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12-3-10 Education Issues in the News
Njspotlight.com ‘Acting Education Commissioner Rochelle Hendricks: The Unanswered Question’ and ‘The Clock is Ticking for Teacher Effectiveness Task Force’

Star Ledger ‘N.J. schools superintendent of the year says pay cap factored into decision to retire’

Njspotlight.com ‘Acting Education Commissioner Rochelle Hendricks: The Unanswered Question’

The acting commissioner is committed to the Christie reform agenda, but will the governor give her the title and the top spot?

Rochelle Hendricks was again at the head table at the state Board of Education yesterday, her nameplate as New Jersey’s “acting” education commissioner in front of her for the third month running.

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But as the uncertainty continues as to whether she will get the formal job after Gov. Chris Christie’s dramatic firing of the last commissioner, Hendricks kept a cheery face, playing down any indecision and saying that her commitment to improving New Jersey public schools was unwavering.

“It’s the governor’s call,” she said of her job prospects. “We will continue to move forward in the things we want to get accomplished. We will not slow down.”

A Slowdown in Trenton?

But the question remains: Have things slowed down at the department's riverfront offices? There have been significant staff departures in the past few months, and little sign as yet of replacements when Hendricks’ standing remains in doubt.

With Willa Spicer’s formal exit next week as deputy commissioner, that will leave only assistant commissioner Barbara Gantwerk at that level or higher. Veteran division directors leaving -- with jobs still unfilled -- include Janis Jensen (academic standards), Roberta Wohle (special education) and Sandra Alberti. (math and science instruction).

That’s not to say that Christie doesn’t have big plans for education, with a full plate of promised reforms, from changes in teacher tenure to expansion of charter schools. He has already imposed strict caps on administrative pay.

This week, Christie traveled to Washington, D.C., to promote his agenda, going national with his fight against high superintendent salaries.

“Why is this fight important? Because shared sacrifice is going to be required of everybody to fix this system,” Christie said in the speech before the Foundation for Excellence in Education.

And lately his staff has sent out signals that a commissioner appointment is coming this month to help forward that agenda, although with few details as to whom they are considering other than saying yesterday they are still interviewing candidates.

Time to Fill the Job

But even some of the governor’s strongest supporters on education -- some publicly, others more quietly -- said it is time to fill the job, a few urging it be with Hendricks, a longtime employee of the department.

Hendricks gets praise for representing a good mix of department experience with loyalty to Christie’s cause, especially around charter schools, for which she led the state’s office before climbing into leadership jobs. Her public refusal last month to attend the annual convention of the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA), one of Christie’s archenemies, removed little doubt she would follow Christie’s lead.

"If she's going to be the person, we need to know,” said Derrell Bradford, executive director of Excellent Education for Everyone, a Newark school choice advocacy group.

“We're 10 months into trying to implement Christie's reform plans,” he said. “Sure there are great people out there, but starting over right now could be a real blow to the continuity of the movement for change."

The Democrats, of course, are far less supportive of the agenda, but said stability at the top would help them at least know whom to talk to.

“It is really at this point a one-man show, and his lack of appointment of a commissioner is evidence of it,” said Assemblyman Patrick Diegnan, Jr. (D-Middlesex), chairman of the Assembly education committee.

He said former commissioner Bret Schundler, who lost the job after the bungled Race to the Top application, had spoken with him at least 10 times.

“No insult intended to her, but I’ve never met the acting commissioner,” said Diegnan. “I understand it is probably difficult for her.”

Adding to the Challenge

Outside the political arena, others said the extended time without a full appointment only adds to the challenge if the next hire is not Hendricks.

“Leadership from the commissioner of education is critical,” said Richard De Lisi, dean of Rutgers Graduate School of Education. “Given where we are in the current reform process -- at the beginning -- the longer Rochelle does the job and puts her stamp on things, the more difficult it becomes to have a new person take ownership.

“In other words, if Gov. Christie intends to make a change he should do so sooner rather than later.”

Still, the Democrats are not foreign to keeping the high-profile post in extended limbo status themselves.

Under former Govs. Richard Codey and Jon Corzine, Lucille Davy was acting commissioner for nearly a year before being named to the post. And it didn’t appear to slow her down much, as she moved immediately to rescind a statewide testing contract and appointed several senior staff to assistant commissioner jobs.

