Tag: Ridgewood NJ

C’est la vie to Paris Trip
July 25,2013
the staff of the Ridgewood blog

WESTWOOD NJ, A little out of our way but we think there is a moral to this story .

A group of Westwood Regional Junior/Senior High School students may be out thousands of dollars after booking a trip to France with a Virginia company that is going bankrupt, the Record reported.

The group of 13 girls and one boy each paid Maridan Travel USA $3,678 for a the trip which would have taken them to Paris. Some  even worked extra jobs to save money  for the trip.

Parents contacted the Ridgewood blog and said form the beginning the whole thing was a bit off. One parent told us that parents were asked to pay cash while others questioned weather the company really went bankrupt or not, still other ask why the schools would send business to a company with such a bad reputation ?

Worse yet some parents indicated they were pressured by the school system to keep quite on the matter .

The Record is reporting that Maridan president Nina Turek Skrpec was selling off assets to pay back the three groups whose trips were canceled, including the one from Westwood. Students trip. (https://www.northjersey.com/news/Dream_trip_to_France_goes_down_the_drain_for_Westwood_students.html)

Rewrite of No Child Left Behind Passes House
Lindsey Burke
July 19, 2013 at 3:27 pm

The House has just passed the Student Success Act (SSA), a proposal sponsored by Representatives John Kline (R–MN) and Todd Rokita (R–IN) to rewrite the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law. The proposal aims to fix some of NCLB’s most egregious policy flaws.

Importantly, the proposal would eliminate Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), which requires all students to be proficient in reading and math by 2014. While AYP sounds like a worthwhile goal, this federal mandate resulted in states watering-down proficiency standards in order to make students appear to reach the mandated target. The SSA would eliminate AYP and allows states to design their own accountability systems, placing this function back at the state and local level, where it belongs.

The SSA would also eliminate the burdensome—and ineffective—Highly Qualified Teacher (HQT) mandate. The HQT required teachers of core subjects to be state certified and have a bachelor’s degree. The SSA returns something that should clearly be local school policy to the purview of principals and state leaders. Moreover, literature on teacher certification shows that there is no difference in a teacher’s impact on student achievement if he or she is traditionally certified, alternatively certified, or uncertified. The HQT mandate was a paperwork burden that the SSA would wisely eliminate.

The SSA would also remove maintenance-of-effort regulations that require states to spend money in order to secure federal funding. And it includes strong language clearly delineating that standards and assessments are not to be dictated by the U.S. Secretary of Education—important at a time when the Obama Administration has been pushing states to adopt Common Core national standards and tests. An amendment by Representative Blaine Luetkemeyer (R–MO) further strengthened that provision, providing a “sense of Congress” that “states and local educational agencies should maintain the rights and responsibilities of determining educational curriculum, programs of instruction, and assessments for elementary and secondary education.”

In previous posts, we noted that the SSA in its original form suffered from two major policy limitations: that while it wisely eliminated the burdensome HQT provision, it replaced it with prescriptive language about how local school districts were to evaluate teachers. It also missed an opportunity to allow states to make Title I funding—funding for low-income school districts—portable, following a child to any public, charter, or private school of choice.

Those policy limitations were addressed in part by two amendments to the bill.

Representatives Steve Scalise (R–LA) and Rob Bishop (R–UT) offered an amendment, which was included in the final version of the bill that passed the House today, to remove the prescriptive teacher evaluation language. This amendment was important not because conservatives dislike accountability for teachers; on the contrary, conservatives have long championed tying teacher evaluations to student performance on assessments and linking personnel decisions and compensation to those evaluations. But as originally drafted, the SSA would have mandated such evaluation systems for states and school districts, wresting personnel decisions out of the hands of principals, who would have had to follow Washington prescriptions for how they evaluated their teacher workforce.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R–VA) introduced an amendment, which was included in the bill that passed the House, that would allow states to make their Title I dollars portable to any public or charter school of choice. Full Title I portability—i.e., allowing funds to follow a child to a private school as well—is better policy, but this is an improvement on existing statute.

