TO: ALL NEWS MEDIA FROM: PROSECUTOR JOHN MOLINELLI DATE: APRIL 21, 2008
Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli announced the arrest of Mark Nobles, D.O.B.: 06/20/1985 of 328 South Broad Street, Ridgewood, New Jersey, on charges of Sexual Assault (second degree crime) and Endangering the Welfare of a Child (third degree crime-2 counts). A fourteen (14) year old juvenile was also taken into custody and charged with Sexual Assault (second degree crime) during the investigation which resulted in the arrest of Mr. Nobles.
The arrest came about as a result of an investigation conducted by members of the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office Sex Crimes and Child Abuse Squad, under the direction of Chief Joseph Macellaro, and the Saddle Brook Police Department, under the direction of Chief Robert Kugler.
On Friday, April 18, 2008, a fourteen(14) year old female disclosed to detectives from the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office that she had been sexually assaulted by twenty two (22) year old Mark Nobles and a fourteen(14) year old male on Wednesday, April 16, 2008. The incident occurred in Saddle Brook, New Jersey after the victim and several other juveniles had been supplied with alcohol by Mr. Nobles.
On Friday, April 18, 2008, twenty two(22) year old Mark Nobles and the fourteen(14) year old juvenile were placed under arrest by members of the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office, Sex Crimes and Child Abuse Squad, and the Saddle Brook Police Department.
Honorable Patrick J. Roma, J.S.C., set bail for Mark Nobles at 100,000.00 with no 10% cash option and no contact with the victim or her family. In lieu of bail, Mr. Nobles was remanded to the Bergen County Jail. The fourteen(14) year old juvenile was remanded to the Bergen County Juvenile Detention Center.
Prosecutor Molinelli states that the defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and would like to thank the Saddle Brook Police Department for their assistance and cooperation in the investigation. CHARGE INFORMATION FORM
DEFENDANT: Mark Nobles DOB: 06/20/1985
LAST KNOWN ADDRESS: 328 South Broad Street, Ridgewood, NJ
MARITAL STATUS: Single
PLACE OF EMPLOYMENT: NAR Towing, Ramsey, NJ
ARREST INFORMATION FUGITIVE: NON FUGITIVE: X
ORIGINATING AGENCY: Saddle Brook Police Department
CASE DETECTIVE: Linda McNulty DATE AND TIME OF ARREST: 4/18/08 @ 5:30 p.m.
AGENCIES AFFECTING ARREST: Saddle Brook Police Department Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office, Sex Crimes andChild Abuse Squad CHARGE AND STATUTE CITATIONS
2C:14-2c(4) Sexual Assault (1 count) 2nd Degree 2C:24-4a Endangering the Welfare of a Child (2 counts) 3rd Degree
ARRAIGNMENT INFORMATION ARRAIGNMENT DATE: April 23, 2008 @ 5:30 p.m. JUDGE: Honorable Nicholas Nasarenko, J.M.C.. BAIL AMOUNT & CONDITIONS: $100,000.00 with no 10% cash option No contact with the victim or victim’s family.
LAST DAY to REGISTER for MUNICIPAL ELECTION is APRIL 22nd
The Village of Ridgewood will be holding its Municipal Election, to elect three Councilmembers to the Ridgewood Village Council, on May 13, 2008. The terms are for four years. The polls will be open from 6:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Sample ballots for the election will be mailed out one week prior to the election, and the polling places are the same as the ones used in all other elections.
The last day to register to vote for the Municipal Election is Tuesday, April 22, 2008. Voter registration will take place in the Village Clerk’s Office from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on that day, and the Deputy Village Clerk will also be in the Library lobby on April 22nd from 4:30 P.M. to 9:00 P.M. to register voters.
An absentee ballot application must be received by the Bergen County Clerk’s Office no later than Tuesday, May 6, 2008 in order to allow ample time for the absentee ballot to be sent to the voter. After May 6th, voters may vote by absentee ballot by going in person to the Bergen County Clerk’s Office, One Bergen County Plaza, Room 130, Hackensack, NJ up until May 12, 2008 at 3:00 p.m.
If you have any further questions about the Municipal Election, please contact the Village Clerk’s Office at 201-670-5500 ext. 201 or ext. 205.
> 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.
>Answers of Sarah-Kate Maskin & Greg Lois, Candidates for Ridgewood Board of Education To “10 Questions” Posed by The Ridgewood Blog March 21, 2008
1) Would you support the expansion of the BOE from the current five member board to a seven member BOE?
Answer: Ridgewood is a “J” district- that means that Ridgewood is one of 25 schools that falls into the highest categorization of personal income of its residents. Out of these 25 school districts, 14 have nine board members. Of the remaining eleven that we have data for, only four districts (including Ridgewood) have 5 members of the Board.
Given the size of our student population (second-biggest in our “J” category) and the small size of our Board one would expect that this small-decision making body would be more agile than a larger board.
Our experience in observing this board indicates that this “agility” which is born from “smallness” is wasted: we do not have a dynamic, quick-moving board. In opposite, we have a board that seems overwhelmed and which does not seem to question the administrators.
We would support the expansion of the Board from five to seven members.
[Our research on the other “J” districts follows:
Bedminster Township, New Jersey K-8. 620 students. Nine board members.
Bernards Township School District 5,404 students. Operates K-12. Nine school board members.
Chester Township Public School District K-8 only, approximately 1,500 students. Nine board members.
Cranbury School 650 students. K-8. Nine board members.
Essex Fells, New Jersey K-8. 271 students. Five board members.
Glen Rock Public Schools K-12. 2,472 students. Nine members.
Haddonfield Public Schools K-12. 2,377. Nine members.
Harding Township, New Jersey K-8. 321 students. (Bd of Ed website down).
Ho-Ho-Kus Public School K-8. 650 students. Five members.
Little Silver School District K-8. 802 students. Seven members.
Mendham Borough Schools K-8. 650 students. Nine members.
Mendham Township Public Schools K-8. 926 students. Seven members.
Millburn Township Public Schools K-12. 4,573 students. Nine members.
Montgomery Township School District K-12. 4,917 students. Eight board members.
Mountain Lakes Schools K-12. 1,631 students. Nine members.
North Caldwell Public Schools K-6. 731 students. Website down.
Plainsboro Township, New Jersey Plainsboro and West Windsor are part of a combined school district, the West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District. 9,016 students. Nine members.
Ridgewood Public Schools K-12. 5,551 students. Five members.
Rumson School District K-8. 986 students. Nine members.
Saddle River School District K-5. 207 students. Five board members.
School District of the Chathams K-12. 3,380 students. Nine members.
Tewksbury Township Schools K-8. 753 students. Nine members.
Upper Saddle River School District K-8. 1,344 students. Seven members.
West Windsor Township, New Jersey See Plainsboro. Plainsboro and West Windsor are part of a combined school district, the West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District. 9,016 students. Nine members.
Woodcliff Lake Public Schools K-8. 895 students. Seven members.]
2) “In light of the unexpected departure caused by Mr. Brooks, what have you changed in your approach to a search for a superintendent candidate and what changes you have, if any, in the criteria for the superintendent candidate?
Answer: We would start by conducting a search within our current staff to find a “home-grown” replacement.
Instead of simply “listing qualities” of a “dream superintendent” we think it is more important to (a) identify the problems we are facing and then (b) describe what type of leader we need in Ridgewood to address our problems.
(a) Problems – the challenges we expect our next Superintendent to deal with:
Our leadership staff (Principals) and teaching staff have had to endure a ‘revolving door’ of Superintendents. We need someone who is committed to Ridgewood – who will live here and become part of the community. This will inspire our staff and leadership and show that our superintendent is here to stay, and not just “passing through.” Permanence will lend credibility to our next Superintendent.
Ridgewood is heading into a crisis with the infrastructure in our schools. In the next 3-5 years our community-members (taxpayers) are going to have to face up to the years of neglect our lovely buildings and grounds have endured. This will be expensive. In the next several months and years not only does our Board have to show the taxpayers of Ridgewood they can exercise fiscal responsibility, but our superintendent must lead us towards the necessary reinvestment and rebuilding of our school infrastructure. This new Superintendent must demonstrate fiscal responsibility in order to convince the taxpayers that any ‘Second question’ or capital improvement monies will not be “frittered away”-the Superintendent must lead the way and build a community-wide optimism in rehabilitating our crumbling schools.
We have an instructional crisis in Ridgewood-our district has become embroiled in “Math Wars.” Our next Superintendent should have a strong instructional background so she/he can steer our district clear of “fads,” “experiments,” and “unproven reforms.”
The Superintendent must reduce our overhead and “flatten” the organizational tree. For example, why have the facilities supervisor report to the Business Administrator? The facilities manager should report directly to the Superintendent. This will “free up” our business administrator (and maybe we will not have to hire an assistant for our business administrator). Our next superintendent must reduce inefficient staffing.
(b) To adequately address these problems, Ridgewood’s superintendent should possess the following qualities:
Possess the highest standards and maintain the highest aspirations for Ridgewood – demonstrate a belief that Ridgewood can be #1; Show a commitment to Ridgewood (permanence); Be fiscally responsible and prepared to reduce waste; and Have a strong instructional background.
