Tom Moran's Pig-Headed Ignorance

What do you do when someone in a position of influence refuses to see a basic truth over and over again? Like, for instance, the Star-Ledger's op-ed page editor Tom Moran, here speaking about Newark's  charter schools:

The best charter schools have waiting lists that stretch into the thousands. The council wants [Superintendent Cami] Anderson to block any expansions — and even bar the charter schools from even using empty classrooms in district schools.

And so we have yet another piece by Moran that implies that Newark's charters are "succeeding," without acknowledging the most basic fact about these schools:

Charter schools in Newark are not replicable on a large scale because they do not serve the same students as public schools.

I have explained this to Moran over and over and over and over and over again. I know for a fact he reads this blog (one day, maybe I'll tell the story of how I know this), yet he refuses to acknowledge the argument. The closest he's ever come was in a piece where he, once again, sang the praises of Anderson for doing things she hadn't yet done.

And if he doesn't want to listen to a crazy teacher-blogger, that's fine; how about a leading education researcher who has written about the segregation and attrition found in Newark's charters over and over and over and over again.

Sometimes even with pretty pictures that a child could understand!

As Bruce Baker says:

Misinformed charter punditry doesn’t help anyone. It doesn’t help the public to make more informed decisions either about choices for their own children or about policy preferences more generally. It also doesn’t help charter operators get their jobs done and it doesn’t help those working in traditional public schools focus on things that really matter. [emphasis mine]

That is exactly right, and it is a clarion call for Tom Moran - the man in charge of the op-ed page for the most widely-read newspaper in the state - to start stepping up his game. If Moran wants to make a counterargument, let him make it.

But this pig-headed, willful ignorance about what's really happening with Newark's charter schools has got to end.

Star-Ledger Editorial Board.

No One Trusts Jeb!'s "Chiefs For Change"

"Chiefs For Change" is a reformy group of state-level education leaders supported by Jeb! Bush*, the former Florida governor and current industry shill. They are pushing an agenda of test-based teacher evaluation, "revamped" school report cards, and charter expansion.

So how is the awesome leadership of the "Chiefs" being received by local school districts, educators, and elected officials? [all emphases mine]

Hanna Skandera, New Mexico:

In an unusual joint meeting Thursday of the Albuquerque and Rio Rancho school boards, members of both boards raised concerns about the costs, logistics, timeline and fairness of the state’s new teacher evaluation system.

No formal action was taken at the meeting, which consisted mainly of discussion. But board members did reach a consensus that administrators will draft a joint resolution to be sent to the Public Education Department. The boards will each meet separately to discuss and approve the resolution in the coming weeks.

It is still unclear exactly what the resolution will say, but, based on the board’s discussion, it will most likely ask [ACTING! Just because she doesn't say "acting" doesn't mean that she isn't! - JJ] state education chief Hanna Skandera to consider giving the districts more flexibility in how and when they implement the system. The resolution will likely ask Skandera or representatives from the Public Education Department to sit down with the districts and collaborate on a teacher evaluation plan that all are comfortable with.

[...]

Schlichte identified himself as a Republican and a supporter of Gov. Susana Martinez, but was sharply critical of the governor’s education reform program as a whole, and teacher evaluations in particular.

“I believe we’re being experimented on by an inexperienced practitioner,” he said.

Chris Cerf, New Jersey:

School administrators in New Jersey districts that tested a new ways to evaluate teachers are bullish on the changes, but teachers remain skeptical, according to a report from Rutgers University.

[...] 

The Rutgers study found that 74 percent of administrators in the test districts felt the new evaluations gave accurate assessments of teachers. But just 32 percent of teachers felt the same way.

There were also gaps in perceptions between teachers and administrators about whether the new efforts offered meaningful feedback or had positive impacts on their own, their colleagues' or their school's professional development.

