Zombie Lies Eat Laura Waters's Brain!

Zombie lies will not die in the brain of Laura Waters:

Who needs Zoloft? [Do you really want to know? - JJ] We've got Ed. Comm. Chris Cerf, a featured speaker at NJEA's Annual Convention this past November. (Last year, then-Ed. Comm. Rochelle Hendricks declined the invitation.) We've got NJEA Executive Director Vince Giordano telling a Star-Ledger columnist, "this label that we are the organization of 'no' I don't think is accurate. We've turned a corner. We understand our role. We want to be part of the solution." (Last year an NJEA officer sent out a memo that included a prayer for Gov. Christie's early demise.) [Emphasis mine]

I really thought we were past this stupidity, but I guess this is the sort of nonsense that is destined to live on like the lie that Al Gore said he invented the internet (he never said he did). So, once again, let's go back to 2010:

"The head of the teachers union in Bergen County sent out an email encouraging his members to pray for the death of the governor" (7:45): Let's lay this stupidity to rest once and for all. Here's the "prayer" that was sent out:

"Dear Lord this year you have taken away my favorite actor, Patrick Swayze, my favorite actress, Farrah Fawcett, my favorite singer, Michael Jackson, and my favorite salesman, Billy Mays. I just wanted to let you know that Chris Christie is my favorite governor."

You would have to be the biggest moron in the world to believe this is a "prayer," and you'd have to be the biggest tool in the world to argue that this was "praying for your death." It's a stupid, tasteless, unprofessional joke that should not have been sent, but it's no more than that.

The head of the Bergen union, Joe Coppola, and NJEA President Barbara Keskishian both apologized to Christie, as well they should. But Christie has held on to this stupid little slur as an excuse to slam teachers with impunity.

What he won't accept is that HE is the governor. HE sets the tone. HE could have been the bigger man, accepted the apology, and moved on. What he chose to do instead is cling tightly to this little tiff and use it as an excuse to slam teachers and humiliate women in public. And he has no problem lying about the content or the context of this "prayer" to use it to his own ends.

I leave it to you, dear readers, to judge whether what I underlined in the third paragraph holds true today.

Waters continues:

The tenure reform bill, specifically the one crafted by Sen. Teresa Ruiz, has endured years of due diligence and focus groups and public hearings and collaboration with stakeholders. Yet the bill appears stalled by NJ Democrats' fear of NJEA's wrath. (NJEA has produced its own proposal for tenure reform that adds a fourth year before acquisition of lifetime job security, neglecting to include key components like accountability and tenure limits.) [emphasis mine]

That's just absolutely false. Under TEACHNJ, a teacher can be judged "ineffective" and still keep her job; she loses her tenure status, but can remain in the position. NJEA's proposal forces a school to put a tenured teacher who they claim isn't doing her job through a hearing; if she's found ineffective, she's fired. NJEA's proposal is harsher on bad teachers than TEACHNJ.

Worse, as Bruce Baker points out, there is a "toxic trifecta" of arbitrary accountability measures in TEACHNJ that actually remove accountability for administration and school boards when they make poor personnel decisions.

Further, the NJEA's proposal sets "tenure limits" by capping the time for hearings and putting the cases before qualified arbitrators.

I'm not saying the NJEA proposal couldn't be improved. But it's a testament to the intellectual bankruptcy of the reformies that they won't even have an honest conversation about their proposal. The best they can manage is to keep spewing the same old zombie lies.

"NJEA doesn't want reform... NJEA prayed for Christie's death..."

Gulen Criticism Goes Mainstream

Last night, 60 Minutes moved the concern about Gulen schools away from tin-foil hat country and into the mainstream:



Interesting; unfortunately, once again, CBS News misses the point when it comes to "high-performing" charter schools.

Take, for example, Bergen Arts and Sciences here in Jersey. Typically, as Lesley Stahl reports, they try to distance themselves from Gulen, but Bergen A & S is a Turkish school nonetheless. I wrote about the school this past December; is it really that "impressive"?

