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The Record - Advocates make case for NJ teacher tenure reform
Asbury Park Press- Union, Christie rap tenure fix
NJ Spotlight - Making a Sizable Exception to the Tenure Reform Bill…A critical clause in the proposed bill could mean tenure reform will not be applied retroactively
Star Ledger - Senate Education Committee discusses tenure reform bill's nuts and bolts
The Record - Advocates make case for NJ teacher tenure reform
Monday, March 5, 2012 Last Updated: Tuesday March 6, 2012, 12:04 Am By Leslie Brody Staff Writer
At the Legislature’s first public hearing on a major effort to overhaul teacher tenure, most advocates agreed on the urgent need to fix a century-old law, but many had reservations about the proposal’s fine print.
Speakers applauded the Senate Education Committee for the “courage” to take on an entrenched job protection, and said it was crucial to get change now before momentum evaporated. They said student achievement — and international competitiveness — depended on getting the best teachers in the classroom and weeding out those who couldn’t do the job.
The chairman of the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce, Jeffrey Scheininger, said his manufacturing company was “shocked” to find the vast majority of job applicants could not perform simple math with fractions. “We need a steady stream of literate and numerate young people,” he said. “Our economic stability depends on it.”
Monday’s legislative hearing marks a new momentum toward overhauling a system once designed to protect teachers from nepotism. Tenure’s critics have long charged the system makes it too costly and difficult to dismiss poor teachers. Even the state’s largest teachers union says it should be easier to fire incompetents. But many educators expressed concern that the proposed tenure bill relies on a new statewide method for evaluating teachers that has yet to be fully developed or tested.
The Christie administration has made reforming tenure a linchpin of its education agenda for the past two years, and its views are closely mirrored in the bill sponsored by Sen. M. Teresa Ruiz, D-Essex, chairwoman of the Senate committee. Many argue that a 1909 law to protect teachers from patronage and arbitrary dismissal has morphed into what’s essentially a guarantee of a lifetime employment. At a time when numerous studies show the most important in-school factor affecting student learning is the quality of the teacher in the classroom, they say tenure needs to be revised to put children’s needs first.
“It’s time to reform tenure now,” said Brian Osborne, superintendent of schools in South Orange/Maplewood. He said he feared all the work designing the bill and improving teacher evaluations “will die on the vine if the legislation is not passed, and we’ll let the moment slip away.”
Lawmakers did not vote Monday. But Ruiz said she would revise her bill after reviewing all the comments, and hopes the Senate will pass it by July. An Assembly bill has yet to have a hearing.
Ruiz’s “TEACH NJ” bill would require new teachers to have a year of on-the-job mentoring plus three consecutive years of good evaluations to get the job protections of tenure. A teacher would lose tenure after two consecutive ineffective ratings. That’s a huge departure from the present system, in which teachers get the due process rights after three years and a day on the job. For new teachers, the bill would also weaken seniority rules during layoffs.
How to judge an effective teacher, however, remains an extremely thorny issue. The state is running a two-year pilot project to create new teacher evaluations, based half on classroom observations and half on student growth, judged partly by test scores. The New Jersey Education Association and other groups warned against making tenure dependent on effective ratings before the state found fair, objective ways to gauge teacher quality.
“It’s like building a house before the foundation is set,” said the NJEA’s lobbyist, Ginger Gold Schnitzer. The New Jersey Principals and Supervisors Association also cautioned that new evaluations should be implemented and studied before final action is taken on tenure legislation.
The NJEA’s lobbyist warned that the bill denied teachers due process by giving them no chance to dispute poor evaluations in front of a neutral third party. Further, she said that in this era of unpredictable state aid and tight caps on local tax increases for school funding, districts would have a strong incentive to give teachers bad ratings, avoid giving them tenure and increase their flexibility in cutting staff.
The union has proposed its own plan, which it says would speed up tenure cases by putting them in front of an arbitrator instead of an administrative law judge. The Christie administration has dismissed that as a minor cosmetic change.