More Cerf:

State officials released “performance reports” on every New Jersey public school Wednesday, saying new categories for student growth, absenteeism, success in advanced courses and other measures will give parents more information than the report cards of the past — and create more pressure for schools to improve. 

Some educators applauded the new format, but many complained the reports contained too many errors, misleading categories and unfair school-to-school comparisons. 

State Education Commissioner Chris Cerf – who acknowledged the reports have mistakes — has made overhauling their format a major project in his efforts to improve schools. While he intends to intervene aggressively in failing schools, he said parents, boards and superintendents elsewhere should use this data to find ways to address weaknesses in their districts. 

[...] 

North Jersey superintendents were in an uproar last month when they saw draft versions of the reports. Many found inaccuracies in the number of students taking Algebra I in middle school, Advanced Placement exams and PSAT tests — indicators that feed in to the summaries showing whether students are on the path toward college. Education Department officials said in some cases districts submitted wrong information to the state database, and in some cases errors came from third parties such as the College Board. 

John White, Louisiana:

A 14-minute telephone conversation that was recorded by an employee of the Louisiana Department of Education (DOE) has revealed a plan hatched between State Superintendent John White and State Rep. Alan Seabaugh (R-Shreveport) to “tweak” DOE’s Value Added Model (VAM) teacher evaluation plan in a way to keep changes from being public or necessitating policy change with the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE).

The date of the recorded conversation is unclear but a flurry of emails within DOE in mid-October of 2012 and again in mid-March of this year centered around changes to the VAM plan so the telephone conversation most probably took place a few days prior to the October interoffice communications.

After White agreed to make changes in the VAM—also known at the DOE as Compass—as suggested by Seabaugh, the employee who recorded the conversation over a speaker phone was heard to whisper to a co-worker that White “chewed my ass out” after she had earlier made similar suggestions to tweak VAM.

[...]

“Tweaking the formula was my initial suggestion,” Seabaugh agreed, “not addressing it legislatively.”

“I didn’t want to open the formula up to such scrutiny (unintelligible),” White said.

“I don’t care how you fix it,” Seabaugh said, adding that teachers had been calling his office and sending him emails and that they were “absolutely livid.”

More White:

Louisiana legislators grilled Commissioner of Education John White about the state’s decision to approve the largest number of voucher students (315) for a small religious school that lacked facilities or teachers. Many questions were raised about the state’s failure to do any site visits to ascertain the readiness of the school to accept new students. Questions were raised about the school’s tuition, which is less than what the state plans to pay out (and may be very much less, making the voucher program a windfall for the school).

White must have been embarrassed because he immediately started backtracking and claimed that the list of schools approved by the state was not really final (news to everyone) and that the state planned to do due diligence.

Tony Bennett, Florida:

Teachers in Florida filed a lawsuit in federal court Tuesday, claiming the state’s new teacher evaluation system is unfair because it partly rates their job performance on test scores of students they don’t know and subjects they don’t teach.

 

The lawsuit — backed by local teachers unions and their parent organization, the National Education Association — marks the first time teachers have brought a legal challenge to new evaluation systems that base compensation and job security on student scores.

[...]

When rolling out new teacher evaluation systems, school districts have faced a predicament: How do you judge teachers who educate students in grades that are not tested or in subjects the tests don’t cover? How do you use math and reading scores to evaluate an art teacher? 

Officials in Florida, Tennessee and the District decided to evaluate those teachers by using test scores of other teachers’ students. 

The Florida complaint cites the case of Kim Cook, a 22-year educator who teaches first grade at W.W. Irby Elementary in Alachua County. Because Irby is a school for children in kindergarten through second grade, its pupils are too young to take the state’s standardized test, known as the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.

When it came time to rate the Irby teachers this year, the local school board decided that Cook and other teachers would be judged by the test scores of all fourth- and fifth-grade students in another elementary school.

