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Star Ledger - Officials discuss compromise in Rutgers-Rowan merger: A combined institution with an independent board
NJ Spotlight - Fine Print: Teacher Evaluation Update…'Calibration' and 'inter-rater agreement' help keep DOE's pilot on target
NJ Spotlight - EKGs for Athletic Kids: Protecting the Young at Heart
Star Ledger - Officials discuss compromise in Rutgers-Rowan merger: A combined institution with an independent board
Published: Monday, May 14, 2012, 6:59 PM Updated: Tuesday, May 15, 2012, 7:04 AM By Kelly Heyboer/ The Star-LedgerThe Star-Ledger
A tentative compromise is in the works that could save the controversial propsosal to merge Rutgers-Camden with Rowan University, higher education officials said today. The framework for the deal calls for creation of a combined institution in South Jersey that would be controlled by an independent board but retain some form of the Rutgers name, the officials said.
Under the plan, negotiated behind the scenes by a group of state lawmakers and university officials, Rutgers would still oversee how degrees are awarded and other academic issues but would have no authority over day-to-day operations of its Camden campus, those involved in the talks say.
"There is a conceptual plan," said Peter McDonough, Rutgers’ vice president for public affairs and one of those involved in the talks. "We think we’ve got a loose framework."
The plan still faces review by Rutgers’ governing boards and Gov. Chris Christie, who has pushed for the merger and so far has given no indication he is willing to compromise on the plan — which has faced strong opposition on the Rutgers-Camden campus and among many in the Legislature.
Several top lawmakers and university officials — including Rutgers President Richard McCormick, state Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester), state Sen. Donald Norcross (D-Camden), Newark Mayor Cory Booker, Rutgers-Camden Chancellor Wendell Pritchett and Rutgers Board of Governors members Ralph Izzo and Joseph J. Roberts Jr. — have been meeting for weeks behind closed doors and by telephone to come up with a compromise.
George Norcross, the powerful South Jersey political boss and the brother of Donald Norcross, has also been pushing all parties to salvage parts of Christie’s merger plan and create a unified research university based in Camden.
"I actually am involved in trying to form an agreement here," George Norcross said during an editorial board meeting today at The Star-Ledger’s offices in Newark. "I am trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again."
Norcross said he suggested the new Camden school to be named "Rowan-Rutgers University." But others involved in negotiating the compromise said no name has been chosen.
Those involved said many details about the compromise still needed to be worked out and there is no written proposal yet to present to Christie, the Legislature or the Rowan and Rutgers governing boards.
A spokesman for Christie declined to comment on the emerging compromise plan.
The idea of merging Rowan and Rutgers-Camden was first proposed earlier this year by a state task force appointed by Christie. The original proposal called for folding parts of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in New Brunswick, including one of its medical schools, into Rutgers. Rutgers would also give up its Camden campus to Rowan, the growing state university based in nearby Glassboro.
The merged South Jersey campus would include Rutgers-Camden and its law school, Rowan’s Glassboro campus and Rowan’s soon-to-open medical school in Camden. Supporters said a merged campus would finally give South Jersey its own research university, with nearly 20,000 students, allowing it to attract more fundraising and research dollars.
Christie is pushing for an agreement on the merger and higher education realignment by July 1. But critics, including many students and faculty members at Rutgers-Camden, said the plan has not been properly researched or debated. There is also no estimate outlining how much the merger would cost.
The legal issues surrounding a merger are also unclear. It is likely Christie could issue an executive order to begin a higher education realignment. But it could be blocked by the state Legislature or the Rutgers boards.
The Rutgers Board of Trustees, which helps oversee the university’s assets, has already come out against losing Rutgers-Camden. The Rutgers Board of Governors, which sets policy and oversees the university, has been less vocal on the issue. Rutgers is also getting a new president, Robert Barchi, who arrives this summer to take over for McCormick.
Rowan officials have not been involved in the compromise talks, said Joe Cardona, a spokesman for the university. But Rowan administrators do not want to see the merger plan die.