I went to the Common Core of Data at NCES to get the demographic data for all of the schools in the zip code of Bergen A & S. Using Bruce Baker's method, I made another another quick graph:

Many of the schools have a larger population of "free lunch" kids than Bergen, but not by a huge amount; some have a slightly smaller percentage. But look carefully at the other columns. Something jumped out at me right away.

Let me highlight it for you:

The raw data for 2009-10 shows that Bergen A & S had more Asian students in its school (63) than the rest of the schools in the district combined (59). Bruce Baker's analysis confirms mine:

The zip code for Garfield is 07026; look how it spikes on the chart. What are we to make of this? Well, you know me and my numbered conclusions:

1) I've posted this before:

Keep this in mind as you read this passage from Brody's article: 

Garfield schools Superintendent Nicholas Perrapato said academic files of his students who switched to the charter showed many were top students. "If you're getting the cream of the crop, you should do well," he said.

"It's not that our kids are the smartest kids in the area, but we prepare them," countered the charter's CEO, Nihat Guvercin, a former physics teacher from Turkey. "Students have potential. They only need someone to give them options." [emphasis mine]

I leave it to you, dear reader, to decide if maybe Perrapato has a point.

Any time you see a mainstream media report about how "impressive" a charter is, watch out: inevitably, there's more to the story. In this case, like so many other charters, Bergen A & S owes at least some of its "success" to the fact that it has a substantially different student population than its neighboring public schools.

It would be well worth CBS's time to hire someone to look into whether this is a trend across the country.

(Hey, in a month, I'll be looking for some temporary work...)

ADDING: Sharon Higgins deserves credit for laying the groundwork for an investigation on Gulen. Here's her response to CBS's report.

Calling Stupidity Stupid

Earlier, I blogged about the one absurd test item (that we know of) that came out of the last round of the NJASK. This follows on the heels of Pineapplegate, the absurd question on the 8th Grade NY Regents exam.

Diane Ravitch turns to the NJASK story, and asks a very good question:

What exactly is the point of this question? It does not ask the students to explain what he or she has learned. It is not related to what they were taught or should have learned.

It is intrusive, nosy, pointless, and stupid.

Hmm... what is the point? I think Jonathan Kozol, speaking on another topic, gives us a clue:

In some districts, even the most pleasant and old-fashioned class activities of elementary schools have now been overtaken by these ordering requirements. 

A student teacher at an urban school in California, for example, wanted to bring a pumpkin to her class on Halloween but knew it had no ascertainable connection to the California standards. 

Only Exam Stuff 

She therefore had developed what she called the 'Multimodal Pumpkin Unit" to teach science (seeds), arithmetic (the size and shape of pumpkins, I believe— this detail wasn't clear), and certain items she adapted out of language arts, in order to position "pumpkins" in a frame of state proficiencies. Even with her multimodal pumpkin, as her faculty advisor told me, she was still afraid she would be criticized because she knew the pumpkin would not really help her children to achieve expected goals on state exams. 

Why, I asked a group of educators at a seminar in Sacramento, was a teacher being placed in a position where she'd need to do preposterous curricular gymnastics to enjoy a bit of seasonal amusement with her class on Halloween? How much injury to state-determined "purpose" would it do to let a group of children have a pumpkin party once a year for no other reason than because it's something fun that other children get to do on autumn days in public schools across most of America? 

"Forcing an absurdity on teachers does teach something," said an African American professor, "it teaches acquiescence. It breaks down the will to thumb your nose at pointless protocols— to call absurdity 'absurd.'" 

Writing out the standards with the proper numbers on the chalkboard, even though these numbers have no possible meaning to the children, has a similar effect, he said. [emphasis mine]

Stupid questions on a pointless standardized test are coming from exactly the same place: this is all about control. Forcing students, teachers, and parents to accept this useless nonsense breaks down our will to call it what it is: stupidity.

It is stupid to think these exams should have the importance they have been given. It is stupid to think merely saying, "This is only part of the assessment!" validates the inappropriate way they are used. It is stupid to think these exams should be used to judge teaching practice.

