{"id":56835,"date":"2015-12-28T09:39:53","date_gmt":"2015-12-28T15:39:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=56835"},"modified":"2015-12-28T09:40:38","modified_gmt":"2015-12-28T15:40:38","slug":"a-fire-extinguisher-on-the-titanic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=56835","title":{"rendered":"A Fire Extinguisher On The Titanic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mark Zuckerberg&#8217;s celebrated\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/mark-zuckerbergs-failed-100-million-donation-to-newark-public-schools-2015-9\">hundred million dollar gift to the Newark NJ schools<\/a>\u00a0worked about as well as any huge influx of more-mundane taxpayer cash ever did; not at all.<\/p>\n<p>Zuckerberg&#8217;s donation was earmarked toward merit pay, charter schools, and systemic reforms. \u00a0The charter schools worked well, but the city&#8217;s system for putting kids\u00a0<em>into\u00a0<\/em>charters was a goat rodeo. \u00a0The reform money got swallowed up by consulting fees. \u00a0And as to merit pay and teacher accountability?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Instead, the opposite occurred. Chris Cerf, the New Jersey commissioner of education at the time, worked with the Legislature and was able to negotiate some new accountability measures in teacher contracts.<\/p>\n<p>But the teachers&#8217; union only agreed upon those measures if the seniority protections remained intact.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Which meant that the teacher accountability money went to reinforce&#8230;unaccountability with teachers.<\/p>\n<p>Reforming the public system, under its current politicized leadership, is like trying to argue with a blizzard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mark Zuckerberg&#8217;s celebrated\u00a0hundred million dollar gift to the Newark NJ schools\u00a0worked about as well as any huge influx of more-mundane taxpayer cash ever did; not at all. Zuckerberg&#8217;s donation was earmarked toward merit pay, charter schools, and systemic reforms. \u00a0The charter schools worked well, but the city&#8217;s system for putting kids\u00a0into\u00a0charters was a goat rodeo. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-school-choice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56835"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56840,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56835\/revisions\/56840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}