Chris Christie of New Jersey won re-election by a crushing margin on Tuesday, a victory that vaulted him to the front ranks of Republican presidential contenders and made him his party’s foremost proponent of pragmatism over ideology the New York Times reports.
Mr. Christie declared that his decisive win should be a lesson for the nation’s broken political system and his feuding party: In a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans by over 700,000, Mr. Christie won a majority of the votes of women and Hispanics and made impressive inroads among younger voters and blacks — groups that Republicans nationally have struggled to attract.
The governor prevailed despite holding positions contrary to those of many New Jersey voters on several key issues, including same-sex marriage, abortion rights and the minimum wage, and despite an economic recovery that has trailed the rest of the country.
He attracted a broad coalition by campaigning as a straight-talking, even swaggering, leader who could reach across the aisle to solve problems.
“I know that if we can do this in Trenton, N.J., then maybe the folks in Washington, D.C., should tune in their TVs right now and see how it’s done,” Mr. Christie told a packed crowd at Convention Hall in Asbury Park, where his musical idol, Bruce Springsteen, holds holiday concerts, and where red and blue lighting gave the gathering a presidential campaign-like glow.
The governor all but lectured Republicans about how to appeal to groups beyond their base. “We don’t just show up in the places where we’re comfortable, we show up in the places we’re uncomfortable,” he said, adding, “You don’t just show up 6 months before an election.”
Around the country, Republicans alarmed by the surging grass roots support for the Tea Party wing were cheered by Mr. Christie’s success, saying they hope their party will learn not only from the size of Mr. Christie’s margin over Barbara Buono, a Democratic state senator, but also from the makeup of his support.
“We’ll be led back by our governors, and Chris Christie is now at the forefront of that resurgence,” said Ed Gillespie, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee.
Here is a man who wants to be president, who wants to be a role model, and who wants to brook no opposition. He’s only succeeded at the latter. This is what we get when we elect former prosecutors to public office. Prosecutors, remember, are true believers who are always, always, always right. Even when they’re wrong. But they never are wrong, so the point is proven. Challenging them is a challenge to the natural order of things.
Remember when New Jersey missed out on some wonderful federal Race to the Top dollars because Christie nixed the application that included some concessions to the New Jersey Education Association? That couldn’t be Christie’s fault, even though it was, so he fired Education Commissioner Brett Schundler.
So now we have an example of a teacher asking the governor why he’s against teachers, and his response is clearly venomous. Does he really think that teachers are supposed to like what he’s said and done over the past four years? Has he convinced himself that trying to tear down the NJEA, overtly accusing teachers of bringing pro-union sentiment into their classrooms, and saying that the public schools in New Jersey are failing would be popular among the education set? If this is his response to a teacher when his reelection is looking promising, just imagine his response in a national race when the press won’t let a story go just because the governor wants it to.
As for being a role model, Christie said in the first debate that he didn’t think his style was anything but telling people the truth and that New Jerseyans appreciated his candor. Now we know what that really means: I’m right, you’re wrong and I’m going to bully you into believing me. This man is no role model, and he never will be.
But there is a remedy to all of this. On Tuesday, vote for Barbara Buono. She knows how to speak to people, but more importantly, she knows how to listen to people. She will make us proud as our governor. And she will do right by families, workers, the environment and our long-term future.
So let’s see where we stand at this moment with the brand spanking new teacher evaluation system in New Jersey. This is the law that is going to revolutionize teaching and learning by making sure that students are mastering content and skills and teachers are doing their jobs to ensure learning in the classroom. For those of us not covered by a standardized assessment, the key is the SGO, or Student Growth Objectives, that is supposed to measure student growth (duh).
How are we doing this? By taking the measure of our students at the beginning of the year. Then we’ll evaluate them again in a few months to see how much they’ve learned. In other words, welcome to testing-mania.
The overwhelming majority of teachers in New Jersey have already given an assessment to their students, usually in the form of a test. Most of these tests ask for knowledge and skills that students haven’t been taught yet. The assumption, then, is that when we re-give these tests again in February or March, the students will have learned the information because they’ve been, well, taught it. Students learn, teachers have done their jobs, numbers go up, salaries are paid.
So what’s the problem? Plenty. Most of these tests are low stakes and mean virtually nothing to the students, while meaning everything for the teachers. In addition, there is no measurable data that says that this is a viable method for objectively evaluating teachers. And districts are getting mucho creative with SGOs in ways that even the Christie Administration didn’t envision.
