The EDiot Thomas W Carroll

Thomas W Carroll is at it again. Imparting what he thinks is knowledge upon all he looks down his gilded nose at. Today, the world was blessed with yet more of his know nothingness in the New York Post. Let's have a looksee inside the convoluted mind of Tommy.

To get it together to win the funds on offer in Round 2, lawmakers will have to stop buying the teachers-union line.

Please explain the teacher union line. You know what Tommy, I have funny feeling that your daddy was a union member and that you were able to attain whatever stature you think you have or deserve due to your daddy being in a union.

the unions were wrong when they told legislators that they could make a minor tweak here or there, without raising the charter-school cap or addressing New York's "data firewall," which prevents schools from using student data in evaluating teachers.

No, the unions are not wrong. The unions are right. Do you really understand anything about how skewed tests can be? There are too many outside influences with a student to ever accurately gauge their knowledge using a test. The whole entire child is what we need to look at. Not what he or she can do on a test. When I took my state teaching tests I was anxious, imagine what a 9 year old must be going through.

But Tommy remember my analogy about you and Mrs Carroll? You should really give it some thought.

Their mistaken advice cost the state of New York $700 million.

And the $200K for office furniture had nothing to do with it right? In fact I am of the mind that the fix was in from he beginning. This blog should also be required reading.

So what is it Tommy that you think Albany needs to do?

1) Bring the charter cap way up -- from the current limit of 200 schools to 460 schools or more. And, again, those "poison pills" are deal-killers -- they'd cost us points in the competition. No "regional caps" on charter enrollment, and no limits on locating charters in city Department of Education space.

Why don't we just put the same resources that the charters are getting into the public schools? And why, please why, do charters did the benefactor of the DOE? If as you and your ilk say that schools should be run as if they were a business, then by golly they should be treated as if they are a business and find a place for their business on their own. I want to open a deli to compete against a entrenched neighborhood deli, should the government help me?

2) Address the one fair point critics raised: New York charters need to address better special education and English-language-learner populations. But the answer here is to let charters give such students preference in admission lotteries -- not to impose quotas, as the unions proposed.

Where have unions asked to impose quotas? To the best of my knowledge they are asking for resources in charters for students with special needs and to have a representative percentage that same as public schools.

To make this practical, charters must also be allowed to to contract with local Boards of Cooperative Educational Services and to set up cooperative arrangements among charter schools to educate difficult-to-serve students.

This is called passing the buck.

3) End that "data firewall": This expires at the end of June, anyway -- but we need it gone by June 1, the deadline for Round 2 applications.

See what I have written above.

4) Strengthen and pass the Regents proposal for requiring all teacher evaluations to consider student data in the future.

Again, see above.

5) ) Give the Regents direct authority to close bad schools and to replace dysfunctional school boards.

You just contradict yourself. You go from SUNY Board of Trustees should make decisions now to the Regents. Make up your mind. Should they also have ability to close profit minded charter organizations that steer special needs students away? ***COUGH*** Brighter Choice ***COUGH***

There are a few other issues, too technical to discuss here, but the above is the core of it.

Translation: There are a few other issues, but I am smarter than everyone else, so why waste my time on peons?

This is what I want to know Tommy, and all the readers of SBSB. Have you ever taught? What are your educational qualifications?