“I never met or instructed the students at Alachua Elementary,” said Cook, one of seven teachers who are plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

The fourth- and fifth-graders at Alachua did not perform well on the standardized tests. Since 40 percent of Cook’s evaluation depended on those test scores, she was initially given an “unsatisfactory” rating at the same time her colleagues honored her as Teacher of the Year.

Stephen Bowen, Maine:

A week and a half of tension that began to mount last week with the release of an A-through-F grading system for public schools culminated Friday evening with Education Commissioner Stephen Bowen attacking Senate President Justin Alfond for delaying action on a sweeping teacher evaluation plan that has been under development for more than a year.

Alfond freely admitted he held the measure up because he and other Democratic leaders wanted to see what education initiatives Bowen and Gov. Paul LePage would unveil late in the legislative session on the heels of what Alfond called months of secrecy around destructive education initiatives by the administration. 

[...] 

“Because the governor and this commissioner have been so secretive and non-transparent with their education agenda, we felt it was only smart to ensure everything was on the table, like the A-through-F grading system, before we took up this bill,” said Alfond, referring to letter grades that the LePage administration gave all Maine schools last week. “We’re really glad we did that because we can now see so many elements of the department’s plans coming through.” 

[...] 

“This is the commissioner unfortunately following the governor and making everything political and everything into a lobbying effort,” said Alfond. “When it’s convenient for Commissioner Bowen to support education, he turns on the switch and when he wants to weaken the education system, which he has done repeatedly over the past week, he just throws a blind eye toward teachers and schools. It’s unfortunate that he is so political as a commissioner of education.”

Janet Barresi, Oklahoma (h/t to the always terrific Bob Sikes):

You need a scorecard to keep track of the outrages coming out of state Superintendent of Public Instruction Janet Barresi's office.  

The latest is that Barresi has been traveling the state telling anyone who would listen that authors of a new report critical of the controversial A-F grading system for schools have privately recanted.  

That, the authors say, is untrue. "I have no idea where that idea on the part of the superintendent came from," said senior project coordinator Patrick Forsyth, professor of education and co-director of the Oklahoma Center for Education Policy at the University of Oklahoma in Tulsa. "We are perplexed by that and don't know what to make of it." 

[...] 

The Legislature approved the A-F grading system but Barresi's department wrote the rules and imposed them with virtually no input from local school officials. Most local superintendents and principals don't oppose a grading system, but they want it to be consistent, fair and transparent.  

A report by senior researchers at OU and OSU concluded that the grading system is "neither clear nor comparable."  

It looks as if Barresi is traveling the state telling groups what she wants them to hear - that the report's authors are privately recanting their published work. 

That's poppycock.  

Barresi is a loose cannon whose dedication to Oklahoma public education continues to come into question. Look for a scapegoat for this latest foul-up. 

Deborah Gist, Rhode Island:

The overwhelming majority of Rhode Island’s public school teachers do not want Gov. Lincoln Chafee to extend Education Commissioner Deborah Gist’s contract, according to a poll released Tuesday by the state’s leading teachers unions.

The survey of 402 teachers shows 85% of those asked believe Gist’s contract should not be renewed. The poll also found that 73% of teachers find Gist to be “somewhat ineffective” or “infective” and another 82% feel less respected than they did when Gist was hired in 2009.

“For too long Commissioner Gist has spoken of her support among classroom teachers,” Frank Flynn, the president of the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals said in a prepared statement. “We decided to put that notion to an independent test. This survey found that she is not supported by classroom teachers. In fact, there is overwhelming evidence that her leadership is almost universally rejected.”

More Gist (h/t Diane Ravitch):

The truth is that the NECAP wasn’t designed to be a graduation test, and this was obvious from the very beginning. It has been coerced into the role not because it was good for kids, but because it was cheaper than designing a dedicated graduation test. The features that make it a bad graduation test are objectively true facts about the test and its design. Neither editing technical documentation, committee-hearing filibusters, or cutting off public comment at Board of Education meetings will change those facts.

