Bob Braun, who worked as an investigative reporter in Néw Jersey for decades until he retired, here describes Cami Anderson’s disastrous appearance before a committee of the Néw Jersey state legislature responsible for state-operated schools.
Anderson was appointed superintendent of the Newark public schools by Governor Chris Christie. The district has not had local control for 20 years but it does have a school board. Anderson refuses to attend the meetings of the powerless board. Anderson imposed a plan called “One Newark,” which caused upheaval and resistance as students were reassigned, and some neighborhood schools were closed and converted to charters.
Braun begins his post like this:
“Not a great day for Cami Anderson.
“The chairman of the legislative committee that oversees state-operated school districts Tuesday accused the state-appointed Newark superintendent of “taking the fifth” because she repeatedly refused to discuss her personal and business ties to a Newark charter school leader to whose organization she sold a Newark public school at less than fair market value. Anderson also was openly caught in a lie when she insisted before the Joint Committee on Public Schools (JCPS) that no school principals were in so-called “rubber rooms,” getting paid to do nothing–apparently unaware one of the principals was attending the hearing. She also was openly laughed at by committee members when she talked about a “legislative liaison” aide whom none had ever met.
“But the oddest thing that happened at the four-hour hearing was Anderson’s insistence that her reforms efforts should not be judged by falling state test scores because such scores were “inaccurate” and “unfair”–this, from a woman who has closed public schools and fired educators because of falling state test scores.
“Anderson, a woman who has shown nothing but smug contempt for critics, was reduced to offering what amounted to personal pleas that the legislators try to “understand my journey”or “my passion”–mawkish and overplayed efforts to depict herself as someone whose past helped her understand the problems of poor people. In the end, she had to be rescued after four hours by state Education Commissioner David Hespe who told the committee Anderson had had enough for one day and should be allowed to leave.
“Hespe wasn’t a witness. He wasn’t even supposed to be there. He was a sort of a minder–or, maybe, big brother– to hold Anderson’s hand (figuratively) while legislators from both parties relentlessly asked questions that demonstrated they failed to understand her genius and couldn’t give a damn about her journey through life and her passion for education. After her ordeal ended, Anderson refused to answer reporters’ questions and all but fled the committee room, chased by television cameras shining bright lights.”
Wish I could have been there. Any chance this was filmed? Can I pop anyone some popcorn?
Relax Newark, and let karma start its healing…
This lady has destroyed our schools. Myself and others also went to the State Board of Education meeting to give testimony on Anderson’s destruction. There are over 6000 children still not enrolled in school to date in Newark!
Legislative scrutiny on the Newark fiasco was overdue. What has happened there is an absolute debacle.
We, along with many others, ‘fail to understand her genius’! Therein lies the issue…people like her and the school of fish swimming along with CorpProfiteers are sold to us as geniuses who will fix education. They march in, kick sand in the eyes of experienced credentialed educators, spit at the body of research, bash teachers and test our children sweat-shop style.
Cami is the Poster Reform Genius. She is also hung out to dry because she is a woman and not part of the ‘beautiful people’ who can get away with murder and corruption.
Anyone out there ‘understand the genius’ in any of the CorpProfiteers?
Oh yes, I got it…they are RICH and hang with the RICH!
And…they pay teachers’ Salary! We work for them! Hired Help!
Cami Anderson had it too too easy.
😲
¿? Yes, I can hear the moans and groans and cries of derision but let me explain…
A little context. This appearance by a [now fading] superstar of the self-proclaimed “education reform” firmament took place under extremely unusual conditions.
What Dr. Raj Chetty of Vergara fame, a big fan of placing Michael Jordans in every classroom, would call an outlier—and he should know, since he likes to push such in his role as an EduOutliar in service to that hard data point known as ROI/MC [ReturnOnInvestment/MonetizingChildren] aka $tudent $ucce$$.
Diane Ravitch: put her on a panel with two or three or four “thought leaders” of the “new civil rights movement of our time” with a MSM moderator aligned with the two or three or four. Call it “balanced” and “fair” as the entire discussion is an shameful exercise in unfair and unbalanced airing of important public issues.
