A Bill Seeks to Halt Charter School Expansion in New Jersey
The teachers union fights to preserve its monopoly.
A bill introduced in the New Jersey State Senate last month seeks to put a three-year moratorium on the growth of charter schools in the state.
In a blistering op-ed this week in NJ Spotlight, Dale Caldwell, the head of school at the Village Charter School in Trenton, argues that the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA), the state's largest teachers union, is behind the legislation. The union's goal: to preserve its monopoly over public education in the state.
Charter public schools are producing graduation rates far outpacing their traditional public-school counterparts. The NJEA and their champions in the Legislature cannot allow the one sector of the public education system that is showing achievement, promise, and hope for students and families to flourish if it cannot be controlled by them, so they exert political pressure to stifle the success of charter public schools.
Last year, I produced a three-part series for Reason TV on how New Jersey's charter school movement is providing hope in America's poorest city. Here's part one:
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The NJEA can get away with in part because many of the mostly white mostly middle class or affluent suburbs have high performing non-charter schools and really aren't interested in charters for their kids. Charter school are located in the poorer cities, so only blacks and Hispanics seem to care.
So, we have indifferent affluent white people siding with the NJEA because they buy into their propaganda.
I never understood how American communities thought it acceptable that the state control the education of free people. Is our deference so severe?
I never understood how American communities thought it acceptable that the state control the education of free people.
Because you were "home-schooled"?
I attended a public Russian school for most of my childhood.
Ah, so you have American public schools because you hate America, Comrade?
/sarc
The State does not cntrol education. It controls State FUNDED education. What irks the Teachers' Unions isn't that private schools exist - they've put up with them essentially forever - but that some schools exist that are run on tax money and yet not in thier control. Scoops that are doing the job rather better than they are.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0p2HvG2wng
OT: I am getting very, very annoyed by these bullshit false equivalencies progressives are always drawing between Christian terrorism and Muslim terrorism. The Young Turks made a video talking about Christian terrorism, and they talk about three groups - the Army of God, Eastern Lightning, and Kony's Lord's Resistance Army. Of those three, the only one with a large death toll is the LRA. The Army of God killed l3 people in the 1980s and Eastern Lightning has been 'linked to' about 10 deaths in 20 years. The fact that they were desperately searching for examples of Christian terrorism for the purposes of saying 'Christians do it to!' and could only find one group that actually committed the kind of mass murder you see from a dozen different Islamic terrorist organizations makes me suspect Christian terrorism is really rare and not worth mentioning.
Sure 90% of all terrorist fatalities globally are Jihadist fatalities, but the Army of God bombed an abortion clinic in 1987!
Also, at one point one of the idiots on the Young Turks said 'There is nothing worse than the Crusades' which is just hilarious since the Muslim conquests of the 700s and 800s probably killed tens of millions more people than the Crusades did.
If tomorrow Islam stopped being a primary source of terrorism and Christians started killing people all over the planet, then I'd start talking about the problems of Christian terrorism.
90% of all terrorist fatalities globally are Jihadist fatalities
But since most of the dead are Muslim, it's an "internal" affair.
You mean workplace violence?
I made the mistake of clicking on a Young Turks video once, and for the next 6 months, all I got in my YouTube recommended feed was more of their inane shit.
no matter how many times I checked "not interested", they kept coming.
Finally i banned their entire channel. and then it still took weeks for them to stop being shoved at me.
I became suspicious it was some kind of YouTube joke. Once you Young Turks, you can never Unyoung Turks.
Never. Again.
Sargon of Akkad, a channel worth subscribing to, pretty regularly takes them to task for their smug fence-sitting BUT THE OTHER SIDE DOES IT TOO segments. Sargon claims to be left-of-center, but ends up defending the right against a lot of illiterate drivel like YT produces. They're a stripped-down, dumber, un-punchy version of TDS.
I subscribed to Sargon last summer during the GG thing.
I think its possible that my sub to him influenced why i was getting TYT recommends all the time.
I think he's a good channel and produces some interesting commentary; however, i occasionally find the schtick of the left leaning GG crowd sort of intellectually lazy.
They seem to isolate the Social Justice thing as being an aberrant 'fad' within leftish politics, which is *otherwise just dandy*.... because there's nothing wrong with Big Government redistributive economics, its just the Moralistic Race-and-Gender-Politics-Trolls they dislike. To them its a *pure* 'culture' war, and has little connection to broader political ideas.
People really failed to appreciate that the GG thing was really a schizm within young left-leaning ranks. Its not "the other side" - its people on the same side fighting about whether or not the Victim-Mongering Crowd is going to take command of the cultural debate and marginalize the entirety of the population who simply wants to be left alone.
