Why "Libtards" Need Tenure

I'm sure that by now you've all heard about the police chief of Gilberton, PA, who enjoys shooting automatic firearms on YouTube:



One of the details of this story that hasn't gotten as much play is that Mark Kessler is a member of the North Schuylkill Board of Education and, as such, is charged with formulating district policy and approving staff hirings. This comes from an obviously biased source, but I think it may give some insight into Kessler's relations with the staff at North Schuykill:

On May 1, 2013 at 6pm, The North Schuylkill School board was holding a meeting. Chief Mark Kessler, being an active board member, was headed into the meeting from the parking lot. He noticed Chief Edward Tarantelli of the Butler Township Police Department. When Chief Kessler asked Mr. Tarantelli why he was there, Mr. Tarantelli stated “I’m going to the meeting.” This struck Chief Kessler as odd, since Chief Tarantelli had not been there before. 

Mr. Kessler noticed that Mr. Tarantelli was placing his gun belt on, and Chief Kessler asked that he not wear the gun in the meeting. Mr. Kessler had also taken off his weapon for the meeting, therefore didn’t think it was too much to ask. Mr. Tarantelli insisted after being asked several times not to wear his gun that he was going to wear his weapon. Finally, Mr. Tarantelli admitted he was there for security. Chief Kessler then asked who had him come for security and for what? 

According to Chief Kessler, Mr. Tarantelli stated that the Superintendent had hired him privately to come to the meeting as security. Chief Kessler feels that this was an intimidation tactic on behalf of the Superintendent of the school board to silence him from speaking out against the employment of an ex-state trooper that is known to use “intimidation” and “thug” tactics. 

How would you have liked to have been in that parking lot when these two butted heads? How do you think conversations between the superintendent and Kessler have been going for the past few months?

One of Kessler's favorite insults is the word "libtard." Were I a parent of a special needs child in the North Schuylkill district, I would have a problem with any member of my school board using a word that clear denigrates special education kids. When confronted with his use of the term by a local radio host, he dodged any responsibility for insulting special needs kids, and started berating the host (go to about 2:20, if you can take it).

[Update: I took the embed of the clip off the post; it was starting on its own and that was getting really annoying. Click below if you want to listen.]

 Watch this at WILK News Radio


Let's be clear: Mark Kessler can say anything he likes, whenever he likes. I know absolutely nothing about federal or Pennsylvania firearms statutes, but if he isn't in violation of any, he can put as many videos up as his little heart desires. I do think there are some reasonable standards of conduct outside of work that can and should be imposed on law enforcement officers (and teachers), but let's put aside the question of whether Kessler has violated any of those; I haven't watched all of his videos anyway, so I won't say for sure.

Is it reasonable to assume that a teacher who expresses an opinion contrary to a school board member like Kessler will be treated fairly by him?

I think even Kessler would admit that he is not a mainstream kind of guy. He's clearly confrontational when dealing with the school staff. How would he react to a teacher who drives to school with an Obama bumper sticker attached to his car? How would he react if a special education teacher asked him (very, very politely) to stop using the term "libtard"? Perhaps he'd be fine with all that; perhaps he'd act in accordance with his stated beliefs about the sanctity of the First Amendment.

Then again, perhaps not.

There are nearly 14,000 school boards in the U.S., supervising over six million employees. I have little doubt the vast majority of these people are conscientious, diligent folks who get paid little to nothing for what is a very difficult job. My neighbors who serve on our local school board work very hard to keep our school system running efficiently, balancing the needs of children, taxpayers, and staff. I certainly believe that's true in the overwhelming majority of cases.

But it simply stands to reason that there will always be people serving on school boards who have their own agendas. It is foolish to think that teachers and staff do not need some sort of workplace protections from school board members who have extreme beliefs. Tenure - which, again, is nothing more than a guarantee of due process - is the best system we have to ensure that the rights of workers are protected from the whims of those who may or may not have ulterior motives.

Mark Kessler has a responsibility to the people who elected him to make sure the staff in North Schuykill's school do their job and do it well. But the staff has a right to express their opinions, just like Kessler, without fear of reprisal. Tenure is the compromise that ensures all parties can retain their rights while meeting their responsibilities. Who could be against that?

Mitch Daniels: Book Banner, Dishonest Academic, Tool Of the Ruling Class

I reported earlier this week that Mitch Daniels, current president of Purdue University and massive hypocrite, went on a witch hunt back in his days as Indiana's governor against those who dared to suggest that adults who are training to be teachers might want to occasionally read a book that has the audacity to challenge conventional thinking.

Daniels's jihad against Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States, was so vitriolic, so personal, and so inappropriate for a man who is supposed to be protecting academic freedom that 90 professors at Purdue have signed an open letter decrying his actions. Daniels, naturally, has defended himself; unfortunately, in the process, he has shown how little regard he has for academic honesty and scholarship:

Purdue University President Mitch Daniels is refuting claims that he lifted sections of his recent public statement criticizing anti-war historian Howard Zinn from other sources without attribution. 

English writing experts, a New York journalist and critics of the former Indiana governor say a statement Daniels released July 17 in the wake of controversy over an Associated Press article contains striking similarities to two sources: an article by journalist Michael Moynihan published in Reason Magazine in 2010 and a Stanford University news release put out in December. 

