Our obsession with accountability and market-driven educational reforms has turned teachers in to robots and robbed our students of our teachers’ creativity.
That’s teh point of this week’s Dispatches.
I have lived in New Jersey for going on 40 years. I live here now by choice and bristle at some of the dumber jokes made at the state’s expense (and laugh when the jokes are funny). So I can sympathize with the folks who have kicked off this campaign to combat the stereotypes.
And yet, I am flummoxed that its slogan is “Jersey Doesn’t Stink.” First, some areas do, but that comes with the territory (farms and industry) and is true for most states. More importantly, it is a dopey slogan, a negative that has nothing positive to say and that plays to, rather than against, the stereotypes. The campaign would have done better with one of those silly songs that made the rounds several years ago — “I Like Jersey Best” — or a billboard with famous Jerseyans (Springsteen, Sinatra, DeVito, Nicholson, Robert Pinsky, William Carlos Williams, Rick Barry, Franco Harris, etc.).
Now, that doesn’t stink, right?
I want to start this post with a couple of caveats:
Now, let’s get down to the brass tax of this post.
The Access to the Region’s Core project, or ARC, is neither theoretical nor logical given the fiscal realities facing not only New Jersey but New York, as well. While a rail tunnel into the city that could expand rail access would seem to make sense, this project fall short of its original goals and appears headed for boondoggle status.
As Mulshine writes in today’s Ledger, the ARC project falls far short of its original goals and may just be counterproductive in the long run. The
$8.7 billion plan would give Manhattan exactly what it doesn’t need: yet another railroad station that isn’t linked to the rest of the rail network.
The current plan calls for construction of a new station, next to Penn but deep underground, that would serve only the new lines. It would be so far below the surface, says Clift, that riders would wonder whether they were traveling on a rail line or an escalator line.
That’s a lot of bucks for a lot less bang than we need.
Jeff Tittel of the Sierra Club argues that “the riders of the lost ARC,” as he calls them, will never achieve the connectivity to Grand Central that was originally promised. The newer, deeper tunnel will dead-end at a water tunnel that New York City won’t be replacing anytime soon, said Tittel.
And remember, the tunnel is being built with money that we just don’t hvae, as conservative state Sen. Michael Doherty pointed out to Mulshine.
“Frankly, nobody knows where money’s coming from,” Doherty said. “The Transportation Trust Fund is depleted and now we’re going to divert money that should be going for road maintenance for this tunnel?”
This in a state with crumbling roads and failing bridges and — and this is key — inadequate rail service on existing lines. It would seem to me that we do more to fix our infrastructure — while creating needed jobs — by putting our money into fixing what we already have (This might make for good housing policy, as well) rather than just building newer and fancier toys.
That remains to be seen. The trust fund doesn’t run out of money until next year.
I would applaud the governor if I thought he would go to bat for a school board member who was censured for being critical of the state’s education cuts. He’s right that the board should have let the school board member have her say, even if I disagree with what she had to say.
My suspicion, unfortunately, is that the governor is not interested in defending the rights of school board members to speak their minds, but only of those members that speak their minds and back his causes.
Gov. Chris Christie is nothing if not brutally political, to a degree well beyond any governor in my memory.
http://www.ucbcomedy.com/videos/embed/23691f9f95fce8fca3b49a14619493ae
I post this video by the brilliantly funny Upright Citizens Brigade without comment because it speaks for itself.