But after all the departures, there may be fewer such staff to chose from now than three years ago. Schundler had yet to fill many of the main assistant commissioner slots before his firing, mostly bringing in people to lower-level positions.

His one prominent appointment was Andrew Smarick, a nationally known conservative commentator and former federal education official. Schundler sought to appoint him deputy commissioner, but the state Board of Education balked at his lack of education credentials.

Smarick remains in a “special assistant” position in the department, making $129,000, actually more than Hendricks’ current salary of $121,000. The full commissioner’s position pays $141,000. A department spokesman said Smarick is “involved in policy development, planning and research for a wide variety of projects.”

Interviewing Candidates

The state Board of Education president, Arcelio Aponte, said he remains confident of Hendricks’ leadership and also hopes that she is chosen to keep the job. He said she has begun to bring in potential candidates for top jobs, including for deputy commissioner, special education director, and math and science director.

“The ones we have seen have a lot of depth of knowledge,” he said. ‘We are starting the discussion, and what I can appreciate is she is bringing them in early.”

Overall, Aponte said he’s actually encouraged by the lack of any buzz and rumors around the full appointment.

“I think the silence is favoring Rochelle,” he said. “I think the governor is seeing how valuable she is. Not only for her institutional memory, but she represents the administration well.”

But Aponte stopped short of saying much more. “All this could change next week if he decides on someone else,” he said.

 

Njspotligiht.com ‘The Clock is Ticking for Teacher Effectiveness Task Force’

Behind closed doors, committee reviews research and interviews experts, with draft report slated for March 1

By John Mooney, December 3 in Education |1 Comment

With no small task at hand -- and not much time -- a dozen or so educators, advocates and academics have begun gathering regularly in the administrative offices of North Brunswick schools to come up with a way to evaluate teachers and principals across the state.

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The members of Gov. Chris Christie’s Educator Effectiveness Task Force, along with state department staff, met on Wednesday for more than five hours, beginning to draft a report to submit to Christie by March 1.

The members appointed by Christie in what was a controversial selection process in itself and have each signed confidentiality agreements.

But their chairman said yesterday that the group has already begin reviewing research and talking to experts, in and out of state. Some early attention has been paid to Delaware’s evaluation system, as approved for federal Race to the Top funding, another devised for Washington D.C. schools under former superintendent Michelle Rhee, as well as several New Jersey districts’ approaches, he said.

“We’ll be meeting every 10 days, as much as possible,” said chairman Brian Zychowski, superintendent of North Brunswick schools. "We’re up against it in terms of time.

No Predefined Direction

Zychowski yesterday said there is no predetermination for his group’s work, and that has been made clear in the early meetings.

"Our charge is not merit pay or changing tenure, but to come up a measure for effective teaching in the classroom," he said. "And there have been some effective practices out there in New Jersey, where districts are achieving and successful."

“We are working very hard to give this a fair and balanced discussion and not -- I know what everyone thinks -- make it political,” Zychowski said.

The committee was named by Christie last month as a first step in his efforts to devise a system that he said would remake how schools evaluate, promote and retain teachers and principals.

Another Hot Topic

Teacher evaluation has become the latest hot topic in education reform, not just in New Jersey. Christie has insisted that educators be judged on the success of their students, as measured by standardized tests and other factors.

Out of the task force’s report could come changes in how, or if, the state grants tenure for teachers, Christie said, as well as the seeds for merit pay for teachers who excel and possible disciplinary steps for those who don’t.

The membership of the nine-member committee itself became the subject of intense dispute when the governor threw out an earlier plan for a vast and broad-based group of education stakeholders and instead chose a small group that included some prominent voices outside traditional public education, as well as inside.

In addition to Zychowski, the members include the leader of the state’s predominant school vouchers group, the headmaster of a Newark parochial school, and a principal of a Newark charter school. Also included are two teachers, a former Elizabeth school board president, a Lacey Township PTA president, and a Drew University associate dean.

The New Jersey Education Association (NJEA), the state’s dominant teachers union and frequent target of the governor, was among those groups excluded from the committee. Yesterday its spokesman continued to voice criticism of the task force’s work.