No one wants to believe that they would waste their time - or worse, their children's time - with such idiocy. So our first impulse is to try to convince ourselves that there is some shred of value in any of this. We give the people who push this crap the benefit of the doubt. We mock those who point out that maybe the reformyists who push this stuff don't have the best of intentions.

But every time we docilely accept these stupid tests with their stupid questions, we learn passivity and compliance. Every time we shrug our shoulders and say, "Well, that's dumb, but whatever..." we learn to accept whatever new foolishness is shoved down our throats.

Forcing students to answer this test item, forcing teachers to administer this question, and forcing parents to accept this question is a particularly pernicious form of control, because it tells all of these stakeholders that they must passively accept stupidity when it is foisted on them.

I've worried about this before. Eisenhower warned us about the military-industrial complex, but we ignored him; look where it got us:

Now we're prepared to head down the same path with education. But this time, I have more hope...

Because they are now messing with the lives of our kids. These people can throw a ton of money and mendacity at us while they sell the corporate reform agenda, but they will never be able to buy our love for our children. They will never convince us to do what we know is against the interests of our own kids.

So, all of you who send your children to private schools with huge per-pupil budgets and small class sizes and no standardized tests: keep trying to tell us that what's good enough for everyone else's kids isn't good enough for yours. All of you who have never spent a minute in front of a classroom: keep trying to tell us teachers how to manage our profession. All of you failed educators who now cluck your tongues at us from the seats of your limousines: keep trying to blame those of us who actually do the job for problems we never created.

You only dig your own graves deeper. Parents and teachers and students began by giving you the benefit of the doubt; we didn't want to believe you were really as duplicitous as you are. But you are messing with our kids, and we will not stand for it. We've have started to figure you out.

The rest of the nation will follow soon enough.

Self-Regulation for Me, Not for Thee!

Just to be clear:

It's OK for banks to regulate themselves...

... but not teachers. Not ever.

Sigh...

Big Brother (NJDOE) is Watching?

Diane Ravitch reports on what it's like to dare to criticize the reformyists:

I got an email last night from Leo Casey at the United Federation of Teachers, informing me that the UFT had just received a dump of emails from the New York City Department of Education, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. Leo noticed that Deborah Meier and I were mentioned several times in the emails and so he shared the trove with us.

Pretty ugly stuff. Read it here, in two parts, if you can open a google document: 

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B1Ghj5xYLG5Ka0c2RUJLWHhNSmM

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B1Ghj5xYLG5KcjZTem95WjZnUUU 

The first thing I noticed was the chummy exchanges between the public officials in change of the New York City public school system and the top dogs of the charter leadership–the Wall Street hedge fund managers, the leader of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), the leader of the New York City Charter Center, and various others. It comes clear that there is a strong and concerted effort to hand over as much public space as possible to the charters. The charter leaders are not the poor and oppressed of New York City; they are the powerful and monied, and the public officials who are paid to protect and support the PUBLIC schools of New York City are working hand-in-glove to advance the interests of the privately-managed charters, not the public schools. You will also notice, in one of the emails, that the charters are very concerned to make sure that there is no cap on their executive compensation. Heaven forbid! It’s important that their leaders continue to pull down $400,000 a year to oversee a few small schools. [emphasis mine]

Those of us in Jersey know well that charter leaders are able to skirt Chris Christie's vaunted cap on superintendents' salaries. This had led to experienced, successful superintendents leaving for jobs out of state; in at least one case, to be replaced by a dedicated union basher with a small track record of success.

Ravitch continues:

For me, the other interesting point is that they are so afraid of any criticism. They are especially afraid of Deborah Meier, me and Jonathan Kozol. They refer to columns by Deborah Meier and myself–she an educator with decades of experience, I a historian with a long view–as “moronic” and “idiotic.” They refer to Jonathan Kozol and me as “deranged crackpots.”

How can anyone take these mean-spirited, ignorant, arrogant people seriously?

Jersey folks, I'd like to show you one of these emails:

Yes, that's ACTING NJDOE Commissioner Cerf, back when he was working for Joel Klein at Tweed. Remember, it was Cerf's job to lead a "truth squad" for the NYCDOE. This squad monitored critics like Leonie Haimson and Ravitch, and then fed information to friendlies in the media so they could write scathing replies - all funded by the NYC taxpayers.