"It is good to see another plan is in place," Cardona said. "Who knows if there is a ‘Plan C,’ ‘Plan D’? It’s a good conversation to have."
A merged university in Camden that keeps some ties to Rutgers would be unusual, though not unprecedented. Proponents of the Camden compromise point to the agreement reached between Purdue University and Indiana University to create Indiana University–Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW).
Both schools had offered courses at separate locations in Fort Wayne, before opening the combined campus in 1964, followed by the formal merger of the campus administration in 1975. According to IPFW officials, the university it is operated as a regional campus of both Indiana University and Purdue University, but managed by Purdue under terms of a management agreement that is renewed every five years.
New Jersey has a long history of trying and failing to merge its public universities. A similar plan to merge Rutgers, UMDNJ and the New Jersey Institute of Technology into a single state university with unified campuses in New Brunswick, Newark and Camden was proposed under Gov. James E. McGreevey. It fell apart under opposition from the universities and questions about the costs.
Another merger plan proposed by Gov. Jon Corzine also died in the state Legislature due to lack of support.
Star-Ledger staff writer Ted Sherman contributed to this report.
NJ Spotlight - Fine Print: Teacher Evaluation Update…'Calibration' and 'inter-rater agreement' help keep DOE's pilot on target
By John Mooney, May 15, 2012 in Education|Post a Comment
What it is: The state Department of Education is releasing every month an update on its teacher evaluation pilot, now including 10 districts and another 19 individual schools and expanding to another 30 districts next year. The latest update provides a useful run-down of the basics of the program -- including the tricky nomenclature of teacher evaluation -- and also highlights the work in one district in particular, this time, Alexandria Township.
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Language matters: Educators have their own language, where they call tests "assessments" and teaching practice "pedagogy." Teacher evaluation is another layer on top of that, and the update provides a bit of a glossary on some of the basics on what is a "teaching practice framework" and "observation instrument."
Glossary for the glossary: Of course, some of the definitions need definitions, like that for the "observation instrument." It is "the specific teaching practice tool used to assess the observable competencies of teaching practice."
"Calibration:" A key term, it addresses how the evaluators themselves are monitored to make sure they are scoring teachers on a consistent and accurate basis.
"Inter-rater agreement:" Another important concept, it speaks to whether two evaluators of the same teacher come to the same conclusions about the teacher's performance. On its own, however, it is no guarantee of an accurate measure. "Observers can be wrong and agree with each other. Agreement alone does not assure accuracy of scoring -- just consistency. Therefore calibration is necessary to ensure accuracy."
Alexandria's progress: The Hunterdon County district is among the 10 that signed up to be pilots in the program, the collective laboratory for what works and what doesn't as the Christie administration seeks to go statewide in 2013-14. The update says the district has already made significant progress in beginning to link teachers' evaluations to their student performance, maybe the most controversial piece of the program. In Alexandria's case, it was work started prior to the pilot when it began to build common measurements in subjects and grades in which students are not tested by the state.
Superintendent quoted: "A sense of urgency around this work that is shared by a critical mass is needed, because the overall lack of feedback that teachers receive from traditional evaluation systems does them a disservice. Additionally, most current systems do not successfully differentiate levels of effectiveness among teachers." -- Mark Jennings, Alexandria superintendent.
Principal evaluation: The state is expanding the pilot next year to include principal evaluation. Districts are to apply for the principal evaluation pilot by the end of this month.
Pilot timeline: The update lays out the timeline for the pilot proceeding into the next year.
NJ Spotlight - EKGs for Athletic Kids: Protecting the Young at Heart
Not yet the norm, EKGs could become commonplace as computers learn to interpret results
By Beth Fitzgerald, May 15, 2012 in Healthcare|Post a Comment
Brenda Gergich had open heart surgery at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center in February to repair a congenital heart defect. Last Saturday she was back with her entire family, and the three children had electrocardiograms during the free sports physical clinic the hospital runs twice a year to identify heart abnormalities, and screen student athletes for concussions.