I have no doubt at all that the commissioner can fend off challenges from the public over these matters, indefinitely. But reality will — as it usually does — have the last word. And children will pay the price. The question for Board of Education members, legislators, school administrators, teachers, and parents is which side they want to be on.

Kevin Huffman, Tennessee:

Nashville Democrats are piling on Tennessee Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman for his decision not to attend this afternoon’s special Metro school board meeting where controversial state charter authorizer legislation will be the focus. 

A Friday letter signed by Democratic Reps. Sherry Jones, Mike Stewart, Jason Powell and Darren Jernigan expresses “disappointment” over Huffman’s unwillingness to visit Metro’s Bransford Avenue boardroom at the invitation of the board. 

“Your office is less than four miles from those of the school board, which has simply requested an opportunity to have a conversation about recent press reports suggesting that the legislation poses extreme financial risks for our county,” the letter reads. “Participating in such a discussion would seem to us to be a matter of common courtesy, in addition to an important part of your job.”

More Huffman:

Over at WPLN, Daniel Potter has a story about the number of teacher retirements doubling in the last five years.

More Tennessee teachers are heading for the exits. Since 2008 the number is up by more than a thousand — nearly doubling — to a total last year of almost 2,200. Exactly why is a bit of a mystery.

Some teachers see it as a response to a couple years of politically charged upheaval in state education policy. But state officials say it’s not so clear-cut, and even go so far as to argue higher turnover has an upside.

You can already see the root of the silliness in these two paragraphs. Teachers are retiring. Teachers say that it's because of job upheaval. It would seem logical to believe teachers about why they're retiring or thinking about retiring. But no, our silly state asks us to ignore teachers' own statements about why they retire, and instead accept that those teachers are mistaken or lying or ... I don't know ... ignorant of their own motivations. The state can tell us the real truth: "The uptick in retirements might have less to do with shifting policy, says Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman, and more to do with the economy."

But, wait! It gets better. Because not only is Huffman going to try to sell us on his ability to know teachers' minds better than they know them themselves, Huffman is going to try to tell us all this retirement is a good sign — saying that "our lowest-performing teachers were retiring at twice the rate of our best-performing teachers.”

Twice the rate! Wow, that sounds like great news. Except Potter looks at the actual numbers, not the rate, and finds we're losing more good teachers than bad.

But it’s worth comparing more than just rates. In terms of real people, last year more top teachers retired — 129 of them, compared to 96 from the bottom. So even though 5s retired at a lower rate, there were still far more of them gone. State officials argue the rate is a more telling comparison, since in 2012 there were 6,704 teachers with 5s on the 1-to-5 scale, while 1s totaled just 2,644.

So, what conclusion are we to draw from our little state-to-state tour of the "Chiefs'" fiefdoms? How about this:

Jeb! Bush's "Chiefs For Change" are perhaps the most disliked, unaccountable, overly political, and untrusted public officials in the country.

Heckuva job, Jebbie!

Where did I find all these clowns?

*Why do I call him "Jeb!"?

Believe it or not, we called him "the smart one"!

Bill Gates's Ridiculous TED Talk, Part III: Shanghai Surprise

Let's get back to Bill Gates's astonishing talk at the latest TED conference about teacher evaluation. In Part I and Part II of this series, I challenged one of Gates's primary assertions: that "over 98% of teachers just got one word of feedback: 'Satisfactory.'"

There's simply no reason to believe this patently absurd statement is true; I find it amazing that Gates would make this claim without the slightest bit of hesitation. I can only hope he is challenged one day to provide a source - but I'm not holding my breath waiting.

Let's go on to another part of the speech. Thanks to Diane Ravitch, we now have a transcript of this video, which appears to be an abridged version of the live speech. I mention that because we can't be entirely sure, based on this excerpt, of the full context of Gates's words. Still, I found this next statement remarkable:

Let’s look at the best academic performer: the province of Shanghai, China. Now, they rank number one across the board, in reading, math and science, and one of the keys to Shanghai’s incredible success is the way they help teachers keep improving. They made sure that younger teachers get a chance to watch master teachers at work. They have weekly study groups, where teachers get together and talk about what’s working. They even require each teacher to observe and give feedback to their colleagues. 

