Board of Education Meets Tonight
January 23, 2017 at 7:30 p.m.
The Education Center
49 Cottage Place, Ridgewood
Ridgewood NJ, The Ridgewood Board of Education will hold a Regular Public Meeting tonight, Monday, January 23, 2017. The Board meets at the Education Center, 49 Cottage Place, Floor 3 at 7:30 p.m.
The public is welcome to attend the meeting, or to watch from home on FiOS channel 33 or Optimum channel 77. Meetings are also streamed via the “Link in Live” tab on the district website at www.ridgewood.k12.nj.us.
Meeting webcasts are immediately available on the district website.
Educator Jim Trelease explains why reading aloud to your child, no matter what her age, is the magic bullet for creating a lifelong reader.
by: Connie Matthiessen | January 14, 2016
Jim Trelease is the author of the respected, Read-Aloud Handbook, which some parents have called the “read aloud Bible.” The book is packed with information — from what really makes kids love reading, to tips for luring kids away from electronics and onto the page, to hundreds of read aloud titles. The Handbook’s seventh edition will be published in the spring of 2013 and, at 71 years old, Trelease says it will be his last. We reached Trelease recently in his home in Connecticut and asked him to explain why reading aloud is essential for kids of all ages.
Can you explain the link between reading aloud and school success?
It’s long established in science and research: the child who comes to school with a large vocabulary does better than the child who comes to school with little familiarity with words and a low vocabulary.
Why is that? If you think about it, in the early years of school, almost all instruction is oral. In kindergarten through second and third grades, kids aren’t reading yet, or are just starting, so it’s all about the teacher talking to the kids. This isn’t just true in reading but in all subjects; the teacher isn’t telling kids to open their textbooks and read chapter three. The teaching is oral and the kids with the largest vocabularies have an advantage because they understand most of what the teacher is saying. The kids with small vocabularies don’t get what is going on from the start, and they’re likely to fall further and further behind as time goes on.
How does a child develop a large vocabulary even before school starts? Children who are spoken to and read to most often are the ones with the largest vocabularies. If you think about it, you can’t get a word out of the child’s mouth unless he has heard it before. For example, the word “complicated.” A child isn’t going to say the word unless he has heard it before — and in fact to remember it, a child probably has to hear it multiple times. (That’s not true with swear words, of course. If a child hears his parent swear he’ll remember it the first time, and happily repeat it whenever he gets the chance.) But kids have to hear most words multiple times, so it’s important that their parents talk to and around them from the time they are very young, because that’s how they learn words.
Ridgewood NJ, Wellbeing Series tackles the importance of failure on Feb. 1
The district’s free Wellbeing Series for parents, guardians and the general adult continues next month with bestselling author Jessica Lahey on Wednesday, February 1.
Ms. Lahey’s program, “The Gift of Failure,” will focus on the importance of self-motivation to academic success and how parents can best support their children to stay motivated over the long term. The presentation will take place at George Washington Middle School Auditorium, 155 Washington Place, Ridgewood, from 7-9 p.m.
Ms. Lahey is author of the bestselling book The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed. A writer and teacher on education, parenting and child welfare, Ms. Lahey’s work appears in several publications, including The New York Times and The Atlantic.
by DAVID HARSANYI January 20, 2017 12:00 AM @DAVIDHARSANYI
Betsy DeVos wants better education for minority and low-income kids. There’s something perverse about an ideology that views the disposing of an unborn child in the third trimester of pregnancy as an indisputable right but the desire of parents to choose a school for their kids as zealotry. Watching President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for education secretary, Betsy DeVos, answer an array of frivolous questions this week was just another reminder of how irrational liberalism has become.
Democrats often tell us that racism is one of the most pressing problems in America. And yet, few things have hurt African Americans more over the past 40 years than inner-city public-school systems. If President Obama is correct and educational attainment is the key to breaking out of a lower economic stratum, then no institution is driving inequality quite as effectively as public schools.
Actually, teachers’ unions are the only organizations in America that openly support segregated schools. In districts across the country — even ones in cities with some form of limited movement for kids — poor parents, typically those who are black or Hispanic, are forced to enroll their kids in underperforming schools when there are good ones nearby, sometimes just blocks away.
All public meetings in New Jersey might soon be required to open with a Pledge of Allegiance under a proposal now one vote from reaching Gov. Chris Christie’s desk.
The Assembly State and Local Government Committee gave its unanimous endorsement Thursday to a bill, S308/A777, already passed 35-0 by the full Senate two months ago.