3) What is your plan for ensuring Ridgewood kids receive a world-class education?
Answer: The Maskin-Lois plan is: (a) The Board must set the following goal for our school leadership and instructional staff: We must be #1 in Bergen County and #1 in New Jersey. Tolerance of other standards of success (such as the Board’s discussion of simply ‘meeting state standards’ and espousing success via state test scores) is a waste of time. Let’s focus on getting back to where we should be: #1. (b) The Board must select and support an outstanding new Superintendent. (c) The Board must create community-wide support for massive infrastructure improvement, including facilities, technology, and grounds. As set forth in our other answers, the Board must establish credibility within the community by demonstrating fiscal responsibility (doing more with less, identifying efficiencies, and cutting out the waste). The Board must come up with a sustainable and responsible plan to repair our school buildings in a timely fashion, involve the community, and secure the resources necessary to support the infrastructure development.
4) Do our HSA’s have a purpose beyond fundraising? If so, what is it and how can you help them achieve it?
Answer: We have a talented, educated, and capable parent community that is willing to help our schools achieve excellence. To ask our HSA’s to solely fundraise diminishes the possibilities our parents can offer to benefit our schools, children, and faculty.
We believe the role of the HSA should be an avenue for parents to express their ideas, concerns, needs and goals within each school involving all topics that impact our children. The HSA’s in return can provide the parent voice by communicating directly to the principal at their meetings and then to the superintendent. This allows for changing that avenue from a one-way street to a two-way street.
5) What role should NJ’s state standards or lack thereof play in selecting our curriculum and do you agree with the direction the academic program has taken in Ridgewood Schools?
Answer: Our goal must be to be #1 in Bergen County and #1 in New Jersey. That does not mean “#1 in NJASK, GEPA, and HSPA testing.” There is a need for improvement regarding our academic programming.
One example is the Reader’s and Writer’s Workshop. Our model is effective in producing solid results for elementary student achievement in both reading and writing. However, grammar and language mechanics are missing from this model. We should include grammar and language mechanics into our program.
Another area of our academic programming that must be addressed is the methodology of instruction dictated by district administrators. Our children spend a disproportionate amount of time working in groups or partnering with other students throughout all academic domains.
Our district must unify our curricula throughout all of our schools. Unifying the curricula will save tax dollars, guarantee the same content is provided to each student, and eliminate the divisiveness felt among parents that “one school is better than another.” We all live in Ridgewood, and creating unity has powerful results.
6) Is a “state teaching certification” enough to satisfy our standards for teachers we hire?
Answer: Of course not. By law, all teachers must be state certified. That is merely the “minimum” requirement. We must continue to recruit outstanding teachers and invest in our teachers (continuing education, workshops, etc.). Ridgewood traditionally hired only those teachers who had at least three years experience. We would consider a return to this practice to ensure our children have experienced teachers.
7) Would require redistricting our elementary and middle schools to lower the student teacher ratio?
Answer: There are many things we could do to lower the student-teacher ratio in our schools.
For example, Benjamin Franklin Middle School has a very high student-to-teacher ratio. The ratio of students to teachers at Benjamin Franklin is nearly 25 to 1. The New Jersey middle-school average is closer to 19 to 1.
Principal Orsini took an innovative approach to this high student-to-teacher ratio: he looked at ways of re-scheduling the class offerings to maximize his student-to-teacher ratio. The school is moving to a different scheduling system and Principal Orsini expects that this change alone will reduce the student to teacher ratio at BF. Changing the schedule is obviously a more cost-effective approach than simply hiring more instructional staff and does not require redistricting.
The mission of the school board and their administrators, consultants, leaders, etc., is to find and encourage efficient and innovative solutions to district problems, like the high student-to-teacher ratio at BF.
8) How do you think the recently released report of the President’s Math Panel should impact and inform our current discussion of Ridgewood’s math curriculum?
Answer: The recent math panel report does not support the adoption of reform math teaching methods in our schools. The Math panel found that knowledge of basic math facts (using standard algorithms to solve equations) is necessary to comprehend math concepts.
It is a waste of learner’s time and taxpayer dollars to re-train our teachers and re-purchase new instructional materials to teach reform math.
We believe the traditional math instructional model, which has always been used in Ridgewood, best follows the math panel recommendations.
The report also recommends moving away from the spiral topic sequencing approach that reform math advocates espouse. The reform math currently in use at some of our elementary schools relies on a spiral approach and eliminates standard algorithms. At the middle school level, ‘Connected Mathematics Program 2 (CMP2)’ was rolled in for the sixth and seventh graders. It will follow them next year as they enter eighth grade. This middle school math program follows a spiral approach to learning and instruction.
After reading the President’s Math Panel Report, we strongly urge our administrators and Board to jettison all reform math programs from our district as not meeting the recommendations of the report.
We believe a traditional math program provides the necessary content and rigor to prepare our students mathematically and these suggestions are outlined in the Report. Any quality traditional math program inherently builds into its text both strategies and problem solving skills that reform math so highly promotes. Textbooks are a must. Sarah-Kate has sat on curriculum committees and knows it is absolutely possible to unify our districts math instruction with a top quality, proven successful program for this coming September.
For your information, below is a letter that Ms. Maskin emailed to our Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction on March 17, 2008.
Dear Ms. Botsford,
I am sure you have had an opportunity to read through the President’s Math Panel report that was released last week.
Now that it is published with its clear recommendations regarding K-8 mathematics, the district, I hope, will abandon its idea of partnering with a local university.
Short of the implicit response to re-train our teachers, I can’t imagine that this said partnership could possibly offer anything as insightful and detailed as outlined by the President’s National Math Panel. This august and inclusive assembly of experts spent two years researching and collecting information–something we could not do given our limited resources.
The guidance has been provided and I am sure that this report can truly help our district find a resolve to the current state of math programming here in Ridgewood.
Most importantly, do you still see any reason why delaying the implementation of a math program is necessary given its huge cost of another lost year for so many of our students. I look forward to your reply.
Regards, Sarah-Kate Maskin
9) The BOE believes it has sought ways to improve communication with parents. Has it been successful and if not, what will you do to enhance this aspect of the board’s communication?
Answer: 70.6% of survey-takers said that the current Board does not “accept or want parent input” and 69.7% said that they “don’t feel well-represented by this Board.” (Source: web survey taken by Maskin & Lois for School Board – available online at https://www.OurRidgewoodSchools.com). Based on the results of our polling, the Board has not been successful in improving communication with parents.
Communicating with parents and the community is incredibly important because we are facing several challenges in the coming months: the hiring of a new superintendent, the restoration of a mission of excellence (we must be #1 in Bergen County and #1 in New Jersey and not accept anything less), and the fiscal pressures presented by our decaying infrastructure.
Our campaign exemplifies how to communicate with parents and the community: we have sent direct mail, sent email, created web surveys, drafted a website, and we have individually responded to questions presented by the community (in person at HSA meetings and through correspondence, like these responses). We do not think that the community’s communication expectations should have to change once campaign season is over and the lawn signs go to recycling.
We think the Board must do more to make their website responsive, to incorporate surveys and polling where appropriate, and to consider moving meetings away from Cottage Place and into the individual schools (The BOE has said they can’t hold meetings in the schools because of the location of the TV cameras . . . if the Orchard HSA can webcast their meetings remotely, surely the Board can too!)
Our district’s communication is one way and ineffective. The Board talks about being transparent but in reality, falls short. One of our goals is to provide the public with all information. Currently, the Board and administration impart carefully selected items that equates a partial picture.
There is a chain of command a parent must undergo when voicing their concerns about an educational issue. What has happened specifically regarding math could just as easily be about any issue. It is not the topic; it is the attitude of the Board that is of great concern and we would like that to change to truly represent the parent and tax-payer voice. It is our intent to make sure that no parent must experience the exasperating ordeal of being ignored. These are our children and our hard-earned tax dollars. Parents should be heard and respected in the process. Ms. Brogan does not share in this philosophy; her actions over the past few years demonstrate this point.
We would:
• Provide board minutes on the BOE website; • Provide tallies of how Board members voted on issues before the Board; • Hold Board meetings in all of the schools (on a rotating basis); • Allow write-in (or emailed in) questions to be read into the record at public meetings if a resident can not attend; • Continue our use of web surveys (see www.OurRidgewoodSchools.com) to include annual reviews of each school by the parents and community; • Consider increasing the size of the Board to better address and represent taxpayer’s and resident’s issues (from 5 to 7 members); and • Encourage community participation in the work of the Board committees.
Finally, we remind you that the ultimate communications tool is your vote: if you do not like the direction the school system is heading, vote for change!
10) Where would you rank the quality of our facilities and fields on a scale of 1 to 10? How would you handle the responsibility of ensuring that our facilities and fields are maintained?
Answer: We give the quality and quantity of our recreational facilities a “5” out of “10.” Given that 1 in 4 residents of Ridgewood is a child (25%), versus a national average of 18%, open space and recreational opportunities are very important for our youth.