For example, many teachers who plan on taking leaves for maternity or other family concerns, have been told to administer both a pre-and post-assessment in as little as 6 weeks, so the district has a record of their progress. This flies in the face of everything we know about education and assessment, and is using time as the relevant factor and not learning. Why don’t I just do a Monday-Friday assessment cycle and be done with it. I can teach anyone how to write an effective thesis in a week if that’s all I’m going to measure.
It’s also becoming clear, as I speak to colleagues and monitor the news, that administrators and school boards are tying bonuses to the percentage of staff that has an SGO. The law says that classroom teachers must have them, but leaves it up to the district as to whether nurses, guidance counselors and other support staff must have them. Tying SGOs to a bonus virtually guarantees that all staff will be responsible for an SGO, and it’s up to the district to develop one.
Are we connecting student health rates to nurses? How many students come to see them over a three month period? Do we want more students to visit the nurse or fewer? What’s the difference between taking blood pressure and earning a 4 under the Danielson model and earning a 3?
For guidance counselors, are we tying failure rates to counselors? College acceptances? If a child is crying on the way in to the counselor’s office but smiling on the way out, is that an effective SGO?
The dirty truth is that there’s really no way to know. It’s the same for teachers. Once we administer the test/evaluation, then that becomes the default assessment that we’re going to focus on for three months. The tests rule. And it will get even worse come the spring when teachers covered by a state test enter the maelstrom and sweat out their number through the summer.
This evaluation system is taking money, time and resources away from education. It’s not scientifically valid. It wastes time. It’s a step backwards, and it insults teachers everywhere by assuming that they are not effective.
With polls suggesting a tightening race and only a few days remaining in the United States Senate contest in New Jersey, thousands of people gathered at a racetrack here to watch Sarah Palin endorse the Republican candidate, Steve Lonegan.
Sarah Palin, right, backed Steve Lonegan, shown with his wife, Lorraine, with their daughters, Katherine, left, and Brooke.
“Something big is happening here; it’s called momentum,” said Ms. Palin, the former Alaska governor who was John McCain’s running mate during the 2008 presidential election. “The country knows it, the media knows it.”
Recent polls have shown Mr. Lonegan, a former mayor of Bogota, N.J., and a businessman, gaining ground on his nationally known Democratic rival, Mayor Cory A. Booker of Newark. The election is on Wednesday.
The surge has surprised many who thought the special election to fill the seat that became vacant upon the death this year of Senator Frank R. Lautenburg, a veteran Democrat, would be a landslide victory for Mr. Booker.
While Mr. Booker maintains a 12-point lead in the polls, Mr. Lonegan has gained traction in part by framing the election as a referendum on Mr. Booker’s celebrity.
“My opponent, Cory Booker, was anointed by Hollywood; he was anointed by Oprah,” Mr. Lonegan said. “California doesn’t need a third senator.”
More than 2,000 supporters of Mr. Lonegan’s crammed beside a dirt racetrack in front of a bus emblazoned with “Tea Party Express.” Many hoisted yellow flags that said “Don’t Tread on Me.” Most raised iPhones to snap photos of Ms. Palin.
He’s winning and he will win, but in the meantime he’s not running a stellar campaign and there’s something about Steve Lonegan that makes you want to watch him for a while. Like a really bad car accident or a singer who’s so off key you smile while listening to them or someone who reminds you of a character out of 1984. After a time, though, you realize that he wants to be taken seriously and that’s when you disengage. That will happen next week.
Lonegan probably isn’t saying it now, but he’s got to be unhappy with Chris Christie’s choice to schedule this election separately from the gubernatorial election in November. Christie’s original argument was that having the Senate election on the same date would pull in more Democrats, who would support Booker, to also vote for Barbara Buono. The real loser, though, will be Lonegan, who would otherwise gain some supporters who are showing up to vote for the governor. Or maybe Christie really doesn’t like Lonegan and cares not whether he wins. In any case, this openly helps Christie, who has made a Trenton career by making sure that his needs are taken care of.
This will be the last election that Christie will win, so in the end, he and Lonegan will end their elective political careers the same way. Meanwhile, Cory Booker will have six years to sharpen his running skills before he too considers a national campaign.
If the thought of Chris Christie being reelected makes you feel woozy, then imagine him reelected and with a Republican majority in the Senate, if not the state legislature. My apologies if you’ve re-tasted your breakfast. The thought of that possibility is just as noxious to me, especially when it comes to education.
Consider: With a majority in both houses, Christie would get a vouchers bill, end seniority in the public workforce, and cut funding to districts that need to make up for low incomes and a dearth of jobs (remember jobs? His first term was supposed to be all bout jobs.).
It’s all laid out in this article, and it reads like a right wing wishlist.
