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The Star-Ledger ‘NJEA to reveal plans on teacher tenure system criticized by Gov. Christie’
NJEA Press Packet on Maintaining a Quality Workforce - Tenure Reform - Comparing the Current Tenure Statute and the NJEA Proposal
Star Ledger editorial board ‘N.J. loses another federal education grant’
Philadelphia Inquirer ‘Christie administration blames Corzine on charters’
The Star-Ledger ‘NJEA to reveal plans on teacher tenure system criticized by Gov. Christie’
Star Ledger editorial board ‘N.J. loses another federal education grant’
Philadelphia Inquirer ‘Christie administration blames Corzine on charters’
NJEA Press Packet on Maintaining a Quality Workforce - Tenure Reform - Comparing the Current Tenure Statute and the NJEA Proposal
NJEA Press Packet on Maintaining a Quality Workforce - Tenure Reform - Comparing the Current Tenure Statute and the NJEA Proposal
December 07, 2010, 8:34 AM by Jeanette Rundquist
TRENTON -- The state's largest teachers union will unveil plans today to streamline the process for removing tenured teachers from the classroom, just days before the Senate Education Committee holds a hearing on tenure and its impact on public education.
Tenure, the job protection afforded to New Jersey educators after three years and one day on the job, has come under increasing fire from Gov. Chris Christie and some education advocacy groups.
Steve Wollmer, a spokesman for the New Jersey Education Association, said Monday that the union "will address the legal process for removing tenured teachers (and) make it more efficient," by proposing a system that would "take the judges out of the picture. " and use arbitration instead. He did not offer further details.
Tenure charge cases that get to the point of a hearing now go before an Administrative Law Judge, who makes a recommendation to the state education commissioner. The commissioner can uphold, overturn or modify the ruling.
The NJEA also plans to release a raft of other proposals, for things such as teacher-driven innovation and mentoring, and "set the record straight" about its commitment to education, Wollmer said.
"Our organization has taken a pretty bad rap over the past 10 months," he said. "We're going to set the record straight and get some ideas out there that really matter."
Other education advocacy groups have proposed extending the probationary period before a teacher gets tenure, or eliminating tenure entirely, in favor of renewable contracts, but Wollmer said that is not part of NJEA's proposal, which would require legislative approval.
"If you haven't figured out after three years if someone's a good teacher, another year isn't going to do it," he said. "The focus of our proposal is on the process and how its adjudicated. Our proposal directly addresses the time and cost, while maintaining the standard of fairness you have to have."
Tenure has become a hot-button issue in New Jersey this year, as Christie repeatedly has taken on the state's largest teachers' union.
The NJEA proposal comes just days before the Senate Education Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing Thursday on the subject. Representatives from the NJEA and state Department of Education, along with national experts, are among those expected to testify.
Separately, an "Educator Effectiveness" task force appointed by Christie is working to come up with a way to evaluate teachers and principals, and is to report to the governor by March 1.
Some education advocates said the NJEA's proposal was timed to beat the Senate hearing.
"I'm confident this is pre-emptive," said Derrell Bradford, executive director of Excellent Education for Everyone, and a member of the Christie task force.
"Given that the NJEA's tactics normally involve saying 'no,' it appears they think the best way to deal with change they can't stop is to get out in front of it. I don't see them proposing anything that substantively overhauls tenure."
Some experts say just taking about changing tenure represents movement.
"The type of hearing taking place on Thursday, you'd never have seen in the past," said Frank Belluscio, spokesman for the New Jersey School Boards Association. "It's been a real sacred cow."
The association supports eliminating the tenure system replacing it with contractual tenure, he said.
Another group, the Garden State Coalition of Schools, which represents about 100 suburban districts, wants to extend the tenure probationary period, or move to contracts.
"Three years is a tight timeline," said Lynne Strickland, the group's executive director. "It's fairer to the district to be given more time for in-depth evaluation and process, and often people say it's fairer to the teacher."