The clear implication here is that Shanghai's success in international testing is due to their teacher evaluation policies. I'm not about to say that there isn't anything we can learn from Shanghai, but it seems to me that what Gates is talking about here already happens in the United States.

Take younger teachers watching masters: isn't that the exact definition of student teaching? Aren't "study groups" another name for "department meetings"? Aren't peer observations already used in many districts, sometimes in the form of collegial visits?

Since Gates's theory seems awfully facile, I did a little digging into Shanghai's education system. The OECD - the folks who sponsor the best-known international test, the PISA - recently published an analysis of Shanghai's educational reforms:

China has a long tradition of valuing education highly. This began with the civil examination system, established in 603 AD, which was also exported to Japan and Korea later in the 7th century. It was a very competitive yet efficient system for selecting officials, and was known for its rigor and fairness. These examinations evolved over many dynasties before their abolition in 1905.

The system had three tiers of examinations, at county, provincial and national levels. There were variations, but the general mode was basically an essay test, where the candidates were confined for days in an examination cell, fed with good food, and required to write essays of political relevance. To do this, they had to be familiar with the classics, basically the Four Books and Five Classics, and refer all arguments to these works – hence the requirement for “rote- learning”. Good calligraphy and writing styles were also part of the basic requirements. The final level of selection was usually held in the examinations department, which was often part of the imperial organisation. Whoever gained the appreciation of the emperor, who was virtually the chief examiner, would be the champion, followed by a few runners-up. These winners were appointed to various official posts according to their examination results. [emphasis mine]

So there's a cultural predilection toward an education based on standardized tests - and rote learning - in China. Read the entire chapter if you're interested; it's fascinating. But this analysis is still missing the most necessary concept for understanding Shanghai's testing success:

The hukou system:

FOR MORE THAN half a century, the hukou (household registration) system in China has segregated the rural and urban populations, initially in geographical terms, but more fundamentally in social, economic, and political terms. It is the foundation of China’s divisive dualistic socioeconomic structure and the country’s two classes of citizenship. Under this system, some 700–800 million people are in effect treated as second-class citizens, deprived of the opportunity to settle legally in cities and of access to most of the basic welfare and state-provided services enjoyed by regular urban residents. To an individual, hukou status is an important ascribed attribute in determining one’s social and economic circumstances. The existence of such an overt discriminatory state institution is starkly incompatible with a rapidly modernizing China, aspiring to great power status. [emphasis mine]

That's Kam Wing Chan from the University of Washington. When Shanghai's "miracle" test scores were published back in 2009, Kam was one of the few scholars to understand how to interpret those scores within the context of Shanghai's extreme economic segregation:

Even more important, but far less-known, is that in Shanghai, as in most other Chinese cities, the rural migrant workers that are the true urban working poor (totaling about 150 million in the country), are not allowed to send their kids to public high schools in the city. This is engineered by the discriminatory hukou or household registration system, which classifies them as "outsiders." Those teenagers will have to go back home to continue education, or drop out of school altogether.

In other words, the city has 3 to 4 million working poor, but its high-school system conveniently does not need to provide for the kids of that segment. In essence, the poor kids are purged from Shanghai's sample of 5,100 students taking the tests. The Shanghai sample is the extract of China's extract. A fairer play would be to ask kids at Seattle's private Lakeside School to race against Shanghai's kids. [emphasis mine]

Guess where Bill Gates's sends his own kids? To his alma mater: the Lakeside School.

Heh...

