The Star Ledger's Tom Moran is absolutely right!

Last week broke some kind of record. The Star Ledger started the week with a front page expose on the cost of the PARCC exam (no one really knows), and then, not one, not two, but three pieces of 'reformy' education propaganda appeared on its op-ed page. 

Education blogger Stephen Danley made mincemeat of the third one even before it hit the presses. More Camden schools are being closed and turned over to charters, and the good people of that city have no say because the Camden Advisory Board of Education is "accountable to one group, and one group only: our children." Lucky for them because if they were accountable to the taxpayers, things would be very different. Please read and share Stephen's excellent piece. We must continue to expose the denial of democracy in that city.

But back to the first two...

Jersey Jazzman, Ani McHugh and I have called out Tom Moran on his blind faith in education 'reform' numerous times, but for whatever reason, he refuses to take off his rose-colored glasses. So, I am throwing in the towel. I surrender! Tom Moran is absolutely right. "This hysteria about the PARCC exam needs to stop." This test will save humanity! Corporations, hedge fund managers and billionaires really are altruistically trying to save America's public schools (the ones their kids don't attend). There is no profit-making going on. It's all a conspiracy theory. We're all 'tin foil hat' crazies. Dear God, how could I not have known? 

WAKE UP, PEOPLE! THERE IS NO CONSPIRACY!

Friends, we need to stop running around like Chicken Little ranting that the sky is falling in on public education. It is vitally important that we stop the hysterics and focus on this test because...

[T]here is a broader public purpose here, one much more important than taking pot shots at the PARCC. One of the main reasons we need this standardized test is for parents in struggling districts like Camden or Newark, who would otherwise have no way of knowing whether their kids are in a failing school. The whining of parents in districts that don't have to worry about that sort of thing shouldn't take precedence. (emphasis mine)

Wow, I had no idea the PARCC opt-out movement was just a bunch of 'white suburban moms' being too overprotective. I thought parents in Newark and Camden were just as ticked off about it as the rest of us. But I guess Tom is right. It doesn't matter that far too many urban public schools are underfunded, falling apart, and have high concentrations of high poverty students. Parents in low income urban areas need this test to tell them how bad their public schools are because they are too ignorant to know any better, so suburban parents should just suck it up and force their kids to take this test for their sake. 

It doesn't matter that the test is flawed. It doesn't matter that the test is developmentally inappropriate, especially for special needs students. It doesn't matter that the test is not diagnostic. It doesn't matter that teachers, parents and students won't be able to see the answers. It doesn't matter that the prep and administration of this test has taken countless instructional hours out of the school day. It doesn't matter that school districts are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on tech upgrades for this unfunded mandate. It doesn't matter that many students have purposely thrown their test answers because they know it doesn't count for them this year. It doesn't matter that many teachers' jobs will be on the line because of those thrown tests. It doesn't matter that this test was never properly vetted nor piloted. 

But what do I know? I'm just a teacher. What do education researchers like Jersey Jazzman, Dr. Bruce Baker, Dr. Chris Tienken, Dr. Julia Sass Rubin, Dr. Diane Ravitch or any of the other researchers and bloggers who've been exposing the for-profit motives and flawed methods behind education 'reform' know for that matter? What do the parents who've taken the sample PARCC tests—and failed miserably—know? 

None of that matters because according to Moran, this test is the 'Great White Hope', that will finally defeat poverty in our mostly minority, urban areas. But that big, bad teachers union is messing things up:

"With the added variable of a multi-million dollar campaign against the test by the teacher's union, which doesn't want the PARCC to factor into teacher evaluations, the collective freak-out has reached a crescendo."

What a load of malarky! 

Yes, parents in poor urban areas need the test scores from kids in rich white districts to tell them their schools are 'failing'. And the teachers union is just messing everything up because, you know, The Gates Foundation, The Broad Foundation, Students First, The Koch Brothers, The Walton Foundation, they are the only ones spending millions of dollars on campaigns that push their education message.

I wonder how he'd feel if cardiologists were held accountable for their patients' health after McDonalds managed to convince America that Big Macs would cure heart disease? 

I am stopping short of calling Moran a liar because when one lies, they deliberately mean to deceive. I don't think Moran means to deceive. I think he is in denial like birthers, climate deniers and vaccine opponents who blindly cling to faith-based beliefs in the face of overwhelming research and evidence.