I think his vid about the UK elections and how the conservative victory was "a disaster" brought out a lot of interesting debate in the comments. It clarified that there's really very little political consensus in his audience, despite the generalizations people make about that crowd.
See, I don't mind that so much. I enjoy watching Sargon become increasingly frustrated with the left and more and more defensive of the right, especially when he's making common ground with right-leaning writers like Milo Yiannopoulos. It's a bit of friendly schadenfreude.
same here, more or less.
i think they're a few years away from becoming libertarians. at least some of them.
British politics is so fundamentally socialist in its fixations I can't help but think that someone who's liberty-minded but not specifically anti-immigration ends up somewhere on the left by default. It's not out of the question, and in fact I hear a fair number of British conservatives describe themselves as libertarians, but the whole "32 flavors of socialism" model of democracy doesn't give them a whole lot of room for bringing about substantive liberalization.
The entire umbrella of British political inclinations is so spectacularly narrow, in fact, that two Democratic politicians from the same county in the United States whom we would definitively describe as outright socialists are likely to differ ideologically infinitely more than a stalwart Conservative and a Labor devotee in Britain, especially on issues of personal liberty.
They're three, perhaps four if you feel particularly pedantic, lightly variant forms of socialism. That's their whole range. Exceptions to that range are so rare, they don't even possess the numerical heft necessary for the organization of a demonstration, or of funding the printing of political leaflets for advertisement. The Libertarian Party in Britain is akin to a single grain of rice in the Sahara.
For that matter, there is not a single British politician known to advocate, say, the legalization of lethal weapons like firearms, or the abolition of zoning laws, or the privatization of the Satanic National Health Service.
"someone who's liberty-minded but not specifically anti-immigration ends up somewhere on the left by default"
Perhaps. If you're british.
I honestly don't understand the British 'right' as anything other than "somewhat less socialist, and less inclined to hand out bags of free money to pakistani immigrants"
My point was that the American gamergate-types who frequent Sargon's channel seem to think that American politics *should* be the same way... That they seek to simply establish a version of contemporary left politics which abandons the SJW, Culture-War/Identity Politics nonsense, because its fucking absurd and offensive.
frankly, I'd agree with them if i weren't equally concerned that the Free-Shit gravy train is just as big a problem.
That they seek to simply establish a version of contemporary left politics which abandons the SJW, Culture-War/Identity Politics nonsense, because its fucking absurd and offensive.
Except, by their own premises, the social justice cadres are right. If humanity is nothing more than a canvas for a utopia to be painted upon, if liberty and rule of law are nothing more than excuses for the ruling class to perpetuate its hegemony, if people are to have the power to enslave their fellow man because they have the political power to do so, then there's no rational reason that the proper re-ordering of society shouldn't be constructed to ensure that some people aren't privileged by their race, sex or ethnicity.
Soggy is a hard-core leftard, who makes a habit of hanging out on r/libertarian, pretty much the way Tony does around here.
-jcr
Which is funny - because when he tried making the case for the UK Green party to his own *very loyal audience*, they pretty much group-slapped the stupid out of him in the comments.
coincidence = he's having a live chat now about 'Classical Liberalism'
not recommending, just saying
What do you have about Young Turks?
Damn it - you read my mind.
"I made the mistake of clicking on a Young Turks video once, and for the next 6 months, all I got in my YouTube recommended feed was more of their inane shit."
Cenk Uygur is an outright Armenian Genocide Denier who named his channel after the very people who committed the genocide, and then he has the audacity to criticize other people for allegedly being 'bigoted.'
Uygur once blamed the Islamization of Turkey on the US and said 'when I was young Turkey was way more secular and reasonable than it is today, must be America's fault!'
Yeah, and when you were young the Turks were also invading Cyprus and about 60 years before you were born they murdered millions of civilians in an act of genocide that you refuse to acknowledge even happened. Clearly it was a wonderful place before mean ol' America ruined it.
aHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, I found a youtube comment about that video that is just glorious:
"I GOT AN IDEA. A TV show where glenn greenwald, reza aslan and cenk uygyr tour all the muslim countries and engage the people, we'll call it 2 gays and an apostate, When they get back we'll all talk about how all religions are basically the same"
Multiculturalistic morons don't seem to understand that Islamic culture is foundationally militant, and forcible Islamization of infidel populations is its singular aim. The most pervasive canard apologists for Islam often rely upon to deflect censure is that Christianity and Judaism are functionally comparable to Islam, being that all three are Abrahamic in origin. They cite the misdeeds of medieval Christian authorities as equivalent, and usually argue that because Christianity has its share of sins to answer for, the nature of Muslim culture and the degeneracy and ruination that it creates are somehow excusable, or unfortunately inevitable.
