September 12, 2011 - NJYouthUnited Org - http://njyouthunited.org/wp/student-teacher-unity-is-the-only-way-forward/

BullenInaBible -

Early this summer, while students and many teachers were scattered to the winds on break, many away on pre-planned vacations, NJ Governor Christie and about half the Democratic state legislators led by State Senator Stephen Sweeney and the entire set of Republican legislators were busy indeed.

The bipartisan anti-teacher and public worker putsch occurred in June, when the New Jersey State Legislature passed a law that threatens the retirement security and health benefits of public employees. Under the bill, teachers will pay more into their retirement pension, and will get less when they retire. In terms of health benefits,the average teacher will be paying thousands of dollars more for their healthcare. The bill translates into a huge paycut for our teachers.

Further, Governor Christie and the Democratic legislature plan on taking up the issue of Education ‘reform’ this fall. New Jersey has some of the best public schools in the nation, consistently ranking in the top five of all states using various measures. The schools where students do tend to struggle – places such as Trenton, Newark, and Atlantic City – are the result of extremely high poverty not poor teaching. The proposed bills will make it easier to fire more experienced teachers and will allow school districts to evaluate teachers based largely on student’s standardized test scores.

From Draft NOtices, July-September 2006

Pat Elder -

The pressure is on. You’ve got a lot of things you want to do in your life and all too often, you’re going to have to pass a test to get what you want.

High school students across the country are greeted with this message when they log on to the March2Success.com Web site hosted by the U.S. Army. March2Success, a popular, Web-based, 30-hour course designed by Educational Options, The Princeton Review, and Kaplan, Inc., is ostensibly a program that provides training in test-taking strategies and problem-solving skills and teaches students how to improve their math and English knowledge.

The program, however, is actually a thinly veiled military recruiting tool. Like the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) and the Junior Reserve Officer's Training Corps (JROTC), two widely prevalent programs in the nation's high schools, March2Success is about recruiting for the armed forces.

The Army freely admits there are several advantages to providing this online service to students. First, it drives traffic to the Army’s recruiting Web site, www.goarmy.com, and generates leads for recruiters to pursue. Students are prompted to indicate if they want to be contacted by a recruiter; Army graphics and propaganda are omnipresent. March2Success offers a state-of-the-art product to schools and students who rarely have access to free online instruction. The program helps to strengthen the relationship between Army recruiters and school staff. After all, school "penetration" and "ownership" are cited in military manuals as tasks for all school-based recruiters.

Monday, 26 November 2007

Pat Elder -