New Depths of Ignorance For the Star-Ledger

ME (speaking with mouthful of muffin): Would it be wrong for me to write a post entitled: "Star-Ledger Editorial Board: the Stupidest People on Earth!"

MRS. JAZZMAN (looking up from sipping smoothie): Yes, it would. Not only is it unnecessarily provocative, it's untrue. They're not the stupidest people on Earth.

ME: But they wrote this!

For perspective, know that the reforms [NJ Democratic gubernatorial candidate Barbara] Buono opposes are supported not just by our Republican governor, but by President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who have defied the teachers unions on these issues despite the political cost. Buono is positioning herself to the left of that bipartisan coalition.

MRS. JAZZMAN: Are you telling me they are actually arguing a policy must be correct just because Chris Christie and Arne Duncan both support it?

ME: Yes!

MRS. JAZZMAN: (pause) Yeah, that is really stupid.

ME: And what about this?

Begin with the new teachers’ contract in Newark. It provides bonuses to the best teachers while freezing the pay of those who perform poorly. It eases the path to get rid of persistently bad teachers. It brings the kind of accountability that the NJEA has always resisted as it seeks to protect its members, good or bad.

Buono opposes merit pay, and is skeptical about the use of tests to help assess teacher performance. She would slam the brakes on this kind of change.

ME: I just wrote several posts about the merit pay plan in Newark (here, here, and here). Not only are the Newark teachers getting gypped out of the Facebook millions they were promised; a teacher is more likely to be rated "Highly Effective" if she isn't in the merit pay-eligible pool!

MRS. JAZZMAN: Really?

ME: Haven't you been reading the blog?

MRS. JAZZMAN: Like I have time for that. Anyway, that paragraph is dumb even without the merit pay: why does the Star-Ledger always think the NJEA wants to protect "bad" teachers? All they want is for evaluations to be fair.

ME: Well, once the former president of the NJEA said one sentence Tom Moran didn't like. He can't let that go. Besides, he loves calling teachers "liars," even when they aren't.

MRS. JAZZMAN: Why would his publishers think it was a good idea to insult teachers? Don't they teach people how to read? Don't newspapers need readers?

ME: Exactly my point! These people are stupid! Look at this!

On charter schools, she is even worse. She would require a municipal referendum on each new charter school, turning what is now a sober and professional screening process into a political dogfight that the union would probably win every time. It is a poison pill, plain and simple.

In Newark, roughly 10,000 families are on waiting lists to get their children into charter schools, and for good reason. A study by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes found that charter students exhibited almost twice the achievement gains of students in Newark’s traditional schools.

Why halt a promising reform that is in such high demand?

MRS. JAZZMAN: So what Moran is saying is that if a charter came to our town, even if we all voted that we didn't want it, we should still be forced to take it and drain money away from the Jazzboys' schools to fund it?!

ME: That's exactly what he's saying. And I know you've read my posts about the CREDO study.

MRS. JAZZMAN: I did, but I'm glad you linked to Darcie Cimarusti and Bruce Baker and Julia Sass Rubin. Bruce's post really explained it well:

The kids in the charters aren't the same as the kids in the public schools. Why don't you make more fun cartoons like this?

ME: Because you made me spend all afternoon yesterday searching the attic for the car carrier.

MRS. JAZZMAN: That took maybe five minutes!

ME: Whatever. What about this?

Finally, she wants to fully fund the education formula, which is plainly unrealistic in these tight budget times.

MRS. JAZZMAN: But the funding formula is the law! It HAS to be funded! And the gap between spending out here in the suburbs and the cities has gotten worse under Christie! Shouldn't the Star-Ledger be outraged that Christie is giving away tax gifts to wealthy people while the students in the cities get less funding and wind up in crumbling schools?!

ME: You would think so -- but the Star-Ledger Editorial Board members don't know any of that because they're stupid! The "Stupidest People on Earth!" Why can't I say that?

MRS. JAZZMAN: Look, you've got a point. But saying that sort of thing is beneath you. You can't expect people to listen to what you're saying when you start throwing words like "stupid" around. No one's going to take you seriously.

ME: (pause) Can I say: "ignorant"?

MRS. JAZZMAN: (pause) Yeah, OK. After you weed the front walk.