They're useful idiots.
That's true, but part of the perception of relative aggression vs. Christendom was timing. Rome had already conquered its empire, so when the Moslems came along, the Arabs were conquering where the Christians were defending.
On a slightly tangential note, modern discussions of the era of the Crusades never include the tolerance rulers like Baldwin of Jerusalem instituted by law, protecting Muslims from murderous papal loyalists at immense risk, on a principled basis. The Young Turks and their ilk are comically ignorant.
But until Charlemagne, Christians still didn't spread their faith by the sword. As opposed to Mohammed himself, they were sending out missionaries, and thus ensuring a steady supply of martyrs to the cause. Even after, most of the Europe was converted peacefully (Teutonic fuckers excepted), and the wrath was reserved for heretics (Bogumils, Cathars, and of course, Protestants/Catholics).
What often gets skipped is vast bloodshed Muslim spread of faith initiated in Persia, Afghanistan and what is now Pakistan. Places where the existing religions had no protection in Koran, which V.S. Naipaul touches on in Among the Belivers, 1981 book that describes modern problems with Islam perfectly.
Actually there are some major non-Muslim terrorist groups out there: many of them are left wing nationalist/separatists/socialist groups. Many lefties love, for example, the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, a group which has possibly committed more suicide bombings than Al Qaeda. In both Palestine and Lebanon there are major secular (usually socialist inclined) terrorist groups which are quite active as well. Then there's the Kurdish Workers' Party. Also plenty of leftist terrorist organizations through Latin America (FARC and ELN come to mind). These groups are all known for bombings and killings of civilians, much like their religious counterparts. I am sure the Young Turks will address all these groups in good time though.
Can we count on Governor Fatass to veto this? He's got to do one thing right.
I'm sure he feels it's sophomoric.
It won't make it through the senate, so he won't need to.
I'm sure he'll sign it and then blow smoke up our ass about how "Republican" it is.
That son-of-a-bitch getting the Republican nomination is the only thing that could make me *shudder* vote for Hillary.
A Christie/Hillary election is a reason to vote Libertarian, then take the next plane out of the country.
The next plane to where??
He pardoned the concealed-carry woman, presumably because the primary voters would otherwise vote against him.
Maybe he will use similar reasoning re charter schools? Worried about 30-second ads from other candidates about him being the teacher's union's [female canine]?
Also, at one point one of the idiots on the Young Turks said 'There is nothing worse than the Crusades' which is just hilarious since the Muslim conquests of the 700s and 800s probably killed tens of millions more people than the Crusades did.
The joke about the ridiculous and asinine comparisons where the Crusades are brought up is that they're comparing the behavior of a population in 1095 to a population in 2015. It's kind of why we, you know, sometimes accuse Islam of being somewhat medieval? I know I know, punching down.
Another interesting fact about the crusades is that they weren't anywhere near as violent as popular culture holds them to be. As James Burke noted back in the 80s, the "fall of Constantinople" was more the "Nudge of Constantinople" as there were so many political deals and intermarrying going on between the "crusaders" that there was very little real killing involved.
Especially-- as Burke noted-- that Europeans like to go east to Islam to get a hot bath.
Reply to Irish above.
they're comparing the behavior of a population in 1095 to a population in 2015
The memory of the Democratic Party's civil rights record is somewhat shorter with that crowd, somehow.
Don't you know, Nixon and Raygun turned all of those Democrats into Republicans?
Somewhere, Subetai had a sad. Then he murdered 50,000 people in a day and felt better.
I'm pretty sure the Arab Caliphate was engaged in one perpetual crusade from the 7th century through the 11th. They did not stop conquering until they Hit France on one side and Poland on the other. But I'm sure it was all very peaceful.
Seriously, how do people think Islam got from the Arabian desert all the way to Spain, and on the other side all the way to Mongolia? No war, no pillaging, no massacring the infidels? Does this mean westerners are now free to claim that the Roman Empire spread through sheer peace and love?
OT: WE may have a winner for most over-the-top histrionics in support of a leftist agenda. No surprise, it is from Gawker:
http://gawker.com/spring-in-baltimore-1717209805
Here are some choice quotes:
In Baltimore, strange fruit grow from the concrete each season. City planners arrange Baltimore neighborhoods like row crops, each section producing different yields of life expectancy and suffering. Spring melts away the snow, bringing out the sun and April showers, some streets covered with cherry blossoms and others with black blood. The open air slaughter of black people is not the mistake of an individual, but the blossoming of a seed of destruction.