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NJEA Press Packet (Released noon 12-7-10) on Maintaining a Quality Workforce - Tenure Reform - Comparing the Current Tenure Statute and the NJEA Proposal
The NJEA proposal would retain most of the current statute’s process for certifying dismissal charges against a tenured teacher for "inefficiency, incapacity, conduct unbecoming or other just cause."
• Once charged, the employee has 15 days to file a statement and evidence with the Board of Education.
• The BoE then has up to 45 days to certify charges and file them with the Commissioner of Education.
• Once charges are certified, boards of education may suspend the employee without pay for up to 120 calendar days.
• The employee has up 15 days from the BoE’s filing to file his/her answers to the charges.
• Under the current statute, the Commissioner has 15 days to determine the sufficiency of charges, and another 10 days to transmit the case to the Office of Administrative Law.
• Under the NJEA proposal, the Commissioner has 15 day to determine the sufficiency of charges, and another 10 days to refer the case to an Arbitrator.
Who is covered
• Under the current statute, public school teachers, secretaries, and some custodians are covered. Under the NJEA proposal, all public school employees would be covered. The current three-year probationary period would remain in effect.
Timeline once case is sent to Administrative Law Judge/Arbitrator
• Under the current statute, the process takes between 6-12 months or more to be adjudicated by an Administrative Law Judge, with a lengthy list of checkpoints to allow for additional discovery, disputes over sufficiency, and Commissioner’s final decision with respect to judge’s ruling.
• Under the NJEA proposal, a hearing must be held within 60 days of the case being assigned to an arbitrator, and the arbitrator’s decision – which is final and binding – must be rendered within 30 days of the conclusion of the hearing, for a total of 90 days.
Choice of Arbitrators
• Arbitrators will be American Arbitration Association (AAA/National Academy of Arbitrators)-certified. They will be selected from a list jointly created by NJEA and the New Jersey School Boards Association.
NEW JERSEY EDUCATION ASSOCIATION
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Star Ledger ‘N.J. loses another federal education grant’
Star-Ledger Editorial Board Published: Monday, December 06, 2010, 5:55 AM
It’s disheartening to hear that, yet again, New Jersey has lost out on millions in federal education dollars.
This time, it was for public charter schools. As Gov. Chris Christie seeks to greatly expand charters and his staffers sort through a record number of applications, our state just lost a $14 million competitive grant to fund the schools’ start-up costs.
That’s going to cripple any new charters, since our state already gives them less funding than regular district schools. This fumbled grant wasn’t as big a scandal as New Jersey’s botched Race to the Top application, in which we lost $400 million in federal education funds in part because a question was unanswered. But it does show a history of charter neglect in our state. Federal reviewers criticized New Jersey’s feeble capacity to oversee and evaluate charters, in particular 30 new ones planned over the next three years.
Blame for this does not lie solely on the Christie administration, as it did for Race to the Top. Our state also lost the charter grant in 2009, the final year of former Gov. Jon Corzine’s administration. New Jersey last won the grant money in 2006, but was forced to surrender some of it because it wasn’t opening charters fast enough.
The federal reviewers didn’t see much improvement over last year, when they rejected New Jersey because the decimated staff at the state Department of Education didn’t appear to have the capacity to distribute the grant money. There are now only five overworked employees in the DOE’s charter office, down from 16 nearly a decade ago.
And it’s still our only entity that can select, monitor or shut down New Jersey’s more than 70 charter schools.
New Jersey is one of just a handful of the 41 states with charters that still use the DOE as their sole authorizer.
The feds prefer to give their grant money to states that also allow school boards and universities to oversee charters.
Christie has been in office for a year already, and should have made developing the DOE’s charter school office a bigger priority. He needs to face reality and hire more staffers, because smaller government isn’t always better. Sometimes it’s just smaller.
