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Njspotlight.com ‘Tenure Testimony Reveals A Troubled -- and Troubling – System’
The Record ‘Colorado tenure law considered at N.J. hearing’
Star Ledger ‘N.J. Senate committee hears Colorado state senator outline plan requiring teachers to earn tenure’
The Record ‘Senate Education Committee to hold tenure hearing’ …” The number of tenure cases "seems terribly low," said Lynne Strickland, executive director of Garden State Coalition of Schools. "You have to be doing something rather egregious before districts will file tenure charges. They know it will be costly and long and they don't always win. One good thing that could come out of tenure reform would be that a defeatist attitude on the part of districts might be removed…"
Star Ledger ‘Braun: Despite talk, NJEA takes care of its own’
Njspotlight.com ‘Tenure Testimony Reveals A Troubled -- and Troubling – System’
The Record ‘Colorado tenure law considered at N.J. hearing’
Star Ledger ‘N.J. Senate committee hears Colorado state senator outline plan requiring teachers to earn tenure’
Star Ledger ‘Braun: Despite talk, NJEA takes care of its own’
The Record ‘Senate Education Committee to hold tenure hearing’ …” The number of tenure cases "seems terribly low," said Lynne Strickland, executive director of Garden State Coalition of Schools. "You have to be doing something rather egregious before districts will file tenure charges. They know it will be costly and long and they don't always win. One good thing that could come out of tenure reform would be that a defeatist attitude on the part of districts might be removed…"
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Njspotlight.com ‘Tenure Testimony Reveals A Troubled -- and Troubling – System’
Only a few tenure cases are filed each year, but low numbers can be misleading about what really happens in NJ schools
By John Mooney, December 10 in Education |1 Comment
The tiny number of tenure cases filed in New Jersey is no secret: only 33 cases against schoolteachers last year, 42 the year before, 35 the year before that.
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Out of more than 100,000 schoolteachers statewide, 110 cases over three years is miniscule.
But yesterday, before the Senate Education Committee, more than five hours of testimony from teachers, administrators, union leaders, academics and other experts on the topic of tenure reform made clear those numbers only tell part of the story as to how schools operate, where the challenges lie beyond tenure, and how tenure has its impact, for good or ill.
Few disputed that the process clearly has its deep flaws. For some, it's the length of time and effort required to dismiss a teacher; for others, it's what they described as a culture of few consequences.
Expletives and Epithets
The superintendent of Orange schools outlined four cases in his district, one of a teacher who allegedly fought with another teacher and student, used expletives and a racial epithet, and showed other inappropriate conduct in class.
"Over a five-year period, while the employee engaged in the aforementioned, the employee was on a paid suspension for 563 days," said superintendent Ronald Lee. "The tenure charges resulted in [the judge] suspending the employee without pay for 30 days."
It’s not just protecting teachers, either, but administrators, too. The superintendent of South Orange/Maplewood schools said tenure protection for principals and other leadership positions leave superintendents with little discretion over their own senior staff.
“Just imagine as senators that you couldn’t change your chief of staff?” superintendent Brian Osborne asked the members of the panel.
Eased Out of the Classroom
Still, most agreed that the small numbers of tenure charges filed with the state are really only a fraction of the cases of low-performing teachers for whom the formal filing is a last resort, a vast majority of them eased out of the classroom as the complaints mount.
'You don’t see these statistics, but I would say that hundreds of teachers who receive the first tenure charges resign,” said Eugene Liss, general counsel to the Newark Teachers Union. "Maybe the case didn’t go all the way to Trenton, but many who sit with us, they end up leaving the profession."
Newark has a system in which teachers receiving unsatisfactory ratings are required to undergo additional training through Seton Hall University. Last year, it was 90 teachers, all but 12 of whom returned to the classroom, he said. Those 12 all resigned, none by tenure charges.
The System Is Broken
Still others pointed to an evaluation system for teachers with few standards across the state. The lone teacher to testify said that lack of a decent evaluation is all the more reason for the protections that come with tenure.
"The teacher evaluation system is broken, and the more it is broken, the more we need due process,” said Jeff Trifari, a North Bergen High School teacher and vice president of the state chapter of the American Federation of Teachers.
He described an evaluation system in his school of one or two annual classroom observations that hasn’t changed in 20 years.
“They come in, check a few boxes off, and often don’t even stay the whole class period,” he said.
The Christie administration has proposed an overhaul of teacher and principal evaluation, appointing a task force to develop a statewide plan by March. The governor in an afternoon press conference said that plan will lead to changes in how teachers are promoted, paid and retained.