ME: You gonna finish that smoothie?

MRS. JAZZMAN: Yes.

Star-Ledger Editorial Board

(This conversation, like most of our conversations, may exist slightly differently in my mind than in reality...)

Three Years Ago a Star Was Born: Marie Corfield

It's hard to believe, but it was three years ago this very day when an art teacher from Flemington stood up to a bully named Chris Christie and gave him a piece of her mind:



Keep in mind, this was before we had heard Christie compare teachers to drug dealers and tell reporters to "take a bat out" on a 76-year-old state senator and call an Iraq War veteran an "idiot." Marie Corfield was among the first, if not the first, of us to stand up to this loudmouth and tell him to step off.

That she did it in a scripted, phony "town hall" full of the governor's sycophants speaks volumes to this woman's bravery. That she wasn't a career politician, yet took on the difficult task of running for the legislature, speaks volumes about her integrity.

Marie is going to make a great assemblywoman: smart, tough, compassionate, and practical, she has all the qualities a great teacher (and a great mom) develops on the job. She's in a contested district, but she's got the backing of her party and a great staff of volunteers. It's a real grassroots candidacy -- one that will put one of our own in office to finally fight for us.

Help Marie win so she can represent us. You know what to do.

Marie Corfield for NJ Assembly!

Why Does Anyone Listen To Mike Bloomberg?

Only a few more months and we won't have to listen to Mike Bloomberg rattle off nonsense like this anymore:

You’re a believer in the empirical, in data. But after all the changes in standards, is there any credibility in the test scores and graduation rates?
It is very hard to explain complex numbers in a sound bite. 

But when the numbers went up, you were very happy to say so.
Yes. Compare us to Rochester: I think we’re at 30 percent up to standards. Rochester is at 5—5 percent! We’ve caught up to the whole state!

Oy:

Of course I'm sure Generalissimo Bloomberg could have single-handedly saved Kodak from going under had he been mayor in Rochester. Because he's been just so awesome for the working people of New York City; he says so himself:

So you don’t think the fact that the economic gap is increasing is a problem for the future of the city? 

The question you’ve got to ask yourself is, are we spending money to help those that are struggling? We spend $22,000 per year per student. No other city in the country spends that. We have a commitment to having a park within a ten-minute walk of everybody. I don’t think any administration has done as much to help the whole spectrum of people who live here.

$22K a student!?!

Continuing directly:

The truth of the matter is that there are more private-sector jobs in this city than ever before, and the people struggling at the bottom have more support than ever before. We’ve created something like 300,000 jobs at the bottom end, where they are really needed. [emphasis mine]

The Bloomberg legacy: 300K "bottom end" jobs. Aren't you impressed? He is...

Time to ride off into the sunset...

ADDING: If you decide you'd like to torture yourself and read Bloomberg's interview in its entirety, make sure to pause for a moment and reflect on the fact that the New York Times says Bloomberg is possessed of "a vision that succeeded brilliantly, but incompletely."

No wonder newspapers are dying.

Free Your Hair; Free Your Mind

[WARNING: UNCHECKED SARCASM AHEAD]

Sadly, it look like political correctness has won the day in the fight to groom people of color:

In the wake of an outcry over an Ohio charter school's attempt to ban "afro-puffs and small twisted braids," the institution’s dean has apologized and said the policy was taken out of context.

Because there's clearly a non-racist "context" for telling black parents how to groom their children; just give us time to think of one...

On June 14, officials at Horizon Science Academy in Lorian sent a letter to parents, outlining the school’s new dress code for the upcoming school year. Among other rules regarding hats and tattoos, the updated regulations said that "afro-puffs and small twisted braids, with or without rubber bands are NOT permitted,” according to a copy of the letter obtained by the blog Black Girl with Long Hair.

A swift backlash against the policy –- which many perceived as racist -- prompted school’s administration sent out a letter of apology on Saturday, explaining that the ban would not be included in a final version of the school’s new dress code. The letter, which can be found in its entirety on Black Girl with Long Hair, explained that the administration for the K – 10 school did not have “any intention of creating bias towards any of our students.”

See? All you folks who claim charter schools aren't "public" schools responsive to the needs of parents and protective of students' rights are dead wrong. All you need to do to get your child's charter to respond to your concerns is mount a national media campaign! Hey, no one said being a parent is easy...