Which could be the analysis of the policy in the entire SSA. It makes important improvements to NCLB that could significantly reduce red tape for schools. Ultimately, however, conservatives should push to dramatically limit federal intervention in education—not by “fixing” NCLB but by allowing states to completely opt out and spend dollars on their most pressing education needs. The A-PLUS proposal would allow such flexibility, and it remains the bright line in the sand for conservative policymakers interested in restoring state and local control of education.

https://blog.heritage.org/2013/07/19/rewrite-of-no-child-left-behind-passes-house/?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_campaign=EducationReview

Detroit and the Bankruptcy of Liberalism
Rich Tucker
July 22, 2013 at 7:00 am

Detroit is a showcase for the liberal agenda — and now it is bankrupt. More than 50 years of control by big-government liberals and union bosses have left a once-great American city crippled and deteriorating.

Last week Detroit became the largest city in American history to declare bankruptcy. Few were surprised, as the city’s been struggling for years.

The unemployment rate in Detroit is 16 percent, more than twice the national average. The city’s government-run schools have failed, with just 7 percent of eighth graders proficient in reading. It takes police about an hour to respond to calls, and the city has more than $18 billion in unfunded liabilities. The city’s population has dropped by a quarter in just the last decade, as hundreds of thousands have voted with their feet and left.

It hasn’t always been this way, of course. For decades, the city of Detroit was a manufacturing powerhouse. The assembly line was perfected there, and brought with it the idea of a middle-class lifestyle based on manufacturing. Tanks and planes made in Detroit helped make the U.S. the arsenal of democracy. And after World War II the city boomed, producing cars that helped make the American dream achievable for millions. Motown Records produced music that defined a generation, with artists who remain household names such as Diana Ross and the Supremes, Marvin Gaye and the Jackson 5.

https://blog.heritage.org/2013/07/22/detroit-and-the-bankruptcy-of-liberalism/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell

Senate Candidate Steve Lonegan Takes the Fight to Newark, Calls Booker Out on Vouchers

“Cory Booker has failed the children, the parents, and the taxpayers of Newark in never providing school choice and never solving the deep problems confronting Newark.”

Irvington Resident Asks Booker to Tell the Truth on Vouchers :“My children don’t have the luxury of waiting another 10 years for our politicians to get their act together.”

NEWARK, NJ – In a press conference in Newark today, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Steve Lonegan kicked off his “Exposing Cory Booker” tour by calling on Cory Booker to explain why he never implemented school vouchers for children trapped in Newark’s failing public schools.

In the past, Cory Booker has claimed to support school vouchers, but during his seven years as mayor of Newark, Booker never implemented vouchers. And last week, when called out by Mayor Lonegan, Booker’s campaign said, Booker’s “first priority is strengthening public education,” but “in areas where schools are currently failing our children, however, he believes that parents should have options.” (Philadelphia Inquirer, 07/13/13)

“Seven years ago, I was excited when Cory Booker ran for mayor and pledged to make a real difference in Newark’s failing education system,” Mayor Lonegan said. “I was excited because there was finally a Democrat promising to institute real school vouchers in one of America’s poorest cities. But now it’s seven years later, and absolutely nothing has happened.

“Cory Booker has failed the children, the parents, and the taxpayers of Newark in never providing school choice and never solving the deep problems confronting Newark. When a child drops out of school, their chances of turning toward crime goes up; their chances of being trapped in a life of poverty goes up; their chances of being dependent on the government welfare system goes up. All because Cory Booker refused to live up to his promises.

“Last year, Newark passed a milestone when its school budget flew past the $1 BILLION mark, funded by suburban taxpayers across the state. And despite one of the highest per-pupil costs in the nation – at nearly $24,000 – we continue to see massive drop out rates. The graduation rate in Newark is an astonishingly low 29 percent.

“But this isn’t just about statistics – this is about people. This is about children who have been failed by Cory Booker’s education system. Cory Booker can put out all the tweets in the world – it doesn’t change the fact that he has failed a generation of students.

“I call on Cory Booker to say once and for all whether he will support school vouchers in the U.S. Senate or whether he will allow President Obama to deny children the hope of a better future. New Jersey children and parents deserve an answer. Minnie Cuebas, who spoke about how she can’t afford to send her three daughters to private school, deserves an answer. New Jersey voters deserve an answer now.”