I direct you to the ‘Ridgewood Comprehensive Parks, Fields, and Recreation Master Plan’ (2nd Draft) (available here: https://www.ridgewoodnj.net/main.cfm?ArticleID=498). This plan provides a ten-year incremental map of recreational facilities development. The plan anticipates a ‘sharing’ of costs between the BOE and Village for fields and facilities (tennis courts, basketball courts, etc.).
The allocation of field resources (as opposed to the maintenance and creation of new resources) can be done more efficiently. A greater sharing of facilities between the BOE, the Bergen County park system, the YMCA of Greater Bergen County must be explored in addition to the sharing of township resources. The village has 16 parks and the BOE operates and controls 11 ‘active recreation facilities.’
Our Master Plan calls for the acquisition of additional properties over the next ten years. This is a joint plan involving the Village Council as well as the BOE.
We would fight to fully fund our infrastructure maintenance plan and improve our recreational fields. We do not think that we must “sacrifice” one part of our system (facilities, fields) at the expense of another.
The issue of field maintenance and recreational expense is really about the overall budget. Here is Greg Lois’ Letter to the Editor published in the March 21, 2008 Ridgewood News:
Dear Editor:
I asked Board Member Brogan whether she agreed with the statement that “The proposed 2008 budget does not include full funding for the infrastructure maintenance as presented in the LAN Associates district plan and does not include full funding for the recreational facilities maintenance and upkeep as set forth in the Schoor DePalma master plan.”
Ms. Brogan agreed with that statement.
She then went on to speak at length about why our district did fully fund the maintenance and recreational facilities plans. She specifically said it was problem of “allocating resources” and that the infrastructure needs had to be balanced with instructional costs, etc. The answer was quite lengthy and there was no time for other questions after the long response.
I am writing this letter because I do not want the attendees to get the wrong impression from Ms. Brogan’s response. Specifically, I want your HSA members to know that I do not subscribe to Ms. Brogan’s “shrinking pie” theory of the school budget, where we as Board members can do nothing better than just “slice up the pie” between competing school needs. I want your Association members to know that there is a more realistic and optimistic approach to addressing the district’s financial needs.
It’s not a static pie. The pie expands when efficiencies are found.
In order to most easily understand my approach to the school budget process I will provide an example of it in practice.
Benjamin Franklin Middle School has a very high student-to-teacher ratio. The ratio of students to teachers at Benjamin Franklin is nearly 25 to 1. The New Jersey middle-school average is closer to 19 to 1.
Principal Orsini took an innovative approach to this high student to teacher ratio-he looked at ways of re-scheduling the class offerings to maximize his student-to-teacher ratio. The school is moving to a different scheduling system and Principal Orsini expects that this change alone will reduce the student to teacher ratio at BF. Changing the schedule is obviously a more cost-effective approach than simply hiring more instructional staff.
In the BF example, the application of a different scheduling system (a time management system) “expanded” the budget “pie” and the school district is able to provide a benefit (lower student to teacher ratio at BF) without significant cost increase.
The mission of the school board and their administrators, consultants, leaders, etc., is to find and encourage these types of efficiencies. In relation to the budget, this really should be “job one” for the Board members. Not to throw their hands up, say “well this is all we can do” and give up. Not to lead us to believe that every added benefit (like lower teacher to student ratio) comes at the cost to some other district aspiration.
I was hoping to confront Ms. Brogan’s “shrinking pie” budget theory at the meeting. I am sorry we ran short of time because I really think that focusing on efficiencies and the application of technology (like the new time-scheduling system at BF) will be more successful for Ridgewood.
The question really becomes “how much more pie can we find?” in the current budget. I think there is plenty of efficiency to be found.
I have not given up on fully funding our infrastructure maintenance plan and improving our recreational fields. I do not think that we must “sacrifice” one part of our system (facilities, fields) at the expense of another (according to Ms. Brogan, “everything else”). Very Truly, Greg Lois
Please visit our website (www.OurRidgewoodSchools.com) for more information and information about our platform. Please contact the candidates with any questions regarding these responses. Sarah-Kate can be contacted directly at [email protected] . Greg can be contacted at [email protected].
>Poll Finds Almost Half of New Jersey Adults Want to Move Out of State Thursday , October 18, 2007
By Sara Bonisteel
ADVERTISEMENT Even New Jerseyans can’t stand living in New Jersey, according to a new poll that said nearly half of adults residing in the Garden State want to pull up stakes.
The Monmouth University/Gannett New Jersey Poll, released Wednesday, found 49 percent of those polled would rather live somewhere else.
New Jersey already is suffering from an image problem and bears the brunt of jokes because of its corruption and pollution problems. But 58 percent of those residents polled said the heavy financial burden of just living in the state is no laughing matter, and that’s why they want to leave.
Poll participants cited high property taxes (28 percent), the cost of living (19 percent), state taxes (5 percent) and housing costs (6 percent) as the main reasons they want out. The poll also found that 51 percent of those who expressed a desire to leave planned to do so, with adults under the age of 50 making between $50,000 and $100,000 the most likely to flee.
“If you have the ability to leave and you don’t see any possibility for change with the way the state is run — and that’s the No. 1 issue here — you have to vote with your feet,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute.
The study did not surprise New Jersey’s politicians.
“The high cost of living in the Northeast is not news,” Brendan Gilfillan, a spokesman for Gov. Jon Corzine, said in an e-mail statement. “But it is one of the reasons Gov. Corzine has worked tirelessly to help poor and working-class residents of New Jersey by implementing the Earned Income Tax Credit, expanding S-CHIP and increasing — and sustaining — property tax relief.”
Gilfillan said Corzine also had cut costs by reducing the government workforce, though he noted people would continue to leave New Jersey as baby boomers retired.
“Demographics are only going to accentuate this trend, as the bulk of these folks have yet to leave the workforce,” Gilfillan said.
But Republican Assemblyman Richard Merkt said it was the fiscal policies of the governor and legislature that were to blame for the exodus.
“It’s no wonder that New Jersey is a national joke,” he said. “We’ve done it to ourselves with these just positively irresponsible policies.”
The Monmouth University poll, which was conducted over the telephone with 801 New Jersey adults from Sept. 27 to Sept. 30, did not predict a mass exodus, at least not yet. Of those residents polled, 44 percent would like to stay and 7 percent were not sure. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percent.
But a Rutgers University report released last week found that New Jersey, with nearly 9 million people, is experiencing a population loss and said the number of residents who had left the state more than tripled from 2002 to 2006, with 231,565 people moving elsewhere.
The Rutgers Regional Report, which examined U.S. Census Bureau and Internal Revenue Service data, noted 72,547 people left in 2006, ranking New Jersey fourth — behind California, Louisiana and New York — among states with the highest population losses in the nation.
High prices aren’t the only thing driving people out. New Jersey ex-pats headed in droves to warmer climates, with 124,584 moving to Florida and 29,803 moving to North Carolina. Others (42,459) moved to neighboring Pennsylvania.
That migration depleted the state’s tax coffers of an estimated $10 billion in personal income and $680 million in sales tax, according to the Rutgers report.
“This really illustrates among a lot of other things that the public has thrown up their hands,” Murray said. “They don’t feel that there’s anything they can do that would change the situation.”
And unless there’s change, Merkt said, the flight will continue.
“One can only hope that the pendulum will stop swinging this way and start moving back the other way ’cause if it doesn’t, you’re going to see 9 million people suffer,” he said.
“Or you’re going to see the last person over the Delaware turn out the lights.”
>Ready, Set, Relax! is one town’s effort to stop hyper-parenting, in this exclusive excerpt.
Apr 05, 2008 04:30 AM Carl Honoré
Ridgewood is the sort of place that comes to mind when people talk about the American dream. Nestled in the woodlands of northern New Jersey, this quiet, verdant town of 25,000 souls breathes affluence and well-being. The locals work hard at high-powered jobs in Manhattan, but they enjoy the fruits of their labour. Large, handsome houses sit on spacious lots dotted with swing sets and trampolines. Luxury sedans and shiny SUVs glide along wide streets lined with oak, dogwood and maple trees.
Move in a little closer, though, and this happy portrait starts to fray round the edges. At the school gates, around the tables in the local diner, and in the supermarket parking lot, you hear the people of Ridgewood voicing the same complaint: we may live inside a 21st-century Garden of Eden, but we are too damn busy to enjoy it.
Many families here are scheduled up to the eyeballs. Caught between work and home, parents struggle to find time for friends, romance, or even a decent night’s sleep. Their children are in the same boat, filling the hours not already occupied by school work with organized extracurricular activities. Some 10-year-olds in Ridgewood are so busy they carry Palm Pilots to keep track of their appointments. Eating dinner or doing homework in the car while travelling to swimming or the riding club is common here. One local mother emails an updated family schedule to her husband and two sons every evening. Another keeps her timetable pinned to the front door and the underside of the sun visor in her people carrier. With so many schedules to mesh, with so much going on, even getting toddlers together for a playdate can be a logistical nightmare. One of my favorite New Yorker cartoons was penned with places like Ridgewood in mind. It depicts two little girls waiting for the school bus, each holding a personal planner. One tells the other, “Okay, I’ll move ballet back an hour, reschedule gymnastics, and cancel piano. … You shift your violin lessons to Thursday and skip soccer practice. … That gives us from 3:15 p.m. to 3:45 p.m. on Wednesday the 16th to play.”