Now, policing and gentrification are wiping black neighborhoods off the map in order to make room for development. Black bodies are the raw material for each new site of progress. The new Baltimore will be constructed on top of black graves.
In the slaughterhouse we call the United State of America, whatever place a black body traverses is always the wrong place. The wrong time is the span of a black life.
SLAUGHTERHOUSE, got that? After bitching about racist police for the entirety of the article, what do you suppose the UBER-libs solution would be? Maybe more government?
There's nothing more insufferable and pathetic than a pampered pinko who's known nothing but the comparative paradise of the wealthiest nation in the history of the world screeching about what a uniquely hellish, awful time we must all endure in that nation. He calls the United States a slaughterhouse -- anybody who takes him seriously is senile.
Believe me - those were the lowlights. HE goes on like that FOREVER...
yup. we incarcerate more ppl literally and per capita than anywhere else on earth. libertopia.
We pretty much all agree on how bad the "War on Drugs" is. As well, the militarization of police is a big problem.
But:
You can't say gang bangers arrested for drug violations are the same as Natan Sharansky or Alexandr Solzhenitsyn.
And it isn't that cops are racist specifically. Considering the amount of black on black crime, the cops excesses are against the demographic that are statistically most likely to commit crimes.
The first comment, from "Supermom" (aka the teacher's union PR department) @ the NJ Charter School article is a good piece of hysterical propaganda as well.
basically, "CHILDREN NOT BUSINESS!! PROFITS!! CORPURATE EXPLOITS!"
It's amazing that, after all the the benefits that commerce and industry have brought us, so many people still hate the bourgeoisie.
The vain pretense that the Teachers' Union is completely above self-interest, and is somehow more-interested in the educational-success of Children than maintaining a monopoly on public spending, is an illusion completely betrayed by their historical results. They've sucked up billions of dollars and delivered disaster and failure for decades.
They of course will claim they were never given enough money to do it right. Plus! they have all the black kids and the retards, while charters only take whites and over-achievers.
That "supermom" post there is basically a template of Union rhetoric. I'm saving it for future reference to compare to other attacks on charters.
Spring melts away the snow, bringing out the sun and April showers, some streets covered with cherry blossoms and others with black blood. The open air slaughter of black people is not the mistake of an individual, but the blossoming of a seed of destruction.
Who writes like this?!!
Retarded people.
Someone with an unreconstructed devotion to Pol Pot.
Or as Irish suggested - someone retarded.
I read a good critical essay about that writing style a few years back called "The Rape of Cinderella: Essays on Literal Continuity"
Basically it's an asshole-ish way to write
SLAUGHTERHOUSE, got that? After bitching about racist police for the entirety of the article, what do you suppose the UBER-libs solution would be? Maybe more government?
Unrestricted eminent domain. Kos told me so.
The Democrats have been in control here forever. Why don't they fix it?
And there are miles and miles and miles of all black ghettos in this city, they aren't in any danger of disappearing soon to make room for all white suburbs, which while existing, are a lot more rare and a lot smaller. Seriously, I think about 70% of the city is ghetto.
"Seriously, I think about 70% of the city is ghetto."
I think this is what the author wants though, give the complaint about gentrification.
Can I go on record saying that anti-gentrification is perhaps the most self-evidently insipid position to infect the progressive hive-mind? Middle class people want to come into the city, rejuvenate it, buy houses from poor minorities, leaving them richer in the process; bring their business to the inner city, helping to boost the local economy; generate revenue for the government despite the horrendously high tax rates; form nice cosmopolitan mixed race communities, and.... the progs hate it?
They say they're not the Democrats of the 50s, but they're basically fighting for government implemented segregation here. There's no other way to explain. What sensible reason is there to try to stop 'gentrification?' It's like salting farmland just for shits and giggles.
The only acceptable action is to give free shit. But it must be given in silence and from distance. Entering the black zone is forbidden as destruction, and attempting to do commerce there while not being black is completely unacceptable, justifying looting, burning and death (just ask a Korean shop owner).
Ultimately, "gentrification" is just another word for "enabling commerce", and nothing enrages a prog like commerce.
Why do the teachers unions hate the children?
No...really?
They don't necessarily hate them, they're just props used as a means to an end.
This. The children are grist for the Union mill. The mill owner doesn't hate the grain.
They hate anyone who doesn't pay dues.
Frankie = thought of you when reading this
Novel, "Ghost Fleet" - a fictionalized account of a potential future China/USA conflict
"They've written a fictional version of the nightmare-scenario defense that many military journalists and analysts have long predicted would happen when the F-35 went to war.