"Tenure as it is constituted now in New Jersey is absolutely failed and antiquated system that needs to be substantially reformed or eliminated," Christie said. "I have been clear about that over time, and that will be a big discussion and debate, I assume."
Administration officials spoke at the beginning of the hearing, and laid out many of the statistics, some familiar, others striking.
Of the 35 cases filed with the state in 2008, only 19 resulted in loss of tenure, while the rest saw reduced penalties. Eight cases were dismissed altogether.
And while there has been much discussion of better linking teacher with student performance, an official from the state Department of Education conceded the state still lacked the data system to even track such a link. He said it is still at least a year away.
“We don’t have the data system to prove that a teacher is ineffective,” said Chris Emigholz, the department’s legislative liaison. “With the current system, it is hard to get there.”
Testimony from a state senator from the Colorado elicited considerable attention, as he described a new tenure law in that state in which a teacher is only bestowed what is called “non-probationary status” if he or she has received satisfactory evaluations for three consecutive years.
At the same time, teacher can lose that status and placed back on probation -- and be eligible for dismissal -- if the evaluations are less than satisfactory for two consecutive years.
“It really made tenure a badge of honor,” said Mike Johnston, a state senator from Denver. “We know that nobody who has it wouldn’t have earned it.”
The Record ‘Colorado tenure law considered at N.J. hearing’
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Last updated: Thursday December 9, 2010, 6:12 PM
BY LESLIE BRODY, STAFF WRITER
A Colorado state senator told New Jersey lawmakers considering ways to fix tenure Thursday about a new law he pushed to make such job protection a “badge of honor.”
Mike Johnston gave the Senate education committee details of a law passed in spring that requires teachers to get three consecutive years of effective evaluations before they earn tenure, called non-probationary status there. If they have two consecutive years of poor evaluations, they go back on probation. Those teachers can get help to improve and might eventually earn back tenure. If they don’t, a district can dismiss them.
Having tenure in Colorado will mean, “Wow, this person is really one of the great practitioners in the field,” Johnston said. “Too often it is viewed as something that protects low performers.”
Johnston, a former teacher and principal from a mostly poor section of Denver, was among a parade of speakers at a hearing called by committee chairwoman Sen. Teresa Ruiz, D-Essex, who is drafting a bill to fix tenure. Critics charge that the current system makes it too expensive to weed out bad teachers and does nothing to reward the best.
The crowded event at the State House annex marked lawmakers’ efforts to weigh in on an issue that has been dominated by the noisy, bitter battle between Governor Christie and the state’s largest teachers union.
Colorado’s new system won’t be rolled out fully until 2013. Now a 15-member council is spending months on the thorny task of defining effectiveness and determining how to assess it for teachers and principals. Just as Christie seeks for New Jersey, half of each Colorado educator’s evaluation must be based on student growth, reflected by test scores and other measures.
Although Christie did not appoint union officials to his nine-member committee to improve evaluations, the Colorado council has representatives from the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association. The AFT supported Colorado’s new law but the larger NEA opposed it.
“We thought when you do a process like this you want all the stakeholders involved,” Johnston said in an interview. The unions “bring a much needed perspective. … The NEA did more to improve this bill than anyone else” by raising questions from the trenches, such as how to judge teachers facing students with special needs and migrant children who switch schools often.
The NJEA agrees that test scores can be one of multiple measures used to judge teachers, but says computer models that attempt to grade teachers by student data are too flawed to be a big part of high-stakes personnel decisions.
Dan Weisberg, a leader of the New Teacher Project, which helps districts recruit and develop talented teachers, said these statistical models were not perfect but it was important to use objective evidence in evaluations.
“If what we’re looking for is a perfect system that guarantees us there will never be an unfair result for teachers we should give up,” he said. “Batting averages don’t give you a perfect look at the performance of a player, but they give you a generally reasonable, reliable picture.”
Weisberg told lawmakers that without more rigorous, data-driven evaluations, virtually all educators get high marks. He showed the committee research arguing that removing the lowest-performing teachers would boost achievement and put the average American student near the top of the developed world.
A spokesman for Democrats for Education Reform, which advocates for charter schools and choice, said her group helped pay for the Colorado senator’s trip.
Johnston said the Colorado law also ties principals’ evaluations to teachers’ effectiveness, so school leaders have extra incentive to develop faculty. “Now there is an incentive in state law for principals to do the most important work, which is to be in classrooms supporting teachers to improve their practice,” Johnston said. “For too long people have been able to be a good principal because they show up at football games or break up fights in hallways or know all the parents. Those are good things but not as important as supporting teachers.”
