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NJ Spotlight--New Jersey Gets Lowest Rating Among States for Recession Preparedness
Mixed reaction in Trenton to credit-rating firm’s ranking of Garden State as ill-prepared for an economic downturn; Moody’s cites poor budget reserves and pension risks
John Reitmeyer | May 21, 2019
Star Ledger--Pro-Murphy group has long refused to reveal its donors. We now know the powerful NJEA is one of them.
For months, a political group with close ties to Gov. Phil Murphy has refused to reveal its donors despite pleas from both the governor and New Jersey’s top state lawmaker.
Now we know at least one of the contributors.
The New Jersey Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, donated $2.5 million to New Direction New Jersey, a nonprofit that promotes Murphy’s agenda, according to a report Monday by Politico New Jersey.
Brent Johnson | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com| Updated May 20, 5:06 PM; Posted May 20, 1:58 PM
Washington Post (viaPress of Atlantic City)--Vaccination opponents taking their message to communities battling measles
MONSEY, N.Y. - In a suburban shopping center an hour north of New York City, hundreds of mostly ultra-Orthodox Jews gathered in a sex-partitioned ballroom to hear leaders of the national anti-vaccine movement.
Sustained applause greeted Del Bigtree, a former television producer-turned-activist who often wears a yellow star of David, similar to those required of Jews in Nazi Germany, to show solidarity with parents ordered to keep unvaccinated children at home.
Bigtree described the purported dangers of childhood vaccines in phrases that also conjured the Nazis.
Lena H. Sun and Ben Guarino / The Washington Post| May 21, 2019 Updated 45 min ago
NPR--California Teachers Pay For Their Own Substitutes During Extended Sick Leave
A 40-year-old California law requiring public school teachers on extended sick leave to pay for their own substitute teachers is under scrutiny by some state lawmakers after NPR member station KQED reported on the practice.
KQED found that a San Francisco Unified elementary school teacher had to pay the cost of her own substitute — amounting to nearly half of her paycheck — while she underwent extended cancer treatment. Since the story published, more public school teachers have reached out to describe similar hardships.
Julia McEvoy| KQED| Heard on All Things Considered| May 20, 20194:24 PM ET
Chalkbeat--This school district outsourced many of its high school courses to an online program. But it’s not clear students are learning.
A Milwaukee high school student walks into his class on “Romeo and Juliet.” But there’s no teacher walking students through Shakespeare’s turns of phrase and no peers to discuss them with.
Instead, “The student toggled between his phone and the lesson on the screen, texting while the lecture played and talking to a student nearby,” researchers who observed the course recorded. “The instructor came by and told him to take notes, but he did not follow through.”
Matt Barnum| May 20, 2019
The Hechinger Report--OPINION: How to tell if early learning provides a level playing field
A closer look at developmentally appropriate practices
Lately, there’s been a great deal of talk in the early learning community about equitable practices in early learning settings.
For instance, the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) recently released a draft position statement on equity that sought to outline “equitable learning opportunities that help children achieve their full potential as engaged learners and valued members of society.” And NAEYC isn’t the only educational organization having reinvigorated conversations around equity. The conversation often focuses on the workforce, cultural relevance and bias.
Certainly, these are all central components of the larger conversation on equity in education.
https://hechingerreport.org/opinion-early-learning-and-a-level-playing-field/
Vincent J. Costanza} May 21, 2019
