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njspotlight.com - "Second-Round Race to the Top Gets Off to Sluggish Start...NJ Education Commissioner Bret Schundler goes to educators for their support of his Race to the Top plan. Whether he'll get it remains a question"
"NTU Sticks to Own Path on Education Reform Positions of Newark Teachers Union, such as support for merit pay, often put it at odds with NJEA"
Second-Round Race to the Top Gets Off to Sluggish Start
NJ Education Commissioner Bret Schundler goes to educators for their support of his Race to the Top plan. Whether he'll get it remains a question
By John Mooney, May 11 in Education
The setting was austere, even elegant. The reception was less so.
Hundreds of New Jersey educators filled Trenton’s gilded and marble War Memorial today to hear state education Commissioner Bret Schundler share his plans for the state’s application to the federal Race to the Top program.
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At stake is up to $400 million in available money for a host of education reforms, and Schundler wanted the educators’ support for the specifics of the plan.
But what he also got was earful on the many details in the proposal, including changes in pay and tenure for teachers, guidelines for turning around under-performing schools, and details on new standards and testing.
For each piece of the plan, districts—including their superintendent, school board and teachers union—are supposed to check “yes” for support, “no” for rejection, or “conditional” if it needs more time and information.
Here are some perspectives from each.
About halfway into a presentation that would go three hours, Viktor Joganow was walking out.
The superintendent of Passaic Valley High School district was none too pleased. The Christie administration had cut his budget by more than $1 million, forcing reductions in pay for his aides and extracurricular programs, and now they wanted his support.
“Frustration, you could feel it in the room,” Joganow said. “Their actions over the last few months have established what their agenda is, and it’s not support of public schools.”
Still, he conceded there are some intriguing ideas in the application, even if he doesn’t think they have much chance of ever passing. Tenure needs cleaning up, he said, and what’s not to like in tracking teacher performance with student performance.
“What’s most interesting is the longitudinal studies of student achievement,” he said. “That’s of value right there. . . We’ve asked for that year after year after year.”
And $400 million is nothing to ignore at a time when the state is facing the cuts its facing. “We have an obligation to take a look at it, and I’ll be meeting with my board tomorrow night,” he said.
“But for what it is, most of us will have to put conditional,” he said.
Kristine Height stayed until the end, sitting about halfway back in the vast auditorium that by noon was quickly emptying
The principal of the Somerdale Park Elementary School, the lone school of 500 students in the Camden County district, wanted to say something positive about the plan.
She had seen the use of data to diagnose children’s needs and teachers strengths at work in her own school. The school is big on professional development among teachers based on the data, with frequent assessments of students.
“It sounds like a lot of work, but it’s not,” she said. “The teachers want to succeed. They want to see the assessments and data where they can say, ‘Wow, this works.’”
And she said it works for evaluating teachers, too, especially in times when layoffs in the air.
“Sometimes it disheartening to see the data and see the ones who have to be let go,” Height said.
So before she returned to her seat halfway back in the auditorium, she finished with some encouraging words to an appreciative Schundler. “I wanted you to leave here with that,” she said.
It likely would have been the main event if people had stuck around that long.
Up to the microphone stepped Barbara Keshishian, the president of the New Jersey Education Association, the teachers union that has been Gov. Chris Christie’s frequent target of criticism.
The NJEA had refused to support the state’s last application for Race to the Top funding, citing some of its provisions for merit pay and emphasis on standardized testing. That lack of support was widely seen as a chief reason for the first application’s rejection. Few expect much to change this time.
But Keshishian’s first words were actually thanks to a state Department of Education official who had earlier said nice things about New Jersey’s teachers. She wasn’t so thankful to Schundler, who by then sat alone on stage behind a white-draped table.
She said he was asking for collaboration in the federal application.
“But collaboration requires a certain degree of trust, and so far what has happened over the last four months does not generate a whole lot of trust,” she said. “You cannot have attacks continuing on an almost daily basis and expect there to be trust,” she continued. “And you certainly cannot be holding this meeting two weeks before the deadline and expect collaboration and an atmosphere of trust.”
Schundler said much of the tenor of this winter and spring had centered around the state’s dire fiscal condition. He said it was not about demeaning teachers, a comment that drew some jeers from the thinning crowd. Still, he said the NJEA had done its share of attacking, too.
“But that’s not why we’re here,” he said. “We’re here for the $400 million.”