Diane Ravitch: set up, quite literally, public discussions with the likes of Michelle Rhee and David Coleman, and they literally obliterate the phrase “no excuses” while finding every means and measure to escape, by hook or by crook, even the remote possibility that they will have to discuss, in a fair and balanced way their words and deeds.
Cami Anderson forgot to bring along Bill Gates’s posse when she testified, and didn’t have quite the power to rig and game the give-and-take to make herself look like the second coming of—well, whatever she passionately [shades of John Deasy!] thinks she is.
The leaders and enablers and enforcers of the self-styled “education reform” movement genuinely don’t believe in the power of their ideas. That’s why they bumble and fumble and put their collective feet in their collective mouth when they have to explain and defend what they actually stand for and carry out.
And when confronted by even a sliver of the vast horde of “inconvenient facts” that obliterate their pr claims and catchy slogans and misleading feel-good selling points—seems like somebody always finds a way to show them mercy.
I am not exaggerating. She had it easy. Just put Dr. Bruce Baker and Jersey Jazzman (Mark Weber) before her and let the hard but necessary questioning begin. The Caminator had it easy. Much much too easy.
¿😳? Yes, really. They can’t even deal with the Rheeally easy stuff.
Two postings by Jersey Jazzman.
Michelle Rhee asserts that only 1.7% of classroom time is devoted to testing. Based on a report. One which she, literally, could not possibly have read since it directly contradicted the words coming out of her mouth.
Link: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2014/04/why-is-michelle-rhee-wrong-about.html
But surely picking on Rhee, who often treats treats facts as if they are Johnsonally dependent on her whim of the moment, is just another example of defenders of the status quo in education [that’s the vast majority of us, folks] calling out an outlier. Er, how about another “data-driven” giant of EduExcellence, who confronts Jersey Jazzman and another researcher [Julia Sass Rubin] with one of the classic Edudefenses of all time: the “data-driven” criticism of Weber and Rubin is, hold onto your hats, everybody, it’s going to be a bumpy ride—
Is nothing more than “statistical gibberish.”
Link: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2014/12/charter-school-gibberish.html
So let’s leave the Caminator alone for now, ok, so she can console herself with one of those bedrock Marxist principles that she lives by:
“I’ve got the brain of a four year old. I’ll bet he was glad to be rid of it.”
And Groucho has never, ever, left her in the lurch.
😎
I don’t know much about Cami (although I’d be quite entertained if RI’s Deborah Gist ever ended up being cornered by a similar committee at some point in the future), but I think it’s possible that she fell victim to actually believing the hype of her corporate reform patrons about how brilliant and awesome she was. I’m assuming, of course, that she has a few corporate reform patrons who stood/stand to make some money from her policies.
Here in RI, Gist’s time seems to be winding down, as her contract’s renewal deadline has come and gone and her contract has not been renewed. It would be possible in theory for her to be retained next year, but I think her patrons’ plan is to place her in some other state where she can be a “fresh face”, and insert another “fresh face” here in Rhode Island.
Maybe she’ll land on her feet in New Jersey?
LOL sorry werebat73 please don’t send her to New Jersey. We have been trying to keep tab of all these so called reformers names. I’ll make sure to add Deborah Gist to the list. Cami is Newark’s nightmare!!!
Add Stefan Pryor.
Where is Stefan Pryor from? will add
CT just sent him packing, but the new RI governor, a close friend, created a job for him.
Google his name on Jonathan Pelto’s blog……oodles of DATA on one more edufraud.
Thanks for the info on Pryor, Linda — although it doesn’t surprise me at all that Raimondo would hire a corporate reformer, since she’s (literally) in bed with one (her husband).
Pelto research on Pryor RI connections
Gina Raimondo’s husband Andy Moffitt was Cory Booker’s roommate.
Moffitt is a member Stand for Children Board of Directors
Moffit is a Senior Practice Expert and member of core leadership team for McKinsey & Company’s Global Education Practice.
“Since co-founding the Global Education Practice in 2005, Andy has worked with multiple large urban districts, state education departments and charter management organizations to markedly improve system performance and close achievement gaps.