Unlike other towns, though, Ridgewood has taken a stand against overstuffed schedules. What started with a few moms grumbling over coffee at the kitchen table has blossomed into a mini-movement. In 2002, Ridgewood pioneered an annual event called Ready, Set, Relax! The idea is that one day a year this alpha town takes a breather: teachers assign no homework, extracurricular activities are cancelled, and parents make a point of coming home early from the office. The aim is to cast off the tyranny of the timetable, to let children rest, play, or just daydream, and to give families time together that is not built around driving to the next volleyball practice or band rehearsal.
Hundreds of households put down their planners to take part in Ready, Set, Relax! and the event has inspired towns across North America, not all of them as well-heeled as Ridgewood, to follow suit. To help out frazzled families, the school board in Sidney, N.Y., a blue-collar hamlet 210 kilometres northwest of here, no longer schedules any extracurricular activities or meetings after 4:30 p.m. on Wednesdays. In 2007, Amos, a small forest and mining town in northwestern Quebec, held its first activity-free day based on the Ridgewood model. Marcia Marra, a mother of three who helped set up Ready, Set, Relax! in tandem with a local mental health agency, hopes the tide is turning. “People are starting to see that when their lives and their children’s lives are scheduled to the hilt, everyone suffers,” she says. “Structured activities can be great for kids, but things are just out of control now.”
This is not a new panic. Warnings about children being overscheduled, racing from one enriching activity to the next, first surfaced in the early 20th century. Dorothy Canfield Fisher, a popular novelist-cum-parenting guru, warned in 1914 that American parents were stripping childhood of its “blessed spontaneity” by placing “a constricting pressure upon the children to use even the chinks and fragments of their time to acquire accomplishments which seem to us profitable.” In 1931, Ruth Frankel, a pioneering cancer specialist in Canada, described how “the modern child, with his days set into a patterned program, goes docilely from one prescribed class to another, takes up art and music and French and dancing … until there is hardly a minute left.” Her fear was that overscheduled children would grow so jaded that they would turn “desperately to the corner movie in an effort to escape ennui.”
That same worry has reached fever pitch over the last generation. Books with titles like The Hurried Child and The Overscheduled Child have carved out shelf space in the library of modern parenting. Even the kids’ section has tackled the topic. In The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Pressure, the famous ursine family goes into stress meltdown because Sister and Brother Bear are enrolled in too many after-school activities.
Why are so many children so busy today? One reason is the rise of the working mother. When moms stayed home, it was easier just to let the kids play around the house. But as women entered the workplace and the extended family dissolved, someone else had to pick up the slack on the child-care front. Extracurricular activities fit the bill perfectly, promising not only supervision but also enrichment. Yet putting children on a tight schedule is not always a response to the child-care gap. Many stay-at-home moms also sign their children up for endless activities. Part of this is self-defence: when every other kid in the neighbourhood is booked solid, who is going to indulge in free play with your unscheduled child? In our atomized, bowling-alone society, organized activities are also a good way – sometimes the only way – to meet other parents. Nor does it help that many extracurricular activities are designed like a slippery slope: you sign up your 4-year-old daughter for a weekly dance lesson, and then, before you know it, she has a class every other night and is travelling across the country to compete. Rather than rock the boat, though, we persuade ourselves that lots of scheduled activities are just what children need and want, even when they tell us otherwise. The other day I watched a mother drag her 3-year-old daughter from a nursery school near our house. The child was weeping. “I don’t want to go to ballet,” she howled. “I want to go home and play.”
No one is saying that extracurricular activities are bad. On the contrary, they are an integral part of a rich and happy childhood. Many kids, particularly in lower-income families, would actually benefit from more structured activities. Plenty of children, especially teenagers, thrive on a busy schedule. But just as other trappings of modern childhood, from homework to technology, are subject to the law of diminishing returns, there is a danger of overscheduling the young. When it comes to extracurricular activities, many children are getting too much of a good thing.
Wayne Yankus, a pediatrician in Ridgewood since the early 1980s, reckons that 65 per cent of his patients are now victims of overscheduling. He says the symptoms include headaches, sleep disorders, gastric problems caused by stress or by eating too late at night, and fatigue. “Fifteen years ago it was unusual to see a tired 10-year-old,” says Yankus. “Now it’s common.” Recently he hired a therapist to spend one day a week in his office to talk to families about the need to prune their planners.
The extracurricular merry-go-round can also ensnare the family in a vicious cycle. Parents resent children for taking up so much time and costing so much money – Britons spend £12 billion a year on their children’s hobbies, half of which are abandoned within five weeks – while children resent their parents’ resentment. Activities overload also squeezes out time for the unscheduled, simple stuff that brings families together – relaxed conversation, cuddling, shared meals or just hanging out together in companionable silence. Yankus sees this disconnect in many Ridgewood households. “When the snow comes and the activities get cancelled, everyone is horrified because they’re suddenly stuck at home and have to deal with each other,” he says. “They don’t know how to get along without a schedule.”
Ridgewood does not shut down completely on Ready, Set, Relax! day. Some residents regard the event as silly or patronizing. Sporting matches arranged with neighbouring districts are not cancelled, and the homework ban is not always as strictly enforced as it could be, especially in high school. Yet the town does feel different on the big day. With fewer soccer moms running red lights, the traffic is less frantic. People are more likely to stop and chat than exchange a brief nod before pointing to their watch and rushing off to the next appointment. To many families, Ready, Set, Relax! has been an epiphany. More than a third of those who took part in 2006 trimmed their schedules afterward. Consider the Givens. The three children used to be enrolled in so many after-school activities that there was barely time to eat, sleep or talk. Even though she felt overwhelmed and often found herself jogging round the supermarket to save a few seconds, Jenny, the mother, somehow felt that it was her duty to keep the family maxed out on extracurricular pursuits. “Every activity that comes up you want your kids to try, and you fear that you are failing them if they are not busy every second,” she says. “You want the best for them, but always at the back of your mind, even if you don’t admit it, you have the fantasy that they might turn out to be brilliant at something, that by signing them up for an activity you might uncover some latent genius.”
In the Given household, that translated into an eye-watering barrage of art classes, Spanish lessons, soccer, lacrosse, softball, volleyball, basketball, baseball, tennis, scouts and book club. Every weekend, the parents would split up to ferry the children to their various activities. At home, time and tempers were short. Ready, Set, Relax! came as a wake-up call. On the first night, the Givens made Mexican food and chocolate chip cookies together. Then they got down Cadoo, a board game that had been sitting unopened on the shelf since Christmas. The evening rolled along in a riot of laughter and cuddles. “It was an amazing revelation for all of us,” says Jenny. “It was just such a relief not to be rushing off to the next thing on the to-do list.”
After the Ready, Set, Relax! night, the Givens cut back, keeping only activities the children are passionate about. Today Kathryn, 16, does an art class, Spanish lessons, and a book club. Chris, 14, plays on basketball and baseball teams while Rosie, 12, concentrates on soccer, tennis and lacrosse. The whole family is more relaxed, and the children are all doing better at school since the cutback. The spirit of Ready, Set, Relax! has rippled out into other initiatives in Ridgewood. Every Wednesday, weather permitting, about 80 children aged 4 to 7 are now let loose in the playground of the local primary school. This is Free Play Day and parents are confined to the sidelines. Left to their own devices, the children skip, play hide-and-seek and tag, make up stories, throw balls around, sing and wrestle. The noise is exhilarating, the child equivalent of a Wall of Sound. To many parents it is a revelation. “It never occurred to me to do this, to just let them play like this,” says one mother. “You always feel like you have to be organizing something for them, but actually you don’t.”
There is, of course, something absurd – even a little tragic – about having to schedule unscheduled time, yet given the world we live in, that is probably the first step for many families. And clearly the Ready, Set, Relax! movement reflects a wider rethink.
Harvard urges incoming freshmen to check their overscheduling ways at the door. Posted on the university website, an open letter by Harry Lewis, a former dean of the undergraduate school, warns students that they will get more out of college, and indeed life, if they do less and concentrate on the things that really fire their passion. Lewis also takes aim at the notion that everything young people do must have a measurable payoff or contribute toward crafting the perfect resumé. “You may balance your life better if you participate in some activities purely for fun, rather than to achieve a leadership role that you hope might be a distinctive credential for postgraduate employment. The human relationships you form in unstructured time with your roommates and friends may have a stronger influence on your later life than the content of some of the courses you are taking.”
Most families that ease the load end up spending more time eating together. In a hurry-up, hyper-scheduled culture, where dining al desko, in front of the TV or computer, in the street or in the car is commonplace, the family meal often falls by the wayside. One study found that a fifth of British families never eat together. The irony is that many of the benefits extracurricular activities, including homework, purport to deliver may actually by achieved through the simple act of breaking bread en famille. Studies in many countries show that children who have regular family meals are more likely to do well at school, enjoy good mental health, and eat nutritious food; they are also less likely to engage in underage sex or use drugs and alcohol.