After taking the last question from a crowd that was down to a few dozen, not including his own staff, Schundler thanked those who stayed.
After three hours, the commissioner said the meeting went “pretty much as I expected,” as he was the last to walk out of the auditorium.
NTU Sticks to Own Path on Education Reform
Positions of Newark Teachers Union, such as support for merit pay, often put it at odds with NJEA
By John Mooney, May 11 in Education
The Newark Teachers Union has always been the “other” teachers union in New Jersey, big in its own right as the state’s largest local but not the statewide political giant of the New Jersey Education Association.
Part of the national American Federation of Teachers, a separate entity from the NJEA’s National Education Association, the NTU has kept to its own policies and tactics -- some combative, some conciliatory.
That has been no clearer than in the last few months as Gov. Chris Christie has gone to war against the NJEA, while the NTU has largely sat on the sidelines and actually supported the governor on a few things.
Most recently, it was his proposal for merit pay for teachers. NTU is also expected to sign onto the state’s application for the controversial federal Race to the Top program.
“I don’t consider the governor an enemy or an enemy of public education,” said Joseph Del Grosso, president of the 5,000-member local for the last 15 years. “I actually have great respect for the governor.”
Different Unions, Different Opinions
That’s not exactly the union fight song these days, as Christie has made deep cuts in state aid to schools and aggressively tried to rewrite work and pension rules for teachers and other public employees.
Has Del Grosso talked to the NJEA about all this? Do they even talk?
“We get along good,” Del Grosso said of the NJEA’s leadership. “But they don’t listen to me.”
Nor does the NJEA really have to. With 200,000 members statewide, it has such a reach into virtually every other district that it can leave its Newark cousin to its own devices.
And the NJEA’s leadership doesn’t seem to pay much heed even now as they strategize the next step in their battle against Christie, including plans for a massive Statehouse rally next week.
“We’re not concerned about a split in the ranks,” said Steve Wollmer, the NJEA’s chief spokesman. “People look at their unions through their different lenses.”
Of the NTU, “They have their policies, and we have ours,” Wollmer said.
It’s not always easy to predict the NTU’s policies. This is the same group that had its own open war with Newark Mayor Cory Booker, who has sought mayoral control of the district and pressed for charter schools. The NTU went so far as erect billboards in 2007 that read “Stop the Killings in Newark,” a brazen jab at the mayor’s crime-fighting claims.
In Del Grosso’s first years as president of the union, right after the state seized control of the district, the NTU practically ran the state’s first appointed superintendent out of the city.
Surprising Stances for a Union?
But while the district remains under state control, the 62-year-old Del Grosso seems to have softened a little -- or maybe grown more nuanced in his politics -- and embraced some reforms that are not typically union fare.
The NTU’s endorsement of the state’s first Race to the Top application in January was especially notable, just one of 20 locals statewide to sign on after the NJEA openly said it would not back the bid. The lack of union support was cited as chief reason that the application wasn’t even among the finalists.
Del Grosso said he will sign again in the second round, citing both the $400 million that could come to the state but also the provisions for tenure reform and merit pay.
“Most think it’s about the money, but I think there are some good things that we’re already talking about here that I’d like to see on a broader scale,” he said.
Merit pay, for instance, is something Del Grosso said he’d like to see in some of his own district’s lowest performing schools as an incentive for top teachers.
“It can work under the right circumstances,” he said. “I don’t think it should be just about test scores, that’s ludicrous, but a lot of different things …. But we should be able to recognize people who do something extra.”
His position is actually not that surprising, as over the years, the AFT nationally has leaned toward the more progressive ideas than its larger and more conservative NEA counterpart.
More recently, AFT and NEA locals have split on the Race to the Top applications as well, including in Maryland and Colorado.
“We’re watching all over the country, and the AFT and the NEA have been on two different planets, completely different planets,” said Joe Williams, president of Democrats for Education Reform and a long-time follower of school union politics.
“The AFT wants to be in the discussions, while the NEA has just been saying no,” he said.
Standing Firm on Wage Concessions
Still, there are a few things that Del Grosso will say “no” to. Known for its generous contracts where teachers average better than $80,000 a year, NTU hasn't agreed any wage concessions, as Christie has asked for.
He remains steadfast against private school vouchers and pretty skeptical of charter schools, two major planks in Christie’s platform as well. He said the NJEA’s forceful opposition to vouchers is a “good fight.”
“But I just think it’s a better fight to be talking to the governor,” he said.