Most educators understand that the Governor would love to make public schools into private schools complete with no unions, lower pay and no job security. That private schools can skim the best students from the admissions list, do not have to administer state tests (this makes absolutely no sense), and have endowments from their wealthy alumni/donors does not seem to make a difference to Christie or his minions. They seem to think that if you repeal all of the rules and strip away bargaining rights then schools will miraculously improve, and so will teachers. After all, we love low pay and high-cost benefits that we have to pay for.
Further, with a Republican Senate, Christie can get two more conservative judges on the state Supreme Court where the school funding formula, indeed all spending on education, would be up for revision, rescission and reassignment. Yes, the suburban districts do need to have all of the funding that was taken from them in Christie’s first year returned to them with interest, but the government still needs to fully fund the urban districts that desperately need help. More revenue from top wage earners would be out of the question, so a second term would simply exacerbate the already large differences between the well-off and the rest of New Jersey under Christie II.
And just in case you thought that he is a New Jersey brand of Republicans, please think again. Chris Christie wants to be president in the worst way. He’s already had his stomach surgery so he can slim down in time for the 2015 money/policy push, and he’s become involved in the GOP’s foreign policy debates in a big way, opposing what he sees as a misguided attempt by the libertarians to ease our diligent anti-terrorism policies.
You can look for more right-wing promises on domestic issues too, many of which will be field tested in New Jersey for maximum national exposure. He’s certainly on the wrong side of the marriage equality issue, but not if you’re a conservative. A referendum might get that done in NJ, but it will also give Christie the opportunity to say that the voters took the issue out of his hands.
There’s enough to be wary of in a second Christie administration. That’s why it’s imperative that all progressives come out and vote in November and make sure they vote on the down ticket offices too. The man is serious about implementing his hard right agenda; it’s high time we played serious too.
After 29 years in the classroom, and with a pretty savvy political sense, if I may be so bold, I consider myself a keen observer of most things educational, but this story about Philadelphia’s schools made me shiver with anger from the first paragraph:
Andrew Jackson School too agitated to eat breakfast on Friday, an aide alerted the school counselor, who engaged him in an art project in her office. When he was still overwrought at 11, a secretary called the boy’s family, and soon a monitor at the front door buzzed in an older brother to take him home.
Under a draconian budget passed by the Philadelphia School District last month, none of these supporting players — aide, counselor, secretary, security monitor — will remain at the school by September, nor will there be money for books, paper, a nurse or the school’s locally celebrated rock band.
I know that this kind of mindless budget cutting has been going on for years and real reformers, as opposed to the self-styled ones on the right, have been warning us thatchildren are in real danger, but somehow this story caught me. Or maybe it just represents the last straw on my particular camel’s back. Whatever. I have now officially had enough. If that’s the way that Philadelphia’s families are going to be treated, then we need an educational Tahrir/Taksim/self-immolating fruit-seller moment in this country. It’s that bad now, and it’s going to get worse.
Across the river, here in New Jersey, next fall is shaping up to be one of the worst for education since, well, four years ago when Chris Christie promised to destroy collective bargaining, and then made good on it, among other things. All of the polls point to a reelection win for the governor with a slight possibility that his coattails could enable the GOP to take over the state legislature. With a majority, even if it’s just the Senate, they can reshape the State Supreme Court, and with both houses they can further erode worker’s rights, eliminate seniority, impose radical cuts to public schools and stop funding for programs, like those in Philadelphia, that save lives, literally and figuratively.
What might save the state is a current challenge to the October U.S. Senate primary, forcing it to be held on the same day as the gubernatorial election. That would bring out more pro-education voters. Opponents of the separate election say they’ve found a clause that specifically addresses the issue. Let’s see if the State Supreme Court agrees.
And then, of course, there’s the new teacher evaluation system that’s set to go into effect statewide come the fall. Imagine a program that uses bad data in a manner that it wasn’t meant to be used, then include horse-trading politicians who have little idea what the legislation says, and put a Commissioner of Education in charge of the system who has little regard for anything other than his political standing and whether the State Board of Education supports him. Oh, wait…no need to imagine. New Jersey’s got it!
I’m all for teacher accountability, but this system was created by non-educators as a means of punishing state workers and unions, and making it easier to fire effective teachers who cost too much. If it was about education, then private and charter school teachers would be included in it. But they’re not, and that’s all you need to know about the intentions of its authors.
So enjoy your summer everyone. Let’s hope the shore businesses make lots of money and rejuvenate the towns and people who lost the most. Let’s hope that students and teachers find exciting ways to add to their knowledge, or to just forget about formal learning for a while and smell some flowers. In the fall, a new storm will be brewing, but it won’t be anything like Sandy. It will just be a lot of hot air.