A Harvard study concluded that family meals promote language development even more than does family story reading. Another survey found that the only common denominator among National Merit Scholars in the United States, regardless of race or social class, was having a regular family dinner. Of course, we’re talking here about meals where both parents and children ask questions, discuss ideas at length and tell anecdotes rather than just watch TV and grunt “pass the salt.”
Why does a proper family meal pay such handsome dividends? When it comes to diet, the answer is obvious. A 9-year-old boy is more likely to finish his greens, or to eat any vegetables at all, in front of his mom and dad than when he is dining alone at the computer in his bedroom. Sitting around the dinner table, taking part in conversation, also teaches children that they are loved and cherished for who they are, rather than for what they do. They learn to talk, listen, reason, and compromise – all those essential ingredients of a high EQ. Of course, no one is saying that family meals are always a bed of roses. Sometimes they are sheer hell. Gathering tired toddlers, sullen teenagers and stressed parents around the table can be a recipe for open warfare. But then, dealing with conflict is part of life, too.
Excerpted from Under Pressure: Rescuing Childhood from the Culture of Hyper-Parenting. Copyright 2008 Carl Honoré. Published by Knopf Canada. Reproduced by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.
TO: ALL NEWS MEDIA FROM: PROSECUTOR JOHN L. MOLINELLI DATE: APRIL 3, 2008
Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli announced the arrest of ERIC JIMENEZ (DOB: 2/29/1988) of 792 Norgate Drive, Ridgewood, New Jersey on Tuesday, April 2, 2008 on drug distribution charges. The arrest came about as a result of an investigation conducted by members of the Bergen County Narcotic Task Force, under the direction of Chief Joseph Macellaro, the Ridgewood Police Department, under the direction of Chief William Corcoran and the Allendale Police Department, under the direction of Chief Robert Herndon.
On February 20, 2008, ERIC JIMENEZ sold approximately three and one-half (3.5) grams of Cocaine to an undercover detective of the Bergen County Narcotic Task Force in Ridgewood, New Jersey. On February 25, 2008, ERIC JIMENEZ sold approximately ten (10) grams of Cocaine to an undercover detective of the Bergen County Narcotic Task Force in Paramus, New Jersey. On March 3, 2008, ERIC JIMENEZ sold approximately ten (10) grams of Cocaine to an undercover detective of the Bergen County Narcotic Task Force in Ridgewood, New Jersey. On March 18, 2008, ERIC JIMENEZ sold approximately ten (10) grams of Cocaine to an undercover detective of the Bergen County Narcotic Task Force in Ridgewood, New Jersey. On April 2, 2008, ERIC JIMENEZ sold approximately one (1) ounce of Cocaine and one (1) pound of Marijuana to an undercover detective of the Bergen County Narcotic Task Force in Ridgewood, New Jersey. Subsequent to this narcotic transaction, JIMENEZ was placed under arrest without incident. A subsequent search of JIMENEZ’s vehicle revealed an additional two (2) pounds of Marijuana.
ERIC JIMENEZ was charged with the following: One (1) count (inclusive of five (5) separate dates) of Distribution of a Controlled Dangerous Substance, namely Cocaine, in violation of N.J.S.A. 2C:35-5a(1)/5b(2)-2nd degree crime; One (1) count (inclusive of three (3) separate dates) of Distribution of a Controlled Dangerous Substance, namely Cocaine, while within one-thousand (1000) feet of a School Zone in violation of N.J.S.A 2C:35-7-3rd degree crime; and one (1) count of Distribution of a Controlled Dangerous Substance, namely Marijuana over one (1) ounce, in violation of N.J.S.A 2C: 35-5a(1)/5b(11)-3rd degree crime. Additional charges for possession of cocaine and marijuana are to be levied against JIMENEZ when this case is presented to a Grand Jury for indictment consideration.
Bail was set at $75,000.00-no10% for ERIC JIMENEZ by Judge Louis Dinice, J.M.C., after which, he was remanded to the Bergen County Jail in lieu of bail.
Prosecutor Molinelli states that the defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and would like to thank the Ridgewood and Allendale Police Departments for their assistance and cooperation in this investigation.
BERGEN COUNTY PROSECUTOR’S OFFICE CHARGE INFORMATION FORM
DEFENDANT: ERIC JIMENEZ DOB: 02-29-1988 LAST KNOWN ADDRESS: 792 Norgate Drive, Ridgewood, New Jersey 07109
MARITAL STATUS: Single PLACE OF EMPLOYMENT: Unemployed LENGTH OF EMPLOYMENT: N/A PRESENT POSITION: N/A/
ARREST INFORMATION
FUGITIVE: NON-FUGITIVE: XXXXX
DATE & TIME OF ARREST: 04/02/2008 @ 5:18 p.m.
PLACE OF ARREST/TOWN: Ridgewood, New Jersey
AGENCIES EFFECTING ARREST: Bergen County Narcotic Task Force, Ridgewood Police Department and Allendale Police Department
CHARGE AND STATUTE CITATIONS
Distribution of a Controlled Dangerous Substance, namely Cocaine, in violation of N.J.S.A. 2C:35-5a(1)/5b(2); Distribution of a Controlled Dangerous Substance, namely Cocaine, while within one-thousand (1000) feet of a School Zone in violation of N.J.S.A 2C:35-7; and Distribution of a Controlled Dangerous Substance, namely Marijuana, in violation of N.J.S.A 2C: 35-5a(1)/5b(11).
ARRAIGNMENT INFORMATION
ARRAIGNMENT DATE: 04/03/08 @ 9:00 a.m. JUDGE: Hon. Louis Dinice, J.M.C BAIL AMOUNT & CONDITIONS: $ 75,000 with no ten percent (10%) option PRESENT STATUS: Bergen County Jail https://www.bcpo.net/bcpo/blog/index.php
>A report on math education fuels the debate about the Singapore model. What is it–and would it work here? Peg Tyre Newsweek Web Exclusive Updated: 4:33 PM ET Mar 14, 2008
This week, after two years of deliberation, the National Mathematics Advisory Panel released their report aimed at improving math education in this country. And you could almost hear the sound of textbooks–that heavy one in your kid’s backpack, and a stack of high-stakes math tests, the kind your kid take every year–landing in the garbage can with a thud.
The advisory panel, made up of 24 educators and mathematicians, is all for textbooks and testing. In fact, the report specifically endorses regular math assessment. But after months of hearings, the panel was unequivocal that we need to change the way math is being taught–and the way we test it. Right now, it’s simply too broad, too unfocused, repetitious and, in the end, treated too superficially. Instead, the report recommends, “the mathematics curriculum in Grades PreK-8 should be streamlined and should emphasize a well-defined set of the most critical topics in the grades.” Teachers should focus on skills like computing with whole numbers, fractions, geometry and measurement. Most importantly, those skills should be taught in a coherent sequence so that by late middle school, more students have a proper foundation from which to unravel the elegant puzzles of algebra. “Students who complete Algebra II are twice as likely to graduate from college compared to students with less mathematical preparation,” the report says.
Which means that a lot of states are going to have to start scrambling. In most places, math standards, which are determined by the state and sometimes the district, are a hodgepodge of as many as a hundred different topics related to math: word problems, computation exercises, probability games. And teachers are required to cover them all in a single year. Textbooks, which are written to follow state standards, are also overlong and often incoherent. Take that math book out of your kid’s backpack and look at it. It’s likely to be a massive tome that includes chapter after chapter with photographs, puzzles, data charts, “Did You Know” factoids and even a few games. And the yearly assessments are often just as incoherent.
Instead, states need to figure out what’s crucial, when to teach it, and make sure teachers follow the formula. “The conversation needs to be, at every grade level, ‘What’s important here?’ ” says Francis Skip Fennell, president of the National Council of Teachers of Math, which came up with their own pared-down guidelines for math instruction in 2006, which strongly influenced the math panel’s recommendations.
The findings of the panel come when international assessments show U.S. students rapidly falling behind other developing countries. A 2007 assessment found that 15-year-olds in the U.S. ranked 25th out of 30 developed nations in computation, problem solving and math literacy. The panel was convened in 2006 by President Bush to address concerns about the lack of homegrown mathematicians, engineers and scientists.
The panel’s report tries to defuse factional tension between proponents of new math, fuzzy math, back-to-basics math and the like. The report says teacher-directed approaches (the skills-and-drills method) or student-centered approaches (based on individual or group exploration of math concepts) each have a place.
At the same time, the report will provide momentum to the small but increasingly influential group of math researchers and educators who see the curriculum used in Singapore, often called Singapore Math, as the gold standard. Singapore math is very lean, says Charles Patton, a software developer at SRI International and math-education researcher who is working with Singapore’s National Institute of Education. The Singapore curriculum flows coherently from one subject to another, culminating in algebra. “If you flip through the pages of an American math textbook and a Singapore math textbook, you begin to understand just how much thought and effort went into sequencing and wording. It is a very powerful and well-engineered tool,” he says.
