Eric Shininger is a principal in New Jersey. He comes from a family of educators. He is appalled by Governor Chris Christie’s continual attacks on educators who have dedicated their lives to children. He explains he essentials of Christie’s agenda to destroy public education in the Garden State.
He writes:
“Let’s look at some of the ridiculous decisions Governor Christie has made to derail a great education system:
“Reduced state funding for schools over the years to pay for tax cuts for his rich friends. His latest wisdom is articulated in this article: Chris Christie’s Education Plan Is Shocking: He Wants to Give to the Rich and Take From the Poor.
“Eliminated cost of living adjustments (COLA) for all retired educators who gave their all for kids
“Vetoed a mandatory school recess bill, even though research had shown how important it is to student learning.
“Pushed forward a few unfunded mandates (Common Core, PARCC) that have taken away precious funds from improving what really matters. Schools had to front the money for quality professional development, curriculum revision, and technology to support these mandates. Years later many states have backed away from PARCC. The once strong 26-member consortium has now dwindled to 7. For all the hoopla, PARCC has told us nothing we didn’t already know from previous assessments. To make matters worse, NJ has been the only state to make this a graduation requirement in the near future.
“Imposed superintendent caps to drive out some of our best leaders. Many states have welcomed them with open arms and pocket books as good leaders are often worth every penny
“Followed through with a value-added system for evaluating educators, which by the way has no supporting research. He doubled down on this recently by increasing Student Growth Percentile (SGP) scores to 30% of an educator’s overall evaluation. This latest change was pushed out on Wednesday, August 31, just days before schools welcomed back students. On Monday, a few days later, Education Commissioner David Hespe resigned. A bit shady, huh? In all, the new regulations completely give up on quality teaching and simply shoot for compliance. This was most likely done because people were overburdened with paperwork, but no consideration was given as to the effect of the regulations. The entire SGP issue is a nightmare as in some cases they rely on arbitrary numbers
“Refused to fully fund the public pension system that he committed to in 2012 while pushing all the blame for the state’s economic woes on teachers, policemen, firemen, and other public sectors committed to the well being of all.”
Christie leaves the education system of his state worse than he found it. His bullying of educators is inexplicable.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“My entire public education career as a teacher (Watchung Hills) and principal (New Milford) was spent in the Garden State working in a system that was, and still is, regarded as one of the best in the nation. This recognition has been validated by state-by-state data comparisons. Historically NJ is typically number one or two. Students in the state routinely outperform their peers on the SAT, ACT, and NAEP from across the country. This past year five of the top 100 public schools in America were from NJ.”
Sisss boooommm baahhh, with the emphasis on the bah!
Another data freak adminimal who appears to have a need to be #1, that great American Exceptionalism Disease.
And what, Mr Shininger, have you done to prevent the harm caused by all of those standards and standardized tests to those at the bottom of the education ladder? Have you instructed your staff to not implement the educational malpractices that are those standards and standardized testing? Or have you been a GAGA* Good German, doing your part to implement the holocaust of innocent children’s minds by implementing those malpractices? Have you put your personal aspirations and goals above those innocent children? You know implementing, cheerleading and otherwise not fighting against the scourge of those malpractices?
Personal expediency over justice? That appears to be what you have been doing:
“Should we therefore forgo our self-interest? Of course not. But it [self-interest] must be subordinate to justice, not the other way around. . . . To take advantage of a child’s naivete. . . in order to extract from them something [test scores, personal information] that is contrary to their interests, or intentions, without their knowledge [or consent of parents] or through coercion [state mandated testing], is always and everywhere unjust even if in some places and under certain circumstances it is not illegal. . . . Justice is superior to and more valuable than well-being or efficiency; it cannot be sacrificed to them, not even for the happiness of the greatest number [quoting Rawls]. To what could justice legitimately be sacrificed, since without justice there would be no legitimacy or illegitimacy? And in the name of what, since without justice even humanity, happiness and love could have no absolute value?. . . Without justice, values would be nothing more than (self) interests or motives; they would cease to be values or would become values without worth.”—Comte-Sponville [my additions]
Or have you been one of. . .
“The mass of men [and women] serves the state [education powers that be] thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailors, constables, posse comitatus, [administrators and teachers], etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt.”- Henry David Thoreau [1817-1862], American author and philosopher?