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Most kids don’t get an EKG before going out for sports, and a state task force on sudden cardiac death in athletes recommended doing a better job on the sports physical. The new legislation requires cardiac examination training for the clinicians who perform them, but it stopped short of recommending EKGs.
State Sen. Fred Madden (D-Gloucester, Camden) has introduced several bills in Trenton to implement the task force recommendations. But while universal EKGs are not yet a standard procedure in New Jersey or the nation, some experts predict that could become the norm in a few years as technology evolves to enable EKGs to be analyzed accurately by computers.
The screenings were offered by the Mathew J. Morahan III Memorial Health Assessment Center for Athletes, which, like Newark Beth Israel is part of Barnabas Health and is based at the Barnabas Ambulatory Care Center in Livingston.
The center was founded by the family of Matthew J. Morahan, who died suddenly in 2009 at age 30, and since 2010 it has done EKGs on about 1,500 children and teenagers. None of the 42 youngsters screened last Saturday had a serious enough heart problem to disqualify them from sports, according to Dr. Rajiv Verma, director of the children’s heart center at the Children’s Hospital of New Jersey at Newark Beth Israel. But when the hospital offered the same program this past November, an EKG identified a 15-year-old with an abnormally thickened heart wall.
“Unfortunately we had to restrict him. He is not allowed to play football,” Verma said. “It is always a struggle. I try to educate teenagers that our aim is not to restrict them from playing sports; our aim is to have them participate in sports in a safe manner.”
That youngster can still jog, run, swim, and play baseball: but football is out. “They do so much weight lifting,” Verma said. “If a child does 10 pushups a day that is not a big deal, but these young men do 50 to 100 pushups a day, which is basically lifting your own weight, and that is just not acceptable.”
At age 14, Joshua Gergich is nearly six foot tall and a freshman who plays football at Roselle Park High School. Before he went in for his physical, he was worried that the doctors would find a heart abnormality that would end his football career. “I’ve been playing football my whole life,” he said. The test revealed no cardiac problems: “I feel good that I don’t have anything wrong with me.”
Dr. Stephen Rice, president of the New Jersey chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and a specialist in sports medicine, chaired the task force that recommended improving the sports physical in order to do a better job of identifying children who are risk of sudden cardiac death. Right now there are not enough clinicians trained to interpret a pediatric EKG, Rice said. But he said the technology is evolving, and in a few years it may be possible to accurately interpret the EKG with software. “We may be able to make a determination of normal or abnormal through the electronics, rather than have someone reading it. That is the world that we are advancing toward. It may be several years before we are in a place where we can think that universal screening is a relevant and appropriate thing to do. I don’t think we are quite ready to say that. But this is an area that a lot of attention is focused on, and we are moving toward solutions. And there are plenty of people who want to push that envelope.”
Among them is Verma, who said “there is absolutely no doubt in my mind” that every child should have an EKG before playing competitive sports. “You can pick up abnormalities that you would never suspect and that can trigger a lethal or fatal arrhythmia.”
Currently there is no national registry of sudden cardiac death in the young, and the nonprofit Parent Heart Watch is advocating the creation of a registry. Martha Lopez-Anderson, president, said estimates range from 200 a year to several thousand. “We are all speculating. We need a registry because we don’t know what the incidence rate is.” Advocates argue that there would be more willingness to screen all athletes via EKG if a complete registry of sudden cardiac death were to reveal, as they believe that it would, that the number of cases is underestimated.
Parent Heart Watch collects news reports on sudden cardiac death in the young, and posts them on its website, but she said press reports probably only capture about half the cases.
“Unless it is a high-profile case or it happens in a public place, we are not likely to know about it, Lopez-Anderson explained.The State Department of Health does not have statistics on sudden cardiac death in kids, but said these cases are quite rare. New Jersey last June became the first state in the nation to require hospitals to screen newborns for congenital heart defects before they leave the hospital, and in at least two cases, babies’ lives were saved.
Cardiovascular disease is among the leading causes of death for adults. In 2010, 18,794 adults in New Jersey were diagnosed in the hospital as having had a heart attack.