He co-authored a recent book, Deliverology 101: A Field Guide for School System Leaders (Corwin Press, 2010), which describes key success factors and steps in driving results in global school system reforms.
Before joining McKinsey, Andy was an elementary school teacher in an inner-city school in Houston, Texas as a corps member of Teach For America.”
From my recent article in the Progressive
The Corporate Education Reform Industry effort to buy control of Public Education
The Corporate Education Reform Industry effort to buy control of Public Education
This year’s election season provided a series of textbook examples of how corporate education reformers used their personal fortunes to contaminate the democratic process.
Let’s begin with the little state of Rhode Island, where former hedge fund owner and charter school champion, Democrat Gina Raimondo was elected governor with 40 percent of the vote in a three-way race—one in which there was an unprecedented level of campaign spending.
Raimondo, who as Rhode Island’s state treasurer won national acclaim from conservatives for successfully dismantling the state employee pension fund, raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from donors associated with funding the education reform movement and profiting from the charter school industry. Her running mate, Cumberland Mayor Daniel McKee, one of the state’s most vocal supporters of charter schools, was elected lieutenant governor with help from many of the same donors.
Over the course of her gubernatorial campaign, Raimondo collected checks from many of the major players in the charter school and “education reform” movement, including donations from billionaires Eli Broad and members of the Walton Family. (The Broad Foundation and Walton Foundation, along with Gates Foundation, are the primary funders behind the overall education reform movement.)
Another billionaire, former Enron executive John Arnold along with his wife, not only donated directly to Raimondo’s campaign and her political action committee, called Gina PAC, but the couple’s $100,000 check made them the largest donors to the American LeadHERship Council, a Super PAC affiliated with Raimondo. The second largest donor to the Super PAC was Eli Broad with $15,000.
A proponent of doing away with public employee pensions, Arnold also donated as much as $500,000 to an advocacy group called Engage Rhode Island, which spent approximately $740,000 lobbying for Raimondo’s successful assault on public employee pensions. Over the past three years, the John and Laura Arnold Foundation has donated more than $100 million in support of charter schools and entities involved in the corporate education reform industry, including being one of the largest contributors to Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Educational Excellence.
Raimondo’s success in raising funds from the charter school industry includes at least $50,000 from the members of the board of directors of Achievement First, Inc., the large charter chain that recently opened a school in Rhode Island, adding to their existing schools in Connecticut and New York.
Jonathan Sackler, an investment manager and heir to the Purdue Pharma fortune, is not only a founding member of Achievement First, Inc, but a founder of a national charter school advocacy group called 50CAN. One of 50CAN’s related entities, 50CAN Action Fund, dumped $90,000 to run TV commercials to help Raimondo’s running mate win his primary race.
As a result of the Citizens United case and IRS regulations, the 501(c) (4) Foundation 50CAN Action Fund can accept unlimited donations from contributors and can participate in political campaigns and elections, as long as
Heh — here’s another curious connection between Cami and Gist — apparently they BOTH were named members of the “100 Most Influential People of the Year” by Time Magazine!
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2012/04/newark_superintendent_cami_and.html
What criteria does Time use to name these people? Could there be any — gasp! — string pulling going on there? Perish the thought!
Yet, I give her credit for this:
“I’m not saying they [the charter schools] are out there intentionally skimming, but all of these things are leading to a higher concentration of the neediest kids in fewer [district] schools,” said Anderson.”
Public schools in a given geographical area are systems. When one introduces “schools of choice” a lot of things can happen, and ONE of the things that can happen is the public schools can get hurt. There can BE winners and losers when one launches an experiment in a complex system. That can happen. In this case, it DID happen.
I have not heard one other person in ed-reform-land admit this simple fact. Baby steps, I know, but she gets 1 point for bothering to consider “what happens to the safety net public system when I layer a whole new ‘choice’ sector over it?”
I don’t give her much credit – other people have been saying this to her for years, and she’s dismissed it as “excuses”. Now when it’s her behind in the fire, suddenly she hauls it out. Sorry, stop making excuses, Cami.
I think it’s a chink in the wall. I’m continually amazed that there is absolutely no interest in this question: “what happened to the public schools after the ‘choice’ schools opened”?