Apparently, to its credit, the Chinese central government has tried to break down the barriers to education that hukou has erected for urban poor children. Local interference and bureaucracy, however, have conspired to keep Shanghai's schools economically segregated:

Under normal circumstances, children inherit their hukou classifications from their parents at their time of birth, and migrant parents are often living in cities without the proper urban hukou necessary for access to state services such as health care and education.44 Once born with rural hukou classification, these migrant children will similarly face problems accessing state services in urban areas. To frame the scale of this issue, it is estimated that approximately 19 million migrant children are currently living in China’s cities.45 A journalist reporting on migrant children noted:

Chinese children are entitled to a state education, but not all of them get one. And the tens of millions born to migrant workers . . . are among the most vulnerable, owing to a registration system that divides the country’s citizens into rural and urban dwellers, and dictates their rights accordingly.46

Migrant children face difficulties accessing state education for several reasons. Urban public schools often receive no additional funding from the central government for these children, so many of them are turned away even if their parents can afford to pay the exorbitant “donations” some schools charge to admit migrant children who meet the designated criteria.47

Many migrant families turn to private schools to educate their children, but local governments consistently demolish these institutions in the name of urban development.48

There's some preliminary research that suggests that these Chinese urban private schools perform far worse than the public schools. Again, the de-centralization of the Chinese government seems to have created a system where migrant children living in cities are denied access to Shanghai's "high-performing" public high schools. And hukou is only part of the problem:

Educational success or stagnation in China can hinge on one issue, tuition. High school tuition costs about $450 per year, a big chunk of a paycheck for a minimum-wage worker in Shanghai, who earns $164 a month.⁸

To be fair: according to the authors here, Shanghai actually does better in attempting to address inequality than many other Chinese cities. Still, that only means they are the best of the worst.

Shanghai is a city where the working poor cannot send their children to local high schools. And the international comparisons that put Shanghai at the top of the world - the ones Bill Gates frets about - are based on high school scores.

Has any one of the many people paid to tell Bill Gates these things ever thought to bring this matter up? Or have they figured out he would rather not be bothered with these pesky details?

Better do a search for "hukou" on Bing...

ADDING: The best-known comparison of international test scores for elementary students is probably the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). Download the 2011 report and look at the list of participants on page 2. Notice who's missing?

Shanghai. I would very much like to see the results of an administration of the TIMSS for 4th and 8th Grades for Shanghai, including all of the immigrant children denied adequate education under the hukou system. I doubt the province would look nearly as "miraculous" then. 

Bill Gates's Ridiculous TED Talk, Part II

As I blogged before, Bill Gates's talk at TED about teacher evaluation was patently absurd. Gates actually said this:

(1:06) Until recently, over 98% of teachers just got one word of feedback: "Satisfactory."

That is an amazingly ignorant statement on its face. Does Gates really believe teachers get "one word of feedback" in their evaluations? Seriously?

We live in a world where powerful people like Gates are allowed to make audacious statements like this without any vetting: who has the brass to ask Gates to give his source for such an obviously ridiculous claim? The TED people didn't think it was worth their while to demand that Gates back up his clam with a citation - so I had to go digging...

My best guess as to where Gates got this ridiculous claim is from what has become the Rosetta Stone of reforminess: The Widget Effect, published by Michelle Rhee's former playpen, The New Teacher Project. Turn to page 12:

These data often stand in sharp relief against current levels of student achievement. For example, in Denver schools that did not make adequate yearly progress (AYP), more than 98 percent of tenured teachers received the highest rating—satisfactory.16 On average, over the last three years, only 10 percent17 of failing schools issued at least one unsatisfactory rating to a tenured teacher. [emphasis mine]

Did Gates get his claim from here? Dear lord, let's hope not - it would be astonishingly ignorant for Bill Gates to make the claim that "98% of teachers just got one word of feedback" on the basis of a think-tanky, un-vetted study about a small sub-section of Denver's "failing" schools.