Since 2006, when the NCTM published its guidelines, several states have begun looking at ways to simplify their math curriculum. But Patton cautions against schools simply grafting Singapore Math textbooks onto their already existing math program. Singapore’s teachers are trained by a single institution, which also provides the math curriculum, tests and textbooks. Teachers get about 100 hours of professional development to work on their instructional skills. “If you simply drop a Singapore math textbook into your math program,” says Patton, “it is bound to fail.” URL: https://www.newsweek.com/id/123326
>Your community passion must be commended. Yes, it is fuzzy math…to adults. When taught in its entirety, students get it. So is this about us as adults and what we know or about student achievement?
Visit What Work Clearinghouse, www.w-w-c.org and justforkids.org. See what successful schools are doing to improve student achievement. EM is being used in quite a few places.
The big problem with EM is the sprial. It makes all of us uncomfortable because it is outside of what we know. We are uncomfortable because WE have to change our way of thinking that has served us well for decades. It goes to the very heart of what we know about school. So does using the Internet, IPODs, PDAs, or the fact that children are extremely disruptive at school and even at home. It is a difficult shift for teachers, parents, and the community.
But are they not worth making a change? Mathematics is not just arithmetic, even at the kindergarten level. In kindergarten, students visit concepts in all mathematical strands: numbers and operations, geometry, algebra, data analysis and statistics, and probability. That’s real mathematics that they learn.
No, they don’t know the facts like we would like them to know them. If you look at the standardized assessments, it doesn’t seem to be a priority either. But they have strategies for performing operations mentally and/or using tools that are amazing.
Before you condemn a program, learn about it. We were ready to give up on it, too. What we realized is that this program, this type of program is not going anywhere. NCLB has ensured us that not only will spiraling programs stay, there will be more. So we decided to accept and embrace it fully, then we would decide for ourselves. The results: we made 14% growth in mathematics scores!
The more we learned, using program and the Teacher Reference Book, the more we realized we did not understand at a deeper level. We memorized information when we were in school! We have a cohort of teachers from this school earning endorsements in Middle School Mathematics. Even the Pre-K teacher is going! The classes are not about EM but about mathematical concepts and the teaching and learning of mathematics. Our grade level meeting discussions are deeper and our conversations are always peppered with questions and things we have learned.
With parent workshops, our parents are starting to learn about mathematics, not just the program. We are honest about our struggles. It sometimes difficult to understand the point of some lessons. We use the EM website, email EM for clarity and talk about it. Most of the time, it is a topic we learned by memorizing years ago and now we need to understand it conceptually.
Ask a second grader with a teacher who is fully implementing EM what it means to multiply. The depth of their explanation and the ways they can prove it are amazing.
With FULL, UNSUPPLEMENTED, and SUPPORTED implementation you will get the results you are looking for from this program. Teachers will not do well with this program without intense professional development in their first two years of use.
Take the time and really find out what this type of program does for learning. Understand it has it draw backs, but so does NCLB. For all of the problems with it, the good outways the bad in working towards a quality education for all students.
Montclair State University Receives $6.8 Million in Grants to Lead Cutting-edge Collaborations to Improve Science and Math Education in New Jersey Schools: The Prudential Foundation, National Science Foundation and New Jersey Department of Education to Provide Funding
“…”We’re absolutely thrilled to have Montclair State as a partner,” said East Rutherford Schools Superintendent Gayle Strauss, Ph.D. “Our schools have been struggling to raise test scores, as the number of students in ESL (English as a Second Language) and special education in a district our size has a large impact on our overall scores. This program will target those populations.”
Teacher preparation and recruitment will be a major part of the answer to this challenge, and Montclair State’s collaborations with the private sector, the state government, a federal agency and numerous local school districts illustrate that the challenge will require extensive resources and a broad array of partnerships.
Professor West said the participating districts were selected in part for the teaching challenge presented by the district’s fast-changing, multi-ethnic and multi-lingual student populations. All the communities have experienced an influx of immigrants from Eastern Europe, Asia, South Asia and Latin America. To meet the challenge, West predicted that the program fellows and middle school teachers would develop more hands-on classroom activities, workshops and field projects that transcend language barriers.”…”
Just what the doctor ordered for Ridgewood, right. Our teachers are so “ill-prepared” and our students so “challenged” that we have to run for help to a local university partner. Thanks Regina. This is a real stomach-churning moment for all of us.
>Bids Requested For Additional Flood Prevention Measures At Village Hall
VILLAGE OF RIDGEWOOD – NOTICE TO BIDDERS
Sealed bid proposals will be received by the Village of Ridgewood, in the 3RD Floor Conference Room, Village Hall, 131 North Maple Avenue , Ridgewood, New Jersey 07451, on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 10:00 am, prevailing time, and then publicly opened and read aloud for the following project: Village Hall Flood Protection Project
The work of the Contract shall be to construct and furnish the following flood protection measures for Village Hall:
“Approximately 80 linear feet of 3-foot tall stucco finished reinforced concrete wall.
“Approximately 70 linear feet of 3-foot tall stucco finished face, formed reinforced concrete wall.
“Two 3-foot tall stucco finished reinforced concrete end pillars with seating benches for mounting Doordam panels.
“Approximately 100 linear feet of Doordam Panels with mounting pillars, mullions, brackets, and all necessary appurtenances for a complete installation for flood protection.
“Site landscaping and sidewalk restoration, as needed.
>The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight… but They Can Do Damage Anyway
By Steve Lonegan
It is clear that the big-government radicals that are running Trenton will stop at nothing to advance their vision of an even bigger nanny state. So much so that they will pass drastically flawed and dangerous bills that will destroy New Jersey’s competitive business climate in favor of emotion based, job destroying politics. This time, however, they got caught.
New Jersey taxpayers will be expected to fork over another $130 million in new taxes to seed the launch of the radical Paid Family Leave bill and small businesses already struggling in the nation’s worst business environment will be sacrificed on the alter of entitlement.
The destructive Paid Family Leave bill will go back to the Senate for another round of hearings and voting. The bill, which allows every single worker in the state six weeks Paid Leave for virtually any reason at all with pay of up to $550, is so deficient it would result in crippling lawsuits for New Jersey’s beleaguered small businesses.
After prompting from conservative legislators, AFP Citizen Activists and Members of the NJBIA, Attorney General Ann Milgram issued an opinion stating the bill is too vague and opens the small business community to costly litigation. The bill’s proponents are so committed to advancing their socialist agenda and expanding the entitlement state they will stop at nothing to advance what they consider the “Common Good,” no matter what the cost.
Left to their own devices, the backers of this bill would have sought a way to by-pass Senate rules and shove this bill through this past Monday. Thanks to Senator Tom Kean, Republican Minority Leader, it became obvious the required thirty votes would not be there for an emergency vote.
The real lesson here is the willingness of those we elect to represent us to railroad destructive legislation past the voters in order to gain favor from state worker union leaders. It is impossible to believe the Senators who voted to pass the dangerous PFL legislation did not realize the potential for trouble. Set aside the basic fact this is bad policy—the fact that they were willing to ignore clear issues of litigation and costly business destroying lawsuits for the bill’s benefit reveals a far more insidious motive. Even legal laymen were questioning the bill’s disastrous side effects, but the Trenton gang did not care. They just wanted to gain favor from those labor union bosses looking down from the gallery.
They were caught this time. The Senate will have to vote again. Now that we have revealed their lack of consideration for the business community and taxpayers, we must convince more of our taxpayers to pick up the phone and call Senators who voted yes and get them to change their votes.
Here they are. Call them now!
JOHN H. ADLER – Democrat (856)-489-3442 BILL BARONI – Republican (609)-631-9988 BARBARA BUONO – Democrat (732)-205-1372 RICHARD J. CODEY – Democrat (973)-731-6770 SANDRA B. CUNNINGHAM – Democrat (201)-451-5100 NIA H. GILL, ESQ. – Democrat (973)-509-0388 JOHN A. GIRGENTI – Democrat (973)-427-1229 ROBERT M. GORDON – Democrat (201)-703-9779 RAYMOND J. LESNIAK – Democrat (908)-624-0880 FRED H. MADDEN, JR. – Democrat (856)-232-6700 DANA REDD – Democrat (856)-384-5862 RONALD L. RICE – Democrat (973)-371-5665 M. TERESA RUIZ – Democrat (973)-484-1000 NICHOLAS J. SACCO – Democrat (201)-295-0200 PAUL A. SARLO – Democrat (201)-804-8118 NICHOLAS P. SCUTARI – Democrat (908)-587-0404 BOB SMITH – Democrat (732)-752-0770 BRIAN P. STACK – Democrat (201)-330-3233 STEPHEN M. SWEENEY – Democrat (856)-251-9801 SHIRLEY K. TURNER – Democrat (609)-530-3277 LORETTA WEINBERG – Democrat (201)-928-0100 JOSEPH F. VITALE – Democrat (732)-855-7441 JIM WHELAN – Democrat (609)-383-1388
Saint Patrick is believed to have been born in the late fourth century, and is often confused with Palladius, a bishop who was sent by Pope Celestine in 431 to be the first bishop to the Irish believers in Christ.
