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New Jersey Newsroom - Report: N.J. Dept. of Education can consult data better to improve teaching
NJ Spotlight - From Brawls to Charter Challenges, They All Cross the Commissioner's Desk…Cerf is the last administrative word on legal challenges filed with state education department
Asbury Park Press-NJ Press Media- N.J. bond debt rises 3.1 percent
Politickernj.com-State Street Wire - Buono bill for teacher evaluations disregards standardized tests
Star Ledger column-¬Moran - Perth Amboy superintendent takes on fight over teacher tenure
Saturday, 03 December 2011 18:23
BY BOB HOLT
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
A report from the Data Quality Campaign says New Jersey has gotten better, but is still far behind in its use of student data to improve teaching.
New Jersey has only applied 4 of the 10 actions to use the student data well. 36 states are using all 10 elements in 2011, an increase from none back in 2005.
The Data for Action campaign’s essential elements include unique student identification, student enrollment, demographic and participation information, matching of students’ test records each year to chart their academic growth, information on untested students, teacher identifiers, student transcripts, college readiness test scores, graduation and dropout records, information to match student records between P–12 and post-secondary systems, and state audits to check the data’s quality.
According to NorthJersey.com, Data Quality said New Jersey can track students’ K-12 data, doesn’t use the data to induce change in helping the children who have fallen behind.
A New Jersey Education Department spokesman said the state recently began measuring gains by comparing each child with peers across the state who had similar test scores previously.
Students who score higher than those peers on the more recent testing get a high "student growth percentile." Students who score worse get a lower percentile. And teachers may decide to give those percentiles to parents. By fall of 2012, New Jersey will be able to determine how much each teacher helped a student’s growth.
Governor Christie has not decided whether the teachers’ ratings will be made public.
The Republic reports that Georgia is being hailed as one of the national leaders in using this data. The system of tracking the students and teachers played a big part in Georgia’s winning $400 million from the Race to the Top grant competition last year.
NJ Spotlight - From Brawls to Charter Challenges, They All Cross the Commissioner's Desk…Cerf is the last administrative word on legal challenges filed with state education department
By John Mooney, December 5 in Education|Post a Comment
It's the quieter part of acting education commissioner Chris Cerf's job, but it may have more immediate impact on school kids and teachers than the policy speeches and pronouncements.
Cerf is the final administrative word on the dozens of legal challenges that are filed with the state Department of Education each year. They range from the routine to the rancorous, all with an individual's job or education at stake.
"It's not a big part of the job, but one I take very seriously," Cerf said this weekend.
And once in a while, a case rises to broader public attention, such as the challenge that made it to Cerf's desk last week involving nine Wayne Hills High School football players. They'd been suspended by their school board on the eve of a state playoff, over a fight outside school that brought assault charges.
In a case that garnered statewide headlines, Cerf on Friday ruled on behalf of the board and upheld the suspensions. Cerf, himself an attorney who once clerked for former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, said afterward that this case was pretty straightforward as to whether the board was within its rights.
"This was a decision of the school board and the question of whether it was in the zone of reasonableness, and not arbitrary and capricious, in which case I will let their decision stand," he said.
But other challenges may prove a little more discretionary, including a couple of charter school cases headed to his docket.
One is from a group of Jersey City charters, challenging the state's funding system, which they contend has left them unable to provide a constitutionally required "thorough and efficient education."
Another challenge filed by an approved charter maintains that local school districts are illegally fighting the school's opening. An administrative law judge last month ruled on behalf of the districts, and now Cerf stands as the final word for the state.
It's a legal process that dates back decades, involving some historic cases, and has gone through its own iterations. Under statute and administrative code, challenges to school or state decisions can be filed to the department. They run the gamut, from disputes over a student's residency to teacher or staff tenure decisions to disagreements between school boards. The department also hears appeals to decisions of the state's Board of Examiners and the state's School Ethics Commission.
The challenges are filed with the state, and the commissioner has the discretion to have them first heard by an administrative law judge before he makes a determination. He is assisted by his own staff of lawyers in the state's Office of Controversies and Disputes. All of the decisions can still be appealed through the courts, usually starting with the state appellate court.
Currently, the legal authority rests solely with the commissioner, but it was not always that way. Up until 2008, the State Board of Education was also a stop in the process, and it played a prominent role in some historic cases for the state, including the acrimonious fight over the desegregation of Englewood City's high school. But at the behest of the Corzine administration, the legislature in 2008 removed the state board from the process.
It is a move that has rankled board members ever since, but it clearly speeded up a process that became well known for its snail's pace.
"I think the board added very little to the process and the final agency decisions, and at the same time slowed it to a crawl where it took forever to come to a decision," said David Sciarra, executive director of the Education Law Center, the Newark advocacy group that is best known for its Abbott v. Burke litigation but also represents scores of such smaller challenges.
"The process is much better now than it used to be," he said. "And these are a lot of important cases that affect kids' lives directly. We may overlook them with all the talk of policy, but these involve the education lives of children."