I've been combing through the Gates MET Project's website to find another citation for Gates's claim. So far, I've found nothing: TNTP's report is all I can find. But perhaps the fine folks at the Gates Foundation will help me out...

What is the source for Bill Gates's claim that "Until recently, over 98% of teachers just got one word of feedback: 'Satisfactory.'"?

Under any reasonable standard, Gates has an obligation to provide proof for his claim. What is your source, Mr. Gates? Show us the research that backs up your assertion. As a working teacher, I would dearly love to see what has informed your opinions about my chosen career.

I've got lots of research right here! Just waiting for Windows 8 to reboot...

Education Privatizers LOVE Steve Fulop

Leave it to PolitickerNJ to write an important story, yet skip all the meaningful facets:

Following up on his endorsement of Steve Fulop, Bishop Reginald Jackson did a robocall tonight for the Jersey City mayoral candidate. 

"Steve is the only candidate with a real jobs plan for Jersey City residents," Jackson said in the robocall to targeted voters. "Steve will also work to clean up the dirty streets and end political corruption at city hall."

Jackson urges residents to vote for Fulop, "a real Democrat." [emphasis mine]

Let's fill in a few relevant details, shall we? Starting with the woman Jackson is married to, who happens to be the CEO of the reformy outfit Excellent Education for Everyone (E3):

Christy Davis Jackson, award winning entrepreneur, author, motivational speaker and attorney, has been tapped by Fortune 100 companies, non-profit organizations and small businesses alike to develop, manage and execute strategic, leadership and diversity management programs to increase company performance. 

As President and CEO of E3, Christy’s leadership and management skills have helped energize the Urban Education Reform and School Choice movement. She understands the value of a quality education and is leading the charge to see to it that every child in New Jersey’s receive’s an excellent education. [emphasis mine]

E3 has been at the forefront of the choice "movement" in New Jersey for years; Davis Jackson, the controversial wife of Reginald Jackson, is currently E3's CEO. Reginald gave up his position on E3's board when Christy took over as CEO, but his fellow member of the Black Ministers Council, Therman Evans, has stayed on to chair the board of E3.

Of course, the BMC is deeply involved in charter school expansion and voucher cheerleading. Reginald bragged on how he was able to get charter applications from his fellow BMC members approved by the NJDOE; his political connections to the Christie administration and the NJDOE were no doubt helpful.

The most (in)famous of these charter applications was brought forward by Pastor Amir Khan, who sought to open a charter school in Cherry Hill. The community fought hard against this charter and eventually stopped Khan's plans. As I've said before, I don't understand why men of the cloth are so anxious to open up secular charter schools. Khan, caught in a moment of candor, gave us a clue:

Khan already operates an approximately 85-student private school on the property. 

But the opening of the larger charter school is essential to the church's plan to buy the land from the diocese, he said. 

"We were anticipating the charter school to get additional income to carry us," he said. [emphasis mine]

Oh, my...

Jackson and the BMC are also big voucher pushers; they supported a lawsuit brought last year by E3 and others that would have forced Camden's already underfunded school district to come up with money for school vouchers (the lawsuit was dismissed).

So there isn't a reformier couple in the Garden State than the Jacksons - and they are backing Fulop as mayor of New Jersey's second largest city. Remember, Fulop was the one who orchestrated the secret meeting with Education Commissioner Chris Cerf to install Cerf's preferred superintendent. Fulop has also been working hard to get slates of candidates elected to the JCBOE that are loyal to him, using money from David Tepper, the sugar daddy of B4K, New Jersey's reformiest lobbying outfit.

Why is Fulop paying all this attention to the schools? And why would Fulop align himself with an education privatizer like Jackson?

Perhaps Jersey City voters ought to ask themselves these questions when they go to the polls.

Preferred by school privatizers throughout New Jersey!

Bill Gates's Ridiculous TED Talk, Part I

I didn't even have to go two minutes into this spiel by Bill Gates before he laid out a whopper so large it's simply stunning:

(1:06) Until recently, over 98% of teachers just got one word of feedback: "Satisfactory."