James Knight, an advisory board member for the school, told HuffPost Live that the proposed policy was “a misunderstanding.” Knight, who has four African-American sons, said that the policy was specifically directed at the school’s male students.

“It had nothing to do with young ladies, young African-American ladies. It was really more so addressing young African-American men here at this school,” said Knight. “We want to maintain a certain type of college prep culture here, and we just want the young men to be well-groomed.”

Leila Noelliste, creator and editor of Black Girl with Long Hair, told HuffPost Live that the problem lies with the idea that natural African-American hair is not automatically considered well-groomed.

“It’s an issue black people face within the black community and outside, that our naturally occurring features are characterized as unruly, undisciplined, unkempt," Noelliste said. [emphasis mine]

Which, of course, is why poor black children living in cities need to be lined up and talked over and made to chant and marched through the halls and told to stop talking at lunch, even after all the "troublemakers" have been segregated away.

And it's also why communities exerting local control over their schools are so dangerous to the powers-that-be. Because if you allow a local community to make decisions about grooming, you're starting down a slippery slope that ends with teachers reading Howard Zinn and students questioning why they're stuck in crumbling schools. Next thing you know, mayoral candidates who call for raising "offensive" taxes on the wealthy to fund pre-school start moving up in the polls.

Freeing hair is the first, dangerous step in freeing minds.

Can't have that, can we?

The 1% says: "Whew..."

It's been a while since we've heard George preach, hasn't it?

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. 

ADDING: Silly me -- I forgot to add the story that started me thinking about all this in the first place:

The parents of a Tulsa girl have pulled her from school because the administration wouldn't let her keep her hairstyle. Speaking with KOKI-TV this week, Tiana Parker, 7, said tearfully, "They didn't like my dreads."

According to the parent-student handbook of the Deborah Brown Community School, a charter school, which Tiana attended until Friday, "Hairstyles such as dreadlocks, afros and other faddish styles are unacceptable. For safety reasons, girls' weaved hair should be no longer than shoulder length. Boy's hair is to be short and neatly trimmed." The school's website also states, "Uniforms are required as a part of the strict dress code we strongly enforce."

 Tiana's father, Terrance Parker, told KOKI that school administrators told him that his daughter didn't look presentable. "She's always presentable. I take pride in my kids looking nice," said Parker, who works as a barber. He also said that last year, she wore the same hairstyle to school without consequences. A school representative told Yahoo Shine via email, "We have photo documentation in our yearbook that her hair was not in dreadlocks during the 2012-2013 school year." [emphasis mine]

It will be such a relief when inBloom gets up and running; that way, charter schools will be able to track little black girls' hairstyles across state lines...

More Merit Pay Flimflam From Newark

A commenter makes a very good point about the Newark merit pay scam program:

20% were rated below effective, which means (.2*3200) 640 teachers did not increase in step. Using the average step increment on the Universal guide 13-14, ($2652) this means they saved approximately $1,697,280. If the bonuses cost them 1.4 million then they are still $300,000 ahead of the game without spending any of the FB money! [emphasis mine]

Let me amend this a bit:

The Memorandum of Agreement between the Newark Teachers Union and the state-run district outlines what happens when a teachers gets a rating of "partially effective" or "ineffective":

NPS shall implement a new educator evaluation system with four summative rating categories beginning in school year 2012-2013. (For  additional  details  see  “Teacher Coaching  and  Evaluation.”) There shall be movement on the steps and remuneration on the scale only by effective professional performance and valued experience. 

o Only educators who receive effective or highly effective annual summative evaluation ratings will be entitled to move up one step on the salary scale. 

o Educators who receive an ineffective annual summative evaluation rating will stay on their current salary step. These educators may request a Peer Validator. 

o Educators who receive a partially effective annual summative evaluation rating may remain on their current salary step. The decision about whether or not these educators will remain on their step is at the sole discretion of the Superintendent who will consult with Peer Validators (see Section X of the MOA). 

o Educators who receive a partially effective annual summative evaluation rating and are rated effective or  highly  effective  in  the  following  year’s annual  summative evaluation rating shall be entitled to a one-time stipend worth 50% of the difference between their new step and their old step as an incentive for improvement.[emphasis mine]

So this is a bit trickier than what the commenter said: we don't know if all the "partially effective" teachers stayed on their current step, and some monies need to be reserved for non-effective teachers if they improve this year. And that step increment could vary significantly depending on where teachers fall on the salary guide.