Democrats Sweeney and Prieto will pursue individual approaches to funding reform
Get ready to hear a lot more about school funding in New Jersey.
This week will start what could amount to nine separate public hearings in the next month about the state of school funding for New Jersey’s public schools, all driven by the somewhat fractured Democratic leadership of the Legislature.
The first is scheduled for today before the Joint Committee for the Public Schools, a hearing that has long been on the docket.
The next day will be the initial hearing before the Assembly’s education committee at 10 a.m. on Wednesday in the State House. Another is planned before a new Senate select committee next week, on January 27, at Kingsway Regional High School in Woolwich at 11 a.m. The next three have yet to be scheduled.
And this is all before Gov. Chris Christie unveils his state budget for fiscal 2017, in which a third of state spending will be aid to schools. It’s anyone’s guess as to what he will put forward.
Christie has been pushing to scuttle the state’s current formula-driven funding plan, instead providing the same amount of state aid per pupil for every district, no matter the need.
Ridgewood NJ, The 2017 Best School Districts ranking is based on rigorous analysis of key statistics and millions of reviews from students and parents using data from the U.S. Department of Education. Ranking factors include state test scores, college readiness, graduation rates, SAT/ACT scores, teacher quality, public school district ratings, and more.
Niche bills itself as a website that helps you discover the schools and neighborhoods that are right for you. We rigorously analyze dozens of public data sets and millions of reviews to produce comprehensive rankings, report cards, and profiles for every K-12 school, college, and neighborhood in the U.S.
Their ranking system assesses 10,364 U.S. public school districts. The same methodology is used to produce the Overall Niche Grade for each ranked school district as well as additional school districts. Statistics obtained from the U.S. Department of Education represent the most recent data available, usually from 2014–2016, as self-reported by the school districts.
They rated Tenafly Public Schools number 6,Fair Lawn School District 15th, Glen Rock Public School District 19th,
Pascack Valley Regional High School District 27, Mahwah Township Public Schools 28,Park Ridge Public Schools 33,Cresskill Public School District 35, and Paramus Public Schools 39.
Ridgewood NJ, so who’s Afraid of Betsy DeVos? “Mrs. Devos’s Most Important Qualification is that She Has the Courage of Her Convictions”, in an editorial the Wall Street Journal attempts to answer the critics and make the case to provide poor children with better educational opportunities. We know the unions don’t like it and neither do Democrat, lawmakers looking to stifle their constituents keeping them fat, dumb and happy. Who’s Afraid of Betsy DeVos?
The Wall Street Journal
Wall Street Journal Opinion
January 14th, 2017 Click Here to Read
Democrats are searching for a cabinet nominee to defeat, and it’s telling that progressive enemy number one is Betsy DeVos. Donald Trump’s choice to run the Education Department has committed the unpardonable sin of devoting much of her fortune to helping poor kids escape failing public schools.
Mrs. DeVos’s most important qualification is that she has the courage of her convictions.
The DeVoses have donated tens of millions of dollars to charity including a children’s hospital in Michigan and an international art competition in Grand Rapids. They’ve also given to Christian organizations, which the left cites as evidence of concealed bigotry. Yet education has been their main philanthropic cause.
During the 1990s, they patronized a private-school scholarship fund for low-income families and championed Michigan’s first charter school law. In 2000 they helped bankroll a voucher initiative, which was defeated by a union blitz. The DeVoses then turned to expanding charters, which have become Exhibit A in the progressive campaign against her.
Two studies from Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (2013, 2015) found that students attending Michigan charters gained on average an additional two months of learning every year over their traditional school counterparts. Charter school students in Detroit gained three months.
The real reason unions fear Mrs. DeVos is that she’s a rare reformer who has defeated them politically. Prior to being tapped by Mr. Trump, she chaired the American Federation for Children (AFC), which has helped elect hundreds of legislators across the country who support private school choice.
AFC has built a broad coalition that includes black and Latino Democrats, undercutting the union conceit that vouchers are a GOP plot to destroy public schools. In 2000 four states had private-school choice programs with 29,000 kids. Today, 25 states have vouchers, tax-credit scholarships or education-savings accounts benefitting more than 400,000 students.
You know progressives have lost their moral bearings when they save their most ferocious assault for a woman who wants to provide poor children with the education they need to succeed in America.
Nicholas Pugliese , State House Bureau, @nickpugzPublished 6:42 p.m. ET Jan. 13, 2017 | Updated 2:59 a.m. ET Jan. 14, 2017
Senate President Stephen Sweeney and Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto lobbed news releases back and forth this week urging each other to get serious about reforming the state’s school funding formula.
