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Thursday, January 24, 2013

UPDATE: You Get What You Pay For + The Sky Will Soon Be Falling, Again + School Tech Connect: Nekritz vs. Martire

School Tech Connect: Nekritz vs. Martire:


You Get What You Pay For

Ben Joravsky goes right to the heart of it.
And I'd note that CPS uses charters to take care of a community's educational needs during the time poor people are moving out and wealthier people are moving in. At which point they create a regular public school with unionized teachers who get paid a decent salary, because as everyone knows, you get what you pay for.
I actually don't care. Nothing can dissuade me from starting Tim Tech Charter. Like this blog, my school will 


The Sky Will Soon Be Falling, Again

The crisis noise has officially been ratcheted up in Illinois, in case you missed it. OMG the sky is falling---- I can hear it now.


The stated motivation for the decision was to prepare students for the more rigorous exams aligned with the Common Core State Standards set to be administered beginning in 2014-15.
There's so much to say, but I'm tired. But let's just say that curriculum and standardized tests have some meaningful relationship to each other, and that it's a stronger relationship than the relationship between socioeconomic status and test scores. Already we're in fantasyland but bear with me. 

Kids will be getting measured on the new ultra-angry Common Core cut scores, even though the Common Core 

Nekritz vs. Martire

Blogging while wolfing down cold pizza....A line is forming outside my door. The lights are off....

Recently the good folks at IEA Region 28 posted this message from Elaine Nekritz, a person I would like to see voted out of office but who always has the courtesy to reply to emails.

Thanks so much for your response.  I am familiar with Mr. Martire’s proposal.
The reality is his proposal would require a payment of almost $9 billion into the pension systems next year. The current year payment is “only” $5.7 billion. We could decimate General State Aid for schools by about 75% in order to pay for it, or raise the income tax another 1%. I don’t believe either of those are good for Illinois.
Mr. Martire omits some very important points in his article. The first is that his payment amount does not include the going forward cost of the pensions…the cost that actually funds current teachers versus the cost of those already retired. Second, his proposal only truly works if the State is somehow magically able to turn the pension debt into bonded debt. The markets would never