Daniels, who came under fire last week over emails he wrote when he was governor that denounced Zinn’s work and detailed his desire to rid it from Indiana public schools, says any similarity between his statement and the two sources is coincidental. 

“Look, if there’s anything I do, I write my own stuff,” Daniels said. “All of it. I always have — 75,000-word books, speeches, everything.” 

But by Monday afternoon, many of the alleged similarities in sentence structure and word choice between the sources no longer appeared in the online version of Daniels’ statement, which defended his desire to rid K-12 schools of a Zinn textbook, “A People’s History of the United States.” [emphasis mine]

The Journal and Courier interviewed several scholars for this article; while most said it didn't exactly rise to the level of plagiarism, all agreed it was bad scholarship. Not a surprise, as Daniels is not a scholar in any meaningful way and has no business running a university.

Alas: Daniels appointed most of Purdue's current trustees. And plutocrats like Daniels and his cronies cannot allow prospective teachers - again, these are adults - to be exposed to thinking like this:

A People's History of the United States, Chapter 2

It is imperative that elitists like Mitch Daniels be ensconced in our universities to guard against any possibility that teachers are exposed to rhetoric that challenges our plutocrats' accepted narratives about class and race in America! We simply cannot afford to have teachers and students dare to explore the idea that the owners of this country might occasionally act in their own self-interest at the expense of the rest of our citizens!

All praise to the Founding Fathers for sending us men like Mitch Daniels from on high: men who will save us from ourselves!

I will save you from ideas that I think are bad for you! You can thank me later...

ADDING: Hey Amazon: I love my Kindle and all, but can I please have some limited ability to cut and paste?

REPOST: Chris Christie: Liar, Fool, or Both?

I originally posted this a year ago; given that we are coming up on Chris Christie's reelection, I think it bears revisiting. Here's what it comes down to - there are three choices when it comes to describing Chris Christie:

• He is a lying liar.
• He is a fool beyond belief.
• He is some combination of the two.

I vote for #3. Also note he told us he was "likely" to write another letter on pensions if he runs again. Where is it?

I got so caught up in Chris Cerf's coronation yesterday that I never got around to this poignant moment:

Instead of vitriol and venom today, Gov. Chris Christie's interaction with a teary public school teacher ended with an apology.

Tia McLaughlin invoked the Republican governor's frequent refrain that it's "harder to hate up close" in telling him she felt betrayed by his treatment of teachers when he took office two and half years ago. 

“You're right, it is much harder to hate up close because I’m not feeling the hate right now," she said, standing in the crowd at the boardwalk Music Pier. "I never thought I’d get the opportunity to talk to you up close."

She made copies of the letter he sent unions during the campaign that promised to leave their pensions alone and distributed them to the 12 schools in her district, but then he did what she called "a complete 180" with pension and benefits reforms that further soured his dealings with the NJEA, the state's largest teachers union. 

Christie said, if he runs for re-election again, he will likely pen another letter to unions explaining his new position. 

“When I wrote that letter, I had no idea the pension system was about to go bankrupt," he said, launching into his usual answer which puts the blame on prior governors for failing to address the problem. "Why are you getting angry at the first guy who's telling you the truth?" [emphasis mine]

Of course, we all remember this famous letter from the fall of 2009; the quote at the top of this blog comes directly from it. So now Christie's excuse for writing it is that he had "no idea the pension was about to go bankrupt."

Really? He "had no idea" the pensions were in trouble? Well, he was the only one in the whole damn state that was clueless. [all emphases mine]

September, 2009:

Sometime later I looked at the state’s pension system in a Hall Institute report; the system once controlled $86 billion or so in resources, and I was startled at its depreciation.  It is now $59 billion or so.

When I raised some modest points for reform, I was surprised at how defensive those responsible for investing or interpreting the investment strategies became.  No one wanted to deal with the issue of gross underfunding.  The administration has argued that all pension systems are down, some more than New Jersey’s, and that under Corzine, the state has contributed more money, $3.4 billion, to the pension system than previous administrations did in the previous 15 years.

Corzine saluted himself for beginning repayments, and I agreed that he deserved credit.  Unlike his predecessors, he did not say at first that tough times or the need to balance the budget prevented him from meeting his obligations.  But as the economy tumbled, Corzine decided to follow the old wisdom:  For this coming fiscal year he proposed decreasing the state’s contribution by $895 million from the previous year’s $1.1 billion contribution.

June, 2009:

If all of Governor Corzine's pension deferral plans are put into effect this year, the governor will have underfunded pensions by an incredible $7.5 billion during his less than four years in office, [Republican Senate Whip Kevin] O'Toole noted. Passage of S-2955 will ensure that the official $30 billion deficit between what the state has in its pension funds and the estimated pension payouts in the future will continue to grow, O'Toole said."It defies logic to further increase the size of a multi-billion dollar deficit in the middle of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression," Senator O'Toole said. "This governor is pushing the pension funds closer to insolvency."

April, 2009:

The pension fund for New Jersey teachers fell $2.6 billion more into the red last fiscal year, prompting the professionals who monitor the system to warn for the first time that the state is teetering near a point where it may not be able to pay educators their promised benefits.

