Race To The Top finalists: word on the street is that they’ll be announced early this week.

The New York Times “Room for Debate” asks whether national standards will improve education.

Today’s Philadelphia Inquirer looks at a tight job market for new teachers in the Jerz.

NJ Spotlight examines the cost-saving trend of NJ districts shelving full-day kindergarten programs.

The Star Ledger Editorial Board argues that the current plan to cap sick pay at $15K for all public employees doesn’t go far enough. Instead, “scrap the $15,000 cap. Make it zero for new hires and prohibit all employees from additional banking after their current contracts expire. No more banking from that day on, for anybody. Period.”

Marcus Winters at the Manhattan Institute takes on the delicate subject of whether or nor NJ public school teachers are adequately paid relative to other professionals, and says that they are.

“New Jersey nonpublic schools save taxpayers $2.7 billion annually while providing 160,000 students an education, according to a state report made public Tuesday.” (New Jersey Newsroom.)

Time Magazine makes the case against summer vacations. (Link is to abridged edition.)

Superintendent Caps: from Alfred Doblin of The Record: “The governor has not suggested superintendents aren’t doing good jobs. He has said these jobs are not worth nearly $200,000 a year on average. Philosophically, it’s a subjective argument. Fiscally, it is not. The state cannot afford to be paying anyone top dollar. Which brings me back to a subject I wrote about in May: Rutgers head football coach Greg Schiano.” Also in The Record: the Christie Administration is worried that superintendents will try to evade new salary caps by extending their old contracts, so Executive County Superintendents will impose the caps immediately. Ensuing hue and cry from the Garden State Coalition of Schools, New Jersey Association of School Administrators, and some highly-paid superintendents. And Assemblyman Upendra Chivukula says we’d save more money by centralizing public school administration and governance at the county level.

Trentonkat is so fed up with the Trenton public schools that she proposes this solution: “With the recent news that our school system is more of an outrage than we suspected, firing every single district employee, and starting over again with an entirely outsourced system, seems like a really, really good idea to me.”