Christie Town Hall Follies

More on Amir Khan... (4.00 / 1)

Courtesy of @DefeatNJBullies on twitter:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

location 2:47 shows Aughtney Khan SCREAMING"Hallelujah"as Same-Sex Marriage Bill is defeated

3:03=Amir Khan

Really? These are the people we are turning our public dollars over to, to educate children in this state!!!

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by: kellypage @ Sat Jan 21, 2012 at 04:05:28 AM UTC

Amir Khan is a piece of shit (0.00 / 0)

And I'll sing that same refrain until i draw my last gay breath.

An unGoldy, irredeemable, bigoted piece of garbage he is.  A total waste of carbon.

It's worth noting that property crimes in Cherry Hill when through the roof when Khan and his goons came to town.  His experiments with drug addicts and homelessness were reckless and geared at his expert exploitation of religious tax exemptions and the good will of the folks of Cherry Hill.

activist for hire.

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by: Jay Lassiter @ Sat Jan 21, 2012 at 11:51:35 AM UTC

Jay: (4.00 / 1)

As you know, Blue Jersey was the place where NJEA and GSE (and others) had it out over their differences:

http://www.bluejersey.com/diar...

I thought that was healthy, and I appreciated that you started the conversation. And I think - I hope - it's now going to pay off.

Because you got that stuff out in the open, I think - I hope - the union, the GLBT community, and the real ed reformers can now come together to stand up to this.

Giving Amir Khan a charter school is wrong as a civil rights issue. It's wrong as a moral issue. It's wrong as en educational issue. It's wrong as a local control issue.

We all need to work together to stop this.

http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com

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by: Jersey Jazzman @ Sat Jan 21, 2012 at 16:21:55 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Let's be thankful OSA hasn't moved... (0.00 / 0)

Imagine the windfall for Khan, then!

I don't want school vouchers in this State because it is a failed experiment and I don't want to see the same fate for NJ, as Milwaukee and other cities and states.

And, then I see bigots like Khan running schools, and am so fearful. Obviously, Christie prefers kids taught in the church - he reiterated it in the Oprah interview.

We have to do everything to fight publicly funding educational institutions pushing Khan's agenda.

Expand the Inter-district School Choice Program and give these kids real opportunities in thriving public schools. Keep them out of the claws of Khan and his cronies!

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by: kellypage @ Sat Jan 21, 2012 at 12:38:51 PM UTC

Am interested (0.00 / 0)

in these comments about Mr. Khan. Off line can some of you provide me with more information on this guy's background? I know nothing about him. I'm sure those "invited guests" sitting behind our Governor are well vetted!

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by: Senator Loretta Weinberg @ Sat Jan 21, 2012 at 15:03:24 PM UTC

He needs the public money (via his charter school) to pay the church's rent (0.00 / 0)

http://articles.philly.com/201...

Do we need any further proof that it is a bad idea to have charter schools decided by one appointed commissioner, who can dole out charter approvals to political supporters?

Khan is quoted in numerous news articles as saying he and the Black Ministers Council meet with Christie regularly on Education reform issues.

The local communities have been voicing their concerns over this Regis Academy for how long now, only to be completely ignored by the DOE? Who better to watch-dog their public schools than local parents? Local communities have no voice in how their local school dollars are spent right now. And, now they are slowly, more and more, being siphoned off to religious entities.

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by: kellypage @ Sat Jan 21, 2012 at 16:59:47 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

state vs local (0.00 / 0)

Do we need any further proof that it is a bad idea to have charter schools decided by one appointed commissioner, who can dole out charter approvals to political supporters?

This problem is based in who the Governor is and who he has appointed to be the commissioner of the DOE and the charters that they have approved.  That said, we have a major problem with corruption in this state and it exists on both sides of the aisle.  Maybe we have to solve that problem first before we can have "nice things" like charter schools or maybe the next administration can be the one that they can handle this kind of responsibility and do it right.

