Independent since 2002 Issue No. 1102 Week of November 7, 2026 Get the free email dispatch →

Category: The Farrell Report

Commentary

The Cartel Places Heavy Responsibilities on Teachers

By Dr. Walter C. Farrell, Jr., PhD, M.S.P.H. Columnist

teachers are placed in an impossible situation whereby they are required, if not mandated, to overcome the poverty of their students while they are denied the resources necessary to even begin to address this issue. While under-resourced, they are held to the highest standards and demonized for not meeting them.

New Jersey Updates: Lawrence Hamm, a long-time Montclair resident, received the 2016 Human and Civil Rights Award at the National Education Association’s (NEA’s) Delegate Assembly during…

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Commentary

Gov. Christie’s Equal Funding Scam to Increase NJ Charters

By Dr. Walter C. Farrell, Jr., PhD, M.S.P.H. Columnist

The Cartel for education reform is aggressively orchestrating a scam in New Jersey in an attempt to squeeze as much privatization as possible out of public education in the final year of Gov. Christie’s last term.

Update: Dr. Penny MacCormack, former Montclair, NJ superintendent and now chief academic officer at the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE), has caused the university’s…

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Commentary

The Cartel for Corporate Reform’s “Ratf**king” of Public Education, 1990 to the Present

By Dr. Walter C. Farrell, Jr., PhD, M.S.P.H. Columnist

In recent years, the Cartel has targeted middle-class suburban districts for corporate charters as they view them as yielding greater profits to be raped and pillaged. Additionally, it has undertaken other strategies to fast track public school privatization.

Update: Members of Rev. Jevon Caldwell-Gross’ A.M.E. church congregation (he was recently appointed to the Montclair, NJ School Board by Mayor Robert Jackson) are preparing a…

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Commentary

What We Should Know About Corporate Education Reformers and the Undermining of Teachers

By Dr. Walter C. Farrell, Jr., PhD, M.S.P.H. Columnist

the Cartel uses its communications unit to ensure that charter schools are referred to as “high performing and/or high quality” irrespective of their academic outcomes, fraud, and dismissal of students whom they claim are not a good fit.

Update: Rev. Jevon Caldwell-Gross who was recently appointed to the Montclair, NJ School Board by Mayor Robert Jackson was alleged to be ineligible for the appointment…

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Commentary

‘Epicenters’ for Corporate School Choice: Milwaukee, Washington, D.C., and Montclair, New Jersey

By Dr. Walter C. Farrell, Jr., PhD, M.S.P.H. Columnist

the current privatization assault on public education escalated on January 29, 2009 when a representative of the corporate education reform Cartel (the Koch Bros.; Gates, Bradley, Walton, Broad, foundations, et. al.; and Wall Street financial firms) met with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office and handed him and his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, a fully developed copy of legislation for Race to the Top (RTTT) that instituted the national infrastructure for the dismantling and privatization of K-12 public education.

On March 22, 1990, Milwaukee, Wisconsin became the epicenter of school choice in the modern era when the Wisconsin legislature passed a bill signed by Gov.…

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Commentary

More Rallies for Public Education Are Needed in New Jersey

By Dr. Walter C. Farrell, Jr., PhD, M.S.P.H. Columnist

Public education in New Jersey has never been under greater duress. Christie is paying off his political debts to the Cartel by aggressively trying to turn over public education to the corporate sector in both urban and suburban districts.

The rally in Trenton on May 15th needs to be repeated across the state of New Jersey. The Cartel of corporate education reformers is pulling out…

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Commentary

Trenton Rally for the Survival of Public Education in Trenton and Throughout New Jersey

By Dr. Walter C. Farrell, Jr., PhD, M.S.P.H. Columnist

In Camden, as will be the case in Trenton, the Hope Act which allows for the establishment of corporate charters with fewer controls and lesser accountability than the charters that already exist. And state funding is also available for their creation.

They all came last Sunday, supporters and advocates for public education from all over New Jersey: Camden, Middlesex, Mercer, Atlantic, Essex, Bergen, Hudson and other New…

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Commentary

Trenton, New Jersey Educators’ and Citizens’ Standoff with Cartel, Gov., Mayor, and School Board

By Dr. Walter C. Farrell, Jr., PhD, M.S.P.H. Columnist

What is at stake here is the future of Trenton’s system of public education. There is a mad rush by the Christie administration to privatize and dismantle it before the end of his term in 2017 in payment for the Cartel’s support (more than $50 million) of his three political campaigns: two for governor and one for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.

May 15th is D-Day for public education in Trenton, New Jersey. A rally of pro-public education advocates will take place at the New Jersey state capitol…

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Commentary

Trenton, New Jersey School Board Member Dr. Jane Rosenbaum: ‘Sleeping’ While Privatizing the Trenton Public Schools

By Dr. Walter C. Farrell, Jr., PhD, M.S.P.H. Columnist

The Cartel is hell bent on making New Jersey’s capitol city a shining example of public school privatization with an African American mayor at the helm. The achievement of this objective will have an even greater impact statewide and nationally

At its April 25th meeting, the Trenton Board of Education took giant steps toward privatizing its public schools: laying-off staff and privatizing special education and other…

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Commentary

Trenton’s Educators’ and Citizens’ Stand Against Layoffs and the Cartel: A Fight for Workers

By Dr. Walter C. Farrell, Jr., PhD, M.S.P.H. Columnist

There appears to be a crisis in educational values in that students in majority-minority, as well as majority, low-income New Jersey school districts are viewed as expendable and not deserving of the necessary resources to avoid being pushed into the school-to-prison pipeline.

Last Monday, the Trenton Board of Education issued 236 layoff notices to professional and paraprofessional educators. It appears that school board president, Jason Redd, and Mayor…

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