Cerf went so far as to direct his squad to videotape Ravitch's public appearances for a J. Edgar Hoover-like file they kept on her.

I think we ought to keep this history in mind in the weeks ahead, yes? Information does seem to be released from the NJDOE at very... convenient times these days.

Massive Tenure Hypocrisy, Moran Style!

Tom Moran, Op-Ed Editor for the largest newspaper in New Jersey, continues to dig a deeper hole for himself:

It was a relief when acting Education Commissioner Chris Cerf came to the rescue of Perth Amboy’s embattled superintendent, Janine Caffrey, by reinstating her to her job.

The school board was way out of line in removing Caffrey in the first place. To get the flavor of this fight, know that the man leading the charge against her, board president Samuel Lebreault, is under investigation because he applied to get free lunches for his kids in school, even though he knew he didn’t qualify. Caffrey says he also repeatedly pressed her to make patronage hires and was furious when she refused.

Let's leave aside the journalistic ethics of claiming Caffrey is telling the truth and Lebreault is lying on the basis of Caffrey's word alone. Let's leave aside Moran's obvious disdain for "innocent before proven guilty." Let's leave aside the fact that Lebrault claims, and no one has yet disputed, that his kids don't get free lunches (is it really a crime to fill out a form accurately?).

Tom says it's a "relief" that the ACTING Commissioner - a third party - intervened in a case where an (allegedly) politically motivated school board unfairly fired an educator. In other words, Tom Moran supports due process in firing school employees, the very essence of tenure.


But in the very next paragraph:

One more snippet: One of the board’s complaints against Caffrey is that she wrote an op-ed that appeared in The Star-Ledger outlining how the state’s antiquated tenure law hurts students. So it seems that speaking your mind on a public issue is, for this school board, a firing offense. [emphasis mine]

From that very piece by Caffrey:

The overwhelming majority of Perth Amboy’s — and, indeed, New Jersey’s — teachers are honest, hard-working people of great integrity who have kids’ best interest at heart. I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about the very few who don’t show up for work or who shouldn’t be around kids. Because of the current tenure process — one that can take as long as three years and cost more than $100,000 in legal fees to remove a teacher — I must engage in a rarely successful process to remove these individuals.

No district should have to bear that burden. And most, as a result, do not challenge tenure. Even if we make our case thoroughly and successfully, and a judge agrees to let me dismiss a teacher, he or she can still appeal to the commissioner of Education, the state Board of Education, the Superior Court of New Jersey and, potentially, the state Supreme Court.

Proponents of tenure will tell you that any school or district can remove a teacher by the due-process system that the tenure law affords. That may be the intent of our tenure law, but it certainly doesn’t work that way. [emphasis mine]

Again: Caffrey appealed to the ACTING Commissioner when her own job was threatened. But she decries this same ability to appeal for the very teachers she supervises. And, as much as Tom tried to weasel his way around it, Caffrey isn't calling for "reform" of tenure; she wants to ban it outright:

So for Caffrey, small reforms simply won’t do. She wants to end tenure, to pull it out by the roots and to spread salt over the patch of earth where this weed once grew so that nothing like it can rise in its place, ever.

“I don’t understand why people who work in public schools have greater rights and protections than other people,” she says. “The people we should be protecting are the children. It should not be about protecting adults.” [emphasis kine]

To recap: Moran approvingly gave Caffrey a platform multiple times to call for the removal of due process before a third party for teachers. Now, he approves when she uses those same protections to save her own job.

Folks, I have been thinking about this for days. I can honestly say I've never seen such blatant hypocrisy in my life.

I'd say that both Caffrey and Moran should be deeply embarrassed; but at this point, I'm not sure either is capable it.

ADDING: For what it's worth, everyone agrees the tenure laws need to be changed, including the NJEA. So Moran's weasel words about "the state’s antiquated tenure law hurts students" are the stuffing for a straw man: no one disputes that tenure cases take too long and are too expensive.