Following a series of sophisticated cyberattacks, the fancy jets barely fly, don't carry enough ammo to effectively engage the enemy and are easily destroyed by Chinese fighters.
In the end, it's America's ghost fleet that comes to the rescue. The Pentagon resurrects ships and planes retired by defense-contractor overreach and technological hubris. The old F-16s and A-10s still fly, and they're ready and able to beat back America's enemies.""
They also point out that the Chinese-sneak-attack scenario is actually less-plausible than an Independence Day Alien-invasion
Sounds like a fun story.
It's not a realistic assessment of US/China war if it doesn't include almost everyone dying by nuclear fire.
All of this assumes that we won't just embrace the Chinese invaders as liberators. I sure as hell wouldn't take up arms in defense of 'Murica come that day.
Can't we just have the two governments kill each other off? Can you imagine what China and America could do, freed of their respective communists?
To be fair, if I had to spent 5-8 hours every weekday with a roomfull of little demons, I'd hate them too.
They don't so much hate children.
Does a rancher hate cattle?
Silly libertarians. Choice only applies to abortion. All other choices are to be made by Top. Men.
You can also be gay. There's a choice. So there are 2 choices we support without government intervention, gilbertarians! Take that!
/the proglodytes
Don't you mean "troglodytes"?
Ah, the 70s................and Jimmy Castor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCV6paTXyCU
No no, not those guys, those guys were way more intelligent than the modern day urban proglodyte.
"You can also be gay. There's a choice."
Ugh. Born this way.
But it is a choice if I listen to Lady Gaga or not, and it ain't happening.
You really missed out on the man in the leotard dancing on the NYC subway
Damnit, now I have to watch it. Thanks a lot!
Almost every passer-by seemed to enjoy it, amazingly enough.
Hey Gilmore, what was the Toots and the Maytals record you said you listened to the most?
Funky Kingston
there are like 3 versions of the record (original UK, 1975 version, then CD which tried to include more tracks than either)
You really can't go wrong with any of them., although the 1975 version i think is one of the most listenable records ever made. as in, every song from beginning to end is A++
So yeah, be prepared for another retarded law to get 100% unswerving support.
http://www.seattletimes.com/se.....ms-stores/
""gun-violence-prevention research and programs.""
Otherwise known as the Police Benevolent Association/Corrections Office slush-fund.
I guess their will be around 23 new gun shops around 150th and Hiway 99.....hello Shoreline.
Explain to me again the difference between a Teachers' Union and a criminal conspiracy to defraud the public? I forget. There is one, isn't there?
Conspiracies don't operate in the open.
All teachers' unions are criminal conspiracies to defraud the public, but not all criminal conspiracies to defraud the public are teachers' unions. Does that help clear it up?
-jcr
Ah, that clears THAT up.
Criminal conspiracies actually sometimes provide goods and services, like gambling venues, prostitution, and bootleg cigarettes (see the Gambino family); teachers' unions, however, only defraud the public.
I read a good critical essay about that writing style a few years back called "The Rape of Cinderella: Essays on Literal Continuity"
That was supposed to be a reply for above sorry
So this cunt Trachtenberg keeps saying it's "fashionable" to talk about the waste and corruption in NJ's public schools. Yeah, so what, asshole: Is it WRONG?
NJ's taxpayers aren't getting what they pay for. Where are the goddamned torches, pitchforks, tar and feathers?
-jcr
"So this cunt Trachtenberg keeps saying it's "fashionable" to talk about the waste and corruption in NJ's public schools."
Well, she can exactly come right out and say "We've gotten away with this crap since the 1970's, you CAN'T stop it just before my pension vests. It isn't FAIR!"
Fucking hipsters and their 'fashion.'
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Nowadays education is significant for every person. If you want your life to meet high living standards, you have to be good in particular field. Thus, schools and colleges have to be ready to prepare real specialists. Authorities should pay attention to educational aspect. Nevertheless, students have to focus on study process too. However, there come different deadlines and college students can't complete everything on time. For this purpose exist quick college essay writing online services. I consider them to be very useful, especially if they offer really professional writing help.
Nowadays education is significant for every person. If you want your life to meet high living standards, you have to be good in particular field. Thus, schools and colleges have to be ready to prepare real specialists. Authorities should pay attention to educational aspect. Nevertheless, students have to focus on study process too. However, there come different deadlines and college students can't complete everything on time. For this purpose exist quick college essay writing online services. I consider them to be very useful, especially if they offer really professional writing help.