*GAGA-Go Along to Get Along
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Duane, you are very fast to judge people harshly who do not share your belief that all test scores are meaningless. Like you, I dislike standardized tests. I think the industry has come to dominate Americcan education, rather than serving it.
But please disagree respectfully.
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Sorry, Diane, but when I see people praised for supposedly coming out against implementing educational malpractices while at the same time continuing to implement said malpractices, it sticks in my craw.
The holocaust of innocent minds that is occurring as we type right now, might be viewed as worse than not providing any public education at all. At least then the child wouldn’t be belittled, berated, ranked and sorted, labelled as a failure of a child or a 1/5 no progress being made student.
These malpractices are so egregious that I cannot just disagree respectfully, but must vehemently deny the worth of those practices and the intent of those that implement them. Going Along to Get Along just doesn’t cut it and needs to be condemned for that horrors that it produces. And those horrors are many.
The day that an administrator prevents (and not just talks) those harms from occurring will be the day that I will respectfully tip my hat to her/him-not before.
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Jack Hassard is professor emeritus (he also taught in MA and knows exactly what is happening to our public schools)…. http://www.artofteachingscience.org/the-undemocratic-character-of-georgias-chronically-failing-school-turnaround-amendment/
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Thanks for the link. What is happening in so many states is deeply disturbing. Billionaires are inserting themselves to control the outcomes of local elections. At least, Georgia is putting their plan up to a public vote. It is important for supporters of public education to get out the vote in this state. This decision has the potential remove public education from public responsibility and turn it into an opaque, top down cesspool of “choice,” that the public will forever regret. I do not believe most communities want a corporation taking over their public money without accountability or oversight. Corporations will always put students second to profit, and they are not obligated to serve students as fairly as public schools.
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thanks; Jack was always an outstanding supporter (and still is ) for public education. He “friended” me on FB when i first took on Fordham Institute (Checkers finn etc in emails) and I have tried to follow Jack’s work. I copied out what Jack wrote and what one of the Oregon persons wrote and sent it to our Mayor and to the Essex County coordinator for SaveourpublicschoolsMA.com . This is one hell of a fight coming up on November election. There has been a good amount of helpful comments on Lowell Sun etc and Christine L. has contributed greatly to the discussion.
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This was posted on FB by Robert Valiant this morning; I wrote and thanked them and commented on the page and sent a portion to our Essex County coordinator.
“Outcomes are dismal for the latest high-stakes testing affair. The achievement gap has widened and there’s no end in sight for the failure. When we finally get to to see the price tag for this failure on September 15, parents and taxpayers will be outraged.
Here’s what you can do:
1. Start the discussion. Submit this text and videolink now to your school board for presentation during public comment. The video duration is 3:18, 18 seconds longer than most comment periods. You may need a second person to give allow it to be seen in its entirety. The Yong Zhao zinger at the end is definitely worth it.
2. Share, comment, react on social media.
3. Find your public school and study the results http://www.ode.state.or.us/search/page/?=5387
4. Attend Parent Club meeting and talk about the results with your child’s principal and others.
5. Express your opinion about the costs to your neighboring property owners.
Sober up
http://www.oregonlive.com/…/8_sobering_take-aways_from_ore.…
Use a bigger hammer to try and fix the tv
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/…/or-oh-noooos-sba-resul…
Rick Stiggins is the retired founder and president of the Assessment Training Institute (ATI), Portland, Oregon. After conducting a decade of in-school research on the state and status of classroom assessment in America’s education, Rick authored a leading introductory textbook for teachers on classroom assessment, An Introduction to Classroom Assessment FOR Student Learning.
Yong Zhao served as the Presidential Chair and Director of the Institute for Global and Online Education in the College of Education, University of Oregon, where he was also a Professor in the Department of Educational Measurement, Policy, and Leadership.
Rick Stiggins:
The point I want to make about how we would use assessment is we’re going to devote it primarily to support student learning is that of those 9 cells, only 2 arise from a foundation of research, rigorous, scientific research, that they have in fact had a positive impact on student learning and may have some evidence to have narrowed achievement score gaps, if that’s our aspiration……..
As a matter of fact, we’ve been involved now in testing for at least seventy years – we started with district testing, statewide testing, national assessment, international assessment. I have it on good authority that we’ve already shipped to the space station. (laughter) There’ll be a scanner on the space station. (laughter)
Someone cite for me a reference I can turn to, for compelling evidence that that’s been a high-quality investment in the advancement of American education.