But the larger point is spot on: when 20% of Newark's teachers aren't getting any raises this year, that saves the district a lot of money that can then be put into the merit pay bonuses -- bonuses that were supposed to be paid out of Mark Zuckerberg's $100 million donation to Newark's schools.

I've said this before: merit pay will ultimately shift money from some teachers to others, using a generally noisy, crappy evaluation system that is incapable of making fine distinctions between teachers. No one can possibly believe that the Newark evaluation system is so precise that it can distinguish between the 20th and 21st percentiles in teacher "effectiveness." And yet that's exactly what's going on here -- with high-stakes consequences.

In addition, the $20 million in Zuckerberg money that was promised to teachers to fund this scheme has barely surfaced; it is, in fact, quite possible that only a tiny fraction of Zuck's bucks will ever make their way into the pockets of "great" teachers.

NPS, NJDOE, Chris Christie, Education Commissioner Chris Cerf, State Superintendent Cami Anderson, and Zuckerberg's FNF are quickly losing credibility on this issue. It is increasingly clear that the promises they made during the contract negotiation have been and will continue to be broken. The only way they can redeem themselves at this point is to allow for a full vetting of the merit pay program.

No teacher's union in New Jersey, or anywhere else in the country, should accept any agreement containing merit pay unless and until the Newark district releases as much data as possible about the state-run program.

Don't all of you agree?

Well...

Er...

Um...

I'm sorry, what was the question again?

The Educational Racism of Chris Christie

Yeah, I went there. But you tell me how else to honestly describe this:

Gov. Chris Christie plans to reappoint Newark School Superintendent Cami Anderson to another term.

And if some in the city don’t like it, too bad.

During a public appearance Wednesday at a school in Beach Haven, Christie was asked whether he and Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf plan to renew Anderson’s contract, given the level of criticism from the Newark community, about the job she’s doing.

"Yes we do, and we’re going to renew it because she’s done a great job, and I don’t care about the community criticism," Christie said. "We run the school district in Newark, not them." [emphasis mine]

Understand that this isn't an isolated incident for Christie; it is all part of a pattern. I pointed this out back in March of this year:

- Many citizens of Fort Lee, NJ, were unhappy with their school superintendent's performance. The local school board pressured him to resign. The state's response?

Nothing - even though that superintendent, Steve Engravalle, was a personal favorite of both Governor Christie and NJDOE Commissioner Cerf.

- Many citizens of Perth Amboy, NJ, were unhappy with their school superintendent's performance. The local school board voted to remove her. The state's response?

Reinstate her against their will, then wait out hearing an appeal until a new school board could be elected (with the unprecedented help of tens of thousands of dollars in out-of-state money).

- Many citizens of Camden, NJ, were unhappy with their school superintendent's performance. The local school board pressured her to resign, and arranged interviews for her replacement. The state's response?

Completely take over the district and disenfranchise the board. (Keep in mind that the state had veto power over the superintendent's hiring back in 2007.)

Three different districts - three different responses from the state. Why is that, I wonder...

Fort Lee has a majority white/Asian student population, and relatively low levels of poverty. The locally-elected school board feels it made a mistake in hiring a district leader, and they get to remove him without giving up local control.

Perth Amboy has a majority Hispanic student population, and higher levels of poverty. The locally-elected school board feels it made a mistake in hiring a district leader, but they don't get to remove her. They do, however, retain local control.

Camden has a majority black/Hispanic student population and crushing levels of poverty. The locally-elected appointed school board feels it made a mistake in hiring a district leader, but they are now compelled to give up what little control over their district they had left.

In New Jersey, local control - for all its flaws - is a privilege enjoyed by communities with few students of color and little poverty.

Everyone good with this? After all, it's "for the kids"...

And then there's the double standard Christie engaged in when he personally appointed a woefully inexperienced young man to lead Camden's state-run school district. Princeton and Bridgewater have also been conducting superintendent searches; these relatively affluent districts with majority white populations, however, are allowed to have their locally elected school boards to hire leaders after a lengthy process that allows for multiple levels of community engagement:

Does anyone think the good people of Bridgewater and Princeton would put up with the governor coming into their town and forcing an uncertified, barely-experienced superintendent on them without any community input?