Along with the shortfall, calculated as of June 30, 2008, actuaries said recent events not factored into their report will only make the picture darker. Those include a 25 percent loss in the state’s investments and a new budget plan that calls for giving the fund just 6 percent of what is owed next fiscal year, short-changing the teachers pension system alone by $1.4 billion.

“That really gives us some concern for the fund’s long-term ability to meet its obligations,” said Scott Porter, an actuary with Milliman Inc.

December, 2008:

Like many governors before him, Mr. Corzine first turned to the pension fund for a lifeline. But it is a frayed line.

The fund started in 2008 with $81.3 billion in assets, but that was still only 79 percent of the amount actuaries calculated it should hold to cover the benefits retirees have already earned.

Investment losses would ordinarily prompt steep increases in state and local taxpayer contributions, to keep the pension funds flush. But Mr. Corzine and local leaders face a host of competing demands for the diminished tax returns they control, and the long-term demands of the retirement account have become a tempting source of short-term savings needed to prop up current government spending.

April, 2007:

Mr. Corzine said on Wednesday that state officials had recently reviewed an audit that found the fund had a deficit of about $25 billion. But some experts have estimated that the shortfall is much larger than that.

Whatever the figure is, the governor said, the shortfall must be closed.

“The fact is we have a huge hole,” said Mr. Corzine, who has warned of problems with the pension system since taking office 15 months ago. “It has been created by a failure to deal with the issue, frankly, for the better part of a decade, and I consider it one of our greatest challenges.”

Let's get this straight, once and for all: everyone knew the NJ pension system was a mess in October of 2009. The recession began well before Barack Obama was elected to the presidency; we were right in the throws of it during the 2009 NJ gubernatorial election. The market had already tanked earlier that year; everyone knew the fund's investments wouldn't be putting up large returns for years, if ever again.

Given all this, there are really only two possible explanations for Christie's claim that he didn't know the pensions were in serious trouble:

1. He was ignorant of the issues facing New Jersey at a level that would have made George W. Bush blush.
2. He knew he couldn't deliver on a promise of keeping pension benefits the same and slashing taxes for the wealthy and corporations - but he made the promise anyway. Again, like George W. Bush's clearly impossible fiscal promises in the 2000 campaign.

So, is Christie a liar or a fool? I could never decide about Bush, and I can't decide about Chris Christie. Is it possible they are both?

I feel sorry for Tia McLaughlin. I feel sorry for all the teachers who supported this clown of a man. I only have one question for all of them:

Will you let yourself be fooled again?

NY Daily News: "Lie To Your Wife? Shame! Lie To Cops & Teachers? Meh..."

NY Daily News, July 24, 2013:

Anthony Weiner led all New Yorkers to believe that he stopped recklessly, immaturely and compulsively sexting after his resignation from Congress in abject humiliation. Lie.

Weiner reinforced the message that he had achieved maturity and self-control by citing wisdom gained with the birth of his son in December 2011, six months after he stepped down. Lie.

As he laid the groundwork for for a reentry into politics, Weiner sat beside his wife Huma Abedin as she told People magazine last July: “Anthony has spent every day since (resigning) trying to be the best dad and husband he can be.” Lie.

Weiner’s dishonest, impulse-driven psyche is once more stripped as naked as the images of his texted private parts.

He is not fit to lead America’s premier city. Lacking the dignity and discipline that New York deserves in a mayor, Weiner must recognize that his demons have no place in City Hall.

I actually agree: Weiner is a snake and does not deserve election. No one who lies this brazenly should hold high office, right?

NY Daily News, October 5, 2011:

Chris Christie, the blunt-as-a-sledgehammer governor of New Jersey, said it multiple times. Last September: "I'm not ready" to be President. In April: "I'm not running for President." In August: "I said this answer isn't changing, and I don't see any reason why it would."

[...]

And those players would do well to channel a little Christie if they want to win over the many Americans disenchanted with President Obama.

Christie's appeal is threefold.

One is how he speaks. He's got a no-nonsense style - the guy eats talking points for breakfast. Where some see hostility, many more see a directness that's rare in a consultant-dominated, partisan climate. Christie explains, connects and, where necessary, argues.

Two is what he says. He has dispensed with wedge issues. When a Muslim judicial nominee was attacked, he lashed out against the "Sharia law" panic, which he called "crazy" and "crap."

Instead, he has focused on what, for Republicans, matters most: runaway spending and the often crippling taxes that go hand in hand with it.

Three is Christie's flair for action. Last year, he declared a fiscal emergency and used his line-item veto to eliminate nearly $1 billion from the proposed state budget. He closed more than $13 billion in deficits without a tax increase, capped property taxes and reined in pension and health benefits for public-sector workers. [emphasis mine]

Go look at the very top of this blog. See the quote that lives up there permanently? I'll repeat it here:

"I will protect your pensions. Nothing about your pension is going to change when I am governor." - Chris Christie

And yet, as soon as he could, Christie slashed pension benefits for current and future retirees, breaking his explicit promise to teachers and other public workers. In a spasm of excuses that would even embarrass Weiner, Christie claimed he had "no idea the pension system was about to go bankrupt," even though pension solvency was one of the biggest issues in his campaign against Jon Corzine.