A New Jersey father who made headlines after naming his son ‘Adolf Hitler’ has marched in to a court wearing a Nazi uniform.
Heath Campbell, 40, from Holland Township, gained national attention back in 2008 when a store refused to put his son’s name on a birthday cake.
Campbell has since become estranged from his wife, Deborah, after their children were put into foster care in 2011. He was at the Hunterdon County Family Court in Flemington fighting for the right to visit his youngest son, Heinrich Hons Campbell, 2.
“I’m going to tell the judge, I love my children. I want to be a father, let me be it,” Campbell told NBC10 outside court.
“Let me prove to the world that I am a good father.”
Campbell has reportedly worn his Nazi garb, including swastika patches, arm bands and a moustache in the style of Adolf Hitler’s since forming the hate group group “Hitler’s Order” a year ago. He was accompanied to court today by a woman, also wearing Nazi insignia, said to be a member of the group.
The New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services also has custody of Campbell’s three other children – Adolf Hitler Campbell, 7, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell, 6, and 5-year-old Honzlynn Jeannie Campbell.
The children were taken into care after alleged violence and neglect in the family home. Heinrich Hons was taken by authorities 16 hours after his birth in November 2011 but his father denies any wrongdoing.
Johnnie Mae Smith, 61, mother of Marie Smith who sued Dr. Kermit Gosnell after a botched abortion, looks at a newspaper with Gosnell’s photo on it during an interview with the Associated Press in Philadelphia Thursday, Jan. 20, 2011. Abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, who catered to minorities, immigrants and poor women at the Women’s Medical Society, was charged Wednesday Jan. 19, 2011, with eight counts of murder in the deaths of a patient and seven babies who were born alive and then killed with scissors, prosecutors said Wednesday. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
PHILADELPHIA — A lack of follow-up on reports of venereal disease, political sensitivities and unfulfilled promises made to health inspectors all added up to missed chances to stop a doctor from performing illegal abortions that killed at least two patients and hundreds of newborns, prosecutors said.
The indictment of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 69 — a family practice physician not certified to perform abortions — details allegations of a litany of failures in upholding even the most basic public health guidelines. Gosnell was arraigned Thursday on charges of murdering eight babies and one patient.
Authorities allege that Gosnell and a fleet of undertrained — sometimes untrained — workers ran a ghoulish operation in Philadelphia in which labor was induced in very late-term pregnancies with unsanitary equipment, the viable babies born alive and killed with scissors to the spine, and their body parts left in jars — or clogging plumbing into which unattended women had given birth.
A single ticket sold in New Jersey matched all six numbers in Saturday night’s drawing for the $338.3 million Powerball jackpot, lottery officials said. It was the 13th drawing held in the days since a Virginia man won a $217 million jackpot Feb. 6.
Thirteen other tickets worth $1 million each matched all but the final Powerball number on Saturday night. Those tickets were sold in New Jersey and 10 other states. Lottery officials said there was also one Power Play Match 5 winner in Iowa.
The New Jersey Lottery said Sunday that details about the winning ticket would be released Monday, declining to reveal where it had been purchased and whether anyone had immediately come forward. It was the sixth largest jackpot in history.
The numbers drawn were 17, 29, 31, 52, 53 and Powerball 31. A lump sum payout would be $221 million.
Lottery officials said the 13 tickets worth $1 million apiece – matching the first five numbers but missing the Powerball – were sold in Arizona, Florida (2), Illinois, Minnesota, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania (2), South Carolina and Virginia.
Powerball said on its website that the grand prize jackpot has now been reset to an estimated $40 million or a lump sum cash amount estimated at $25 million for Wednesday’s next drawing.
There’s a great deal to digest in these new rules, but the key to it all is how teachers are going to be evaluated, rated and either retained, let go or brought up on tenure charges for not adequately performing their jobs. Those regulations were issued separately by the DOE and are contained in this memorandum and summarized in this article.
It is here that we learn that a 50-50 split is actually a loaded proposition that is stacked against effective teaching and learning, and assumes that tests can measure how well an educator is doing their job. It is scary, and it’s coming to a school district near you in September.
All public school teachers in New Jersey will be evaluated with a system that divides their performance into two categories: 50% will be based on classroom observations and 50% will be based on student test scores or other measures of student classroom progress. The problem is that these are not equal measures. Quite simply, if all other measures are equal, the test score/student progress half will be used as the tie breaker, which effectively means that whether a teacher keeps their job is more directly related to how well their students perform on tests. I heard Commissioner of Education Christopher Cerf say it in person. I wrote it down.
