The Ridgewood Blog Brings a Free Market Laissez-faire Point of View to Local, New Jersey State and National Issues.
The truth will out. Teachers’ unions are 100 percent motivated to advance the interests of their tenutred members. When push comes to shove, the unions ALWAYS reveal their contempt for public school students. New laws are needed to stop this nonsense in its tracks. Teachers’ unions, bulletproof tenure, and foolish “last in first out” teacher hiring/firing rules HAVE TO GO. Take what the municipality chooses to give you or quit.
February 13,2017
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Hackensack NJ, Ridgewood teachers joined the “Bergen County Unity March and Rally” on Sunday, February 12th, at the Bergen County Courthouse in Hackensack . It was promoted by the NJEA , REA and its bought and paid for Democrat allies and claimed,”as we come together to celebrate and reaffirm our American values of freedom, diversity, and inclusively, and to push back against hateful, divisive rhetoric. With one voice, we will send a clear message to those around the country who seek to drive us apart: We will not be divided, and we will not be silenced.”
Anti-Choice Sponsor Organizations were:
Communication Workers of America
Bergen County Education Association
Bergen County NAACP
Bergen County LGBTQ Advisory Committee
Mount Olive Baptist Church, Hackensack
Central Unitarian Church, Paramus
The Latino Coalition
Women for Progress
WEDO of Bergen County
Democratic Women of Bergen County
Bergen County Brady Campaign Chapter
Women Lawyers of Bergen County
Garden State Equality
Smile for Charity
Northern NJ Chapter, NOW
Latino American Democratic Association
Council of the Unitarian Society, Ridgewood
Korean American Civic Empowerment (KACE)
Indivisible NJ 5th
Darulislah Mosque, Teaneck
Young Democrats of Bergen County.
By Post Editorial Board
February 5, 2017 | 3:32am
Get past all the noise, and the opposition to Betsy DeVos, President Trump’s pick for the Education Department, is all about the teachers unions — which consider it their right to have a friendly face running federal policy even in Republican administrations.
Yes, two Senate Republicans have come out against DeVos — the only two who routinely get A’s on the National Education Association’s “report card” because they vote the union line. Efforts to find another GOP vote against her will almost surely fail, because the other 50 Republicans aren’t in unions’ pocket, and Vice President Mike Pence can deliver a 51st vote if needed.
https://nypost.com/2017/02/05/the-war-on-betsy-devos-is-all-about-the-teachers-unions/
Mumia Abu-Jamal
By Sergio Bichao February 4, 2017 6:44 PM
WEST DEPTFORD — A South Jersey elementary school principal got a lesson on checking her work after assigning students as young as 6 a project that honored a convicted cop killer.
The school-wide assignment at Red Bank Elementary School was actually supposed to honor famous black Americans for Black History Month.
But the list of notable black figures included Mumia Abu-Jamal and Angela Davis alongside Louis Armstrong, Mohammad Ali, Crispus Attucks and George Washington Carver.
Abu-Jamal, a black nationalist, was convicted of killing Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981. He has maintained his innocence even though he was found wounded from a gunshot at the scene alongside his fired gun.
Davis, meanwhile, is a social justice activist and communist who was a one-time fugitive after being charged as an accessory in a violent and deadly 1970 takeover of a California courtroom. Prosecutors tried to tie her to the incident because the guns had belonged to her, but an all-white federal jury acquitted her.
What the principal failed to notice, many parents did — including Bryan Klugh, who alerted his friends on the police force.
Read More: Oops! NJ elementary school assignment asks kids to honor convicted cop killer | https://nj1015.com/ooops-nj-elementary-school-assignment-asks-kids-to-honor-convicted-cop-killer/?trackback=tsmclip
February 1,2017
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Newark NJ, in a statement from the Partnership for Educational Justice comments on the New Jersey Supreme Court’s denial of State motion to re-open Abbott v. Burke.