Local communities have no voice in how their local school dollars are spent right now. And, now they are slowly, more and more, being siphoned off to religious entities.

This is a major problem, which should be solved and can be solved without doing away with charter schools altogether.  Once again, the solutions to these problems come from changing the charter school law to reform how charter schools are approved and funded, but home rule and local control cause more problems than they solve.

For every progressive community in towns like Cherry Hill, there are far more regressive communities whose school boards do terrible things like ban books and prevent students from forming gay-straight alliances.  The only answer is a system that gives as much power as possible to education professionals like principals, department heads, and teachers and as little power as possible to people in the community-at-large whose agendas and priorities are sometimes as bad as the Amir Khans of the world.

For many progressive families, charter schools represent an opportunity to educate their children in an environment that is more progressive than the community in which they live, which often produces a regressive academic environment.  For far too long, home schooling was the only option for families like these.  Now, charter schools offer a better one.  The key is to have a system that makes it easier for good charter schools to get approved and bad ones to get rejected.

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by: Bertin Lefkovic @ Sat Jan 21, 2012 at 18:08:05 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Once again, Bertin... (0.00 / 0)

Once again, Bertin, no one said shut down all the charters. The idea that there is no problem with one sole authorizer is absurd. NACSA doesn't even advocate for that scenario. It is so wide open for cronyism and graft it is ridiculous. Your idea that we only have a problem when there is an activist commissioner (like Cerf)  in office is absurd. You said it yourself that there is corruption on both sides of the isle.

So, you want " a system that gives as much power as possible to education professionals like principals, department heads, and teachers and as little power as possible to people in the community-at-large whose agendas and priorities are sometimes as bad as the Amir Khans of the world." That's kind of ironic coming from you, no? The educators in your community said they don't let anyone your daughter's age into kindergarten, so you (part of the community-at-large) decided you knew better, and that you shouldn't have to pay for pre-k like everyone else.  And, since they didn't agree, you just had to find a way around the system, right? (I'm not saying you are as bad as Khan - I'm trying to show you its personal agenda with no regard for how it affects anyone else  vs. what's going to give the best outcome for the most people.)

At the end of the day, community oversight is healthy and vital to our schools.  Cherry Hill and Voorhees know Mr. Kahn's story better than anyone. They should have a seat at the table in deciding if he should be educating kids in town.

By the way,Just because you keep slapping a "progressive" label on it, doesn't make it so. There are true progressive options to providing quality education to kids in failing districts right now, like expanding inter-district school choice.

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by: kellypage @ Sat Jan 21, 2012 at 22:20:27 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I don't believe... (0.00 / 0)

...that the policies like cutoff dates and their enforcement are determined by education professionals.  Those decisions are made by school boards and their lackeys (superintendents and business managers).  If issues like these were decided by education professionals (teachers, department heads, an principals), they would be based less by birthdate and more by school readiness and both children and parents would be better served by them.

I agree that interdistrict school choice is a better way of dealing with the problem of failing schools than charter schools, but I don't think that either do anything to solve the primary problem of failing schools, which is poverty.  I have never believed that charter schools are a panacea for failing schools.  I believe that charter schools should be laboratories for innovation that can and should be replicated by traditional schools, but I do not believe that innovation is the silver bullet that will help failing schools succeed.  The only thing that will do that is eliminating poverty.

However, I do believe that even schools whose students score high on tests could benefit from innovation, which is where charters can be beneficial.  Cherry Hill is exactly the kind of community where charters could make great schools even better, but I do not believe that will happen if they are run by people like Khan.

As much as corruption is a problem in NJ, I think that we can have a system by which the DOE approves charter applications with some degree of community input, especially when the applicant is a notorious individual like Khan.  I just don't trust the voters-en-masse to be the gatekeepers, because there is no doubt in my mind that they will reject every charter school that tries to come into their community.  It is called the tyranny of the majority and I do not believe in it.