The simple solution, easily implemented, is to cap the time and costs of hearings and put them before qualified arbitrators. But if we did that, Caffrey, Moran, Chris Christie, B4K, and all the others wouldn't have nearly as much to complain about, would they? All of them would actually have to start thinking about the real causes of the "achievement gap."

But we can't have that, can we?

Fresh Jersey Pineapples

We've all heard about the ridiculous question about a pineapple and a hare that showed up on this year's New York 8th Grade state exam. Pineapplegate, I'm afraid, is only going to be the tip of the iceberg (lettuce?). Gary Rubinstein, for example, has been analyzing the many flaws in New York's math exams.

Let's add this example in New Jersey to the growing list:

Can you keep a secret? 

Apparently, some third-graders in Marlboro K-8 public schools couldn’t: They were asked on the New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge earlier this week to reveal a secret they have and to explain why it’s hard to keep. A few came home and told their parents, some of whom weren’t pleased. 

“That is an outrageous question and totally inappropriate to ask school children,” said Richard Goldberg, 41, whose twin 9-year-old boys told him about “the secret question” after school Tuesday. “What right does the education system have to put children in such a difficult position? That was not supposed (to be) the purpose of composition writing.” 

All parents should be asking the same question, and not just about this item. What have we gained by subjecting children to this testing regime in the first place?

New Jersey Department of Education spokesman Justin Barra confirmed that some version of the question — which was not to be included in students’ scores — had appeared on the language arts portion of the standardized test.

Barra said the question actually is a “field test question,” part of a vetting process in which potential NJ ASK questions are themselves put to the test. The questions, for which students do not receive a score, are included among official test questions to gather data on responses and to determine whether they are fair and should be included in scored testing, Barra said. 

Barra said this particular question has been put before about 4,000 children in 15 districts. He did not immediately release information on what other districts received the question.

Barra said the state will investigate the source of the question, which also went through a vetting process that included review by a panel of New Jersey teachers and state testing and content experts. [emphasis kine]

A word about this "vetting process": field test questions are used all the time in developing these tests. As Todd Farley points out, psychometricians look at the results of the tests to see whether they are "valid": whether the predicted number of children pass or fail the item. If too many children pass, the item may well be judged invalid.

Teachers, keep this in mind: your careers will be judged on a test deliberately designed for a set number of children to fail.

NJ ASK, along with the state’s High School Proficiency Assessment (HSPA) and Alternative High School Assessment (AHSA) are published by Measurement lncorporated, a Durham, N.C.-based company with offices in Robbinsville, N.J., according to Barra.

More on this later. What does a parent think about this item?

“I guarantee you some children will be writing things family members and parents would have rather not revealed to the state,” Goldberg said. “They want to answer a question; they don’t want to fail. I think somebody should be held accountable for putting children in a difficult position in the middle of a test.”

Anyone with half a brain and minimal experience with children would know immediately that this question was inappropriate. It speaks volumes that it was vetted through both the testing company and the state and deemed to be worthy of field testing.

All NJASK tests should be released to the public for a real vetting, especially if the state is planning on using them for high-stakes decision making.

Blatant Tenure Hypocrisy Update

It just couldn't get worse, could it?

The battle between the Perth Amboy Board of Education and the superintendent of schools has become so unwieldy that board members on opposing sides could become involved in a separate legal dispute over a comment made during a closed-session meeting. 

Board member Kurt Rebovich Jr. is considering his legal options in response to alleged threatening remarks made to him during the board’s private meeting on Monday. 

Rebovich said that board member Israel Varela said: “I will go after you just the way I went after Joseph Vas, and I will not let you live and breathe.” 

Rebovich, who took the comment as a threat, said he is working with his personal attorneys to explore his legal options, such as ethics or criminal charges.
Vas is the former Perth Amboy mayor serving federal prison time on corruption charges. 

Rebovich said the comments were made in front of other board members, as well as the board attorney. He questions why the attorney didn’t stop the comments.

“I never directed it to him at all,” Varela said, adding that he was speaking generally about how he would go after anyone caught stealing or doing anything wrong in the district. “If he (Rebovich) felt threatened, there was no reason.”
Varela said he never hit Vas, but he did go after him verbally to bring to light some of the misdeeds during his administration. 