So let's get the NY Daily News's position on this clear:

• Lying to your wife about your sexual exploits: you don't deserve to be in office.
• Lying to teachers and cops about their pensions: you're a role model for the nation.

This is where our national punditocracy is at right now, ladies and gentlemen. 

I'd wear a mask too, Mort, if my newspaper published crap like this.

Marie Corfield Money Bomb: Thursday, July 25!

When a teacher runs for office, those of us who work in schools need to support her:

On July 25th, please give what you can to support Marie Corfield For New Jersey Assembly by participating in her "Money Bomb."

Marie is a mother, a teacher, and an activist; electing her is the best way to save public education in  New Jersey.

Marie has a plan for property tax relief that helps the middle class. She'll promote real job growth, not the phony, low-paying jobs Chris Christie crows about. She'll protect the environment, and she'll fight to bring marriage equity to a state where the majority of citizens want it.

Teachers in New Jersey are always asking me: "What can we do to fight back?" Here's your answer: pledge to support Marie Corfield's "Money Bomb" on July 25th.

Go to Marie's Facebook page, and pledge to give support in any amount to her campaign when she drops her "Money Bomb" on July 25th. You'll get reminders to come back and make a donation on the big day.

If you'd rather just give right now go to Marie's donation page and give whatever you can. It won't take long, and you'll be standing up for our schools, our communities, and our kids.

Go get 'em, Marie!

Marie Corfield for NJ Assembly!

ADDING: Just in from Marie's campaign:

We have some exciting news! The grassroots enthusiasm for this race is off the charts and continues to build. We have already knocked on over 3000 doors and are talking to voters daily about sending Marie to Trenton to fight for women’s health care, create jobs and stabilize the growing property tax burden. Now, we are looking to make a statement by launching a Money Bomb on Thursday July 25th, a grassroots fundraising effort compacted into one fun 24-hour day that engages all kinds of people giving at all levels. Money is fuel for a campaign, just like volunteers, ideas and hard work are. On Money Bomb Thursday, you can participate from wherever you are - pool, beach, work or home - with nothing more than a smartphone or computer. You'll be joining supporters and some surprise guests, and we'll be all over social media as we watch the numbers climb. And it's going to be fun. Even if you can't contribute a lot, every little bit helps when we all work together.  RSVP now to Pledge your support for the #CorfieldMoneyBomb on July 25th… We are gaining strength every day and Marie’s grassroots supporters are making it happen. But over these next few days, it's more important than ever for you to join us and help make it happen too! Only you can help us demonstrate that the momentum we have in this race is real and that we have the strength and resources to get our message out and win. On Thursday July 25th, if we can produce a big number, our Money Bomb will send a strong message that Marie’s supporters are coming together to do something big. The #CorfieldMoneyBomb is just 2 days away, you can RSVP and pledge your support now! We need to show that our supporters are ready and willing to step up with the huge grassroots support it's going to take to win this race. Thanks for your support, Dan Siegel Campaign Manager Corfield For Assembly

The Hopelessly Broken NJ Charter Oversight System

Better late than never: the NJDOE has released the list of new charter schools that have received final approval to open this fall:

Among those approved, Camden will see two new charter schools. The only final charter approved for Newark was the new Philip’s Academy Charter School, a conversion from the former St. Philip’s Academy, an independent private school. The K-8 school will serve Newark, Irvington and East Orange.

The other five approved, all elementary schools, are the following:

• Camden Community Charter School, Camden,
• Compass Academy Charter School, Millville, Vineland, Pittsgrove
• Hope Community Charter School, Camden
• Jersey City Global Charter School, Jersey City
• Paterson Arts and Science Charter School, Paterson.

So what do we know about these schools?

- Jersey City Global Charter School: In an outstanding piece of investigative journalism, Darcie Cimarusti at Mother Crusader has detailed the many, many failures of the man who will provide "leadership" to JCGCS, Sam Howard. Even as Howard was working to establish charters in New Jersey, he was at the center of the worst charter school failure in the nation: the shuttering of six Imagine Schools charters in St. Louis, closed for fiscal mismanagement and academic failure.

The NJDOE apparently does not care about Howard's track record, even as charter authorizers and advocates themselves have pointed to the failure of Imagine's schools as a cautionary tale. And it no doubt helped JCGCS that one of their board members is a valued political advisor to Chris Christie.

- Camden Community Charter School: I wrote a two-part series on this charter this past March. In Part I, I tell the story of the man who will run CCCS, Vahan Gureghian, an "entrepreneur" who has become incredibly wealthy by managing charter schools in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. Gureghian was the single largest individual donor to PA Governor Tom Corbett's last campaign; trading in on that influence, he has essentially rewritten the commonwealth's laws to drain money away from public schools and into his coffers. His actions bankrupted the Chester, PA school district, even as his charter was caught in allegations of cheating that were never properly investigated.

In Part II, I detail how Gureghian has started dropping campaign cash into the South Jersey Democratic machine, setting up a sweetheart Camden land deal that echoes his exploits in Pennsylvania.

