Petrosino Gets Smackdown


Of all the tools in the Dark Side tool chest beware of the ones with doctoral degrees.

Their malevolence is cloaked in high-falutin' mumbo-jumbo and like a Trojan Horse, once they get inside the gates of your mind, BOOM!  Statistics! Graphs! Ratios! Acronyms! Data, data, more data... all twisted like a Bavarian pretzel that sounds very, very impressive to the layman.

Wow, I didnt know that! You're kidding me! 

This kind is much different than the garden-variety political operative dope bearing midnight flyers and juvenile blog posts; he is credible- even admired.  With his doctorate degree, big words, and mysterious acronyms that mumbo-jumbo must be true, because it's coming from an academic.

Unless you are another academic, an honest one, who sees the through the mumbo-jumbo and calls it for what it is- crap. 

 Enter the Jersey Jazzman

In the left corner, is Hoboken's Dr. Anthony Petrosino. In the right is "Duke", the Jersey Jazzman.

"Jersey Jazzman" is a New Jersey public school teacher, public school parent, taxpayer, NJEA member and a part-time doctoral student in education policy at the Rutgers Graduate School of Education

Dr. Anthony Petrosino is a University of Austin professor  and former Assistant to Hoboken Schools Superintendant Jack Raslowsky from 2007 until he was fired at the end of the school year in 2009.  After that, Petrosino unsuccessfully sued Hoboken's BoE and was forced to pay back the district.  Dr. Petrosino's blog   "Dr. Petrosino's Education Project" is obsessively Hoboken-centric and (it seems) retaliatory;  cloaked in academic language, his half-baked diatribes rip and tear at Hoboken public schools, Kids First, and Dr. Toback. Who is hurt most by The Doctor's unrelenting bashing?

Our district's kids and hard-working teachers.

On March 19 2014, the Doc published: "Under Kids First and Superintendent Toback- Traditional Hoboken Public School SAT Scores Are SIGNIFICANTLY Lower than Socio-Economic Status Predicts."  

OBSESSION: Petrosino's 3/19/14 article includes this  Kids First 2009 mailer (designed by me!)


Well, this latest salvo in Petrosino's long war on the Kids First, Dr. Toback and our distict is so foul, so nasty, so wrong-- it drew the  Jersey Jazzman's attention.

The blog took a brick bat to Petrosino's 'research' and dismantled it as crapola.  For one, Petro used a graph of national SAT averages correlating to family income to lambast Hoboken High School's SAT performance.

 Petrosino Blog: Graph using National SAT Averages
Petrosino uses national data to skew results

Jersey Jazzman:  

Instead of comparing Hoboken High to an entire class of students across the nation at a particular family income level, why don't we look at every high school in New Jersey -- including Hoboken High -- and judge their SAT total scores against the proportion if kids they have in poverty. That might make more sense, dontcha you think?

 Jazzman Blog: NJ Public High Schools:  SAT Total v % Free Lunch Eligible 



Yeah, OK, sure: after all, the correlation between SAT scores and percentage of free lunch students is very tight. 

Nearly 70 percent of the difference between schools in their SAT scores can be explained by those schools' Free Lunch-eligible percentage (look at the r-squared). 

The trendline shows the prediction of where a school should be when accounting for free lunch eligibility among the student populations. Hoboken High is actually above prediction: Hoboken High is above where we would expect to find it on SAT scores, even when controlling for student poverty. 

You see?

The intellectually dishonest  "Education Project" serves the Dark Side by trashing Reformers (Kids First, Toback) which is also a side-swipe at the Zimmer administration.  In fact, its narratives of Reform-failure are in my opinion, the bleating of a bitter crap-merchant.  (No offense to crap-merchants)

Okay, now for the 'fun'.  Petro chimed in below the Jazzman article:


"Duke" replied:

How funny is that?

Petro inaccurately used 'Duke's' data ... and is scolded to get his "facts in a row!"

Hey Duke, facts don't matter on the Dark Side. 

Last word goes to a sockmonkey:


Comments

  1. What are Hoboken Charter Schools scores like?

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  2. Hey Petrosino, get off your high horse and get real. You got caught with your no-show pants down and like other cheating academics you refuse to take responsibility for your actions. The students of Austin have my sympathy.

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  3. His "education" blog is a joke. It is nothing but a "bash the Hoboken Distirct" blog. 24hrs a day. Outrageous behavior. He doesn't care how many kids he hurts or teachers he insults. He writes twisted and convoluted posts under the guise of a credentialed academic and pass it along to his buddy Murray. Wonder if Murray gives him a peice of the real estate action every time he repeats Petro's BS to prospective clients.

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  4. What bothers me most about Dr. Anthony Petrosino's blog is that he uses his academic credentials to convey steely-eyed objectivity without ever disclosing anywhere his connections with Hoboken's HoLa charter school (who the state has decided must fight with public schools over funding), and his lawsuit with the public school district. These two facts undermine any "facts" he blogs about the public schools. Indeed, they explain the monomaniacal attacks on Kids First, Hoboken's fantastic public schools superintendent Dr. Toback, and Hoboken's public schools.

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  5. He's a Criminal no less than Carmelo Garcia who also defends & upholds HOLA schools. Both have gotten paid for no show jobs. Both have sued the city, too, in order to further defraud the taxpayers. In fact, Petrosino was found guilty & forced to repay the taxpayers what he stole. These people are criminals pure & simple. out only for personal gain. You cannot believe anything these people say. Sadly if me or you did only 10% of what these criminals do, we'd be in jail for the next 8years.

    ReplyDelete

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