What a mess. But the most interesting part of the article comes later:

The meeting notice appears to indicate that the board does not accept Tuesday’s ruling by the acting state education commissioner, which allowed Superintendent of Schools Janine Walker Caffrey to return to work on Wednesday after the School Board placed her on paid administrative leave, citing a list of more than 20 allegations. 

Caffrey said the board has asked the commissioner to consider a second vote taken on May 7 to put her on paid administrative leave, a vote in which all nine board members participated. Last month, only four of the five board members eligible to vote participated. 

Caffrey has until noon Monday to file her response to the board’s request to the commissioner. 

“I’m in the process of preparing my response,” she said.

Whoa, whoa, wait a minute! You mean Caffrey, the Queen of Gutting Tenure, is appealing to a third party - the ACTING Commissioner - as to whether or not the school board can fire her? She asking for due process in her dismissal?

Due process and appeals to a third party are the essence of tenure! Again: Caffrey and all of her acolytes want what is essentially tenure for her, but not for teachers.

Continuing:

Meanwhile, the union representing teachers and other staff members considered taking a no-confidence vote regarding the superintendent, who was brought into the district before the start of the school year to lead reform in the special-needs district of about 10,000 students. But she has met opposition from some board members and staff. 

An emergency meeting of the union leadership was called on Wednesday to consider all options after Caffrey was reinstated as superintendent, said Donna Chiera, president of Perth Amboy Federation/AFT.

A quick time out: there was only one practicing teacher on Chris Christie's Educator Effectiveness Task Force, and that teacher was Donna Chiera. It's worth noting that Perth Amboy is one of a handful (along with Newark) of districts in New Jersey that is not affiliated with the NJEA, Christie's primary target for abuse.

So let's be clear: Chiera may be a unionista, but she is hardly against "reform."

Chiera said the first question that was asked was whether the leadership had confidence in the superintendent. 

“The majority said they did not have confidence in the superintendent,” Chiera said, adding that although some advocated for a no-confidence vote, the leadership instead decided to develop a statement of what they stand for and what the district’s leader needs to do, and if they can’t do what’s needed. the leader should step aside. The statement is expected to be completed by early next week. Chiera said it was after the leadership had completed its business that Board of Education President Samuel Lebreault and Vice President Kenneth Puccio met with leaders to answer questions. She said attorneys for the board and union authorized Lebreault and Puccio’s 25-minute visit. 

[...] 

“I don’t know if she can lead us. If she can’t lead us and we look at what is best for the district, I don’t know if she should be there. I don’t believe the staff has the faith and confidence to follow her to make the changes in the district that need to be made,” Chiera said. “I think the marriage is over.”

Let's break this all down: Janine Caffrey is adamantly against using third-party hearings to protect teachers from political retribution - otherwise known as "tenure."

Her school board doesn't want her. Her teachers don't want her. They are moving to remove her.

But ACTING Commissioner Cerf thinks he needs to step in and protect her from a political prosecution. And she is happy to appeal to him as often as it takes to protect herself. And her supporters in the press and the reformy lobbying world are proud to stand with her, even as they demand tenure be gutted.

I really am struggling to find another example of hypocrisy this blatant.

Willing Ignorance of Pundits on Education

Let's start with Tom Moran, a pit bull who just won't let it go:

The Perth Amboy school board voted again to place Superintendent Janine Caffrey on leave, a move that will stall reform of the schools, waste taxpayer money and lead inevitably to a lawsuit that Caffrey is almost certain to win.

The reason she’ll win is that this move to fire her is based on flimsy grounds and political cat-fighting. Caffrey had the temerity to refuse to make patronage hires, she says, and to cooperate with a state investigation into board president Samuel Lebreault’s improper attempt to get free or reduced-priced lunch for his kids. [emphasis mine]

In the world of Tom Moran's op-ed page, "she says" is as good a confirmation of the truth as anyone needs! After all...