I don’t think there is a single teacher who says that student achievement is irrelevant in their performance. Any teacher should be able to demonstrate that the children are learning.
The question is the evidence and how to attribute that to any one teacher. And I can say with confidence that nobody yet has figured out how to do that.
It’s a serious issue, and there are enormous stakes in us getting it right.
Classroom teachers know that they can gain very valuable information from students when they analyze scores or critical thinking assignments. Teachers can asess content knowledge, skill attainment and progress towards educational objectives. What they also know is that making these measures the tie-breaking metric is folly. You’d get more relevant data by noting which students ate an adequate breakfast the day of the test, or asked parents at drop-off how their marriages are working out, their family income, or when they last went to an AA meeting. That will tell me more about potential student performance on the day of the test than what they might have learned and retained since September.
Given that, the new state testing guidelines, courtesy of the PARCC Consortium, should make every teacher whose students will take them anticipate a shiver up the spine. Here’s what’s in store:
Third-graders, for example, now spend roughly five hours, spread over four days, on the New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge or NJ ASK tests. The new exams will take eight hours, but will be split among nine short sessions.
In Grades 4 and above, the new tests will take nine and a half hours total — over nine sessions — up from about six hours now. Some sections will take place after three-quarters of the school year is over, and other sections at the end of the year.
Think about how many days teachers and students will lose from instruction just to administer the tests. Think about the anxiety that many students will feel not only in March, but in May since the tests will be given 75% of the way through the school year and then again 90% of the way through. Then think about the disruptions in the day, because students will take these tests in short time periods, rendering much of the rest of the day’s instruction irrelevant.
Now let’s factor in the cost and availability of the computers these tests require (though there is a paper version for students whose IEPs require it). The state is recommending one computer per student. Some districts won’t have that, and can’t afford to buy more. The good news is that districts can schedule the tests in shifts so that all students can be accommodated. The bad news is that the tests will be given at all different times of the day, so possible cheating might be an issue (that one fact negates the idea that these are standardized tests). And what if some of your students don’t have sufficient enough keyboarding skills to do well on the tests? The state suggests that this will open up your district’s curriculum to teach more keyboarding. Shall we take that time away from Social Studies? Science? Physical Education? Art? We’re open to suggestions.
These tests are being hailed as ushering in a new era of education and teacher evaluation in New Jersey, but before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s remember two things:
1. The dirty secret behind the new teacher evaluation rules is that only about 20% of New Jersey’s schoolteachers will be evaluated using a standardized test, because the state has only set up tests for elementary grades in math and language arts. All other disciplines will have to come up with a classroom measure that shows student progress. Therefore, the tests will only have limited utility.
2. Standardized tests and other student progress data do not measure a teacher’s effectiveness.
The bottom line, though, is that the 50% of a teacher’s evaluation that uses tests/data will always beat out the 50% based on classroom observations. Always.
This past week’s blizzard in the Northeast has brought even more attention to the already real possibility of weather playing a factor in next year’s Super Bowl. Super Bowl XLVIII is scheduled to be played at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey early next February. This marks the first time the NFL has decided to host the big game in a cold weather/open air stadium. Traditionally,the game is either in a warm climate city or played in a dome.
The decision to host the Super Bowl in New Jersey has been a controversial one but has also opened up the possibility for other great cold weather stadiums to play host to Football’s biggest game. Stadiums such as Gillette Stadium in New England or Lambeau Field in Green Bay. The league expects next years Super Bowl to break all sorts of records from attendance to viewers to media coverage. But what happens if it snows? Like really, really snows.
The NFL is discussing contingency plans for such a scenario. Some ideas are moving the game up a day and having it on Saturday night if a storm is rolling in on Sunday, or even pushing the game until Tuesday or Wednesday if need be. However, there are major flaws with both of these plans. MetLife Stadium seats 82,566 people. It is the highest capacity stadium in the NFL and that means it will likely be the highest attended Super Bowl ever. If the day of the game changes, 82,566 people will have to change their plans. Many will be from out of town so those changes will include flight changes and hotel extensions. Further more, if a blizzard rolls into town, the chances the local airports will have to cancel flights are pretty good so that makes it much harder for fans to find their way to the game.
I’m a supporter of the location of next year’s Super Bowl because I think the cold temperature will provide the ultimate test for the league’s two best teams, but I do not doubt that the NFL is mainly relying on luck for things to go as planned. Super Bowl Saturday doesn’t have the same ring to it.
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