It’s not even discussed. Good, bad, no one knows and no one cares, apparently. There’s this crazy, chirpy insistence that it’s “win/win!” but they don’t know that because they CAN’T know that. It’s an experiment. It could just as easily be win/lose or lose/lose.
Chiara and Dienne: I much appreciate your comments here.
One of my take aways: Cami Anderson, like the vast majority of self-styled “education reformers” that bray and brag at every step and turn that they are “data-driven” are, in fact, studiously indifferent to what even their own data says. Even more, they seem to suppress even a smidgeon of curiosity about what inconvenient facts reveal.
Another way of looking at this is self-serving gullibility. I have mentioned this before, but consider the following. Michelle Rhee used to tout her edumiracle of taking “her” [conveniently forgetting her co-teacher] students from the 13th to the 90th percentile. Forget for a moment that this “hard data point” maven hasn’t a shred of evidence to back up her claim, that the principal that allegedly told her this has never ever confirmed such, etc.
If any employer had told me during an eval the equivalent of “you’ve turned water into wine” or “your work is the equivalent of walking on water” I would have gotten a sick feeling in my stomach, knowing that such nonsensical praise was sure to be followed by something like “but your performance for the last few months has been subpar and I am afraid we’re going to have to let you go.”
So Cami Anderson shouldn’t be TURNING OFF her critical thinking skills when confronted with such data but TURNING THEM ON.
And never discount the strange but cage busting ability of the “thought leaders” of the “new civil rights movement of our time” to combine word salad and cognitive dissonance. For example, into speeches given by US Secretaries of Education at the annual meetings of AERA [American Educational Research Association]. *Google “Arne Duncan” and “AERA” and “2013” and “Choosing the Right Battles.*
Just sayin’…
😎
Our journey is irrelevant in the bigger scheme of things. Providing what students need to be safeand healthy ensures a better learning environment. Being both a registered nurse and a special ed teacher for 21 years tells me me can’t cut corners in any of these areas or they effect the other.
As a current board of ed. Member in a small suburban school I was invited to go to a breakfast conference with the principal one day. I went and sat at a table with a lady who is head of one of the charter schools in Buffalo. I ask her many pointed questions over coffee and she answered them. Several things jumped out to me…one no school nurse and no psychologist or counselor. Trust me even in our school the health and mental health of students is always front and center because it effects the students ability to perform. A student with a behavior problem was going to be sent back to public because they had no ability to intervene. She was not worried though because she had a waiting list and would be able to keep her numbers up. Seemed like a travesty to me!
I’m following this from afar, and now count at least three times that Anderson has fled from a public meeting, either running or walking fast out of a room when things weren’t going her way:
1) at a Newark School Board or Ed. meeting after some parent mentioned that she was failing to meet the needs of poor African-American students, while Anderson made sure Anderson’s own African-American (actually bi-racial, the father being black) children wanted for nothing education-wise; Anderson has since boycotted all Newark Board of Ed. meetings as a result of this question, and refused to meet with any parents or community members who did not support her unreservedly;
2) at some Rick Hess school privatization party last fall when Anderson was about to speak, but saw protesters’ hand-made signs in the room, then ran for her life; Hess then interviewed her in a secluded room elsewhere in the building, where Anderson fabricated victimhood and blathered on about “adult interests” of “the status quo” who were stalking her… sheesh! ; (a video of this is on-line somewhere)
and now
3) at this fiasco yesterday described in Braun’s article.
Seriously, is this the corporate ed. reform and school privatization industry’s idea of competent leadership?
By way of contrast, below is an example of how someone on the other side—NYC UFT President Michael Mulgrew—handles being confronted with a similarly tough situation. In this case, corporate reform darling (the “New Michelle Rhee”) Campbell Brown poses Mulgrew a query with a premise full of bald-faced lies and exaggerations about sexual impropriety among NYC public school teachers and alleged outcomes of investigations into sexual impropriety.
(And yes, Browns’ numbers and specific claims are bogus. South Bronx Teacher, and others have definitively debunked them elsewhere on the net.
Yeah, yeah, Campbell again slanders and lies again about unions and unionized teachers… big shock, I know.)