But in other ways, the governor has improved the outlook for charters. He lent his support to needed reforms like a proposed bill that would permit universities like Rutgers to also authorize charter schools.
The clock is ticking to implement that law by next Spring, when we re-apply for this grant. Without better oversight, we’re just setting our charters up to fail.
Philadelphia Inquirer ‘Christie administration blames Corzine on charters’
By Rita Giordano, Inquirer Staff Writer
The Christie administration said Monday that New Jersey's failure to win a federal grant for charter school start-ups was the fault of a weak and understaffed state charter operation it inherited from Gov. Jon S. Corzine.
Democratic leaders criticized Gov. Christie last week after the state's failed bid for $14 million in education funds was made public by The Inquirer.
New Jersey's low-scoring application - combined with the Christie administration's unsuccessful effort to secure a $400 million federal Race to the Top education grant - indicates that education is not a priority for the governor, the lawmakers charged.
When asked about losing the grant, Christie spokesmen initially cited the governor's support of school choice and said efforts were being made to strengthen the charter program. The state plans to reapply for the grant, probably in the spring, according to state officials.
A week later, the administration ramped up its defense and blamed Christie's Democratic predecessor.
"We inherited an office [of charter schools] that was decimated," state education spokesman Alan Guenther said Monday.
The Corzine administration lost about $17 million in federal charter aid, Guenther said.
In 2009, during Corzine's tenure, New Jersey's application for about $13 million from the same start-up aid program was rejected, he said. A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Education confirmed that the application was denied.
In 2008-09, Guenther said, the state also was denied almost $4 million it was to have received in the third payout of a 2006 grant that would have totaled more than $10 million.
The reason, Guenther said, was that federal program officials said New Jersey was not opening enough charters or spending the money it was given fast enough.
New Jersey got only $100 that year, according to state records.
The state was awarded charter start-up grants, which usually cover three-year periods, three times before 2006. The federal program was launched in the mid-1990s.
Assembly Education Committee Chairman Patrick J. Diegnan Jr. (D., Middlesex) said again Monday that he wants acting Education Commissioner Rochelle Hendricks to speak to his committee about what went wrong with the state's application.
Hendricks was asked to appear Thursday but may not be available, Diegnan said.
New Jersey received 61.3 percent of the possible points on its losing grant application. The 12 states that won grants scored between 67 percent and 85.7 percent. The state lost points in every category, including those about its charter management and monitoring plans.
It is "unacceptable" to blame the previous administration for this year's failure, Diegnan said. The state learned over the summer that it had lost out on the charter money.
"It's getting a little old at this point to continue to blame the Corzine administration for everything that goes wrong for the Christie administration," he said.
Diegnan said he read the comments of the application's peer reviewers and found their references to basic lacks in the application "disturbing." The administration should have learned from the unsuccessful 2009 application, he said.
"Clearly, the ball was dropped," Diegnan said.
Guenther said that the state charter school office was woefully undermanned when Christie became governor. "The level of neglect . . . was profound," he said.
In 2001, the office had a staff of 16 to administer 45 schools, Guenther said. When Christie took over, he said, four staff members oversaw 67 schools.
A fifth person recently was hired for the charter office, and about a half-dozen other employees have pitched in to help handle the workload for what is now 73 schools, he said.
The Education Department has requested that the National Association of Charter School Authorizers do a study, now under way, on how the state can improve its charter program, Guenther said. The state is also working on creating a mentoring project to help new and existing charters.
"We will continue to improve and upgrade the office," he said.
Had the grant application been successful, the money would have benefited some of the record 50 charter schools seeking state approval next month. Typically in New Jersey, new charters have received about $150,000 in start-up money from the federal grant program.
The state will use about $148,000 left from its previous grant to help newly opening charters that have already been approved, said Guenther and other New Jersey education officials. The seven schools each will get about $20,000, Guenther said
Contact staff writer Rita Giordano at 856-779-3841 or rgiordano@phillynews.com.