Saint Patrick was the patron saint and national apostle of Ireland who is credited with bringing christianity to Ireland. Most of what is known about him comes from his two works, the Confessio, a spiritual autobiography, and his Epistola, a denunciation of British mistreatment of Irish christians. Saint Patrick described himself as a “most humble-minded man, pouring forth a continuous paean of thanks to his Maker for having chosen him as the instrument whereby multitudes who had worshipped idols and unclean things had become the people of God.”
Saint Patrick is most known for driving the snakes from Ireland. It is true there are no snakes in Ireland, but there probably never have been – the island was separated from the rest of the continent at the end of the Ice Age. As in many old pagan religions, serpent symbols were common and often worshipped. Driving the snakes from Ireland was probably symbolic of putting an end to that pagan practice. While not the first to bring christianity to Ireland, it is Patrick who is said to have encountered the Druids at Tara and abolished their pagan rites. The story holds that he converted the warrior chiefs and princes, baptizing them and thousands of their subjects in the “Holy Wells” that still bear this name.
There are several accounts of Saint Patrick’s death. One says that Patrick died at Saul, Downpatrick, Ireland, on March 17, 460 A.D. His jawbone was preserved in a silver shrine and was often requested in times of childbirth, epileptic fits, and as a preservative against the “evil eye.” Another account says that St. Patrick ended his days at Glastonbury, England and was buried there. The Chapel of St. Patrick still exists as part of Glastonbury Abbey. Today, many Catholic places of worship all around the world are named after St. Patrick, including cathedrals in New York and Dublin city
Why Saint Patrick’s Day? Saint Patrick’s Day has come to be associated with everything Irish: anything green and gold, shamrocks and luck. Most importantly, to those who celebrate its intended meaning, St. Patrick’s Day is a traditional day for spiritual renewal and offering prayers for missionaries worldwide.
So, why is it celebrated on March 17th? One theory is that that is the day that St. Patrick died. Since the holiday began in Ireland, it is believed that as the Irish spread out around the world, they took with them their history and celebrations. The biggest observance of all is, of course, in Ireland. With the exception of restaurants and pubs, almost all businesses close on March 17th. Being a religious holiday as well, many Irish attend mass, where March 17th is the traditional day for offering prayers for missionaries worldwide before the serious celebrating begins.
In American cities with a large Irish population, St. Patrick’s Day is a very big deal. Big cities and small towns alike celebrate with parades, “wearing of the green,” music and songs, Irish food and drink, and activities for kids such as crafts, coloring and games. Some communities even go so far as to dye rivers or streams green!
>March 13, 2008 Panel Proposes Streamlining Math By TAMAR LEWIN
American students’ math achievement is “at a mediocre level” compared with that of their peers worldwide, according to a new report by a federal panel. The panel said that math curriculums from preschool to eighth grade should be streamlined to focus on key skills — the handling of whole numbers and fractions, and certain aspects of geometry and measurement — to prepare students to learn algebra.
“The sharp falloff in mathematics achievement in the U.S. begins as students reach late middle school, where, for more and more students, algebra course work begins,” said the report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, appointed two years ago by President Bush. “Students who complete Algebra II are more than twice as likely to graduate from college, compared to students with less mathematical preparation.”
The report, to be released Thursday, spells out specific goals for students. For example, it says that by the end of the third grade, students should be proficient in adding and subtracting whole numbers; two years later, they should be proficient in multiplying and dividing them. By the end of sixth grade, it says, students should have mastered the multiplication and division of fractions and decimals.
The report tries to put to rest the long and heated debate over math teaching methods. Parents and teachers in school districts across the country have fought passionately over the relative merits of traditional, or teacher-directed, instruction, in which students are told how to solve problems and then are drilled on them, as opposed to reform or child-centered instruction, which emphasizes student exploration and conceptual understanding. The panel said both methods have a role.
“There is no basis in research for favoring teacher-based or student-centered instruction,” said Dr. Larry R. Faulkner, the chairman of the panel, at a briefing for reporters on Wednesday. “People may retain their strongly held philosophical inclinations, but the research does not show that either is better than the other.”
Districts that have made ‘’all-encompassing decisions to go one way or the other,” he said, should rethink those decisions, and intertwine different methods of instruction to help students develop a broad understanding of math.
“To prepare students for algebra, the curriculum must simultaneously develop conceptual understanding, computational fluency and problem-solving skills,” the report said. “Debates regarding the relative importance of these aspects of mathematical knowledge are misguided. These capabilities are mutually supportive, .”
The president convened the panel to advise on how to improve math education for the nation’s children. Its members include math and psychology professors from leading universities, a middle-school math teacher and the president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.
Closely tracking an influential 2006 report by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, the panel said that the math curriculum should include fewer topics, and then spend enough time on each of them to make it is learned in depth and need not be revisited in later grades. This is how top-performing nations approach the curriculum.
After a similar advisory panel on reading made its recommendations in 2000, the federal government used the report as a guide for awarding $5 billion in federal grants to promote reading proficiency.
The new report does not call for a national math curriculum, or for new federal investment in math instruction. It does call for more research on successful math teaching, and recommends that the Secretary of Education convene an annual forum of leaders of the national associations concerned with math to develop an agenda for improving math instruction.
The report cites a number of troubling international comparisons, including a 2007 assessment finding that 15-year-olds in the United States ranked 25th among their peers in 30 developed nations in math literacy and problem solving.
The report says that Americans fell short, especially, in handling fractions. It pointed to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, standardized-test results that are known as the nation’s report card, which found that almost half the eighth graders tested could not solve a word problem that required dividing fractions.
After hearing testimony and comments from hundreds of organizations and individuals, and sifting through 16,000 research publications, the panelists shaped their report around recent research on how children learn.
For example, the panel found that it is important for students to master their basic math facts by heart.
“For all content areas, practice allows students to achieve automaticity of basic skills — the fast, accurate, and effortless processing of content information — which frees up working memory for more complex aspects of problem solving,” the report said.
Dr. Faulkner, a former president of the University of Texas at Austin, said the panel “buys the notion from cognitive science that kids have to know the facts.”
“In the language of cognitive science, working memory needs to be predominately dedicated to new material in order to have a learning progression, and previously addressed material needs to be in long-term memory,” he said.
The report also cites recent findings that students who depend on their native intelligence learn less than those who believe that success depends on how hard they work. Dr. Faulkner said the current “talent-driven approach to math, that either you can do it or you can’t, like playing the violin” needed to be changed.
“Experimental studies have demonstrated that changing children’s beliefs from a focus on ability to a focus on effort increases their engagement in mathematics learning, which in turn improves mathematics outcomes,” the report says “When children believe that their efforts to learn make them ‘smarter,’ they show greater persistence in mathematics learning.”
The report makes a plea for shorter and more accurate math textbooks. Given the shortage of elementary teachers with a solid grounding in math, the report recommends further research on the use of math specialists to teach several different elementary grades, as is done in many top-performing nations.
The report also recommends a revamping of the math content on the national assessment test, to focus on the same skills that the report emphasizes.
Here are the panel’s recommended benchmarks for elementary school math education:
Benchmarks in Math Education Fluency With Whole Numbers
1 By the end of Grade 3, students should be proficient with the addition and subtraction of whole numbers.
2 By the end of Grade 5, students should be proficient with multiplication and division of whole numbers.
Fluency With Fractions
1 By the end of Grade 4, students should be able to identify and represent fractions anddecimals, and compare them on a number line or with other common representations offractions and decimals.
2 By the end of Grade 5, students should be proficient with comparing fractions and decimalsand common percents, and with the addition and subtraction of fractions and decimals.
3 By the end of Grade 6, students should be proficient with multiplication and division offractions and decimals.
4 By the end of Grade 6, students should be proficient with all operations involving positiveand negative integers.
5 By the end of Grade 7, students should be proficient with all operations involving positiveand negative fractions.
6 By the end of Grade 7, students should be able to solve problems involving percent, ratio,and rate and extend this work to proportionality.
Geometry and Measurement
1 By the end of Grade 5, students should be able to solve problems involving perimeter andarea of triangles and all quadrilaterals having at least one pair of parallel sides (i.e.,trapezoids).
2 By the end of Grade 6, students should be able to analyze the properties of two-dimensional shapes and solve problems involving perimeter and area, and analyze the properties of three dimensional shapes and solve problems involving surface area and volume.
3 By the end of Grade 7, students should be familiar with the relationship between similar triangles and the concept of the slope of a line.
Source: National Mathematics Advisory Panel, 2008.
>At L.A. school, Singapore math has added value By Mitchell Landsberg Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 9, 2008
Here’s a little math problem:
In 2005, just 45% of the fifth-graders at Ramona Elementary School in Hollywood scored at grade level on a standardized state test. In 2006, that figure rose to 76%. What was the difference?
If you answered 31 percentage points, you are correct. You could also express it as a 69% increase.
But there is another, more intriguing answer: The difference between the two years may have been Singapore math.
At the start of the 2005-06 school year, Ramona began using textbooks developed for use in Singapore, a Southeast Asian city-state whose pupils consistently rank No. 1 in international math comparisons. Ramona’s math scores soared.
