More choice. Academic rigor. New school configurations. School/teacher reward plans. I listened to Dr. Evans at Thursday night’ forum with hope and dread. Hope: Because the strategic plan and this year’s targets are bold and doable. Dread: Because the foes of change in Paterson have defeated every
Read more →Dr. Evans brought better news to the Board of Education on Wednesday night. The meeting was called to order at 7:05 with Best, Guzman, Irving, Kerr, Mendez and Simmons present. Rodriguez and Hodges entered at 7:10 and Taylor at 7:30 pm. Evans announced that the special auditors
Read more →Yesterday, I went to see “Waiting for Superman, with four colleagues. Going with my trusted colleagues is very important to this story, because I didn’t go alone. As I think back upon the film, I’m stuck by the isolation of everybody in it-parents, children, teachers, experts. They
Read more →You decide: You say that you want everyone to take the bus to the game. The bus costs $3.00. Jerry has three dollars, Stacey has $2.50 and Eddie has $2.00. Ok , you say, I’ll give everyone $.50 so they can take the bus. That’s fair, everyone gets
Read more →Two interesting reports were released Oct 12: one on fairness in school funding and the other on mayoral control of schools. I’ll write about the school funding report later. But for now, let’s consider mayoral control of schools as a possible way to return to local control.
Read more →Most of the news wasn’t good. Spring 2010 test scores were mostly down. One hundred eighty-six seniors didn’t pass the final exit exam and were denied diplomas. The board had lots of ideas about what to do that include all of us, especially parents, in motivating students.
Read more →Yesterday I attended the Joint committee on Public Schools meeting. Here are a few things I thought noteworthy. Senator Rice asked some very pointed questions about QSAC. He wanted to know: the implementation process, how many districts had been evaluated, how many were in each level of monitoring
Read more →On Tuesday, October 5, the Joint Committee on the Public Schools will hold a hearing on state takover. Our legislators want to know how the NJ QSAC law is working. We can tell you- not very well. Ever since the first QSAC evaluation was delivered in a
Read more →