- Paterson Arts and Science Charter School: As I reported back in February, PASCS is a charter affiliated with the Gulenist movement. Both the New York Times and 60 Minutes have raised disturbing questions about this network of charters, including their practices of abusing H1-B visas and steering contracts exclusively to Turkish-owned businesses. Bruce Baker has shown the schools often pay teachers considerably lower wages than public school teachers.

As I reported in 2011, another school in PASCS's network, Bergen Arts and Science Charter School, has a substantially different student population than its neighboring public schools. Bergen A&S had more Asian students than all the rest of Garfield's public schools combined.

In spite of the serious questions about these three schools, NJDOE has allowed them to open this fall. In every case, the local community had no final say in each charter's authorization, and must hand over significant amounts of their own school budgets to each charter, with no way to oversee those charters' budgets.

What assurances do the citizens of Jersey City have that Sam Howard won't enrich himself once again and create an educational nightmare as he did in St. Louis? How will the people of Camden know if Vahan Gureghian wreaks havoc on their district as he did in Chester? How can Paterson's taxpayers be sure that PASCS isn't engaging in unfair labor practices or segregating its students?

At some level, granting any new charter is a leap of faith. But, in these three cases, there is more than enough evidence to suggest that any benefit these schools may impart to their communities is not worth the risk.

The charter school oversight system in New Jersey is an utter disaster. There should be a moratorium on all new charter schools unless and until the legislature passes new laws that require serious vetting of charter applications, including a provision for local approval.

Accountability begins at home.

Creeps Like Mitch Daniels Make Teacher Tenure Necessary

UPDATE: Daniels isn't only a twerp; he's a dishonest academic.


Mitch Daniels - former governor of Indiana and current president of Purdue University - is an anti-intellectual, book-banning little twerp:

Purdue University President Mitch Daniels on Friday stood by his efforts to keep liberal historian Howard Zinn's work from being taught in Indiana schools, saying the actions he took while governor were meant to keep the book out of the hands of K-12 students.

Meanwhile, the university's board of trustees threw their support behind the former politician, approving a $58,000 bonus to reward him for his first six months on the job.

Daniels told reporters after a meeting of the board that a statement he made as governor that Indiana should "disqualify the propaganda" he saw being used in Indiana's teacher preparation courses was meant only to keep Zinn's "A People's History of the United States" from being taught in the state's K-12 classrooms. [emphasis mine]

You catch that? It's not that the book was even being taught in K-12 schools; it's that it was being used in college courses taken by prospective teachers. Daniels was telling adult college students what they should and shouldn't read.

After learning that Zinn's book was being used in a summer teacher training course at Indiana University, Daniels signed off on education adviser David Shane's proposal to review university courses across the state to determine what should count as credit.

"Go for it. Disqualify propaganda and highlight (if there is any) the more useful offerings. Don't the ed schools have at least some substantive PD (professional development) courseware to upgrade knowledge of math, science, etc.," Daniels wrote.

After being told Zinn's work was being used at Indiana University in a course for teachers on the Civil Rights, feminist and labor movements, Daniels wrote:

"This crap should not be accepted for any credit by the state. No student will be better taught because someone sat through this session. Which board has jurisdiction over what counts and what doesn't?" 

See, if some smart 17-year-old brings up something sympathetic to the point of view of this very popular book in an AP US History course, the teacher shouldn't try to engage that student from a position of understanding the debate. The appropriate response, of course, is to tell him to sit down, shut up, and fill in the correct bubble. "Critical thinking," after all, is only important to a fascist like Daniels if it leads to conclusions of which he and he alone approves.

It almost goes without saying that this is yet another example of why this country needs teacher tenure. There are millions of petty little despots like Daniels serving on school boards and in district offices who would love to impose punishments on teachers who dare to challenge their orthodoxies. These people are a threat even to elementary educators' ability to teach basic truths in science and history without interference. The best way by far to protect teachers' academic freedom is through the right to due process, which is all that tenure really is.

There's another angle to this, however: don't think for a minute that the recent, foolish criticism of teacher preparation programs isn't tinged with the conservative movement's contempt for scholarship and academic freedom.

You can be sure that the unqualified faculty at Relay GSE will not be assigning A People's History of the United States, or any other books that are remotely considered controversial, to its graduate students. Deep content knowledge and scholarship is not what these programs are about, because those are not qualities conservatives want in America's teaching corps. Corporate flacks like Daniels want schools to produce compliant workers, not critically-thinking citizens; teachers who encourage divergent thinking are antithetical to that goal. It simply makes sense: teachers who march to Daniels's drum will produce students who do the same.

And that greatly lessens the chance that the good people of Indiana will apply their ability to think critically on massive hypocrites like Daniels:

First of all, I didn't realize we had decided that American schools are now the equivalent of Chinese computer factories. I guess it's absolutely imperative that Big Brother keep constant surveillance on Miss Crabtree just in case she sends something out by email that hasn't been approved by the Ministry of Truth.

