Education Reform Now

[Disir]

This is what it is via their website:
Education Reform Now, a non-partisan 501c3 organization, is committed to
ensuring that all children can access a high-quality public education
regardless of race, gender, geography, or socio-economic status.

This is the board of directors via their website:

Board of Directors
Charles H. Ledley, Board Chair of Education Reform Now, is an Analyst at Highfields Capital Management. He joined Highfields in May 2010 and serves as a generalist focused on special situations. Prior to joining Highfields, Mr. Ledley was a partner at Cornwall Capital, a private investment firm focusing on special situations across a wide array of asset classes. Prior to joining Cornwall, Mr. Ledley was a consultant at Bain & Company. Previously, he worked for Golub Associates; at the time, a private equity firm specializing in leveraged buyouts and growth capital investments. Mr. Ledley received an MBA from Harvard Business School and a bachelor of arts cum laude from Amherst College.

John Petry is the founder and managing principal at Sessa Capital. Previously he was a partner at Gotham Capital and Gotham Asset Management. John has been active in a variety of education reform causes. He was a co-founder of Democrats for Education Reform, served as a past Chairman of Education Reform Now, and currently serves as a co-chair at the Success Academies network of charter schools.

Sidney Hawkins Gargiulo is a Partner at Covey Capital. Covey Capital is an investment partnership that manages capital for individual and institutional investors. Sidney has over a decade of investment management experience investing in a wide range of industries including technology, business services, retail & consumer companies, among others. Prior to Covey, she worked for Ziff Brothers Investments and Hawkshaw Capital Management in New York. Sidney graduated magna cum laude from Wake Forest University, and received an MBA from Columbia Business School, where she was a teaching assistant for Professor Bruce Greenwald in the Value Investing Program. She has been actively involved in education reform for many years, having served on the boards of Education Reform Now, NewSchools Venture Fund Leadership Council, New Leaders for New Schools Advisory Board, and Bronx Success Academy II, part of the Success Academy Charter School Network. She and her husband John live in Palo Alto, CA.

Brian Zied is the Founder of Charter Bridge Capital. Prior to this, he was a Principal and Head of Consumer and Retail Stock Investments at Maverick Capital Ltd. Mr. Zied joined the firm in 1998. He covered the consumer sector at Omega Advisors for three years. From 1991 to 1995, Mr. Zied was employed in the Corporate Finance Department at Bear, Stearns & Co. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Pennsylvania in the Management & Technology dual degree program, receiving a B.S. from the Wharton School of Business and a B.A.S. from the Moore School of Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania.

John Sabat is a Portfolio Manager at SAC Capital. Mr. Sabat is a founding board member of Harlem Success Academy 4, a high performing charter school within the the Success Academy network. He holds a Master of Science in Statistics degree from New York University's Stern School of Business where he graduated summa cum laude. He earned his B.B.A. in Finance from the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business where he graduated summa cum laude.

Michael Sabat is currently Vice President of Equity Derivative Sales and Trading at Sanford C. Bernstein. Prior to Sanford C. Bernstein, he was an Equity Options Trader at Capstone Holdings, LLC in New York as well as Fixed Income/Equity Option Trader in London. Michael currently serves on the Education Reform Now (ERN) board and is event chair of the annual Take 'Em to School Charity Poker Tournament, a major annual fundraiser. He received his BBA from the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business in 2003. Michael is an avid golfer and lives in Manhattan with his wife Amber and daughter Abigail.

And this is what they do:

What We Do

ERN works to transform the struggling education system through three central strategies:

Coalition Building - ERN builds coalitions at the state and national level to give a left-leaning voice to reform in the public education debate. ERN also identifies missing constituent groups advocating for reform and then aids in their development.

Policy - ERN's policy priorities are chosen based upon a number of factors - feasibility within the current legislature, public acceptance, and buy-in from organizational partners. Generally, policy objectives are built around strengthening innovation, public charter laws, accountability, high-quality new school development, transparency on finance and student results, and best practices for turning around low-performing schools.

Media - One of ERN's greatest strengths is the ability to give elected officials and advocates of legislation ultimate credit for education reform victories through the media. ERN partners are regularly quoted in news coverage of public education reform from coast-to-coast, appearing in over 1,850 news articles and op-eds in 2012 in publications such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Time, and Newsweek.

Oh and this little bit:

A few successes...

ERN-NJ was a lead advocate during the 18-month effort to support Democratic State Senator Teresa Ruiz's groundbreaking tenure reform legislation. The legislation overhauls NJ's antiquated tenure law, replacing it with annual evaluations to ensure only effective teachers remain in the classroom.

ERN-WA helped lead the coalition that campaigned successfully for the passage of a public charter school initiative in November 2012. Not only has Washington State lifted its ban on public charter schools, but thanks to ERN's work, it now has one of the strongest charter school laws in the country.

Hundreds of Democrats attended ERN's events at the 2012 Democratic National Convention including over 100 elected officials, candidates for office, and key staffers. Mayors, state legislators and leaders in the field of education technology participated in two panel discussions, then raised a glass to celebrate DFER's 5th birthday.

In December 2012, ERN brought state-level legislators from across the country to the Bay Area to visit blended learning schools, talk with leaders in education technology, and see firsthand how innovative technology is transforming education.

