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‘Gov. Chris Christie backs off plans to push N.J. teachers to retire early’ Statehouse Bureau- The Record & Ledger
‘State, school districts can learn lessons from roll-out of new alternate high school test’ StarLedger Editorial
‘N.J. Gov. Chris Christie's rant reveals a hard-right agenda’ Column-Star Ledger
By Claire Heininger/Statehouse Bureau- The Ledger
‘State, school districts can learn lessons from roll-out of new alternate high school test’ By Star-Ledger Editorial Board
‘N.J. Gov. Chris Christie's rant reveals a hard-right agenda’ Column-Star Ledger
‘Gov. Chris Christie backs off plans to push N.J. teachers to retire early’
By Claire Heininger/Statehouse Bureau- The Ledger, June 07, 2010, 9:45PM
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TRENTON — The Christie administration today backed off plans to prompt public school teachers to retire early, saying it will not pursue further pension and benefits changes for those who do not leave by Aug. 1.
Spokesmen for the governor’s office and Department of Education said the administration will not immediately propose reforms affecting current teachers other than Gov. Chris Christie’s proposed 33-bill "toolkit" to help schools and towns cut costs.
Previously, Education Commissioner Bret Schundler said the state would make more changes but exempt veteran teachers who retired before Aug. 1 — leading to forecasts of mass retirements far beyond the 4,500 teachers who leave in a typical year.
"It’s been very frustrating for all of us," said Jane Muhlstock, 55, a librarian who has worked in Teaneck schools for 31 years. "Teachers of a certain age have been gossiping and gossiping. People have been ill over this ... Some people retired basically because they couldn’t take the uncertainty."
Saying retirements could help offset layoffs occurring in districts around the state, officials pitched a plan that included calculating pensions based on a teacher’s last five years of salary instead of three, rolling back a 9 percent increase in pension benefits granted in 2001 and basing health care contributions on a percentage of premium, not salary.
Christie spokesman Michael Drewniak said the governor is still committed to those reforms — but they won’t be in place in time for the coming school year.
"The reforms are coming; there’s no doubt about that," he said. "But we cannot get it all done at once, particularly as we work on getting a budget in place."
Alan Guenther, a spokesman for Schundler, said the state does not anticipate "wholesale retirements" because of changes that have already become law — including requiring teachers to pay at least 1.5 percent of their salary towards health benefits.
With additional reforms, Schundler had predicted about 13,000 teachers might retire by Aug. 1. The New Jersey Education Association teachers union warned of 30,000 departures and "irreparable damage to every school system in the state."
NJEA spokesman Steve Wollmer today said without further changes, about 6,500 teacher retirements are likely this summer — combined with thousands of layoffs due to budget cuts. He said Christie’s talk of big changes created "panic" and led to "unnecessary early retirements of talented teachers."
"This governor has people convinced that he’s capable of just about anything, so forgive them if they took him seriously," Wollmer said.
Frank Belluscio, spokesman for the New Jersey School Boards Association, said retirements give districts "flexibility" to bring back others who got pink slips. "Without a doubt, there’s going to be fewer teachers working in the public schools next year," he said.
Muhlstock said the repreive gives her a chance to test out a new classroom gig after Teaneck cut her librarian position.
"If I have a few more months, then since I don’t wish to retire, I’ll probably try it and see how it goes," she said.
Teachers who have already filed for retirement but change their minds can still rescind the paperwork, said Andrew Pratt, a treasury department spokesman.
Lisa Fleisher contributed to this report.
‘State, school districts can learn lessons from roll-out of new alternate high school test’ By Star-Ledger Editorial Board June 08, 2010, 5:45AM
Thousands of 12th graders who took this year’s new Alternative High School Assessment failed all or part of it. The test replaced the Special Review Assessment for students unable to pass the state’s standard high school graduation exam.
The questions on the new test were somewhat similar, but there was this big difference: The student’s teacher was not the one scoring the test. Instead, it was graded by an independent evaluator, Measurement Inc.
The SRA had long been criticized as a way for teachers to give a pass to students who did not meet standards for graduation. In fact, 96 percent of SRA takers passed that exam.
Once the scoring was taken out of the school building, students started to flunk in droves. Of 9,500 students who took the new math test when it was introduced in January, 35 percent passed. Of 4,500 who took the language arts portion, only 15 percent passed. When the AHSA was administered again in April, the results were somewhat better: 48 percent passed math and 35 percent passed language arts.
This year’s experience should serve as a wakeup call for districts that they can no longer use the alternative testing route to push through students lacking the basic skills to function in today’s world.