And heaven forbid any minute a teacher is in school is not used to teach. Lord help us if a teacher takes part of her prep period or lunch break to engage in her life outside of work. Because I'm sure Mitch Daniels never used state property as governor to conduct personal business. That, would, after all, make him a massive, unbelievably shameless hypocrite:

A Democratic lawmaker filed a complaint Wednesday seeking an ethics investigation into whether Gov. Mitch Daniels overstepped his role when his office sent out a statement about renovations to Purdue University’s president’s office — the post Daniels will assume in January.

State Rep. Charlie Brown, D-Gary, said in his request to state Inspector General David Thomas that “Daniels clearly misused state property for personal reasons” when he asked his staff to send out a statement last week to respond to stories about $380,000 in renovations being done on the Purdue president’s office. [emphasis mine]

Oh, no, no, no! See, this is totally, completely different!

This jerk has no business being anywhere near a university, much less running one. How in the world did he ever get his position?

Daniels appointed a majority of the Purdue trustees, including Krach.

Oh.

Well, if the presidential thing doesn't work out, Chris Christie's got it set up to pull the same trick at Rutgers. Both schools are now in the Big Ten;  maybe he and Daniels can set up a joint school book burning before the big game in 2017...

Skip to 2:35: "It tells me that goose-stepping morons like yourself should try reading books instead of burning them."

Free Lunch "Fraud" Menu: Red Herring

Apparently, the greatest threat to the fiscal well-being of New Jersey is children who might be getting their school lunches for free [all emphases in this post mine]:

More than 100 people – including 83 public employees – gave false information about income on applications for free lunches submitted to school districts.  

That is the finding of a Comptroller’s investigation announced Wednesday involving 15 school districts over a three-year period that uncovered widespread fraud.

Comptroller Matthew Boxer’s office reported that it has referred 109 names to the Division of Criminal Justice for prosecution: the 83 public workers and 26 others who are spouses or other household members of the public workers. The total in unreported income of those cases was over $13 million [What a poorly constructed sentence; that is not the amount of fraud, but the income misreported - JJ].

Leave it to PolitckerNJ to breathlessly report that 101 families getting free school lunches is "widespread abuse" when over 380,000 kids in New Jersey receive free and reduced price lunch, and that's only about 80 percent of those who are eligible. But let's do a little more math and put the whole thing into perspective:

According to NJ Department of Education data, there were 503,486.5 (don't ask me which half...) children eligible for free or reduced price lunch in 2012-13; that's puts the statewide eligibility rate at 31%. The Comptroller looked at 15 school districts, searching for fraud:

• Bayonne Board Of Education 
• Egg Harbor Township School District 
• Essex County Vocational Technical Schools 
• Linden City Board Of Education 
• Long Branch Public Schools 
• Millville Board Of Education 
• The Newark Public Schools 
• Paterson Public Schools 
• Pemberton Township Schools 
• Pennsauken Township Board Of Education 
• Pleasantville Public School District 
• Toms River Regional School District 
• Trenton Public Schools 
• Union City School District 
• Winslow Township School District 

These districts, however, are unusually large, and represent over 11% of New Jersey's total student population:

Moreover, these districts have unusually high rates of eligibility for free and reduced price lunch; while they make up on 11% of the total student population, they make up nearly twice that of that FRPL population:

Some of you are probably saying: "Wait, that's circular: if there's fraud in reporting FRPL eligibility, you can't trust these statistics!" Except, as Bruce Baker has recently shown, there is a very strong correlation between FRPL statistics and other measures of poverty:

That "rsq=.89" figure is geek-speak for: "89 percent of the variation between districts in FRPL rates is explained by census poverty figures." In other words: the FRPL data and poverty data from the census pretty much reports the same relative rates of poverty for school districts in New Jersey.

Let's go back to those 101 incidents of alleged fraud the Comptroller found. The total student population for the 15 districts investigated is 154,268, which is a "fraud rate"* of 0.07%. These districts, again, have large number of students eligible for FRPL: 110,424.5. That's a "fraud rate," based on FRPL eligibility, of 0.09%.

Extrapolate that out to the entire state and in the worst case scenario, there are less than 1000 cases of fraud we would project the Comptroller could find within a three-year period. Remember, there are more than 1.3 million students in New Jersey's schools, and we are talking about a "fraud rate" of less than one-tenth of one percent. Folks, you can't even see a "fraud rate" that small:

Look, people shouldn't commit any fraud, and I'm all for prosecuting those who engage in it. But how about a little perspective? As far as scandals go, this is tiny... unless there's an ulterior motive to this investigation.

Turn to page 18 of the Comptroller's report:

According to information obtained from the state Department of Education, school districts receive additional state aid based upon the number of children in their districts deemed NSLP eligible. This additional aid is awarded pursuant to the School Funding Reform Act, NJSA 18A:7F-43 et seq., based on the districts' low-income population, which is determined by NSLP eligibility data. While school districts thus have a financial incentive to maximize the number of students participating in NSLP, aggressive efforts to encourage successful applications can result in additional instances of fraud. The large number of cases where benefits have been reduced or eliminated through the verification process indicates that this issue is more than merely theoretical. These concerns are particularly relevant when the when the recruitment efforts are not couples with cautionary warnings and guidance from the districts about avoiding fraud and complying with program requirements. Information we obtained during the course of our investigation provided cause for concern in this regard. For example, several interviewees advised OSC that either no contact person was provided for questions concerning the NSLP application or they were referred to district employees who did not appear to have specific knowledge of program requirements. Breaking the connection between NSLP eligibility and state aid to school districts could both avoid awarding aid based on inaccurate information and address the incentive to enroll ineligible applicants in the free lunch program.