• George Bush: "he says" there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
• Richard Nixon: "he says" he isn't a crook.
• OJ Simpson: "he says" the bloody glove doesn't fit.
• Barry Bonds: "he says" he never used steroids.
• Bill Clinton: "he says" he never had sex with that woman.

Have I made my point yet? Just because "she says" something doesn't make it so. It is your job, Tom, to get off your duff and find out if what she said is true. Did you?

No:

The board finally released its list of trumped-up charges yesterday. Our favorite was her grave offense of writing an op-ed article for The Star-Ledger that made an ironclad case against the state’s antiquated tenure laws -- and her cooperation when The Ledger wrote its own piece quoting her on the same topic. [emphasis mine]

Tom, when you and Caffrey wrote your "ironclad" pieces, did you ever bother to confirm them? She said she had a teacher who put soap in a kid's mouth, but a member of the PA BOE, Israel Valera, says that is "totally untrue." How do I know this?

Because I've stopped relying on the op-ed page of the Star-Ledger for facts, and started reading hyper-locals like the Amboy Guardian, which appear to believe in using journalism as a means of getting at the truth.

Did the hacktastic Moran ever consider calling up Valera for his side of the story, like the Guardian did? So he could compare the stories and try to ascertain which is correct?

Please. Instead, we get this stupidity:

That’s right: Speaking your mind on public policy is considered a firing offense in Perth Amboy. Russia’s strongman president, Vladimir Putin, would be proud.

Keep in mind, too, that Caffrey's views on tenure are the same as Gov. Chris Christie's. Maybe this board would like to fire the governor for mouthing off, as well.

So here’s our own attempt to remind the Perth Amboy board that this is America, and their sordid attempt at censorship will never work.

This is the same Tom Moran who, when confronted by his readers on his hacktacular nonsense, wrote this:

Folks

I think we can do better than this. How about we elevate the discussion to the substance, and move off the personal insults?

Comparing the PA BOE to a ex-KGB thug is, in Tom Moran's world, not a personal insult. Nice.

Tom, Caffrey made accusations against her own faculty that are, at the very least, disputed by members of the school board. You printed those accusations, without any discernible attempt to find out whether they are true. That is hackery of the highest order. And now, you stand with her, wallowing in your massive hypocrisy about tenure.

But as bad as Moran is, he's still second banana to New Jersey's biggest suck-up, Bob "Hoover" Ingle:

Acting state Education Commissioner Chris Cerf has ordered Amboys schools chief back on the job today. Superintendent Janine Caffrey was fired by the school board, but Cerf said the action lacked sufficient votes. It lacks sufficient cause too. What were these alleged dastardly deeds? Giving interviews to the media, damaging staff morale, failing to give the board necessary information and accusing board members of pushing their friends for district jobs. That last one is interesting. Four of the board members abstained from the vote, citing conflicts because they have relatives employed by the Middlesex County district. The Star-Ledger reports Caffrey’s support for education reforms — which she has said stem from personal experience with ineffective teachers — has alienated her from her staff. Sounds to me like she is on the right track. [emphasis mine]

Bob forgot to point out that Caffrey, a brand new superintendent with little public school administration experience, had been supervising New Jersey teachers for less than three months when she wrote her screed against tenure. Is that adequate "personal experience"? Or are you always this credulous?

Again: in that article, she made accusations about her own staff that members of the school board say are not true. Varela, in fact, says he will resign if she can prove her allegation that a teacher high on drugs could not be removed from her schools.

Sorry, Hoover, but it is a serious offense for a superintendent to make accusations about her own staff publicly and not have the evidence to back them up. Further, you haven't even bothered to ask, let alone report, on the questions surrounding questionable contracts to cronies of Chris Cerf that were inked under Caffrey's reign.

What do the Gannett people pay you for? Sitting in an office and typing whatever "feels" right to you? No wonder newspapers are dying.

But so it goes in the phone-it-in, blog-whatever-you-feel-in-your-gut world of New Jersey punditry. Hey, it's only education, right? Who gives a crap about doing some real reporting and getting at the truth? If the unions are against it, that's good enough for Moran and "Hoover" to print it.