In response, Mulgrew admirably keeps his cool, corrects the specious presuppositions contained in her question, then basically puts Campbell in her place.
NOTE: I am not a big fan of Mulgrew in the least—i.e. the recent lousy contract he helped negotiate; his throwing ATR’s under the bus: his publicly threatening (at last summer’s AFT Convention) to “punch in the face” any NYC teachers who oppose Common Core (WTF???!!!) I would prefer Julie Cavanaugh in charge there—and also Warren Fletcher here in L.A.—but we have to respect the will of the membership in the outcome of both of these elections, and get behind our leaders. At the same time, we should also correct them and provide them with challenging input if and when it’s warranted. (I hope that’s carefully worded and balanced enough for everyone out there 😉 )
That said, I have to give Mulgrew his props for his handling of Ms. Brown’s demagoguery in this instance.
I wouldn’t say that being on a luncheon panel and handling one question (and refusing to take a followup question, which Bob Braun presumably would describe as “taking the fifth”) is a similarly tough situation to the one Anderson was in. According to Braun, she was before the committee for four hours. It’s less like a lunch panel and more like this:
I mentioned three times when Anderson ran out of a public meeting. Doesn’t such repeated non-performance call into question this woman’s competence? There may be even more such instances. I don’t know In the most recent instance, whether she ran out of the room after four minutes, or after four hours really makes no difference.
She can either answer the question, or refuse to do so, preferably with an explanation for why she was refusing. Then on to the next question, and on and on… until the hearing is over. It may take ten minutes, or ten hours. That’s part of her job. If she can’t handle being held accountable to elected officials—and by extension, to the tax-paying public—in a public forum, she should quit, or someone should remove her.
Also, expecting Mulgrew to answer Brown’s follow-up question—asking him to have a detailed familiarity with and then argue with certainty the specifics of one particular case out of thousands—was and is patently absurd.
That’s why he instead stated the general truth that, in the event of any allegation of sexual impropriety (even a false one from a mischievous and/or vindictive lying student… and yeah… this happens all the ding-dong time, unfortunately), the teachers is removed, followed by an investigation and hearing. That hearing will then have two outcomes;
GUILTY and you’re fired;
NOT GUILTY and you keep your job.
Mulgrew further mentioned that this system was negotiated by the union, and that the union and its members—folks who’ve dedicated their lives to educating children with meager compensation—want sexually inappropriate teachers out as much—if not more—as anyone else.
“That is my answer”… and a damn good one at that.
Ms. Brown and her moneyed backers don’t want their to be a hearing in front of a fair and impartial third party. They want teachers to have the same job protections as a fast-food worker, or an office temp, or a retail clerk…. that is… NO JOB PROTECTIONS… and it has nothing to do with improving the educational outcomes of children… the whole “we’re-doing-it-for-the-children” canard is just a facade, as their REAL goal is to privatize the system, and union-busting via the Vergara lawsuit, and Brown’s Vergara copy-cat lawsuit are steps towards that ignoble end.
You don’t believe that? Well, look at who’s funding Brown and her group, and the Vergara lawsuit people, and who stands to benefit. They’re groups who are out to rape and pillage (READ: privatize) the trillion-dollar public school system, and enriching themselves at the same time.
Keep getting that word out.
I’m just saying that it’s not easy to get yelled at by a row of politicians for four hours. You typically don’t get to shout down followup questions with your Large Man Voice whenever you think the questions are patently absurd. Look at Lloyd Blankfein — a Master of the Universe, rarely challenged in life, prepped for weeks by Sullivan & Cromwell, but squirming and babbling while Carl Levin tells him what he really thinks of him. It’s not easy.
Flerp, I wonder if Blankfein would have been squirming and babbling if he hadn’t have been involved in something reprehensible to begin with. Maybe a member of the 100 most influential people in the nation (according to Time Magazine) might also find it easy to handle a similar meeting if they hadn’t been involved in something that was at least embarrassingly deceptive.
The old “If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to worry about,” right?
Here’s the thing though: winning an argument in the political environment we are in only has real meaning when the person/side that loses recognizes that they lost! Only the reflection that comes with acknowledging the loss of a rhetorical contest brings change, especial when the loser has any type of power. Campbell Brown didnt walk away from that dialog thinking, even a little, that her position was remotely out of whack.
