Tag: Ridgewood Moms and dads

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Jamie and Jolene from Ridgewood ,Jersey cook up some delicious scallops and veggies.

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Ridgewood Super Cellars
www.supercellars.com

32 S Broad St
Ridgewood, NJ 07450
(201) 444-0012

What to know about New Jersey’s laws governing bring-your-own restaurants:

* Whether BYOs can legally pour wine for diners is ambiguous, says an attorney for the New Jersey Restaurant Association.

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The five candidates running for the three seats are;

Jacques Harlow – RIDGEWOOD 2025

Paul Aronsohn – A NEW VOICE FOR RIDGEWOOD

Keith Killion – COMMON SENSE APPROACH TO MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT

Betty G. Wiest – RIDGEWOOD – PRIDE AND PROGRESS

Anne Zusy – REFRESH RIDGEWOOD A-Z. ELECT ANNE ZUSY.

Killion & Aronsohn are NOT running on the same ticket. The “Common Sense to Municipal Government” slogan is Killion’s, not Paul’s. Not sure where/who you got this information from, but it was also posted in errata on the “anti Blog.” Someone is trying to link them for some unknown reason.

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Should this Blog publicize the where abouts of sex offenders living in our community?

>Notwithstanding the optimistic title of the following article, its author recommends that parents dissatisified with their district’s math program vote with their feet.

From https://www.gobiged.com/wfdata/frame164-1000/pressrel103.asp

How to Promote a Good Math Curriculum

Q. How can you tell if your school’s math curriculum is any good, and what can you do if it isn’t?

If you spend time on the website, www.mathematicallycorrect.com, you will see that there have been tremendous efforts in recent years to battle back “fuzzy math,” but not much progress has been made. “Fuzzy math” curricula are listed there. You can pass along that link to your child’s math teacher, but don’t expect anything to change.

One of the problems is that there are a lot of educators who have risen through the ranks who really don’t “do math” very well, yet they’re making decisions about curriculum and influencing policymakers, when they shouldn’t be. Even a well-regarded math teacher has little, or no, chance of changing those big decisions as long as the big money and big power is behind “fuzzy math.”

You can tell this is a problem, because the REAL math professionals – mathematicians and scientists who DON’T work for schools – hate the “fuzzy math” curriculum so many schools are using. If your district is using Everyday Mathematics, Connected Math, TERC, or one of the other math curricula blasted on that website, then you’re in the midst of a national controversy that doesn’t appear to be ending any time soon.

If you really want your child to be good at math, you’d better run, not walk, to a private, after-school math tutor and keep your child there for years, or pull your child out of public school and into the best private school you can afford. Of course, that’s after you’ve made sure that the tutor or the private school aren’t blindly following the lead of the public schools in using ineffective math programs just because they’re “popular.”

Chances are, if your child attends a public school, your district’s selected curriculum has been recommended by the federal government because the National Science Foundation has funded its development. The problem is, the National Science Foundation, otherwise an excellent organization, has gone off the deep end toward “whole math,” and in so doing has ruined the course of math education in this country in recent years.

The basic problem is that it’s “in style” among educrats and policymakers to NOT teach the math basics. They honestly believe this is best, even though in the case of math curricula there has been a tidal wave of protest from parents, taxpayers, mathematicians and scientists against NOT teaching the basics. Because the “fuzzy math” curriculum marketing has been smart about targeting certain large, influential districts, and placing their curriculum in them, there’s a widespread “monkey see, monkey do” effect in which other districts copy what the Big Boys are doing – to the detriment of all the students.

Making matters worse is that large, nongovernmental entities that are highly influential in K-12 education because they sprinkle around millions of dollars in grants – for example, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – make those grants conditional on retaining the educrats who will favor the “progressive” curricula that the foundations prefer because they’re in “style.”

Why is this such a problem?

“Whole math” deemphasizes routine arithmetic and algebra as being “drill and kill” or “mindless symbol manipulation.” Instead of memorizing math facts and working increasingly difficult computation problems, the kids are given calculators. So they don’t get any practice or skill in the actual mathematics which they are supposedly being taught. Obviously, this dumbs them down.

Instead, they develop their own strategies for solving story problems, work in groups, write math journals, and do other nonsense work, without a competent adult teacher guiding their work, but their age peers. Obviously, this ingrains misinformation and bad habits.

They don’t do long addition problems, they don’t learn how to make change, they don’t learn how to subtract with borrowing, they don’t work with fractions, and certain other college-prep skills that are necessary for physics and calculus and other higher-level math and science courses go by the wayside. Obviously, then, they aren’t equipped to major in the “hard” sciences or math-related fields, and instead of going in to productive and highly-sought-after fields like technology, medicine and engineering, they major in “soft” fields like psychology and education. Actually, they aren’t even capable enough to work at a cashier in a retail store, because they can’t even make change for a simple cash transaction.

So how can a lowly parent influence curriculum selections? Well, you can sure write letters and make phone calls to your school board. But the best thing may well be to “vote with your feet.” Get your child out of a system that’s using a poor math curriculum, tell the district why, and go on with your life. If they lose enough money, they’ll eventually do the math – and make the correct change.

By Susan Darst Williams • www.GoBigEd.com • Show ‘n’ Tell For Parents 110 • © 2006

>From numerous sources the fly has learned that the BOE hides administrator’s salaries by having an administrator teach one class there by shifting that salary to the teacher’s line item. This artificially lowers and misrepresents administration expenses.

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GO OUT AND VOTE !

POLLS ARE OPEN TILL 9PM

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The debate over mathematics curricula is prominent as we vote on April 15th for two seats on the Ridgewood Board of Education (BOE). That’s why I’m voting for Sarah-Kate Maskin and Greg Lois . They are the only two candidates that are flatly against the BOE’s march toward reform math. This march continues even as evidence mounts that reform math curricula including TERC, Everyday Math, and CMP2 are worsening the broken system of mathematics education in the U.S.

Reform math was dealt a major blow in September 2006 when the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) reversed its 1989 call for students to ‘discover’ free-flowing solutions to mathematical problems. Instead, the NCTM called for a return to fluency in basic arithmetic for grades K-5. Yet our BOE responded last year by continuing to tout the 1989 standards, and expanding Everyday Mathematics in our elementary schools, and introducing CMP2 to our middle schools.

Hundreds of Mathematicians have dealt additional blows by signing petitions against reform math. Notable was Alan Greenspan ’s comment in his recent autobiography: “I always wondered how you can learn math unless you have a thorough grounding in the basics and concentrate on a very few subjects at a time. Asking children to use their imagination before they know what they are imagining about seemed vacuous to me.”

Parents who brought these concerns to the BOE were met with condescension.

Greenspan’s view was reinforced in the long-awaited report by President Bush ’s National Mathematics Advisory Panel (NMAP). The report calls for fluency and automatic recall of basic arithmetic in K-5, and for concentration on fewer subjects to allow mastery. But reform curricula in our schools, including TERC, Everyday Math, and CMP2 don’t value or teach fluency, and they quickly skip over many subjects, not allowing time for mastery.

The NMAP report should have dealt the final blow to reform math, but not for the Ridgewood BOE. Instead of honestly comparing current curricula to the NMAP recommendations, they trolled the report for sound-bites that justify their actions.

It’s time for a change in the Ridgewood BOE. That’s why I’m voting for Maskin & Lois. While there are many other issues, curriculum choice is paramount. Votes for Maskin & Lois are against clinging to the pendulum as it swings to the extreme of the next education fad. Votes for Maskin & Lois are for critical thinking and sound curricula.

John G. Sheehan , Ph.D.
Ridgewood