So why is this acceptable in Camden? What makes Camden so different from Princeton and Bridgewater that Chris Christie feels he can appoint whomever he wants to run the schools, no matter how inexperienced and ill-qualified?

Thinking....

Not enough evidence for you? How about a look at which districts around the state still have local control:

- There are currently three schools districts under state control in New Jersey: Newark, Paterson, and Jersey City. We'll add Perth Amboy and Camden in for kicks and giggles. Here's a not-very-elegant look at the demographics for the state and these districts:

As you can see, these urban districts have many more minority students than the state as a whole (keep in mind my state total includes these five districts). What about students in poverty, as measured by Free Lunch/Reduced Lunch status?

Many more kids in poverty, huh? Gosh, what a shock...

And then there's the matter of which school districts Christie's NJDOE deems as "failing":

 This first figure shows the demographic composition of schools by their classification. Perhaps the most astounding feature of this graph is that priority schools are nearly 100% black and Hispanic, while reward schools have very low levels of low income, black or Hispanic students.

Ask yourself this honestly: would Chris Christie ever attempt to wrest away local control of schools in Mendham? Would he interfere in a superintendent search in Haddonfield? Would he arrogantly proclaim he doesn't care about "community criticism" from voters in Sussex or Hunterdon or Ocean counties?

Of course he wouldn't. But when it's Newark or Paterson or Camden... well, you now how it is. Folks like "them" just need to go along with the program. It's for their own good...

It's not as if the "community criticism" in Newark is limited to a few small pockets of protest:

• The elected school advisory board cast a vote of "No Confidence" in Anderson.
• The elected city council unanimously called for a moratorium on all of Anderson's initiatives.
• The students themselves walked out of school in protest and marched down the street to make their grievances about inadequate funding known to their representatives.
• The teachers have blasted Anderson's administration for secrecy and are demanding a full audit of the district's finances.
• The parents are pursuing legal action to correct civil rights violations.

Would any superintendent in Morris County survive this level of assault from all the stakeholders in his or her district? Would Chris Christie blithely dismiss the concerns of all of these groups if they were coming from a school system in Somerset County?

One of the best ways to break down a people is to take away their right to educate their children as they -- as a community -- see fit. And substituting a consumerist notion of "choice" through charters and vouchers for real community engagement and empowerment is a cheap ploy to keep us from seeing what is really going on: Chris Christie is dismantling democracy and self-determination in communities of color, and he's doing so under the guise of "education reform."

By the way, fellow white people: when he and his acolytes have finished with the cities, do you think they will be satisfied? Do you think these reformy folks aren't going to be coming for your town's schools next?

One more thought:

"Yes we do, and we’re going to renew it because she’s done a great job, and I don’t care about the community criticism," Christie said. "We run the school district in Newark, not them." [emphasis mine]

"Them." Hmm, I seem to recall a time when Chris Christie thought the use of a pronoun like "them" told us something about attitude...

"Teachers who crowded the statehouse on Monday to try to intimidate public officials like Assemblyman Schroeder and Assemblywoman Vandervalk into not voting for pension and benefit reform. 

"And when one teacher was asked, "What are you doing here today? It's a Monday in the school year." She said, 'Oh, we got a substitute. I left a plan; it's not like they're watching videos or something.' 

"They. 'Not like they're watching videos or something.' I thought that was a really interesting part of the quote. That contraction: 'they're.' They didn't say 'the kids' then, did they? No, they only use the words 'the kids' when they want to evoke an emotional response from you which will get you to open your wallet and pay them. 

"When they're talking about protesting and fighting in Trenton, then it's 'they're.' 'They're watching videos or something.' I thought that was an interesting part of the quote. Language matters, ladies and gentlemen. Language is a window into attitude. And this isn't about the kids. So let's dispense with that portion of the argument.

For once, I heartily agree with the governor: I think Christie's use of the pronoun "them" when referring to the good people of Newark tells us all we need to know about his "attitude" toward letting "them" run their own schools.

"I don’t care about the community criticism," Christie said. "We run the school district in Newark, not them." 