I want an estimation of an effect size attributable to having spent billions of dollars over the service of this agenda.
Now, I’m a pretty good researcher, and, as a matter of fact, not only can I not find the results of the research, I can’t find the place where anybody has actually asked that question.
We are going to, and If you think back, 70 years, those different levels, it’s gotta be billions of dollars.
During that same time, how much have we invested in supporting teachers, as they face the challenges of day-to-day classrooms assessments? How much? Zero – audience member
So my – why we would assess – if we we’re really going to transfer our attention to our kids that are learning is that we invest in teachers and their ability to use high quality assessments in support of student learning, so that they can bring students on board and develop their uniqueness in the ways that make sense in the future of our culture.
That’s, that’s what I would do.
And so, my advocacy then, is for the creation of balanced assessments the serve the use of information needs for all users, not just those that presume to make some kinds of decisions on behalf of students once a year.
And the keys to that are balance, clear learning targets, dimensions learning targets, well-assessed, by wherever their assessed, by competent assessors, with results effectively communicated in ways that support learning.
The counter-example of that is the communication of the results for the Smarter Balanced Test a few months ago where nobody can figure out what to exactly do with those results on behalf of kids.”
This was copied from FB post by Rober Valiant (an activist)
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I find Eric Shininger’s comments to be right on target. Christie is not only the worst NJ governor on education in my memory but he is the ANTI-education governor. Christie loathes and despises the actual real public schools and their unionized teachers. He has described the public school teachers as being greedy and uncaring; he never passes up an opportunity to demonize and vilify teachers and their schools. You would think that Christie would be bragging about NJ schools which are highly rated nationally. Instead Christie can only talk about failure factories and that the only solution is charter schools and vouchers.
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I particularly loathe the clip of Christie being asked who he’d like to punch in the face. Without missing a beat, he said,”The president of the teachers’ union.”
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“Refused to fully fund the public pension system that he committed to in 2012 while pushing all the blame for the state’s economic woes on teachers, policemen, firemen, and other public sectors committed to the well being of all.”
I wonder what kind of pension Christi and other state legislators, who want to renege on state workers pensions, have
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Yes, I also wonder about Christie’s pension (pensions)? Will he also be collecting pensions from his stints as US attorney for NJ and as a Morris County freeholder? Christie eliminated the COLA for current and future retirees. He’s doing his best to get NJ to renege on the pension promise.
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the game is rigged
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we have this same attitude in MA….. Stephen Lynch , a MA rep. in House in D.C. said on NPR radio interview (WBUR Boston University station)…. ” I believe in charter schools ; parents could not find a decent school in my district;….. public schools are dysfunctional.” I called his Washington office and said that is a gross over-generalization (and not factual)….
The politicians are all grabbing this talking point and it regurgitates and reverberates in the media and we hear it in public from voters who are misinformed and rely on the radio/tv/cable. The politicians know the votes are split on Charter schools in MA (current polling shows 48% in favor of NOT lifting the cap and 41% who want to lift the cap on charters) so they know what ever way they go they will anger a percentage of the population. I put comments on local school board FB and he erases the whole article because he is on the school committee. But we do have some strong supporters like Pat Jehlen and Barbara L’italien and I have recognized the mayor of my city ; city councils know the money is being siphoned off and we have about 100 school boards that have passed resolutions DO NOT LIFT the cap on charter schools. This is in addition to the standardized testing issues and the $3 million that the Commissioner wants to continue trying to validate tests (that have so far not proven to be reliable or valid and have no predictive validity whatsoever).
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Jean, if politicians think that so many public schools in Massachusetts are terrible, how could it be the highest rated state in the nation? That doesn’t make sense.
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To answer your question: Because that “rating” is based on errors, falsehoods and invalidities that render the rating meaningless.
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I called the Boston office for lynch; I waited two more days and called the Washington office a second time. I sent the Bill Phillis article to Elizabeth Zappala (Washington Office). She tells me there are people assigned on education issues in Boston as well and she will give them the Bill Phillis article. I was a bit haughty in my email to her but that shows how infuriated I was with Lynch going on NPR (WBUR) radio and defaming public education .