The New Jersey Supreme Court today denied the State’s September 2016 motion to re-open the decades-old school funding lawsuit, Abbott v. Burke. As part of their broad motion, the State had asked the court to grant the State Commissioner of Education – a political appointee – the authority to waive enforcement of the State’s “last in, first out” (LIFO) teacher layoff law, among other education laws and negotiated policies.
In response to the State’s motion, six Newark parents also filed a motion with the Supreme Court against the State’s legal tactics to address LIFO. These same parents instead are fighting the LIFO statute on its own in the trial court. Their case, HG v. Harrington, asserts that New Jersey’s quality-blind LIFO law violates students’ constitutional right to a “thorough and efficient” education by allowing ineffective teachers to remain in classrooms while effective teachers are let go. The plaintiff families have asked the court to declare LIFO unconstitutional and render it unenforceable in Newark and similar districts.
The Supreme Court’s denial of the State’s motion today means that the lawsuit filed in November by six Newark parents is the only case pending to address New Jersey’s outdated LIFO statute.
The following is a statement by Ralia Polechronis, Executive Director of Partnership for Educational Justice:
“This ruling is a big win for New Jersey parents and schoolchildren. The Supreme Court has echoed the position of a group of Newark parents, who argued to this court that the state’s unjust quality-blind teacher layoff law must be evaluated on its own, and not in connection with a decades-old school funding lawsuit. Concerned about looming school budget cuts, these same parents – the plaintiffs in HG v. Harrington – will continue their fight in the state’s trial court to invalidate the “last in, first out” law that prevents the retention of Newark’s best teachers during funding crises. These brave parents are leading the charge for students’ rights in New Jersey, and they will not back down until the harmful impact of this law is revealed and deemed unconstitutional.”
To learn more about HG v. Harrington, the parent-led lawsuit challenging New Jersey’s “last in, first out” teacher layoff law, please go to edjustice.org/nj. To read all legal filings related to HG v. Harrington, click here.
School Choice — Who Opposes It and Why?
1)The leaders of teachers unions(NJEA), though not all of the teachers themselves, see school choice as a threat to their “virtual monopoly on education.”
2)Other critics of school choice think that it violates the First Amendment’s clause separating church and state, because some religious schools can end up receiving taxpayer funds.
5 Myths About School Choice
To help you better understand the ongoing debate, we want to dispel some common myths about school choice. But first:
What is school choice?
School choice isn’t just about charter schools. It refers broadly to a range of options and policies which provide alternatives to public school, including but not limited to publicly funded charter schools, magnet schools, school vouchers, and tax credits.
The goal of school choice is to improve student outcomes by giving parents a wider range of educational options and find what works best for their children.
Myth #1: School choice promotes inequality.
Opponents of school choice believe that increasing choices will benefits mostly middle and upper class families, leaving low-income students stuck in failing public schools with dwindling resources. They believe parents, if given a choice, won’t want to send their kids to school with minority or low-income students, and that increased choice will lead to increased segregations.
Fact: Public schools are already segregated; charter schools see increased diversity.
Under the current public school system, the school you go to is determined by where you live. What happens under this system is that higher-income households move to communities with other high-income families and better schools, while low-income families who can’t afford to move are stuck with the local public school. The segregation of race and income in public schools is a direct result of this self-segregation in housing.
School choice programs can create more diverse schools by overcoming this location-based segregation. Indeed, research shows that school choice programs create to more integrated, less segregated schools.
Myth #2: School choice harms public schools.
Opponents worry that school choice programs will harm public schools by diverting away much-needed funds, and forcing public schools to compete with other alternatives.
Fact: Losing students can help public schools, and so can competition.
There are several assumptions in this argument: 1. That losing students will cost public schools money, 2. That losing money will lead to a decline in school quality, and 3. That competition is harmful to public schools.
First, while public schools may lose money when students leave, the money lost may be less than the cost of educating the student, leaving more resources to educate the remaining students.
Second, more money doesn’t always lead to better outcomes. For many schools, budget concerns are less about how much money they have, and more about how that money is spent.
