Ed Reform 101: Summary Edition

by: KendalJames

Tue Sep 06, 2011 at 10:34:28 AM EDT

Standardized testing is generally bad for students, expensive, unreliable and biased. It is a terrible tool for evaluating teacher effectiveness. No parent would ever want their child's entire academic identity to be boiled down to one single test on one single day. Who even likes these tests? Not the administrators. Not the teachers. Not the students. But despite that, stacks of bubble sheets, in all of their irrelevance, should be used for making staff decisions in our schools? Even though the folks who design the tests explicitly say that they should not be used for that purpose? And what about those who teach art, music or physical education? The question itself is arbitrary and absurd: "What percentage of teacher evaluation should be based on standardized test scores?" The clear answer for any serious educator or statistician is "zero."

Ed Reform 101: Merit Pay, Seniority & Tenure

by: Jersey Jazzman

Thu Sep 01, 2011 at 09:15:00 AM EDT

As with so many other parts of the corporate "reform" agenda, adherence to merit pay and abolishing tenure is more a matter of faith than reality.

The truth is that there is no evidence that radically changing how we fire, layoff, and pay teachers will have any positive effect on student learning. There are, however, many reasons to believe that instituting merit pay and getting rid of tenure will harm students and the interests of taxpayers.

We also know that the difference between high-performing and low-performing schools is not whether they have merit pay schemes, or tenure, or lay offs based on seniority; why impose these changes on schools that are doing a great job educating kids?

What you should know about merit pay, seniority & tenure:

Deep Thought

by: Hopeful

Wed May 19, 2010 at 01:02:13 AM EDT

Money and Power in Congress

by: Jason Springer

Wed Dec 02, 2009 at 12:45:00 PM EST

The table below lists the minimum value of the assets and liabilities of Members of the House of Representatives as reported on their 2009 financial disclosure forms (covering calendar year 2008). Assets include stocks, bank accounts, rental properties and other income-producing holdings; liabilities are most frequently mortgages and other bank loans. Assets and liabilites are reported in broad ranges; this table uses the minimum of all reported ranges and subtracts liabilities from assets to produce a minimum net worth. See story for details.

Seniority is each Member's ranking in the House, as reported by the Clerk of the House.

Frelinghuysen, who belongs to a political dynasty that dates back more than two centuries, has nine times the minimum net worth of the next richest member from New Jersey, Steve Rothman (D-Englewood).  

Rothman has a minimum net worth of $2.1 million, followed by Bill Pascrell (D-Parterson) with $1.85 million, Leonard Lance (R-Clinton) with $1.59 million, Rush Holt (D-Princeton) with $899,000, John Adler (D-Cherry Hill) with $702,000, Donald Payne (D-Newark) with $346,000, Frank LoBiondo (R-Vineland) at $270,000,  Chris Smith (R-Hamilton) with $113,000, Albio Sires (D-West New York) with $87,000, Frank Pallone (D-Long Branch) with $88,000, Scott Garrett (R-Wantage) with $80,000 and Rob Andrews (D-Haddon Heights) with $31,000.

Last	Seniority	Assets	Liabilities	Minimum Net Worth
Lance	403	1,593	0	1,595
Pallone	51	113	25	88
Holt	191	1,499	600	899
Pascrell	166	1,858	0	1,858
LoBiondo	131	370	100	270
Andrews	65	46	15	31
Payne	57	461	115	346
Rothman	169	2,099	0	2,099
Adler	377	712	10	702
Garrett	259	80	0	80
Smith	24	113	0	113
Sires	319	97	0	97
Frelinghuysen	124	18,153	0	18,153

Seniority

by: Hopeful

Sat Feb 07, 2009 at 05:29:04 PM EST

Currently New Jersey's senior senator, Frank Lautenberg, sits at #61 overall and #36 for Democrats based on his start date of January 3, 2003. The only benefit from his years of prior service is that, in a tie-breaker worthy of the NFL, he is put ahead of the five other remaining members first elected in 2002. (If his previous service counted, he would be somewhere in the neighborhood of #13-18 and in charge of a committee instead of Joe Lieberman. By the way, I'm including  Lieberman as a Democrat because his seniority counts in the caucus.)  

The junior senator, Bob Menendez, sits at #74 overall and #38 for Democrats. (Yes, he's only two behind Lautenberg in the Democratic caucus: The elections of 2002 and 2004 were not good for our party.) This is actually a pretty good rise:  In only three years, Senator Menendez now is ahead of a quarter of the other senators overall and a third of Democrats. That's thanks to many Republican retirements and defeats in 2006 and 2008, the triumph of the Obama-Biden ticket, and Obama's appointments of senior senators to Cabinet positions.  Below the flip, we'll see how the future looks.