That is astonishingly wrong. No teacher I've ever heard of ever got a one-word evaluation. Every principal I've ever worked for has written multiple pages about my teaching when doing my summative evaluation. Principals are, in fact, required to give meaningful feedback to their teachers; if they don't, they are derelict in their duties. All good school leadership programs require training in teacher evaluation.

Folks, you know I usually give gobs of links in my posts. But I feel stupid trying to add them here. Do any of you reading this actually think principals simply give one word of feedback to 98% of teachers in their evaluations? Do you really think this is how schools work? Does Gates?

There are only two reasons for anyone to make such a transparently incorrect statement: ignorance or mendacity. I'll give Gates the benefit of the doubt and just say his lack of experience with America's public schools must have rendered him hopelessly clueless.

I'd suggest he spend some time getting himself up to speed. It might be better, however, if he gave up on interfering in public education and instead focused his efforts on fixing Windows 8...

Soon, I'll make public education as good as Windows 8!

ADDING: Dear lord, Gates's talk may be the freakin' stupidest thing I've ever heard. He uses Shanghai as role model for teacher training, because the students do so well. But it never occurs to Bill that Shanghai is one of the most economically segregated cities in Asia, if not the world. Has he never heard of the hukou system?

More in a bit.

What's In a Name? Only Jeb! Bush Knows.

Hanna Skandera is now the head chief of Jeb Bush!'s reformy group, Chiefs For Change. And she's decided to celeberate by snatching up a title that was not conferred on her by law:

Hanna Skandera, one of most controversial figures in state government, has given herself a new title. 

Even without the New Mexico Senate's vote of approval, Skandera is calling herself secretary of public education. 

It would seem a not-so-subtle dig at a Democrat in the Senate who waited two years to schedule Skandera's confirmation hearing, then never held a vote on it. 

Now, publicists in Republican Gov. Susana Martinez's administration and Skandera herself have stopped referring to her as "secretary-designate" of education. The designate title is for cabinet members still awaiting a confirmation vote by the Senate. 

Skandera, 39, has been running the state Public Education Department for almost 2 1/2 years. Rules Committee Chairwoman Sen. Linda Lopez, D-Albuquerque, finally called Skandera for a confirmation hearing this year. 

Lopez accepted 10 hours of public testimony and committee debate about Skandera, but then recessed the confirmation hearing without any vote on Skandera's nomination. 

Lopez said she wanted more documents related to Skandera's performance and management of the Public Education Department. Her decision meant that the full 42-member Senate could not vote on whether Skandera should stay on the job or be removed from office. [emphasis mine]

Cheeky, huh? And I'm not the only one who thinks so. Now here's what's funny about this...

One of Skandera's most prominent fellow "Chiefs For Change" is NJ Education Commissioner Chris Cerf. Since Newark remains under state control after nearly two decades, Cerf is the de facto tsar* of the city's schools. And the Commissioner was not happy when the elected schools advisory board members decided to change their titles:

The board also passed resolutions Tuesday to change its official name from Newark Public Schools Advisory Board to Newark Board of Education and to prevent students from facing disciplinary action for protesting conditions in their schools.

However, the board has no authority to change its name, Morgan said. State education officials will continue to refer to the board as the Newark Public Schools Advisory School Board, she said. [emphasis mine]

So I guess the rules are this:

- If Jeb! Bush likes you, you can call yourself what you want, regardless of what elected officials say.

- But if one of Jeb!'s proteges doesn't like you, you can't call yourself what you want, even if elected officials say otherwise.

Because Jeb!, I guess, knows better than people who were actually elected to office. Everyone OK with that?

I am!

ADDING: I lived in Florida when Bush ran for his second term as governor. His campaign slogan was: "Jeb!" Ever since then, I always think of Jeb with the added "!"



* Latin-Russian metaphor!