There’s another lesson: Preparation is key.
The Department of Education should have done a better job preparing schools for the switch. The Education Law Center, which advocates for students in poor urban districts, says the new test should have had a pilot year. “You can’t open a trap door on thousands of students three months before graduation,” says Stan Karp, a program director for ELC. Good point.
Schools should have done a better job preparing students for the new test. The improved performance in April suggests more preparation helped.
What about the students who didn’t pass? The state is allowing districts to submit appeals using other evidence to show that a student deserves to graduate. The evidence can include scores from other standardized tests, class work that shows proficiency, or school staff recommendations. Others will have to go to summer school to prepare for a retest.
The appeals process is a reasonable way to ensure that deserving students who may not have been ready for the new test have a chance to graduate. But come next year, school districts have the ultimate responsibility to prepare students to meet the higher standards and be successful on the exam.
Hot Topics, Politics, Statehouse »
‘N.J. Gov. Chris Christie's rant reveals a hard-right agenda’
By Tom Moran/Column/ The Star-Ledger , June 08, 2010, 5:30AM
TRENTON — The reason fanatics like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck adore Gov. Chris Christie has never been so clearly on display as it was last week during his Rant in Robbinsville.
It was one of his town hall meetings, stuffed with friends as usual. But this time he went far beyond the familiar call for a reasonable cap on property taxes.
This time he attacked justices of the state Supreme Court as “people in black robes who are elected by no one” and suggested that they should never defy the majority will. So much for Alexander Hamilton’s quaint notions of judicial independence.
The governor also revealed for the first time the real reason he removed Justice John Wallace from the bench: It was the first phase in a larger scheme to take money out of poor urban school districts and spread it around to wealthier suburbs.
“If people wonder why I want to change the Supreme Court, it’s because I don’t have the flexibility to change the school funding formula,” he said. “The Supreme Court theory that if you put more money in, (schools are) going to just by magic get better has proven to be wrong.”
The hope must be that if you repeat this nonsense enough, people will start to believe it. But for the record, New Jersey is closing the racial achievement gap faster than any other state. That’s partly because we’ve built the nation’s best preschool program, no small thing.
Some districts, like Union City, have worked near miracles. Others, like Camden, are still failing horribly.
But let’s place the blame where it belongs — with state and local officials who failed to make the most of the money directed to poor urban areas under the Abbott vs. Burke rulings.
The court can only open the door. Union City showed that it’s possible to walk through it.
The governor also claimed that the court mandated “the overwhelming majority” of state money to go a “small number” or urban districts. It was half the money, and it went to districts attended by nearly 1 in 4 New Jersey students.
Worse, the governor blamed the court for pinching school aid to suburbs like Robinsville, when the real cause is the sweeping cuts to all districts the governor is pushing.
“He’s just wrong,” says David Sciarra of the Education Law Center, who represents students in poor districts. “If he funded the formula, Robbinsville would get $1.7 million more in aid.”
The governor is playing an ugly political game. He wants suburban taxpayers to blame their problems on the cities, with the Supreme Court as the enabler. If he has to smudge a few facts along the way, so be it.
Look up the word “demagogue” in Webster’s dictionary and you find a pretty tight fit with the governor in Robbinsville: “A person who tries to stir up the people by appeals to emotion, prejudice,
etc., in order to win them over quickly and so gain power.”
Standing in his way, of course, is the Supreme Court. It found that the state’s reliance on property taxes created enormous disparities that deprived kids in poor cities of a chance for a decent education, violating the state Constitution’s promise.
Here’s how the governor described it: “They’ve taken the power out of the hands of the Legislature to make this judgment and out of the hands of the governor, and the courts are making it. Well, that’s wrong. If judges want to legislate, they should run for the Legislature.”
He added, “They’re put there, and they believe they should stay there without any responsiveness to the people of the state.”
Remember, though, that governors and legislatures in New Jersey created a system that was profoundly unequal. Kids in poor cities were crowded into decrepit buildings with poorly paid teachers in systems funded at slightly more than half the state average.
That’s what majority rule delivered. And that’s why the court jumped in. Is the governor really suggesting that justices should heel to the majority instead?
New Jersey is ready for a fiscal conservative after a decade in which the public sector continued to swell even as private sector jobs disappeared. Polls show solid majorities want to see Trenton go on a diet and support his plan to cap property taxes.
If the Rant in Robbinsville is any guide, though, Christie has grander plans to push a conservative agenda. That will no doubt tickle Limbaugh and friends.
But it will be a tough sell to the moderate voters of New Jersey.