And so we see what this jihad against free school lunches is really about: undermining school funding equity. And to do that, Comptroller Matthew Boxer takes an enormous leap: since there is evidence of extremely limited fraud in the school lunch program, free/reduced price lunch statistics must be inaccurate measures of district poverty.

Sorry, but that's absolutely unwarranted. Just because Boxer found a tiny fraction of cases that were fraudulent, it doesn't automatically follow that free lunch statistics hugely overstate relative poverty rates in school districts.

But that hasn't stopped New Jersey's largest newspaper, the Star-Ledger, from once again carrying Chris Christie's milk crate:   

This is just the tip of a much bigger scandal, fraud on a massive scale.

Cheating the school lunch program costs taxpayers far more than a subsidized sloppy Joe. To understand why, consider its impact on school funding.

School districts get additional state dollars based on the number of children enrolled in this federal free and reduced-price lunch program, which, sadly, acts as an incentive to sign up as many students as possible.

New Jersey is among the best states in the country in spending for low-income students. The state’s 31 poorest districts, formerly called Abbotts, on average spend about $3,000 more per pupil than the rest of the state.

To estimate how many needy students there are in a district, the state uses lunch data: It provides an extra $4,700 to $5,700 for each child enrolled in the program, which works out to hundreds of millions in state aid.

So there’s a big incentive for districts to lie, or to look the other way at fraud. The vast majority of free lunch applications are never reviewed for accuracy.

Some experts argue the real problem is underreporting — families that qualify for free lunch but don’t take advantage of it. But even they agree that while this program is vital for feeding the poorest children, it’s an unreliable measurement for state school funding.

Oh, please - that is just foolish beyond belief. Who are these "experts" ready to trash the data collection system for state aid on the basis of a tiny amount of fraud found in the Comptroller's report?  If they were really "experts," they wouldn't even consider such a ridiculous idea.

And leave it to Tom Moran and the S-L Editorial Board to screw up even the most basic facts about school lunch "fraud":

According to the state comptroller, Matthew Boxer, as many as 37 percent of participants are fraudulently enrolled. When he released his latest report last week documenting widespread abuse in the program, Gov. Chris Christie acted stunned — as if a burglar had been caught breaking into his house.

Wrong. That "37 percent" is nowhere to be found in Boxer's report; it's actually in the 2011 report of the State Auditor, Stephen Eells. Worse, the "37 percent" figure way overstates the potential "fraud" in the program; I know this because the Star-Ledger itself said so when they took tea-partyin' State Senator Mike Doherty to task for misreading the auditor's report (of course, even that report in the S-L overstated the level of "fraud").

Hey, I've got a crazy idea: how about, just this one time, everybody be honest? This whole absurd exercise in hyperbole is really about coming up with an excuse to defund SFRA once and for all, just so Chris Christie can get his hands on the state aid money that is required, by law, to go to the poorest school districts.

Wingnuts like Doherty and the S-L's resident conservative ideologue, Paul Mulshine, have been playing this ugly game for years; they harp on this non-issue over and over again to convince themselves that money doesn't matter in education, and poor children don't need extra school funding. The facts don't deter them; they, like Chris Christie, are always on the lookout for an excuse to stick it to poor people. Crying "Fraud!" is a perfect excuse for them: they can pretend that they care about kids in poverty while rolling back policies that have served New Jersey's children well for decades. 

Maybe framing it as an issue of "fraud" helps them sleep at night. Too bad the New Jersey media seems all too happy to help them fluff their pillows.

* Got to be careful here: the Comptroller's report cites 101 instances of parents committing fraud, but those parents may have had more than one child. If you want to double or triple my numbers here to account for that, go right ahead - but the percentages are still tiny. The Comptroller's report in no way signals "massive fraud" in school lunch eligibility.

But I can't wait for all you wingnuts and corporate shills out there to try to convince me otherwise...

The REAL Status Quo

Once again, Gary Rubinstein makes a great point:

Again, NOBODY thinks nothing should be changed and NOBODY thinks everything should be changed.  Imagine some new billionaire comes along and starts saying that the next big school reform is that schools will no longer meet in buildings, but instead out on the street.  This will save money as the real estate can be sold and used to pay for iPads.  Now the old ‘reformers’ say that this is a bad idea, that having schools indoors is a good thing and the new ‘reformers’ can now accuse the old ‘reformers’ of ‘defending the status quo’ just because the changes that the old ‘reformers’ believe will be helpful do not coincide with the changes that the new ‘reformers’ believe will be helpful.  

So it is not fair to label a group of people who include me, Diane Ravitch, Anthony Cody, Katie Osgood, Jersey Jazzman, EduShyster, and so many others as ‘status quo defenders’ just because the changes that we think would improve the education system are not the exact same changes that people who know nothing about schools including Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Arne Duncan, Whitney Tilson, and many others think would improve the education system.