Asbury Park Press-NJ Press Media- N.J. bond debt rises 3.1 percent
11:15 PM, Dec. 3, 2011 | Written by Jason Method | Statehouse Bureau
TRENTON — New Jersey’s bonded debt, already the fourth-highest per capita in the nation, increased 3.1 percent to $38.1 billion in the fiscal year that ended in June, according to a state debt report released Friday.
It was the slowest rate of increase in four years.
However, other forms of debt and long-term obligations, such as accumulated sick time, pension benefits and health benefit costs, rose 28 percent to $26.7 billion. That’s more than twice the $10.5 billion in such liabilities posted in fiscal year 2008.
Pension and post-employment health benefits drove the numbers upward for non-bonded debt. Post-employment health benefits, for example, increased from $10 billion to $13.5 billion.
However, officials hope those numbers flatten or decrease as pension and benefit reforms, adopted in June, begin to make their way through the system. A new actuary report due in coming weeks will further clarify the effects of reform, pension investment results, continued underfunding by the state and a new class of retirees who left over the past year because of the pending measures.
Accumulated sick and vacation time payable rose by $56 million to $623 million.The practice remains in government, but it has been a target for Republican Gov. Chris Christie, who has complained about “boat checks” issued upon retirement.
Proponents contend that paying for unused sick and vacation time offers an incentive for workers not to use it.
The debt for the state’s transportation trust fund — which pays for repairs or new roads, bridges and mass transit — rose by $1.3 billion to $12.4 billion. New Jersey issued another $1.3 billion in transportation trust fund debt as of Wednesday, according to the report.
Annual debt service payments stand at $2.8 billion in the current fiscal year and are scheduled to rise, under current debt loads, to $3.2 billion in 2017.
New Jersey has $3,940 of debt for every man, woman and child.
Star Ledger column-Moran - Perth Amboy superintendent takes on fight over teacher tenure
Published: Sunday,December 04, 2011, 6:34 AM
By Tom Moran/ The Star-LedgerThe Star-Ledger
Janine Caffrey, the schools superintendent in Perth Amboy, couldhardly believe the teacher was so incompetent.
The kids didn’t have needed textbooks. There was no lesson plan.Other teachers complained that students were learning nothing. And when theprincipal demanded changes, the teacher wouldn’t budge.
So Caffrey, a spark plug of energy, left her sparsely furnishedoffice to meet the teacher for a showdown, ready to whap some sense into thisperson once and for all.
But it didn’t work out that way.
“This teacher looked me in the eye and said, ‘I won’t do it.’Just an outright refusal. And this has happened to multiple people before me.We’ve done multiple corrective action plans, and it’s not achieving anyresults.”
So the teacher won the showdown and is still standing in frontof a classroom full of kids every day, supremely secure in defiance.
Only one word can explain this insanity: tenure.
BATTLELINES
A look at five key flash points in the tenure debate.
1. Gaining tenure
Currently, teachers are entitled to tenure after three yearsunless the school district does not renew their contract. The governor wouldend that entitlement, granting tenure only after three years of positiveevaluations. Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex), the Senate Education Committeechairwoman, would impose similar requirements. All sides are likely to agree tostretch the term to four years.
2. Losing tenure
All sides agree the process is broken, that it takes too long,costs too much and does not effectively root out bad teachers. The governorwould establish an expedited process to remove tenure for teachers who arerated “ineffective” for one year or “partially” effective for two. Under Ruiz’splan, teachers could lose tenure after two years as “ineffective.”
The NJEA says teachers deemed ineffective should have at least90 days to improve their performance. If the district remains unsatisified, itcan seek to fire the employee through a new binding arbitration process.
3. Use of tests
Test results are typically not a component of teacherevaluations today. The governor would base teacher evaluations half onclassroom observations and half on evidence of student learning. That evidencewould include progress on standardized tests in math, science and language artsin grades 4-8. But because most teachers work in subject areas withoutstandardized tests, such as art and social studies, evaluators would look toother evidence of student achievement — e.g., work portfolios.
Ruiz would require “multiple measures of student achievement,”but would allow the Department of Education to specify them. The New JerseyEducation Association supports unspecified use of test results, but isresisting the governor’s plan.
4. Seniority
Under current law, districts facing layoffs must let go theleast senior teachers, even if they are more effective than older teachers. Thegovernor would base layoffs primarily on teacher effectiveness, not seniority.Ruiz would allow teachers who currently have tenure to retain seniority protections,but would shift to the governor’s approach for all new hires. The NJEA opposesthis change.
5. Mutual consent
Under current law, principals and teachers must acceptassignments made by district offices. The governor wants to give either partythe right to refuse that placement, as does Ruiz. Teachers who cannot findacceptance at any school could lose their jobs after one year of paid leave.The NJEA opposes this.
— The Star-Ledger
And while the Legislature is mulling reforms that will chip away at thisfortress, Caffrey has a bolder idea: Get rid of it altogether.