ERN developed the DoneWaiting.org coalition in support of the film Waiting for Superman, representing the largest ever mobilization of national education reform organizations and individuals. ERN-CO educated the public on the importance of effective teacher evaluation systems and played a key role in the landmark teacher tenure reform law, SB 191.
Education Reform Now


Just so we are clear---it's a Wall Street thang not a...........fight liberal progressive thang. It's all a line of crap.

 

[Steven_R]

You want to reform education do three things:

1) Make it easy to fire bad teachers
2) make it easy for kids who don't want to be there to drop out or be expelled
3) Stop focusing on feelings and social engineering and go back to the Three Rs.

 

[Disir]

1) It's pretty easy to fire bad teachers. The union doesn't want bad teachers either. I suspect that what you want is to fire at will. So, any time that a parent gets ticked off because her kid didn't do well on a paper can mount a campaign to fire a teacher. Or if a parent is ticked off because science doesn't mention God that the teacher can be fired.
2) It is pretty easy for kids to drop out at a certain age and it's real easy to be expelled.
3) Please see number one.

And none of that changes the fact that it's a Wall Street thang.

 

[Unkotare]

1) It's pretty easy to fire bad teachers. The union doesn't want bad teachers either. I suspect that what you want is to fire at will. So, any time that a parent gets ticked off because her kid didn't do well on a paper can mount a campaign to fire a teacher. Or if a parent is ticked off because science doesn't mention God that the teacher can be fired.
2) It is pretty easy for kids to drop out at a certain age and it's real easy to be expelled.
3) Please see number one.

And none of that changes the fact that it's a Wall Street thang.[/QUOTE

1) Wrong

2) Wrong

3) Wrong


And give that shit a rest, comrade.

 

[RandomVariable]

The is www.edreformnow.org/* and www.educationreformnow.com/* which one are you?

 

[Disir]

Unkotare is on your ignore list.

 

[bripat9643]

You want to reform education do three things:

1) Make it easy to fire bad teachers
2) make it easy for kids who don't want to be there to drop out or be expelled
3) Stop focusing on feelings and social engineering and go back to the Three Rs.

The simplest and surest way to accomplish the above is to abolish government schools.

 

[bripat9643]

1) It's pretty easy to fire bad teachers. The union doesn't want bad teachers either. I suspect that what you want is to fire at will. So, any time that a parent gets ticked off because her kid didn't do well on a paper can mount a campaign to fire a teacher. Or if a parent is ticked off because science doesn't mention God that the teacher can be fired.
2) It is pretty easy for kids to drop out at a certain age and it's real easy to be expelled.
3) Please see number one.

And none of that changes the fact that it's a Wall Street thang.

Based on the above it's clear that no reforms will occur. That same incompetent toadies will be hold the same positions and the classrooms will be overpopulate with thugs and bullies.

 

[Unkotare]

Unkotare is on your ignore list.

Disir is on your ignorant coward list.

 

[Mr. H.]

Nepotism, cronyism, favoritism. Education isn't about the children, it's about... well, you know where I'm going with this.

 

[DGS49]

Many years ago, a friend of mine was elected to a local school board. Once a year, there was a meeting with all of the department heads in the district, where they made a little presentation about the status of their departments, accomplishments, and so on.

When the head of H.R. made her presentation, my friend asked to know how many teachers had received "unsatisfactory" performance evaluations in the previous year. She hemmed and hawed around for a minute then said she did not have that information at hand. My buddy told her he was going to ask the same question the next year, and be ready with an appropriate response.

The next year, he again asked the question, and after dancing around for a few minutes, the HR director conceded that the number was actually ZERO. My friend was incredulous. Out of 500 or so teachers, THERE WAS NOT A SINGLE ONE WHOSE PERFORMANCE WAS UNSATISFACTORY??? "Every employer has some 'bad apples,'" insisted my friend. Is this an amazing statististical anomaly? Are you the best recruiter of personnel who has every existed? Or is it just possible that your system of performance evaluations is utterly meaningless, and hides incompetence for some nefarious reason?

He continued to embarrass the HR director for a couple more years. Same questions, same results; never a teacher given a bad evaluation or - heaven forbid! - fired for non-performance. Eventually he got tired of beating up on this poor, highly-compensated but worthless personage.

I suspect that this same litte drama could be carried out in essentially every public school district in the country, and especially those where the teachers are represented by a Collective Bargaining Unit.

You want school reform?

The first step is an obvious one. End collective bargaining by public school teachers. Immediately.

 

[Disir]

I just watched a school board member say that 22 new hires were unsatisfactory in performance. It wasn't until another school board member stepped up and admitted that there was nothing wrong with the teachers. They just wanted to avoid tenure. That's BS.

 

[RandomVariable]

When education quits being a political pawn, Democrats want to fund it and Republicans want to defund it, then reform can happen. Until education becomes a priority for both parties, or one party controls both the House and the Senate, this country will stagnate. The future of the country will suffer. And that is not a metaphoric statement. This fall it is possible that one party could take both the House and the Senate. Of course that really depends on if someone was sincere or not.

 

[MarkyMark]

Everyone talks about firing bad teachers and firing more bad teachers. It's not that easy; how do you gauge a teacher's success? We SHOULD fire the teachers that don't matter to our education, like the college teachers who teach health and physical education classes. Why are these wasteful gen ed classes still in our system?

 

[Unkotare]

Everyone talks about firing bad teachers and firing more bad teachers. It's not that easy; how do you gauge a teacher's success?

Classroom observation, review of their lesson plans, feedback from parents and students, and ultimately the success of their charges.