Finally, research shows that competition improves performance in public schools. When public schools are forced to compete, they have to show improvement in order to keep students and resources. When there are no alternatives to public schools, there is no incentive to prioritize student-focused improvements.
Myth #3: School choice is bad for teachers.
Opponents of school choice argue that holding teachers accountable by measuring their students’ performance on standardized tests punishes teachers and does nothing to improve the quality. They also argue that more charter schools, whose teachers are often non-unionized, harm the teachers unions, and by extension teachers.
Fact: School choice is good for teachers.
While it might be unfair to punish teachers for poor test scores when outside factors like poverty and lack of funding affect student performance, it is also unfair to students to keep poor-quality teachers employed.
It can be very hard to fire bad teachers in public schools. When budget cuts require layoffs, tenure rules can protect older, less competent teachers, while newer, more competent teachers are let go. Increased school choice means more options, not just for students, but also for teachers.
Myth 4: it doesn’t empower parents.
While the goal of school choice is to provide families with more educational options, opponents argue that through school choice, parents actually have less power to control their children’s education. Without parent-teacher associations at charter or private schools, parents would have less direct influence over school policy. Meanwhile, opponents express concern that parents aren’t equipped to consider all the different educational choices available and determine what’s best for their children.
Fact: Parents get to choose what’s best for their children.
In a public school system, parents might be able to influence some policies at their child’s public school—but if they can’t, or that school doesn’t have the resources their child needs, they have no other options.
Parents know their children’s education needs best, and school choice empowers parents to pick the option that’s best for their them. Indeed, when asked, most Americans favor some form of school choice.
Myth #5: School choice doesn’t work.
Opponents argue that charter and privates schools perform no better than public schools. This myth often refers back to Myth #2, saying that if charter and private school don’t perform better than public schools, then they shouldn’t be allowed to divert resources from them.
Fact: School choice improves outcomes across the board.
School choice improves educational outcomes for those in choice programs, but it also improves educational outcomes of the public schools which compete with alternative educational choices.
by DAVID HARSANYI January 20, 2017 12:00 AM @DAVIDHARSANYI
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.
Read more at: https://www.nationalreview.com/article/444046/betsy-devos-democratic-opposition
January 17,2017
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
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.
Chad Livengood , Jonathan Oosting and Michael Gerstein , The Detroit News11:39 a.m. EST November 25, 2016
President-elect Donald Trump’s planned nomination of west Michigan philanthropist Betsy DeVos for education secretary has ignited a debate about how the country delivers a high-quality education for every child.
DeVos, 58, supports increasing school choices, which she has called an attempt to “empower” parents to find good schools for their children, whether they be traditional public schools, alternative public academies known as charters, virtual schools or private and religious institutions.
“Betsy DeVos is a brilliant and passionate education advocate,” Trump said Wednesday in a statement. “Under her leadership, we will reform the U.S. education system and break the bureaucracy that is holding our children back so that we can deliver world-class education and school choice to all families.”
Hannan Adely , Staff Writer6:09 p.m. EST November 16, 2016
New Jersey officials are considering a plan to raise salaries for school superintendents, in a move local leaders hope will keep the school chiefs from fleeing their jobs for more lucrative work.
Acting Education Commissioner Kimberley Harrington proposed changes Wednesday that would raise the maximum salary from $175,000 to $191,584 and allow for 2 percent raises in subsequent years.
RESOLVED, That there shall be raised an additional $929,800 for General Funds in the 2016-17 School Year. These taxes will be used to employ additional personnel and to acquire additional equipment and supplies in order to implement the District’s full-day Kindergarten program. Approval of these taxes will result in a permanent increase in the District’s tax levy. The additional taxes authorized herein will be used exclusively for purposes described herein and to finance expenditures that are in addition to those necessary to achieve the Core Curriculum Content Standards.
Click here for a PDF of the public presentation.
Click here for Frequently Asked Questions.