And he calls us conspiracy theorists...

Can God save the children from #PARCC?

This is the worst PARCC story I've heard:

A friend of mine who lives in one of New Jersey's many wealthy suburbs with excellent schools and parents who routinely hire tutors for their children as early as first grade was with her daughter at a children's Stations of the Cross event at her church. 

The 14 Stations of the Cross are specific locations or 'stations' throughout the nave of a church where small sculptures or paintings depict the Passion of Christ starting with his condemnation to death and ending with his body being placed in the tomb. To 'do the stations' one moves through them chronologically, praying or reflecting at each stop. Every Catholic religious instruction program teaches children how to do this during Lent. 

In this particular program hands-on activities were set up at each station. Children could write notes about any number of things as they related to the stations: people they needed to forgive; people from whom they needed forgiveness; things for which they were sorry; things they wanted to do better; etc. 

At the station where Jesus carries his cross children were to reflect on their burdens. The cross is a symbol of man's imperfections. When Jesus carried it, he was carrying the sins of all mankind. Any burden from which a child wanted relief could be written on a sticky note and placed on the cross. My friend said that there were approximately 100 notes on the cross, and written on about a quarter of them was one word: PARCC.

The PARCC test is not educational best practice. It is educational malpractice. Our children are being set up to fail. And when they fail, their teachers and their schools suffer the consequences. This is a terrible burden to place on children. It is abusive and it has to stop. And the only way it will stop is if enough parents refuse to allow our children to be subjected to it. If no one shows up to take the test, there is no test.

Chris Christie: Governor Wack-A-Mole

Gov. Christie wants America to believe he tells it like it is. He wants us to believe he's not afraid to stand up for his beliefs, and he says his record proves it. Last week at CPAC Christie sat down with conservative commentator, Laura Ingrahm for a Q&A on a range of topics, and let America know that:

"I care about fighting the fights that are worth fighting"

Except that based on his record, the only fights he deems worthy of fighting are against his constituents, not for them. While other states in the region have recovered from the Great Recession, NJ is still in a post-recession shambles, with little to show for it but 7 credit downgrades and a second-to-last rank for job growth. Yea, I'm lovin' that 'Jersey Comeback'!

But boy-oh-boy, are his town hall meetings taxpayer-funded campaign stops a huge success! In case you couldn't get to one (because they're held during the day when most folks are at work) he's even got a You Tube channel with 7 pages of these things. (Full disclosure: I make an appearance in one of them). 

Whether it's having no regrets about calling a Navy Seal an idiot, ("He's an idiot. I don't have any regret about it at all"), or telling a Sandy volunteer to "sit down and shut up", no other elected official has spoken to and about constituents with such bullying disrespect, and still managed to get re-elected. At first, many found his style refreshing. After four years of Gov. Jon Corzine, who was long on cash and short on warmth and political savvy, Republicans voted the party line and Democrats voted the party machine in 2009 to elect their very own Tony Soprano—telling it like it is and taking no prisoners! And despite his horrendous job at restoring NJ's economy after the Great Recession, they would do so again in 2013. 

But that act is all Christie has to run on, and it's getting old. Personally, I like my 'Rude Jersey' on TV, not in the statehouse. Tony, Snookie and the rest represent the very best of the worst Jersey stereotypes. And they have about as much chance of getting elected to public office as any musician has of beating Bruce Springsteen in a Garden State popularity contest. 

The facts are that NJ hasn't recovered all the jobs lost during the Great Recession, the pension system and the transportation trust fund are in a shambles, Atlantic City is bleeding jobs, many big pharmas pulled up stakes and left taking thousands of jobs with them, school funding is down almost $6 billion, property taxes (the bane of NJ) rose on average 20% in his first term, and he's slashed services to just about every constituent group in the state except the super wealthy and corporations, all while jet-setting around the country on the taxpayer's dime. 

All Christie has to run on is his bluster. His leadership has turned into a game of Wack-a-Mole. NJ residents are fed up. Many are showing up at town hall meetings specifically to bait him. And the more he smacks them down, the more they keep popping up over and over again. 

One thing we know about crowd mentality is that they love to follow. So, look for more Wack-A-Mole behavior across the country as Christie tries to defend his abysmal record out on the presidential campaign trail. It just might make this round of GOP primaries more fun than 2012's.