That’s a huge problem nationally and within the states with those of us opposing Ed reform/privatizing: winning all the rhetorical battles doesn’t seem to be changing the course of policy. In fact, here in NY for example, it couldn’t be more clear how reformer’s policies are BAD policy…..it’s been made clear everywhere…..we’ve won the rhetorical battle, the evidence battle, the academic battle….and yet they double down on the bad policies! I bet the ideas and policies that Cami Anderson represent will move forward and expand in spite of the obviously embarrassing round of questioning she had.
It’s so frustrating. Obviously we have to aggressively continue to win the rhetorical debates….but we won’t win just doing that..
What is needed is a “last march of the (par)Ents” — and that won’t come without the involvement of the parents.
But when it DOES come — and it’s already coming — WHOO-EE! Many will be the politicians and officials who scramble to distance themselves from the corporate reformers.
What a day! NJ learned that this White Hawk is a total jerk. Even some republican congressmen hedge their bets in her defense.
Sorry, but the attacks on Anderson are venomous and personal — and orchestrated by a small group that wants control returned to it and will stop at nothing to make it appear that Anderson is “under siege” — including following her to Washington DC to disrupt a speaking engagement. She’s supposed to attend meetings where union-hired protesters do nothing but shout insults at her? In fact, the children of Newark are doing much better under Anderson! See Chris Cerf’s 5 Falsehoods op-ed in Star Ledger: http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/14/12/01/op-ed-dispelling-five-falsehoods-about-newark-s-school-system/
Nice: you link to an opinion piece defending the indefensible Anderson written by Chris Cerf, one of her co-conspirators in the hostile takeover of public schools in NJ, and a man who has turned everything he’s touched, save his and his patron’s investment portfolios, into a ruin.
Your link is about as credible as an opinion piece by G. Gordon Liddy trying to exonerate E. Howard Hunt over the Watergate burglary, but better luck next time.
Thanks Michael, if Newark is better with Cami Anderson tell that to the over 6000 children still not in school smh
Oh, puleeese! I came of age in the Nixon era and the reference to Liddy is preposterous. Do you ever consider an idea or a fact? Or is it all ad hominem? Tell me what exactly Cerf has gotten wrong? I’ve reviewed tons of data from the last couple of years (and wrote about Anderson and Newark here — http://educationnext.org/newark%E2%80%99s-superintendent-rolls-up-her-sleeves-and-gets-to-work/) and I can tell you that a) the education opportunities for Newark’s children have never been brighter and b) it is a small but well-financed political group that is out to get her. I don’t want to take up space on Diane’s blog going over the evidence, but Anderson has a pretty good record.
If you click on the link pbmeyer2014 above the comment, it brings you to a page titled:
“schoollifemedia The greatest WordPress.com site in all the land!”
Below the title , it says: “Nothing Found”
Seems appropriate.
Christine Langhoff: not surprising that Gertrude Stein would pop up when it comes to describing the fantastical claims of the self-proclaimed “education reform” movement:
“There is no there there.”
And just where is there? And just what is that there?
Just one teensy weensy sample from the blog of Jersey Jazzman, 1-8-2015—
Link: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-week-reformy-died-in-new-jersey.html
For many more acute observations on that blog alone, google “Jersey Jazzman” and “blog” and “Cami Anderson” and “One Newark.”
Of course, when all else fails, just reply with the be-all and end-all argument of the self-proclaimed “data-driven thought leaders” of the “new civil rights movement of our time.” To wit[less]: Whatever ethical numbers/stats persons say that contradicts the numerical chimeras that drive $tudent $ucce$$ is—are you ready?—
“[S]tatistical gibberish.”
Oh, and don’t forget to attack the ethics of said honest numbers/stats folks even though, like Michelle Rhee, you forget to read something in the public domain that directly contradicts your interpretation of informational text.
[See Jersey Jazzman, blog, 12-18-2014, “Charter School ‘Gibberish’.”]
If the rheephormistas keep this up, they’re going to give “gibberish” a bad name. And themselves.