ADDING: One more thing, from the article:

Mayor Cory Booker, who is expected to step down after an Oct. 16 special election for U.S. Senate, declined to comment.

(Sigh)...

ADDING MORE: Jon Pelto reminds us that this is not a problem limited to Christie or New Jersey.

What the Newark Merit Pay Experiment Is Telling Us

Right now, in the Newark, NJ school district, a grand merit pay experiment is underway. Understand that merit pay has never worked in schools and most likely won't work again in the Brick City. Still, the contract was negotiated and everyone signed off on it; merit pay is a reality in Newark for two more years, like it or not.

We may as well use this time to thoroughly vet the Newark merit pay program to see if it works. Which means that someone with the chops to handle a serious policy analysis should be releasing regular, yearly reports to the public about how this program is faring.

Until that day comes, however, we can look at the data we do have to draw some conclusions. Case in point:

Lisa Fleisher of the Wall Street Journal has followed the story closer than just about any other reporter. And she recently released some very interesting information about Newark's distribution of merit pay: 

Last week, 190 Newark public-school teachers learned they’d be getting bonuses in a controversial merit-pay program funded by Facebookcreator Mark Zuckerberg‘s foundation. Not all of Newark’s 3,200 teachers were eligible to begin with, and even fewer – only 11 teachers – qualified for the full bonus amount of $12,500.

Here’s a breakdown of how Newark’s bonuses were handed out, and more about the program.

Opt-out

The new contract approved in November by the Newark Teachers Union was a big leap of faith for some teachers. The district and union agreed to allow some teachers with advanced degrees to opt-out of the new pay scale, and for some it made more financial sense to stick with the old pay system. Only about 20% of the 1,300 teachers with masters and doctorates chose to try out the new system. Newark superintendent Cami Anderson told NJSpotlight she was happy with the figure.

[...]

Performance

Teachers had to score highly effective on the district’s four-tiered evaluation system to get a bonus. But regardless of which pay scale teachers were on, they were only guaranteed an annual experienced-based pay bump if they scored effective or highly effective. Here’s a breakdown of how all teachers rated, both those on the new pay scale and those who opted out:

• Highly effective –11%
• Effective – 69%
• Partially effective – 16%
• Ineffective – 4%

All 190 teachers who received bonuses were rated highly effective.

Let's play around a bit with the numbers. There are five data points I take away from this report:

1. Total teachers: 3200 
2. Teacher getting bonuses: 190 
3. Teachers w/advanced degrees: 1300 
4. % of teachers w/adv degrees who opted into merit pay: 20% 
5. % of teachers rated Highly Effective (HE): 11% 

That is enough information for us to be able to draw some conclusions. You can check out my calculations at the end of the post, but here -- assuming Fleisher's numbers are correct -- are the big takeaways:

• The pool of "merit pay eligible" teachers has 2160 members; 190 of those got merit pay because they were rated "Highly Effective."
• The pool of "opted out of merit pay" teachers has 1040 members; 162 of those were rated "Highly Effective."

In other words, about 9% of the teachers who were eligible for merit pay were HE; however, 16% of the teachers who opted out of the merit pay system were HE.

Remember: according to the Memorandum of Agreement between the NTU and the state-run district,  only teachers who were more senior and had earned advanced degrees were eligible to opt out of the merit pay system; teachers without masters/doctorates and who were new to the district had to opt in. But one group was clearly more likely to earn a rating of HE than the other.

Newark teachers who are more senior, have advanced degrees, and who opted not to compete for merit pay were more likely to get a rating of "Highly Effective" than newer teachers without advanced degrees who were competing for a merit pay bonus.

Here are two different ways to look at the extrapolated data:

The numbers of HE teachers in and out of the merit pay pool are similar, but there are far more teachers not HE in the merit pay pool than out of it. Therefore...

The percentage of teachers out of the pool who are HE is higher than the percentage of teachers in the pool who are HE. Were I the state superintendent, Cami Anderson, I'd be wondering what I needed to do to keep my senior teachers with advanced degrees, as they are more likely to be highly effective.

Is it possible I'm missing some variable in this analysis? Absolutely -- which is why we need to release as much data as possible about the merit pay program in Newark. Only then can we determine whether merit pay is working and why.