District chiefs often complain that trying to revoke tenure can cost six figures in legal fees and take years. The state says that in the past decade, only 17 teachers have lost tenure due to incompetence. The union notes that many teachers facing possible loss of tenure leave quietly instead of litigating.
Ruiz’s bill says that when budget cuts require reductions in force, a teacher’s rating should trump seniority rules and ineffective teachers will be let go first. That rule would apply only to new teachers.
Newark Mayor Cory Booker made an impassioned plea that an end of the last-in-first-out policy should apply to all teachers. “The urgency for change doesn’t apply just to new teachers,” he said. “The urgency for change applies to all children.”
Booker also supported the bill’s provision giving principals the power to choose their faculty, and avoid the so-called “dance of the lemons,” in which ineffective teachers are passed from school to school because it is difficult to dismiss them.
“I can’t imagine taking a job where I’m a leader and I can’t choose or influence who my team is,” Booker said.
Under the Ruiz bill, teachers who lost jobs in budget cuts would go into a “priority hiring pool” and continue getting paid for a year beginning with the 2014 school year. If they didn’t find positions in the district during that time, they would be placed on unpaid leave but still have priority in finding spots. Booker praised that as an “antidote to what we saw disastrously in New York, called the rubber room.”
Patrick Diegnan, D-Middlesex, chair¬man of the Assembly Education Committee, did not attend the 4½-hour hearing but said he was still collecting evidence for a tenure bill of his own. He said he would focus on it in May and hoped to pass it out of his committee by July. He expressed concern, however, about basing tenure on evaluations based partly on test results, and said the state still had no reliable method for linking teachers to students’ scores.
Also Monday, Governor Christie announced his plan to create a task force that would adjust how the state’s public school funding formula counts the number of at-risk students in local districts.
Districts with students judged to be at-risk receive additional state funding per child. But Christie has challenged the use of free or reduced-price school lunch enrollment numbers to work out how to allocate additional educational funding.
The task force would “look at other objective measures of trying to define who that at-risk student is,” Christie said. It would have 180 days to give him recommendations on ways to measure the numbers of students who merit additional funds; its members have not been announced.
Staff Writer Juliet Fletcher contributed to this article. Email: brody@northjersey.com
Asbury Park Press- Union, Christie rap tenure fix
11:11 PM, Mar. 5, 2012 | by Jason Method Statehouse Bureau
TRENTON — A landmark teacher tenure reform bill was criticized by Gov. Chris Christie’s administration and the state’s largest teachers union during its first public hearing Monday.
Christie’s officials targeted a grandfather provision to protect current teachers, while the union, the New Jersey Education Association, insisted that educators get a hearing before they are fired for incompetence.
No vote was taken before the state Senate Education Committee. The bill’s sponsor, M. Teresa Ruiz, D-Essex, the committee chairwoman, signaled that she would consider amending the legislation.
Despite criticisms of the bill, the measure drew broad support from most groups, except for the NJEA, which is opposed.
Assistant Education Commissioner Andrew Smarick said a provision that would protect most current teachers from layoffs by keeping in place seniority preferences and bumping rights should be eliminated.
“There are teachers, for whatever reason, that are not as good as we’d hope they’d be, and we want to be able to deal honestly with that,” Assistant Education Commissioner Andrew Smarick said. He added later: “By delaying implementation of this for what could be decades is hard for us to defend. … Today’s kids deserve it, not just kids 10 and 20 years from now.”
NJEA lobbyist Ginger Gold Schnitzer said the bill — by allowing districts to keep teachers who lose or can’t obtain tenure — creates an incentive for school districts to hold teachers in limbo so they could cut staff easily during layoffs.
In some districts, all or a majority of teachers, eventually might be working without tenure because administrators could decide to not give the three consecutive years of positive evaluations needed to obtain the protections, Schnitzer suggested.