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by: Bertin Lefkovic @ Sun Jan 22, 2012 at 03:39:58 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Ugh (4.00 / 1)

Bertin, why do you keep going back to this?  In NH, where there is a local vote and school Board checks, there are charter schools.  Empirically your statement that there would be no charter schools with local control is false.  In addition, the fact that you return to not trusting voters-en- masse runs in the face of that pesky thing called democracy.  Finally, there can be an override in the local control vote that would have the state open the school on the state dime without making the district pay.  Ugh.

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by: Momotombo @ Sun Jan 22, 2012 at 12:49:41 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

It would be simpler... (1.00 / 1)

...to change the funding paradigm so that all education is paid for with state (and possibly federal) income taxes instead of local property taxes, which would eliminate the need to have local voters vote on budgets, charter schools, or school boards for that matter.

There is a time and a place for democracy, but there is no place for it in education, where the professionals (teachers, department heads, and principals) know far more than the public.  Most of the problems that public education is forced to deal with comes from the politicization of education issues.

Do you really think that standardized testing would have been allowed to become the cancer that it is if it education policy-making wasn't so political?  That is one of many failures of democracy.  For democracy to work, the voters have to be educated enough about the issues.  It is bad enough that most don't know enough to make educated decisions about candidates in elections, but even fewer know enough to make decisions about education policy.

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by: Bertin Lefkovic @ Sun Jan 22, 2012 at 19:43:33 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Do you even read posts before you respond to them? (0.00 / 0)

What does changing the funding formula of charter schools have to do with accountability and transparency?     How does changing the funding responsibility to the State level keep charter school approvals from being doled out to political supporters like Khan?

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by: kellypage @ Mon Jan 23, 2012 at 00:21:55 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

I don't think... (0.00 / 0)

...that giving local residents the ability to block charters results in accountability and transparency just like giving them the right to vote for or against school budgets results in fiscal responsibility.

The best solution to the the question of accountability and transparency is to require that DOE decisions regarding charters be made in public meetings with testimony from both opponents and supporters.  It might also be a good idea to require that a charter school application be signed off on by a State Assemblyperson or a State Senator.

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by: Bertin Lefkovic @ Mon Jan 23, 2012 at 03:09:18 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Thank you Senator Weinberg! (0.00 / 0)

Assuming that a thorough investigation corroborates everything that Duke and Darcie have written, and given the fact that after almost a full year, Acting Education Commissioner Cerf still has not provided a thorough report on the state's charter schools, and that taxpayers have no say in whether these unwanted schools open in their communities, and that they are approved by a secret panel, and that there is plenty of proof that the majority do no better than their public school counterparts, it's high time we put a stop to this runaway train of 'separate and unequal' education before it destroys one of the best public education systems in the country.

Never mind the fact that this has all the makings of a political favor that's being hushed up. Any school that receives public tax dollars must be free and open to every child, and their administrators must treat every child with decency and respect. Openly celebrating the defeat of a bill that would bring basic civil rights to citizens who've been denied it for far too long, is no different than the Union Twp teacher who was brought up on tenure charges for making anti-gay remarks on Facebook.

The proliferation of charter schools is first and foremost a financial investment for their backers. Educators and concerned citizens have been raising the alarm bells non-stop for the past two years.

Please, Senator, don't let this one go unquestioned.  

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by: Marie Corfield @ Sun Jan 22, 2012 at 13:12:46 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Khan and Charter Schools (0.00 / 0)

Too bad.  For the most part charters schools have given parents a positive alternative to public schools.

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by: Roland Richey @ Sat Jan 21, 2012 at 21:18:09 PM UTC

No (0.00 / 0)

That's just not true.

Click to yellow "Ed Reform 101" notebook at the top right corner to get the facts.

http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com

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by: Jersey Jazzman @ Sat Jan 21, 2012 at 22:20:37 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I thought they were public schools (0.00 / 0)

At least that's what I'm told.  But thank you for stating the true, prviateer,  agenda.

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by: 12mileseastofTrenton @ Sat Jan 21, 2012 at 23:29:11 PM UTC

[ Parent ]