No teacher's union in New Jersey, or anywhere else in the country, should accept any agreement containing merit pay unless and until the Newark district releases as much data as possible about the state-run program.

Isn't that fair? Isn't that prudent? Isn't that reasonable? I mean, we're making decisions based on data, aren't we?

Aren't we?

Er...

Um...

Well...

I'm sorry, what was the question?

Calculations:

Total teachers 3200
Teachers getting bonuses 190
Teachers w/advanced degrees 1300
%Teachers w/adv degrees who opted into merit pay 20%
%Teachers rated Highly Effective (HE) 11%

Teachers w/o adv degrees 1900
Teachers w/advanced degrees who opted IN 260
Teachers w/advanced degrees who opted OUT 1040

Sumcheck: Total Teachers 3200

Teachers in merit pay pool 2160
Teachers out of merit pay pool 1040

%ALL teachers who got HE 11%
Teachers who got HE (in & out of merit pay pool) 352
Teachers who got HE IN merit pay pool 190
Teachers who got HE OUT of merit pay pool 162

%Teachers who are HE IN merit pay pool 9%
%Teachers who are HE OUT of merit pay pool 16%

ADDING: I'd be very curious to see the percentage of HE teachers in of the pool of teachers with advanced degrees who opted into the merit pay system. How much do you want to bet it's higher even than 16%? That there is some self-selction going on?

NPS and NJDOE: data wants to be free. Release the numbers!

Back To School '13

Mrs. Jazzman says that when you have kids, January 1 isn't New Year's Day. No, the real start of the year comes on the first day back to school, which, for this teacher, is this week.

We just had our Labor Day tradition: Mrs. Jazzman's ribs, my baked beans, Jazzboys heating up the sauce, the Dutch neighbors and their very good wine...

We may have the looming conflict with Syria and the continuing assault on unions and all the other ills of the world casting a shadow on our fall. But there are family and friends and the small, simple pleasures of life to help us steel ourselves. There's 60-something Diana Nyad completing an impossible physical task. There's the professionalism and generosity of spirit in Philadelphia's teachers. There's the astonishing bravery -- both on the battlefield and at home -- of our best and brightest like Ty Carter.

If we have all that, and we remember that we have each other, we'll get by. We'll make it better. We always do.

I always throttle back the blog a bit in early Spetember to accommodate my job; this year will be no different. But I won't be slowing down too much, because we have so much to deal with over these next few months:

• The new teacher evaluation systems and tests that are coming to NJ and the rest of the country. What happened in New York was only the beginning of what will undoubtedly be an epidemic of nationwide madness. Operation Hindenburg, our local version, will be an especially disheartening disaster, as it is completely preventable. But we need to lay out the facts and we need to challenge our "betters" so that when this finally does explode in their faces, we'll be able to pick ourselves up and set things right.





• The release of Diane Ravitch's Reign of Error. I was honored to receive an advance copy, and it's really, really good. Go ahead put in your early order now: it may very well change the entire framework for this nation's discussion of education.
• Things are blowing up in cities all over the country: not only Chicago, but Philly, Boston, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and many other places. Who will have the guts and the smarts to emerge as the next Karen Lewis and lead their local teachers union in a fight to save public education?
• The charter cheerleaders are running out of excuses; how will they react when the truth has finally caught up with them?
• In light of their spectacular failures this past year, we need to watch Jeb! Bush's "Chiefs For Change" very carefully.
  
  
  
  
• Locally, we'll be watching Paymon Rouhanifard's rule over the Camden schools, the Newark merit pay scheme, the fights for equity and teacher bargaining rights in Paterson and Jersey City, the struggles of parents and students against institutional reforminess in Montclair, the ongoing soap opera that is Perth Amboy, and the wave of "reforms" coming from Trenton that is going to catch the 'burbs by surprise (I've been warning you...).

And so much more. It's been my pleasure to opine about these topics, and it's been my honor to have you as readers. Many, many thanks to those of you who email or retweet or "like" or post a comment. You've made this very gratifying for me; I'll do all I can to continue to make this edifying and maybe even occasionally entertaining for you.

This has become a yearly tradition: take it away, Francis...

The Merit Pay Fairy says: "Sorry kids, not even 'dis fairy can't make da summer no longer..."