"No Basis in Reality"

"The problem remains that this task force has been directed by the governor to create policy with no basis in reality," said Steve Wollmer, the NJEA’s communications director. "There is no research showing that basing teacher evaluations on student test scores is going to reward the best teachers."

Wollmer also added a slap at the confidentiality of the talks: “It's not surprising that they don't want anyone watching while they try to figure out how to sell such a bad idea."

The NJEA is expected to present its own proposed education reform package next week, including changes in once-sacred tenure laws.

Several of the other task force members reached over the past few days declined to discuss the work publicly and referred all questions to Zychowski.

The one member from teacher union leadership said she was pleased with the deliberations so far, and defended it being held behind closed doors.

“I have been in schools long enough and know in doing negotiations and serious talks how things can leak out before anything is decided,” said Donna Chiera, president of the Perth Amboy union and executive vice president of the state’s chapter of the American Federation of Teachers.

Chiera said she fully expected open discussion once the report comes out and the governor makes his proposals. "This is not a forever thing."

 

Star Ledger ‘N.J. schools superintendent of the year says pay cap factored into decision to retire’

Published: Thursday, December 02, 2010, 7:00 AM     Updated: Thursday, December 02, 2010, 1:05 PM

Star-Ledger Staff

TRENTON — The state Board of Education Wednesday honored the state’s Superintendent of the Year, a Camden County educator who won praise for his leadership — but who said he plans to retire in 2012, partly because of an upcoming state cap on superintendents’ salaries.

Mark Raivetz, superintendent of the Haddon Township School District, is one of what may become a wave of superintendents retiring in New Jersey, as the state enacts a salary cap tying school chiefs’ pay to the size of their district.

Raivetz, 62, a 40-year veteran educator who was lauded at the state board meeting in Trenton, said later that the cap was only one factor in his decision to retire after his contract expires in 2012, but that if it were not in place, "I might stay."

"I wouldn't have wanted another five years. I might have asked the board for three without the cap," he said.

Raivetz earns $177,629 in the district of about 2,200 students, with no "extras" such as car allowances, said Haddon’s board president. The only thing not included in that are medical benefits.

The salary cap, which was proposed by Gov. Chris Christie and is scheduled to take effect in February, would limit superintendent pay to $155,000 in districts of 1,500 to 3,000 students.

Three years ago, when Raivetz said the budget "didn’t look great" in Haddon, he and the business administrator passed up their own salary increases — but did not make that public until this spring. "Our wives wanted to kill us," he said.

Raivetz said no one in the small district, where five elementary schools share three principals, and where he said "resources go to the classroom," could be called greedy.

"No one that works here could ever honestly be characterized as greedy. We are not, no matter what the governor says. The community wouldn’t stand for it," he said. "I don’t apologize for the money I’ve made after 41 years as an educator."

Raivetz was selected for the award in October by the New Jersey Association of School Administrators. Richard Bozza, executive director of the group, said of Raivetz’ retirement, "I think it’s another example of a great leader who’s built a record of success in a district, leaving the profession earlier than he might have otherwise."

Bozza also said it’s "not too often" that the Superintendent of the Year almost simultaneously announces retirement.

"I can’t remember a time that has happened," Bozza said.

Bozza said he expects more retirements ahead. "Folks nearing retirement are dismayed. They’re saying "this is my last contract if the caps are in place,’ even though their boards want them to continue," he said.

Haddon school board president Mark Cavallo, who called Raivetz "an incredible superintendent, obviously," said the schools chief told the board verbally of his intention to retire at about the same time the pay cap was announced. "No one likes change. I wish he would stay, but I will support whatever choice he makes," Cavallo said.

Raivetz, who was accompanied by his wife and daughter at the board meeting, in his remarks described accomplishments in Haddon Township, but also spoke of budget cuts that forced the loss of 24 teachers. "This has not been the greatest year of all for public educators and superintendents," he said.

State Board President Arcelio Aponte called Raivetz’ upcoming retirement a "personal decision," and praised him for his efficient and effective district. He said the cap "is certainly going to force every superintendent to evaluate whether it’s in their best interest to stay in a district or move on.

"If it’s enacted, it’s certainly going to change the availability ... of superintendents that have a lot of years of experience," he said.

By Jessica Calefati and Jeanette Rundquist/The Star-Ledger