In the meantime, they announced separate, uncoordinated Senate and Assembly hearings to collect testimony that would form the basis for legislation to fix the current system, which is widely acknowledged to give unequal treatment to students and taxpayers in different parts of the state. Assembly hearings begin Wednesday; Senate hearings begin Jan. 27.
Several years ago, a little boy I know set out to make and enter a project in the state fair. He gathered his supplies, came up with a design, and forged a hand-crafted knife – blade and all.
While his creation was quite impressive, the state fair was not amused and refused to let him enter his creation over fear about the type of message it would send.
Fortunately for this young boy, his parents continued to encourage his creativity and ingenuity even when the fair did not, and today he is in college about to graduate with a degree in mechanical engineering.
But what about all the other little boys (and girls) in the U.S. who don’t receive encouragement to use their imaginations and invent or create something? Are we hindering something which could be of great help to our children and nation?
It’s commonly believed today that “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.”
What nonsense.
Where does this “entitlement” regarding opinions come from? Who has bestowed it?
The statement is a decidedly modern one. No person until very recently in history would have dreamed of saying something so silly. It’s usually attributed to the American financier Bernard M. Baruch (1870-1965). The full quote reads: “Every man has a right to his opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.” (I’m really not sure why the former imaginary “right” wouldn’t also entitle one to be wrong in his or her facts.)
It’s one reason why we can’t rationally discuss things
Devin Foley | December 11, 2015
As we and many others have pointed out, many policy debates these days devolve quickly into emotionalism. Should we be surprised when too many American students lack the tools with which to engage in public discourse?
According to the Nation’s Report Card, produced by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) which is considered the gold-standard for evaluating the job schools are doing educating students, only a paltry percentage of high school seniors know their history.
Yes, only a meager 12% of high school seniors are considered “proficient” in U.S. history. If you’d like to examine the test, you can do so here. We’ll probably do some separate posts on it.
Meet The Producers, Mike Muldoon, Gail McCarthy Linda Aktar and Vivienne Muldoon. Photo credit Susan Knudsen
January 12,2017
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, RHS Jamboree’s World Tour 2017 takes off to a flying start with over a 120 cast and crew members including 40 NEWBIES plus returning Jamboree Alumni who all are working rigorously to put on a show this come February 8-11th. To place an AD, DONATE or purchase TICKETS please go to rhsjamboree.org We look forward to welcoming you onboard.
Ridgewood NJ, On Thursday, January 12, the Ridgewood High School Department of Fine and Applied Arts will present the second Maroon & White Music Recital and Art Exhibit for the 2016-17 school year. The second of five such events for this year, the concert will be held in the newly renovated RHS Learning Commons beginning at 3:45 p.m., followed immediately by a reception and gallery opening in the Carroll Art Gallery. Admission is free and open to the public.
The recital will feature four outstanding musicians, presenting a varied program. Following the concert, the January Maroon & White Art Exhibit will officially open in the Carroll Art Gallery. The exhibit will include original works by highly accomplished students in a variety of media.
The Maroon and White Recital Series began in 1964 as a means of highlighting outstanding Ridgewood High School musicians in a featured solo capacity. Over the past five decades, the series has expanded to include art exhibits as well as a recital featuring only dancers. Musicians and dancers are selected through competitive audition, while artists are chosen after an extensive portfolio revue. Past Maroon & White recitalists include Jonathan Spitz, principal cellist with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Elizabeth Ostling, associate principal flutist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the piano duo of Sarah and Susan Wang, renowned Broadway singer/dancer Ali Stroker, Stephanie Buesser, dancer with Ballet West, New York City choreographer Yael Nachajon, Broadway director Marc Bruni, jazz organist Jared Gold and many others. The list of past artists includes Lauren Roth of Lauren Roth Art, renowned illustrator Kyle McCullough, Giovanni Forlino, whose work can be seen on display at the Getty and Guggenheim museums, plus a host of professional freelance artists who work in a wide variety of visual art related fields.
Upcoming Maroon & White Recital/Exhibits will take place on February 2, March 9, April 6 (Dance) and April 27. All recitals are held in the RHS Learning Commons, with the exception of the dance recital, which takes place in the Little Theater. For more information, please contact the RHS Department of Fine and Applied Arts at 201-670-2800 x. 20542.
Half of young people have so many emotional problems they cannot focus at school, a study has found.
Some 48 per cent of youngsters said that they experienced problems during their school years that prevented them from concentrating on their academic work.
Of these, 46 per cent did not talk to anyone about their problems, mainly because they did not want other people to know that they were struggling.