Click here to view all full-day Kindergarten documents
Ridgewood NJ, This week, presumptive Democrat Gubernatorial nominee and Corzine retread was exposed by WikiLeaks for exploiting loopholes in election law to further his political ambitions.
Democrats are poised to nominate another Wall-Street insider with expert knowledge on exploiting election laws to further his candidacy. The most recent revelations in the saga on Corzine 2.0 (aka- Phil Murphy) came after WikiLeaks furnished e-mail correspondence between Murphy and DC insider and Clinton advisor John Podesta, who has been at the heart of the latest WikiLeaks scandals.
Murphy has already spent a boat-load of money on television and print advertising claiming to be an outsider, but the latest leaked e-mails paint a much different picture of a politician that knows how to use his own money to get his way.
Murphy established a tax-exempt non-profit organization, allowed to take unlimited money without disclosing its donors, in a clear attempt to bolster his Gubernatorial ambitions. Under the law, this organization was supposed to be a “social welfare organization”, allowed to engage in political activity, but not as its primary mission.
As reported by WNYC News, While Murphy said publicly that this was simply a public advocacy think-tank, privately in e-mails to John Podesta, disclosed that the group was formed to boost his name ID as he was “VERY serious but not yet committed” to run for Governor.
With a direct line to one of Clinton’s main advisors and after his shameless acceptance of endorsements of corrupt county bosses and Trenton’s largest special interest group, the NJEA, Murphy’s wasted no time making it clear to voters that he is just another political insider with Wall Street values pretending to be someone he’s not to get elected.
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Trenton NJ, Governor Chris Christie announced the Christie administration went to court on behalf of New Jersey taxpayers, to the Supreme Court, to say three things:” First, that this funding formula has failed for 30 years and that it needs to be overturned. Second, that the real thing that’s preventing us from teaching kids in these districts are the ridiculous work rules that are imposed upon us by statute and by collective bargaining agreements with the teachers union that prevents us from doing common sense things like, if there are going to be layoffs in our schools, that we should layoff the least effective teachers, not do layoffs, as we are required to do by state law, based purely upon seniority. If you’re there the longest you get to keep your job. If you’re there the shortest you lose your job. How does that ensure that children are getting a thorough and efficient system of education? And, how is it that in Camden, one of the worst school districts in the state, the union contract requires only four hours and forty five minutes of instruction for every seven and a half hour day that a teacher puts in. Four hours and forty-five minutes of instruction for every seven and a half hour day a teacher puts in. It’s these kinds of work rules and collective bargaining agreements that we are stuck with in this state that prevents these kids from having, in urban districts, that what they really need. Let’s talk about what happens in a lot of these urban districts, what happens is that the family life isn’t there often, to support what you need to do to make sure that your kids do well in school. Now sometimes this is because of broken homes but sometimes it’s in intact homes and because those families are struggling to make ends meet, sometimes those folks have to work three or four jobs to keep a roof over their heads, And when you have to do that you’re not going to be home at 3 o’clock when the kids get home from school. So who’s checking when they’re going to do their homework? Who’s encouraging them to do their reading. Who’s sitting down with them to help them do their math? It’s not happening. So what should we do? Should we just give up on those kids and give up on those families who out of no fault of their own, are just working 15, 16 hours a day to keep a roof over their head. In those districts, we should have a longer school day. In those districts we should have a longer school year. If those children are falling behind, let’s spend more time with them. That kind of result, we should be willing to pay for. “Gov. Christie On Urban Education: We’re Tired Of Paying For Failure, We Need This System To Change
By Max Pizarro • 09/12/16 5:12pm
The New Jersey Education Association’s (NJEA) PAC Operating Committee this past weekend voted in favor of beginning the process of screening 2017 candidates for governor and the legislature.
It’s probably safe to say that Senate President Steve Sweeney (D-Gloucester) doesn’t need to bother showing up for that process.
He’s identified in a leadership letter to NJEA members as the instigator of “betrayal,” for failing to secure a public payment pension question on the 2016 ballot, and then lashing out at the NJEA in a letter to law enforcement.