Schnitzer said teachers should lose their jobs immediately if they lose tenure, but there should be a hearing before an arbitrator so they could contest the evaluations that caused them to lose their positions.
In its current format, the legislation calls for all teachers, principals and assistant principals to be evaluated annually and classified in one of four categories: highly effective, effective, partially effective and ineffective.
Ruiz said Monday she wants to amend the bill to include all certificated staff, which then would cover guidance counselors, business administrators, coaches and others.
If the bill passes as it is, administrators could revoke tenure for teachers deemed poor or partially performing and who do not improve in the next year. The same would hold true for principals and assistant principals.
Those who lose tenure would be able to appeal the decision to an administrative law judge. But they would not automatically lose their jobs. They would be the first cut during layoffs. Current teachers who maintain their tenure would keep seniority and bumping rights.
The bill also affects personnel decisions. For example, principals will have final say on whether a teacher is hired or transferred to their school.
The bill comes even as New Jersey is testing teacher evaluation systems in 11 school districts. Smarick said Monday that next year, one school in each district will be asked to use the new evaluation system before it goes statewide a year later.
Patricia Wright, executive director of the New Jersey Principals and Supervisors Association, backed the NJEA suggestions in an interview. She said the presence of an evaluation system provides ample power to administrators, and arbitrators would likely back most recommendations to fire bad teachers.
But Wright told the committee that the administrators need to get used to doing the new evaluations and to get other job duties off their plate, so they can spend more time in classrooms watching the teachers. For substandard teachers, new professional development programs will be needed to give them a chance to improve.
“We’ll need time and money to move this forward,” said Wright, former chief school administrator in Spring Lake. “It is a burden to the district.”
Smarick disagreed. “This is not going to require vast new sums of money, but it will require repurposing the money that’s there,” he said.
NJ Spotlight - Making a Sizable Exception to the Tenure Reform Bill…A critical clause in the proposed bill could mean tenure reform will not be applied retroactively
By John Mooney, March 6, 2012 in Education|1 Comment
A few critical words at the top of page 14 of the proposed tenure reform bill caused quite a stir yesterday at a Senate hearing on the measure.
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The new rules -- which redefine how New Jersey teachers earn and keep tenure -- will not apply to "those who acquired tenure prior to the effective date" of the bill.
In other words, the bill put forward by state Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex), the bill that has been given the best chance yet of overhauling New Jersey’s century-old tenure system, will be grandfathered in.
And what of those reforms? Ruiz has reworked how new teachers would be granted and denied tenure and effectively ended the last-hired, first-fired policy. Beginning in 2014, the proposed bill mandates that teachers and administrators would be dismissed based first and foremost on school needs and then according to effectiveness -- rather than the seniority that now determines layoffs.
But it was the grandfather clause that quickly became the focus of attention yesterday.
“It was a huge issue to consider, and we just wanted something in place,” Ruiz explained after the four-hour hearing before the Senate education committee, which she chairs.
But for several educators and others, the exception would gut the bill by stopping it from applying its most stringent consequences to the vast majority of teachers.
The superintendent of Perth Amboy schools, Janine Caffrey, testified that it was critical that schools have the opportunity to move on existing teachers who do not make the grade.
“Don’t tell me we’re not in a hurry and will grandfather people who have been here a while,” Caffrey said.
Newark Mayor Cory Booker, making a rare appearance at a Statehouse hearing, said it was a flaw in a bill he said was otherwise critical to the success of his city’s school district.
“It seems to me monumentally absurd to have a bill that is debated and ultimately agreed upon,” Booker said, “and then somehow forgives and forgets all the teachers who are there and only applies to new teachers in the profession.”
He said it will especially affect Newark, which is shrinking in enrollment and closing schools. “The urgency for change does not just apply to new teachers,” he said.
This is about more than a grandfather clause, however: New Jersey teachers' unions are strongly opposed to the state doing away with seniority -- for any teachers. It was the issue that derailed the partnership between the Christie administration and the unions in one of New Jersey’s applications for federal Race to the Top money, and it continues to be a dividing line in the current debate.