“Ridicule dishonors a man more than dishonor does.” [François de la Rochefoucauld]
I hate to think how much worse it must be to ridicule oneself…
😎
Christine Langhoff wrote: “if you click on the link pbmeyer2014 above the comment, it brings you to a page titled:
“schoollifemedia The greatest WordPress.com site in all the land!”
“Below the title , it says: “Nothing Found”
“Seems appropriate.”
Peter Meyer writes: Not sure where the link comes from; it was assigned when I registered here. But if you’re interested, you can see my stuff here: http://educationnext.org/author/pmeyer/ Thanks. –pm
Nice try. She deserves what she gets. Public response is directly reflected from her hostile, blatantly insulting, racist/segregationist school policy. Only a pocket of individuals who have a huge stake in this bogus One Newark policy–typically, billionaires and pro-business folks linking with Chris Christie– is willing to defend her. Pity at best.
Those are not union hired protestors: those are the parents of the children that she is supposedly so concerned about. Yes, in fact, even if they were “union hired” protestors, which they are not I would expect her to go to work. Every day as a teacher I have to be abused and harassed by the mandates made by Gates et al, but I am professional enough to show up for 8 times less than she makes.
It is so obvious that she could care less about the parents and children of Newark. She is just in it for her ego and her salary.
So glad she is as humiliated and disempowered as those poor kids and parents.
What do Wendy Kopp (yes, I know she’s no longer officially TFA’s head, but come on) and her apparatchiks feed these TFA temps during that five week training, that so many of them are incapable of opening their mouths without regurgitating mawkish, insipid, fatuous, self-praising talk about “journeys” and “passions,” which is totally belied by the destruction they bring about?
It’s impossible to caricature these people, since they exceed the outer reaches of self-parody every time they speak. Yet, since they serve their Masters so well, they continue to be given media platforms, when they should be given perp walks.
If Americans can’t be bothered to recognize and reject the transparent incompetence, dishonesty, and avarice of these looters of democracy, then we’ve clearly been unable to keep the Republic that was bled for and left to our stewardship.
Yes
Michael, you must not have had the brainy experience of listening to 19 year old Miss America finalists who want to end world hunger, cure cancer and create World Peace by the time they graduate from college, if they win the Title & $.
TFA 5wk-wonders are just as hopeful, ‘realistic’ & wide-eyed. They may learn from our students and get an experience they soon forget by the time they move out of Mom & Dad’s house, finish grad school and marry the frog prince.
Thanks, I never fully realized that Miss America candidates were The Best and Brightest, but that’s what happens when you’re a unionized thug public school teacher: you’re so busy destroying your students’ futures that you just miss those things.
All I can say besides “Ding, Dong, the Witch is…uh…Nearly Gone,” is “What the heck took our legislators so long?
It’s about time the perpetuators of all this nonsense have their feet held to the fire. Time to investigate ALL the corruption in the NJ Education Reform racket. Shall we start at the top?
(Oh…I’m dreaming, aren’t I?)
PARCC was lambasted at the NJ BOE Lobby Day yesterday. Maybe my unborn baby will live in a better world, after all.
Yes LG and the stories regarding PARCC and common core were heart breaking!
As noted this is vintage Cami Anderson. She did just as much damage to the Alternative High Schools when she was the superintendent of these programs in NYC. She never tried to understand the students who needed these vehicles to return from being drop outs or to avoid that decision. The principals who worked most closely with her voted unanimously to leave her supervision at the first chance they got. Those who were forced to stay worked with the neediest students and she immediately attacked them for not producing Regents certified graduates fast enough.
Anderson never wanted to hear from her teachers only from the sycophants she surrounds herself with all of whom, like her, lack real teaching experience (7 or more years the new NYC standard for ascending to principal) and offer no real ideas on how to improve the teaching corps or work with students whose first priority is not necessarily school.
Anderson’s refrain is that she’s getting rid of bad teachers, but no one asks who is replacing them. Rotating TFA graduates in for a year or two does nothing to build capacity in a school system. Unfortunately, the Republicans are wedded to ideological talking points (just as Ms Anderson is) and incapable of admitting a mistake even when it is running out of the room rather than answer questions.