Every ‘status quo defender’ that I know thinks that education in this country would be improved if class sizes were capped at lower numbers.  But ‘reformers’ think that reducing class size is not a good use of limited resources.  Aren’t then the reformers ‘defending the status quo’ on this issue while the status quo defenders are looking to ‘reform’ things?  Doesn’t everyone defend some things in the status quo and want to reform other things?

I could easily make a list of things that I’d like to change.  I could bore you for hours about how I feel the math curriculum in this country and this world has evolved into something that leaves out the thing that makes math great — beauty.  I could also very easily pick places where money is wasted on consultants and bad education software, and also places where not enough money is spent to do things right.  But I’m called a status quo defender, still, just because I think that certain things should not be changed and that other things should not be changed, just for the sake of changing them, but until something that won’t make things worse is devised. [emphasis mine]

I have an addendum to this:

Three of the four people on Gary's list of "reformers" are very wealthy people (and I would argue the fourth has shown himself to be a vassal to power). The money that fuels the education "reform" movement overwhelmingly comes not from grass-roots fundraising or unions, but from a relatively small group of extremely wealthy families and individuals: Gates, Bloomberg, Tilson and the Wall Street hedge fund crowd, Eli Broad, the Waltons, Mark Zuckerberg, Rupert Murdoch, Mike Milken, David Tepper, Alan Fournier, Arthur Rock, Sheryl Sandberg and David Goldberg, Jeb! Bush [sic], the DeVos family, the Koch brothers, Michael Dell, and a few others.

These people have poured millions of dollars into advocacy groups and think tanks and political campaigns to promote an educational agenda that can be pretty much summed up as follows:

• Shifting the task of education away from public institutions and toward private contractors: charter schools and voucher-accepting private schools.
• Diluting the power of teachers unions, gutting teacher workplace protections, reneging on promised teacher compensation through pensions, and deprofessionalizing teaching through policies that include stripping accredited universities and colleges of the task of training teachers.
• Removing local control of education and replacing it with centralized policies that require an expensive, invasive testing regime.
• Shifting the national focus away from the issues of poverty, inequality, and institutional racism and toward the largely non-existent "problems" of teacher quality.

Does anyone else find it curious that all of these extremely wealthy people just happen to believe the same thing? That they all have the same education agenda? That there is little to no dissension among the moneyed classes as to how our public schools should be "reformed"?

The real status quo in this country is a system that transfers wealth, through government policy, from the working poor and middle class to the wealthy, ruling classes. America's national security, health care, campaign financing, media, financial, fiscal, and environmental policies have been based almost entirely on this status quo for years. And there is no question that the education "reforms" promoted by this ruling class are designed to align public education with this entrenched system.

We spend trillions of dollars on weapons systems our military commanders (the ones who haven't been corrupted) tell us we don't need, simply to enrich contractors. We have a private, for-profit health care system that spends double what nearly every other country spends per person, yet we have worse outcomes and not everyone is covered.

Our political campaigns have become little more than exercises in money grubbing, and our national politicians increasingly are either servants of wealth or wealthy themselves:

Our media has become almost entirely corporatized and pretty much ignores the opinions of those who would challenge the status quo. Our central bank has made it clear that it values keeping interest rates low for debt holders - the wealthy - more than pursuing a program of full employment. We have highly regressive taxes and a code full of hidden gifts to corporate interests, leading to income inequity not seen in this country since the Gilded Age.

Our planet is burning up, yet we have done almost nothing to reduce our addiction to fossil fuel, even as energy companies make obscene profits.

Some "liberals" take comfort in the fact that we have made some progress in social issues. I'll leave aside for the moment the notion that Trayvon Martin's family or women in Texas seeking medical care may disagree that we've come far enough fast enough, and simply ask this: do the social issue crumbs the ruling classes have tossed at our feet make up for the vast, destructive policies they are imposing on this country?

The last part of our public life these people have not yet commandeered or corrupted is public education. But once they have the schools, they'll have pretty much taken over everything. The real status quo - that the rich take what they want and the rest of us get whatever little is left over - will have invaded every part of our society, and its establishment will be taught as doctrine to all children starting at the youngest ages.

The corporate "reformers" pretend they are an engine for societal change that will bring about a new era of economic prosperity for all Americans. But nothing could be further from the truth: the policies these people have supported in every other area of American life have made our country and our people less safe, less secure, less prosperous, and less free. Why in the world would we ever trust the ruling classes to "reform" education when they have screwed up the rest of our country so badly?

The debate about education "reform" is a proxy battle about whether this nation can continue on a course that enriches a scant few at the expense of many. Our current plutocratic system is the true status quo; "reformers" merely seek to embed it into our schools. To pretend otherwise is to be willingly obtuse.

One more time - preach it, George:

They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying -- lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want -- they want MORE for themselves and less for everybody else. But I'll tell you what they don't want. They DON'T want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that, that doesn't help them. That's against their interests. That's right. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting ****** by system that threw them overboard 30 ******' years ago. They don't want that. You know what they want? They want OBEDIENT WORKERS. OBEDIENT WORKERS. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly ******** jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime, and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. 

"It's a big club, and you ain't in it!" - George Carlin