have alot of money to “transform” curriculums into female friendly and screw the males while your at it mistresspieces. It’s hard for me to believe that B&I with their connections to MSU and Rutgers and their own educational backgrounds could have been unaware of the origins and intent of TERC/CMP. I’d like to see the statistics from Travell and Orchard broken down by gender. I’d like to see the gender of all of the reportable incidents at the high school broken down by gender. I think those statistics will prove my point.
>History of Labor Day
>
The History of Labor Day
Labor Day: How it Came About; What it Means
“Labor Day differs in every essential way from the other holidays of the year in any country,” said Samuel Gompers, founder and longtime president of the American Federation of Labor. “All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man’s prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day…is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or nation.”
Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.
Founder of Labor Day
More than 100 years after the first Labor Day observance, there is still some doubt as to who first proposed the holiday for workers.
Some records show that Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a cofounder of the American Federation of Labor, was first in suggesting a day to honor those “who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.”
But Peter McGuire’s place in Labor Day history has not gone unchallenged. Many believe that Matthew Maguire, a machinist, not Peter McGuire, founded the holiday. Recent research seems to support the contention that Matthew Maguire, later the secretary of Local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson, N.J., proposed the holiday in 1882 while serving as secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York. What is clear is that the Central Labor Union adopted a Labor Day proposal and appointed a committee to plan a demonstration and picnic.
The First Labor Day
The first Labor Day holiday was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City, in accordance with the plans of the Central Labor Union. The Central Labor Union held its second Labor Day holiday just a year later, on September 5, 1883.
In 1884 the first Monday in September was selected as the holiday, as originally proposed, and the Central Labor Union urged similar organizations in other cities to follow the example of New York and celebrate a “workingmen’s holiday” on that date. The idea spread with the growth of labor organizations, and in 1885 Labor Day was celebrated in many industrial centers of the country.
Labor Day Legislation
Through the years the nation gave increasing emphasis to Labor Day. The first governmental recognition came through municipal ordinances passed during 1885 and 1886. From them developed the movement to secure state legislation. The first state bill was introduced into the New York legislature, but the first to become law was passed by Oregon on February 21, 1887. During the year four more states — Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York — created the Labor Day holiday by legislative enactment. By the end of the decade Connecticut, Nebraska, and Pennsylvania had followed suit. By 1894, 23 other states had adopted the holiday in honor of workers, and on June 28 of that year, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday in the District of Columbia and the territories.
A Nationwide Holiday
The form that the observance and celebration of Labor Day should take were outlined in the first proposal of the holiday — a street parade to exhibit to the public “the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations” of the community, followed by a festival for the recreation and amusement of the workers and their families. This became the pattern for the celebrations of Labor Day. Speeches by prominent men and women were introduced later, as more emphasis was placed upon the economic and civic significance of the holiday. Still later, by a resolution of the American Federation of Labor convention of 1909, the Sunday preceding Labor Day was adopted as Labor Sunday and dedicated to the spiritual and educational aspects of the labor movement.
The character of the Labor Day celebration has undergone a change in recent years, especially in large industrial centers where mass displays and huge parades have proved a problem. This change, however, is more a shift in emphasis and medium of expression. Labor Day addresses by leading union officials, industrialists, educators, clerics and government officials are given wide coverage in newspapers, radio, and television.
The vital force of labor added materially to the highest standard of living and the greatest production the world has ever known and has brought us closer to the realization of our traditional ideals of economic and political democracy. It is appropriate, therefore, that the nation pay tribute on Labor Day to the creator of so much of the nation’s strength, freedom, and leadership — the American worker.
>From Today’s New Jersey DEP Enforcement Blotter
>https://www.nj.gov/dep/enforcement/
Name and Municipality: Ridgewood High School, Village of Ridgewood
Program Interest Number: 0251-07-0002
Program: Land Use
Activity Number: PEA 070001
Activity: Notice of Violation
Penalty Assessed: N/A
Summary: A violation notice issued for unlawful use of areas adjacent to an identified floodway for storage purposes.
How many times does the BOE need to be told about this?
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