She has a teacher who washed a child’s mouth out with soap, butwas returned to the classroom.
Another teacher arrives at work high on drugs nearly every day.“The kids can spot it a mile away,” Caffrey says. “It’s been going on for atleast five years, and there’s a file a mile thick with all the interventions.But it keeps happening.”
Another flies into rages that are terrifying the kids and fellowstaffers. “That keeps me up at night,” she says. “There’s a real possibilitythis person could do harm.”
So for Caffrey, small reforms simply won’t do. She wants to endtenure, to pull it out by the roots and to spread salt over the patch of earthwhere this weed once grew so that nothing like it can rise in its place, ever.
“I don’t understand why people who work in public schools havegreater rights and protections than other people,” she says. “The people weshould be protecting are the children. It should not be about protectingadults.”
Caffrey won’t win that fight. It is a safe bet that tenure willbe with us long after she has passed from this Earth. But it won’t be the samebeast that she is wrestling with today, because the status quo is soindefensible. Even the teachers union supports significant changes.
The legal labyrinth (outlined in the chart at right) can takeyears to navigate. Districts have to pay attorneys and continue to pay the badteachers during most of the process. It can easily cost $200,000 a pop.
“There are many instances where a teacher is just paid off to goaway,” Caffrey says.
“That’s really what’s happening. You’re looking at a year or twoof salary as payout. So if someone makes $60,000, they’ll hand you a $120,000check to go away.”
Even her administrators and secretaries are protected by tenure.Caffrey can’t fire them, or even demote them, without jumping into the hatedtenure vortex.
“This is the single greatest impediment to education improvementin New Jersey, without a doubt,” she says.
To be fair, districts share some of the blame as well. Tenurerules might be crazy, but it is possible to get rid of the worst teachers ifthe district builds a solid case with a paper trail. In the case of therefusenik teacher, Perth Amboy failed to do that. The teacher had wonsatisfactory evaluations in the past, as nearly all teachers do.
“I tell the boards: Don’t just send love letters,” says PhilipStern, an attorney whose Newark firm represents about 50 school districts.
Gov. Chris Christie notes that only 17 bad teachers have losttenure over the past decade. But many more bad teachers are asked to leavebefore they get tenure. And most tenure cases end in settlements, so they arenot counted as part of that 17.The Legislature is wrestling with three reform plans. Christie’sis the toughest, while the weakest comes from Assemblyman Patrick Diegnan(D-Middlesex), an ally of the New Jersey Education Association. In the middle,but closer to Christie’s plan, is one from Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex), thechairwoman of the Education Committee.
* * *
The big political question is whether Democratic leaders areready to again defy the teachers union with a tough reform, as they did whenthey passed pension and health reforms.
This time, the union may have found its political footing.
Its hard line against pension and health reforms gave Christie aripe target to hit, and he did with deadly effectiveness. But now, the NJEA isputting on a friendly face.
“We’ve turned a corner,” says Vince Giordano, the union’sexecutive director. “We want to be part of the solution.”
After the bruising fight over pension and health reform, though,many Democrats don’t have the stomach for a new battle with their union base.
The likely outcome is that tenure reform will pass, but it won’tbe as strong as the governor wants.
For Caffrey, the heartbreak is that some teachers regard herfrank talk as treason.
“She makes it sound like the staff in Perth Amboy is ridden withunfit people running their classes,” says Donna Chiera, head of the local teachersunion.
For the record, Caffrey doesn’t believe that. She’s a formerteacher herself, and she says the real misfits who simply must go make up about1 percent of her staff. Ineffective teachers make up a larger portion, shesays, perhaps 10 percent. But many of them can be improved with training.
“My favorite thing to do is to develop teachers,” she says. “Ilove that. There is nothing better, except teaching a child to read.”
What Caffrey says out loud, many other teachers andadministrators whisper in private, to avoid making waves. But some of them arecalling Caffrey and cheering her on.
“I want to stress that there is no school district that doesn’thave these stories,” she says. “Anyone who tells you differently is lying. Ijust have more trouble keeping my mouth shut.”
And for that, anyone interested in improving the public schoolsshould be grateful.
RELATED GUEST COLUMN: SuperintendentJanine Caffrey: Tenure laws keep bad apples in the classroom
Politickernj.com-State Street Wire - Buono bill for teacher evaluations disregards standardized tests
State Sen. Barbara Buono (D-18), of Metuchen, has entered the teacher evaluation reform discussion with the introduction of S3129, a state-blueprinted, locally-adjusted system modeled on the Cincinnati Public Schools’ evaluation policy.
Buono’s bill provides a third option in evaluation reform; Gov. Chris Christie’s initiatives are embodied in state Sen. Joe Kyrillo’s (R-13), of Middletown, “School Children First” bill and the N.J. Education Association has their own model that has yet to be submitted as legislation. (Carroll, State Street Wire)
http://www.politickernj.com/52913/buono-bill-teacher-evaluations-disregards-standardized-tests
