From Palm Beach Post reporter Jason Schultz:

PALM SPRINGS —

Jersey Jazzman read Hari Sevugan’s comment on the blog last night and wondered if anyone still believes that StudentsFirst is bipartisan. JJ doesn’t think that any Democrat could sign on to Rhee’s anti-teacher, anti-union agenda.
Would a bipartisan group pump money into Republican campaigns? Would a bipartisan group pump $500,000 into the anti-union campaign in Michigan?
Not likely.

In response to an earlier post about the rocky beginning of the experiment in privatization in Muskegon Heights, Michigan, a reader sent this interesting observation:
Well, I hope they had a happy Friday afternoon, and the Michigan Department of Education, as well. For yesterday, I filed a written complaint against the Muskegon Public School Academy and Mosaica Education pursuant to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 2004 and Michigan Mandatory Special 

Mayor Bloomberg is frustrated that the New York City United Federation of Teachers does not agree with his plan to evaluate them by test scores. He has been berating the union, as have the city’s tabloids, for weeks.
But now he hit a new low.
He compared the teachers’ union to the National Rifle Association.
Coming only weeks after the Newtown massacre, this is especially gross.
This is reminiscent of the time many years ago when U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige referred to the NEA as “a terrorist organization.”
Paige had the good sense to apologize. So should Bloomberg.

Here is a great new parent and community group supporting strong public schools in Tennessee.
Please check it out.
Are there active parent groups in Memphis? Chatanooga? Knoxville? Other cities and towns?
Please write to let us know.

In Michigan, the state government decided it was tired of all the fiscal woes of certain districts, so it handed them to emergency managers, who gave them to for-profit operators.
Michigan Public Radio has been watching events in Muskegon Heights. The word that is most commonly heard 

Why So Many Schools Remain Penitentiaries of Boredom 

by Elizabeth English
“It’s harder to change a school than it is to move a graveyard.” Or, as it’s also been said, “It’s harder to change a history course than it is to change history.” I think we can all agree that our schools should be among our most dynamic and innovative institutions; but despite the endless talk about school reform, they remain among our most ossified.
Take a look at the typical American classroom, public or independent, urban or suburban, and what you will see looks very much like the classrooms of the 19th century. Yes, slates have been replaced (in most places) with digital tools, but the structure signals the musty past: teacher as authoritative source of knowledge, student as tabula rasa. Or take the structure of the school day itself, typically divided into seven 45 minute classes. Believe it or not, that schedule derives from Victorian factories where industrialist Frederick Taylor concluded that 

I want to thank my union, NJEA, for giving this blog a nice shout-out in this month's NJEA Review.

One of the most important functions of public employee unions is to protect their members' right to free speech - especially political speech. I appreciate that NJEA protects my right, and the right of my colleagues, to express our views without fear of retribution at our jobs.

And thanks to NJEA for including me on a list with such luminaries as Diane Ravitch, Bruce Baker, and Valerie Strauss. It's high praise indeed to be named alongside with these great writers and education advocates. Same with NJ Spotlight, which remains the best reporting outlet on education in the state.

If you're just visiting for the first time, welcome; I hope you'll find the pieces here worth your time. If you've been reading for a while, thanks for your support!

And if you're a teacher: be proud. You are America's last, best hope.

Rocketship Plans to Build an Education Empire According to a December 28, PBS NewsHour Report (See Link below.)
In a 9 minute TV PBS NewsHour report Rocketship  CEO John Danner stated that Rocketship Education’s  goal is for a million students to be attending their schools. This would be over 1600 schools nationally. If they contract the same lucrative deal that the City of  Milwaukee gave them , sending $600,000 annually back to national headquarters in San Jose, this will be nearly $1 billion profit annually  for Rocketship Education. Short-term they want 46 schools up and running in five years, eventually growing to 50 cities.
Rocketship clearly strives to be the largest chartering management organization in America. But with this 

Glen Brown responds to my Saturday Coffee post.

Rights of individuals are bound up with the theory and precepts of social and political justice we adopt (John Stuart Mill, On Liberty). When legislators swear an oath to uphold the state and federal constitutions, then citizens of Illinois and the United States have also acquired the right to expect that they will uphold that pledge. This is also a matter of important moral concern for all citizens of Illinois, for all legal claims will be validated by a moral framework since the concept of justice is grounded in ethics. If citizens’ legal rights are abused, then their dignity and humanity will also be violated.
Rights and obligations are logically correlative. In other words, a citizen’s rights imply or 

As one who has tried to brand the UFT/AFT leadership as having a Vichy mentality, this was a fun read from Naked Capitalism sent over by Michael Fiorillo. This piece on how Obama is selling out the middle class to the wealthy refers to the Obama apologists, which includes the UFT/AFT in this way:

With the Vichy Left now trying to soften up the public for Social Security and Medicare “reform,” it’s particularly important to keep an accurate scorecard on what has already gone down.

Here is more:

Yes, Virginia, The Rich Did Very Well With the Fiscal Cliff Deal

The Real News Network has conducted a series of interviews on the fiscal cliff deal, and the two most recent are worthwhile in and of themselves, and are also good tools for persuading those who fallen for the idea that Obama got a good deal to reexamine their view. With the Vichy Left now trying to soften up the public for Social Security and Medicare “reform,” it’s particularly important to 

By JACK CRAVER
The Capital Times January 3, 2013
The same discord over taxes that we see among Republicans in Congress is
taking place in the Wisconsin Legislature.
On Wednesday morning I wrote that some moderates in the state Senate,
such as Sen. Luther Olsen, R-Ripon, are suggesting the Legislature
authorize increased spending on K-12 education at the local level by
allowing school districts to increase property taxes.
Olsen’s idea is to restore some of the cuts made in the last legislative
session, when Republicans imposed a 5.5 percent decrease (or roughly
$250 per student) in the revenue limits for school districts. Olsen
would like to raise the limits by roughly $200 – nearly restoring the
pre-Walker levels.
That was apparently news to Rep. Steve Nass, R-Town of La Grange, who

Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, Which Is It? Centralization or Decentralization