Yesterday, Ginger Gold Schnitzer, the chief lobbyist for the New Jersey Education Association, said the bill’s treatment of seniority remains an obstacle to agreement. She maintained it gives districts an excuse to get rid of older, more expensive teachers.
If a good evaluation system is in place, she said, ineffective teachers would already be moved out of the schools if they don’t improve. “If a teacher is ineffective, you shouldn’t be waiting for layoffs to move them out,” she said.
But if all the teachers are on the same standing, Schnitzer said, then seniority is “the only fair way” to determine who goes first. “Otherwise, it’s not just about cost savings, but about politics, personality, you name it,” she said.
Nonetheless, the NJEA lobbyist said after the hearing that she was not particularly happy with the grandfather clause, either.
“I think it was intended as a compromise, recognizing this is changing the culture and trying to ease its way in,” Schnitzer said last night. “But it’s almost unworkable, where some employees work under one set of rules, and others under another.”
And the discussion has Ruiz thinking, too. The state senator said after the hearing that she continues to believe some modification of the seniority rule is critical, but recognizes the cutoff point may need further discussion. Yesterday’s hearing did not include any vote on the bill.
“It’s clear that we should be looking at how we keep the best professionals in the classroom and not just one factor,” Ruiz said of seniority.
As for the grandfather clause, Ruiz said, “I heard from a lot of people urging that [the law] apply retroactively. It is something I will take strongly under consideration.”
Star Ledger - Senate Education Committee discusses tenure reform bill's nuts and bolts
Updated: Tuesday, March 06, 2012
TRENTON — The details of tenure reform — who is affected, when it starts and how it will be paid for — were discussed in the Senate Education Committee today.
Teachers union leaders, school superintendents, retired teachers, state officials, business leaders, school advocates and others testified in a more than three-hour hearing on the bill introduced last month by Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex.)
"There is no greater urgency in my city," Newark Mayor Cory Booker said.
Several speakers urged that teachers get a greater part in the process.
"Teachers need to have a voice in this bill ... as we move forward with these decisions," said Donna Chiera, a retired Perth Amboy teacher, and president of the American Federation of Teachers of New Jersey.
Money was also an issue, with several speakers saying funds are needed for professional development and other requirements under the bill — to which Deputy Education Commissioner Andrew Smarick said the law "doesn’t require vast new sums of money."
He said school districts will be able to "repurpose" existing money to cover costs.
The Department of Education made a similar argument last year, however, providing no new funds for the state’s anti-bullying law — but was told by the Council of Local Mandates that they need to provide some funding, recast the law, or watch key provisions expire.
Ruiz last month introduced the tenure reform bill that, coupled with a new evaluation system currently in the works, would do away with the tenure that New Jersey teachers now earn after three years on the job.
Under the new bill, new teachers would be evaluated on a four-step scale from ineffective to highly effective. Being rated effective or highly effective for three years means they earn tenure. Tenured teachers who are rated ineffective or partially effective for two years in a row, then, will lose tenure. Teachers hired before the bill takes effect would gain tenure the old way, but are still subject to the evaluations and removal.
Some amendments to the bill were announced today. The bill, originally proposed to cover just teachers, principals, assistant and vice-principals, will now also cover guidance counselors, school nurses, or any certified staff.
Ruiz said the effective date of the bill would be the 2013-14 school year, but she also told Department of Education staff officials that the changes must match the roll-out of a new teacher evaluation system. That system is being piloted in 10 school districts now, to be expanded to 30 districts next year, then the whole state in 2013-14.
The state’s largest teacher’s union, the NJEA, was critical of the idea of introducing a new tenure bill, before the evaluation system is finished. "Addressing tenure without .... (established) evaluation is like building a house before the foundation is set," said Ginger Gold Schnitzer, NJEA’s director of government relations.