Hoover says: Watch me suck up to the bestest Guv and ACTING Ed Commish EVAH!

Tenure Hypocrisy Update

Here's your latest update on the Perth Amboy tenure hypocrisy case:

When we last checked in, ACTING NJDOE Commissioner Chris Cerf had reinstated anti-tenure superintendent Janine Caffrey, overriding the vote of the PA school board. In other words, Caffrey used an appeal to a third-party to protect her right to due process - which is exactly the definition of tenure. The hypocrisy here is stunning.

NJ Spotlight has posted Cerf's decision. You'll notice that he's very slick here (he is, after all, a lawyer): he is not addressing the substance of the charges, but instead the procedure. There is little doubt in my mind that this is a maneuver designed to protect him from the charge of hypocrisy, because TEACHNJ - the tenure-gutting bill currently working through the Legislature - does allow for appeal on procedure only.

Nice try, but no. First of all, Cerf explicitly retains jurisdiction over the matter: he is saying he is the final arbitrator, not the school board. Again, this is exactly what tenure is supposed to be: a third party overrides a decision of a local school board as a way of offering protection from political or other undesirable interference. Cerf's decision confirms that Caffrey can appeal to him as the ultimate authority on her employment.

Second, he is using the power of his office to insert a mediator into the situation. I suppose the PA BOE could rebuff this, but even the gesture confirms that this is now Cerf's show, not the BOE's. I'm also left to wonder if Cerf is prepared to offer these services to every tenured teacher who is fired.

Third: what happens if Cerf looks at the charges against Caffrey and finds they are not true? Is he really prepared to shrug his shoulders and say, "Well, it's not my decision, because they followed procedure"? Not a chance.

His involvement, his move to stop this on procedural grounds, his insertion of a mediator into the matter, and his decision to make himself the ultimate authority for an appeal means he can enforce her reinstatement on whatever grounds he chooses from now on. The school board cannot act without his OK. Caffrey does not need to make her case to them; she need only make it to Cerf, the third-party.

On the other side, even if the BOE produces evidence that Caffrey should be dismissed, they have to present that evidence to him first. He has the decision, not them. This is the essence of tenure, and it's massively hypocritical that the tenure-busters are prepared to give Caffrey this right to appeal to an outside authority, but they will not give that same right to teachers.

Every one of Caffrey's supporters that I have read or seen has made the case that a politically motivated school board is out to get her. Again, I don't know if that's the case: she may well be in the right here. All the more reason to offer teachers workplace protections to give them recourse from the actions of vindictive employers.

If you believe Janine Caffrey, then you must believe in the need for tenure. But if you support both Caffrey and TEACHNJ, well...

One more thing: there was an awful story yesterday about a teacher who physically abused a special education student and was finally dismissed after four years by ACTING Commissioner Cerf. Let's put aside the very convenient timing for a minute...

This teacher was caught on camera hitting the student with a power cord. The teacher claims the student was bigger than the teacher (he was 13 years old; I guess that's possible). An administrative judged ruled the teacher overreacted to a perceived threat, and called for a suspension without pay. Cerf overruled that, saying the teacher was deliberate and abusive.

Again: I don't know what happened. But two things are clear:

This case never should have taken four years. It is ridiculous that a case with video evidence took this long. But tenure itself has nothing to do with the length of the delay; that's on the people who were supposed to prosecute and administer this case.

The solution is simple: cap the length of a tenure hearing. Force the state to provide adjudicators who can deal with the stuff in a timely matter. No one - not the teacher, not the student, not his family - deserves to be left hanging for that long. Caffrey got swift justice; why didn't the parties here get the same?

Next point: why was this situation allowed to happen in the first place? Were there other people in the room? Did this teacher have help? Why were cameras installed; was someone waiting for something inevitable to happen?

Teaching special education students - especially those with severe disabilities - is perhaps the most difficult job I can think of, outside of the military and law enforcement. It can be dangerous, it can be emotionally draining, and it comes with little pay and little respect.

Can we say, as a society, that we were doing all we could for this boy and this teacher? Or do we prefer to wait until things like this happen, then huff and puff about greedy teachers unions?