“It’s wonderful,” said Principal Susan Arcaris. “Seven out of 10 of the students in our school are proficient or better in math, and that’s pretty startling when you consider that this is an inner-city, Title 1 school.”
Ramona easily qualifies for federal Title 1 funds, which are intended to alleviate the effects of poverty. Nine of every 10 students at the school are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches. For the most part, these are the children of immigrants, the majority from Central America, some from Armenia. Nearly six in 10 students speak English as a second language.
Yet here they are, outpacing their counterparts in more affluent schools and succeeding in a math curriculum designed for students who are the very stereotype of Asian dominance in math and science.
How did that happen?
It’s a question with potentially big implications, because California recently became the first state to include the Singapore series on its list of state-approved elementary math texts. Public schools aren’t required to use the books — there are a number of other, more conventional texts on the state list — but the state will subsidize the purchase if they do. And being on the list puts an important imprimatur on the books, because California is by far the largest, most influential textbook buyer in the country.
The decision to approve the books could place California ahead of the national curve. The National Mathematics Advisory Panel, appointed by President Bush, will issue a report Thursday that is expected to endorse K-8 math reforms that, in many ways, mirror the Singapore curriculum.
The report could also signal a cease-fire in the state’s math wars, which raged between traditionalists and reformers throughout the 1990s and shook up math teachers nationwide. Fundamentalists called for a return to basics; reformers demanded a curriculum that would emphasize conceptual understanding.
Mathematicians on both sides of the divide say the Singapore curriculum teaches both. By hammering on the basics, it instills a deep understanding of key concepts, they say.
Kids — at least the kids at Ramona — seem to love it.
Ramona, which received a grant to introduce the Singapore curriculum, is one of a sprinkling of schools around the country to do so.
Not all teachers like it, and not all use it. The Singapore books aren’t easy for teachers to use without training, and some veterans are more comfortable with the curriculum they have always followed. But you can tell when you walk into a classroom using Singapore math.
“On your mark . . . get set . . . THINK!”
First-grade teacher Arpie Liparian stands in front of her class with a stopwatch. The only sound is of pencils scratching paper as the students race through the daily “sprint,” a 60-second drill that is a key part of the Singapore system. The problems at this age are simple: 2+3, 3+4, 8+2. The idea, once commonplace in math classrooms, is to practice them until they become second nature.
Critics call this “drill and kill,” but Ramona’s math coach, Robin Ramos, calls it “drill and thrill.” The children act as though it’s a game. Not everyone finishes all 30 problems in 60 seconds, and only one girl gets all the answers right, but the students are bubbling with excitement. And Liparian praises every effort.
“Give yourselves a hand, boys and girls,” she says when all the drills have been corrected. “You did a wonderful job.”
Reinforcing patterns
What isn’t obvious to a casual observer is that this drill is carefully thought out to reinforce patterns of mathematical thinking that carry through the curriculum. “These are ‘procedures with connections,What isn’t obvious to a casual observer is that this drill is carefully thought out to reinforce patterns of mathematical thinking that carry through the curriculum.
After 10 years of studying the Singapore curriculum, Yoram Sagher, a math professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said he still has “very pleasant surprises and realizations” while reading the books. Sagher, who helped train Ramos and the other teachers at Ramona, said he is constantly amazed by “the gentle, clever ways that the mathematics is brought to the intuition of the students.”
The books, with the no-nonsense title “Primary Mathematics,” are published for the U.S. market by a small company in Oregon, Marshall Cavendish I nternational. They are slim volumes, weighing a fraction of a conventional American text. They have a spare, stripped-down look, and a given page contains no material that isn’t directly related to the lesson at hand.
Standing in an empty classroom one recent morning, Ramos flipped through two sets of texts: the Singapore books and those of a conventional math series published by Harcourt. She began with the first lesson in the first chapter of first grade.
In Harcourt Math, there was a picture of eight trees. There were two circles in the sky. The instructions told the students: “There are 2 birds in all.” There were no birds on the page.
The instructions directed the students to draw little yellow disks in the circles to represent the birds.
Ramos gave a look of exasperation. Without a visual representation of birds, she said, the math is confusing and overly abstract for a 5- or 6-year-old. “The math doesn’t jump out of the page here,” she said.
The Singapore first-grade text, by contrast, could hardly have been clearer. It began with a blank rectangle and the number and word for “zero.” Below that was a rectangle with a single robot in it, and the number and word for “one.” Then a rectangle with two dolls, and the number and word for “two,” and so on.
“This page is very pictorial, but it refers to something very concrete,” Ramos said. “Something they can understand.”
Next to the pictures were dots. Beginning with the number six (represented by six pineapples), the dots were arranged in two rows, so that six was presented as one row of five dots and a second row with one dot.
Day one, first grade: the beginnings of set theory.
“This concept, right at the beginning, is the foundation for very important mathematics,” Ramos said. As it progresses, the Singapore math builds on this, often in ways that are invisible to the children.
Word problems in the early grades are always solved the same way: Draw a picture representing the problem and its solution. Then express it with numbers, and finally write it in words. “The whole concept,” Ramos says, “is concrete to pictorial to abstract.”
Another hallmark of the Singapore books is that there is little repetition. Students are expected to attain mastery of a concept and move on. Each concept builds upon the next. As a result, the books cover far fewer topics in a given year than standard American texts.
Skilled at math
Singapore is a prosperous, multicultural, multilingual nation of 4.5 million people whose fourth- and eighth-grade students have never scored lower than No. 1 in a widely accepted comparison of global math skills, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. U.S. students score in the middle of the pack.
When the U.S. Department of Education commissioned a study in 2005 to find out why, it concluded, in part: “Singapore’s textbooks build deep understanding of mathematical concepts through multi-step problems and concrete illustrations that demonstrate how abstract mathematical concepts are used to solve problems from different perspectives.”
By contrast, the study said, “traditional U.S. textbooks rarely get beyond definitions and formulas, developing only students’ mechanical ability to apply mathematical concepts.”
Many eminent mathematicians agree. In fact, it is difficult to find a mathematician who likes the standard American texts or dislikes Singapore’s.
“The Singapore texts don’t make a huge deal about the concepts, but they present them in the correct and economical form,” said Roger Howe, a professor of mathematics at Yale University. “It provides the basis for a very orderly and systematic conceptual understanding of arithmetic and mathematics.”
The Singapore curriculum is not strikingly different from that used in many countries known for their math prowess, especially in Asia and Eastern Europe, math educators say. According to James Milgram, a math professor at Stanford who is one of the authors of California’s math standards, the Singapore system has its roots in math curricula developed in the former Soviet Union, whose success in math and science sent shivers through American policymakers during the Cold War.
The Soviets, Milgram said, brought together mathematicians and developmental psychologists to devise the best way to teach math to children. They did “exactly what I would have done had I been given free rein to design the math standards in California. They cut the thing down to its core.”
The Soviet curriculum was adopted by China in the mid-1950s, he said, and later made its way to Singapore, where it was rewritten and refined. The Singapore texts could easily be adapted for use in the United States because children there are taught in English.
“American textbooks are handicapped by many things,” said Hung-Hsi Wu, who has taught math at UC Berkeley for 42 years, “the most important of which is to regard mathematics as a collection of factoids to be memorized.”
One might think that school districts would be lining up to get their hands on the Singapore texts, but no one expects many to take the plunge this fall.
“Maybe in seven or eight years, but not yet,” said Wu. For now, he said he’d be surprised if the Singapore books claim 10% of the market.
In part, that may reflect the inherent conservatism of the education establishment, especially in large districts such as Los Angeles Unified, whose math curriculum specialists said in December, a month after the Singapore texts were adopted by the state, that they hadn’t even heard of them — or of the successful experiment taking place in one of their own schools.
But there is also an understandable reluctance to rush into a new curriculum before teachers are trained to use it. Complicating that, experts said, is that most American elementary school teachers — reflecting a generally math-phobic society — lack a strong foundation in the subject to begin with.
The Singapore curriculum “requires a considerable amount of math background on the part of the teachers who are teaching it,” said Milgram, “and in the elementary grades, most of our teachers aren’t capable of teaching it. . . . It isn’t that they can’t learn it; it’s just that they’ve never seen it.”
Training is key
Adding to the difficulty is that the Singapore texts are not as teacher-friendly as most American texts. “They don’t come with teachers editions, or two-page fold-outs with comments, or step-by-step instructions about how to give the lessons,” said Yale’s Howe. “Most U.S. elementary teachers don’t currently have that kind of understanding, so successful use of the Singapore books would require substantial professional development.”
Although some U.S. schools have had spectacular results using Singapore texts, others have fared less well. A study found that success in Montgomery County, Md., schools using the Singapore books was directly related to teacher training. At schools where teachers weren’t trained as well, student achievement declined.
Sagher, the Illinois professor, said that he would love to see Ramona Elementary become a training ground for L.A. Unified teachers and that Singapore math could radiate out from its Hollywood beachhead. Districtwide, only 43% of fifth-graders last year scored at grade level or above in math, 33 points below Ramona students. “If LAUSD is smart enough to do it, it will be a revolution,” he said.
