Latest News and Comment from Education

Friday, April 4, 2014

4-4-14 Perdido Street School

Perdido Street School:






Newark Star-Ledger Lays Off 25% Of Non-Unionized Newsroom Employees
Brutal:In a grim day of reckoning at the state’s largest newspaper, the owners of The Star-Ledger today said they were eliminating the jobs of approximately 167 people, including 25 percent of the newsroom. The sweeping job loss was part of a plan announced last week in an effort to greatly reduce costs and combine resources by consolidating the operations of The Star-Ledger, along with its sister

Cuomo Administration: Middle Class Is $300,000 A Year, Upper Middle Is $500,000
The Cuomo administration explaining its "middle class tax cuts":In defense of new regressive tax cuts in the most economically unequal state in America, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s top aide tonight told the Journal News that those making $500,000 a year are merely “upper middle class” and those making $300,000 a year are “middle class.” In fact, the median household income in New York i

De Blasio Says "Teacher Retention" Is Key Goal For Public Education Policy
From an interview with Chris Smith of New York:With pre-K and charters dominating the conversation, there’s been little attention to de Blasio’s fuzzier agenda for the million-plus kids already attending conventional public schools. “We’re going to focus on teacher retention, which I think is a huge difference-maker, because we’re hemorrhaging quality teachers,” he says. “Why is Finland so wonderf


UFT Contract Negotiations Update
Bill de Blasio in an interview with Chris Smith of New York:It’s obviously incredibly complicated, and there’s a lot on the line, and we want to get it right. So the conversations over the last weeks have been quite good, and substantive, and collegial. But it’s impossible at this moment to determine whether it’s enough to get us done by that point (June 30)."Collegial and substantive, but no
Common Core Contradictions
 From a commenter at NRO:Common Core is, itself, a contradiction: it professes to help get kids ready for college and careers while at the same time it destroys the very tools they need to learn to do just that. For English standards, Common Core favors informational texts over fiction while completely deleting poetry and art interpretation from the curriculum. In Math, Common Core seems blatantly
Will Oklahoma Be The Second State To "Ditch" The Common Core?
From National Review Online:The Oklahoma state senate passed a bill Tuesday to withdraw the state from the Common Core standards. If the bill is signed by Governor Mary Fallin, Oklahoma will become the second state to withdraw from the Common Core.Indiana withdrew last week, with Governor Mike Pence’s signature.The bill to get the Sooner State was hugely popular in both houses. House Bill 3399 was
4-3-14 Perdido Street School
Perdido Street School: Cuomo Was Behind The Organization Of The Eva Moskowitz/Success Charter School RallyThere have been some stories out that it was Governor Cuomo who pushed for the charter school giveaway rally in Albany - those stories are now confirmed in the NY Times:It was a frigid February day in Albany, and leaders of New York City’s charter school movement were anxious. They had gone to