Text of my email follows; should you feel so inclined call Lynch’s Boston office?
Thank you Elizabeth Zappala for listening on the educational priorities and my secondary issue about veteran’s health care.
This is the article on the NLRB. When Stephen Lynch was interviewed on radio (WBUR ) he said he was unaware of this NLRB ruling and he could not comment on it because it was new to him. That didn’t stop him on the issues where he was praising charters…. so being under-educated or mis-informed or whatever only stops him some times?
This article , by the way , was written on Bill Phillis’ Ohio E&A site; I guess this is what Lynch wants for MA. to be like FL, OH, CA? Like Romney — Lynch would kill the goose that lays golden eggs? The very best schools in the country and Lynch said parents couldn’t find a decent school in his district and all the public schools are dysfunctional?
jean e. sanders
haverhill MA
To: jim mccarty @saveourpublicschoolsma.com
Sent: Thu, Sep 15, 2016 7:29 am
Subject: Fwd: Implication of rulings by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that charter schools are private
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another trick when they are interviewed on radio or cable…
A repubican /libertarian on Boston TV (probably NECN I can’t remember) was asked a question about Kasich and his stand on issue where Kasich had taken a definite action and signed legislation. The interviewee said “I never hear Kasich say that”…. so you could call the interviewee “honest” , that is true they never spoke to each other about the issue but Kasich had signed important legislation …. This is obviously a dodge…. (I wasn’t there when he said it — so I guess nothing happened)
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i am no fan of Chris Christie, but this is an extremely slanted set of accusations. Check the teacher union in New Jersey for causing huge unnecessary expenses to the state and protecting teachers who should be fired.
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Your comment may very well have merit, but it would be both considerate and more credible if you actually provided some specifics rather than a general reference to the fact that, even in the teacher apple basket, some are bad.
Your complaint doesn’t seem to relate to the points laid out by Eric Shininger. His points are for the most part facts seen through the experience of a disappointed principal.
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American Governor: Chris Christie’s Bridge to Redemption Hardcover – January 19, 2016
by Matt Katz (Author)
I found this book to be quite revealing and from my point of view quite accurate as well. In particular, the way the author describes the bullying tactics of Christie (he is similar to Governor Maine in that regard) . Are you trying to say that Christie never did any of those things? I know that when he first won election my friend’s daughter in New Jersey was calling her dad in MA and saying he was going after teacher pensions…. so I took it quite personally (even though I live in MA)….. The teacher pension group was probably the largest so he wanted to start there. Fordham Institute had articles at the same time on “principal pension payoff”…. so I was familiar with what was happening and I found Matt Katz to be credible in what he was describing.
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The union just tries to guarantee due process rights for an accused teacher. You know, innocent until proven guilty. Non tenure teachers can be fired for no reason or any reason. Administrators have all the tools in the world to get rid of bad teachers. The union just tires to make sure that the process is fair and actually warranted. You do realize that innocent teachers have been falsely accused. I think charter schools cause huge unnecessary expenses because they represent a parallel school system draining funds and resources from the district schools.
We have a judicial system, it’s quite expensive but it’s better than just throwing people in jail for long terms based on suspicions alone and without the benefit of a trial.
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Dr Dufner, I disagree.Governor Christie spent two terms belittling teachers. Disgraceful. His poll ratings are rock bottom. Why pick on teachers? He is another bully
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Duane: MA decided early to align state goals/tests with NAEP goals/objectives. I think the fact that they get high results on the NAEP test merely says that “time on task” and “practice makes perfect” are old psychological principles (the “grandma rules) that have power….. and that aligning to a particular test gets a result. Now am I happy about the choice of NAEP goals/objectives? No… and I refuse to call them standards. I have provided references to this before and don’t want to belabor it. In fact when Governor Patrick was in MA , I wrote to him in emails to stop comparing MA with all the other states because it is an unfair way of comparing and the U.S. News and Business report that lists and ranks colleges/schools/states is totally inappropriate and all it does is fuel the real estate market and it will sell million dollar homes in the most affluent districts. I think I have been pretty clear on this — why I feel the NAEP goals are very shallow…. and we’ve narrowed down the focus of curriculum and programs with the emphasis on NAEP (or any other test for that matter). I don’t want to bore all these people with an argument between you and me so I would like to leave it at that.
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