Tom Moran, chief editorial writer for the Star-Ledger of New Jersey, responds here to the open letter written by three New Jersey bloggers, posted on their sites, and at blue jersey.com.
Here is Jersey Jazzman’s reply to Moran.
Moran was offended by the tone of the bloggers’ letter to him. The bloggers are offended by Cami Anderson’s One Newark” plan, which seeks to charterize large numbers of Newark’s public schools without consulting the Newark community.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Wow!
For starters, maybe Tom Moran needs to brush up on his American cultural history.
Even granted he has a smidgeon of facts and logic on his side—a highly debatable proposition—he might start with Benjamin Franklin:
“Don’t throw stones at your neighbors, if your own windows are glass.”
I urge viewers to click on all the links provided in the posting.
And need I remind the supporters/enablers/advocates of and for the charterite/privatization movement that it would behoove them to finally, after they are finished with all their CCSS ‘closet’ reading, to harken back to at least one very dead and very old and very Greek guy:
“I have often repented speaking, but never of holding my tongue.” [Xenocrates]
😎
P.S. Is there still anyone—I mean anyone still clinging to just an atomic particle worth of self-preservation that doesn’t want to indulge in self-caricature—that doesn’t yet understand why such folks don’t want to debate someone like Diane Ravitch in truly neutral public forums? Ya know, like Michelle Rhee and David Coleman?
As soon as they say something that can be recorded and videotaped, they put their collective feet in their collective mouths. At times I almost feel sorry for them… Or not.
‘ “I have often repented speaking, but never of holding my tongue.” [Xenocrates]’
I will have to engrave this saying on my forearm for every occasion where I am tempted to speak when it would be better to keep my mouth shut. You wouldn’t know it from the amount I post, but I do delete some responses before sending them. Sometimes the writing is catharsis enough, and no one else needs to suffer through it.
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
A virtual debate is raging in Newark, New Jersey between a newspaper columnist and three blogger educators. The newspaper columnist clearly supports private-sector, for-profit corporate Charter schools, and he resorts to name calling instead of facts because there are no facts—without cherry picking—to support the privatization and destruction of democratically run public education in the United States and replacing them with corporate run schools that are opaque and are controlled by a small number of billionaire oligarchs. If the oligarchs win, democracy will lose.
Mr. Moran has quite a thin skin for somebody with such a thick head.
I see that Moran is fond of dismissing criticisms of what he has written by saying “please” as if a cursory acknowledgement that arguments were made and then blowing a raspberry at them consists of the “respectful” dialogue he says he wants to have.
The intellectual credibility he might still possess is awfully low.