Star Ledger ‘N.J. Senate committee hears Colorado state senator outline plan requiring teachers to earn tenure’
Published: Thursday, December 09, 2010, 12:37 PM Updated: Thursday, December 09, 2010, 3:18 PM
By Jessica Calefati/The Star-Ledger
TRENTON — A Colorado state senator told a New Jersey Senate committee that tenure should be a job protection first earned and then maintained over time — not a near guarantee as it has become for teachers in many states, New Jersey included.
Mike Johnston was a key advocate of a Colorado law signed this spring that requires all teachers to undergo annual evaluations based on 50 percent of students' demonstrated performance in the classroom. The evaluations are linked to teachers' job security.
"Tenure often protects the low performers," Johnston said. "When the law takes effect, we will know no one that has it didn't earn it or didn't work to keep it."
Johnston is one of more than a dozen experts testifying before the Senate education committee as its chairwoman, Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex), prepares to draft a tenure reform bill. Johnston's success in getting a tenure reform law passed has made him a star of today's hearing, and his testimony has been applauded repeatedly by the committee's members.
On Tuesday, the state's largest teachers union unveiled a proposal to take authority on tenure cases away from administrative law judges and give it to arbitrators — something the union says will speed up an often slow, expensive process.
Wednesday, Gov. Chris Christie criticized the NJEA's proposals as not going far enough. Christie proposed his commitment to tenure reform at a late September town hall, but he's not yet taken acted on his intentions.
The Record ‘Senate Education Committee to hold tenure hearing
Thursday, December 9, 2010’
Last updated: Thursday December 9, 2010, 7:54 AM
BY LESLIE BRODY
Charges to revoke tenure were filed against 35 of the 231,000 New Jersey school district employees for inefficiency, incapacity or misconduct in 2008, according to the state Department of Education.
The result: Four teachers and one custodian were fired, 16 kept their jobs and 14 agreed to resign or retire.
Figures like this will form the backdrop of a hearing on tenure held today by the Senate Education Committee in Trenton.
Critics of the current tenure system say that number is too low considering the group of people in any profession who perform poorly, and it shows why New Jersey needs to overhaul its system for granting job protections to teachers, principals and other school staffers.
A Department of Education panel will bring along more details from 2008, studied because cases filed that year had time to be resolved.
The number of tenure cases "seems terribly low," said Lynne Strickland, executive director of Garden State Coalition of Schools. "You have to be doing something rather egregious before districts will file tenure charges. They know it will be costly and long and they don't always win. One good thing that could come out of tenure reform would be that a defeatist attitude on the part of districts might be removed."
Some education advocates are pushing for renewable three- to- five-years contracts to replace tenure, or five-year probation periods to earn it. The governor wants to make getting tenure, and keeping it, more dependent on classroom results, but specifics have yet to be hashed out.
On Tuesday, the New Jersey Education Association pitched its ideas for education reform at a press conference; it called for fixing tenure, more mentoring for teachers and coaches to improve teachers' use of technology.
At a town hall-style meeting in Livingston on Wednesday, Governor Christie ridiculed the NJEA proposals by saying there was "almost nothing to them."
In a video provided by his office, Christie said the only change aired by the union was putting tenure cases in front of arbitrators instead of administrative law judges.
Christie also pointed to a published comment by NJEA Executive Director Vincent Giordano, who had said the union did not propose changes to the three-year probationary period for earning tenure because "when a system works, why should we seek to change it?"
"It's working perfectly well for him, he's making $550,000 a year from the NJEA," Christie said. "It's not working for kids."
NJEA spokesman Stephen Wollmer countered he was sick of hearing the governor give false information on Giordano's salary.
Wollmer said Giordano makes $300,000 a year, but had a one-year spike in 2007-2008 when he changed positions and was given a lump sum for deferred compensation, plus unused sick and vacation time.
Wollmer said the governor should not minimize the money-saving power of the NJEA's proposal, which would make it more difficult for administrators to avoid tough personnel decisions by claiming the process for dismissing teachers was too onerous.
"What we can't address is what the governor refuses to address - the abject failure of administrators to do their jobs" in conducting thorough teacher evaluations, Wollmer said. Administrators "have to have the courage to evaluate honestly and tell people the bad news. Too many administrators are conflict averse. & That's not the NJEA's fault."
E-mail: brody@northjersey.com
Star Ledger ‘Braun: Despite talk, NJEA takes care of its own’
Published: Thursday, December 09, 2010, 9:55 AM Updated: Thursday, December 09, 2010, 9:59 AM
Bob Braun/Star-Ledger Columnist
TRENTON — It was a painful sight. Leaders of the New Jersey Education Association, perhaps the state’s most powerful union — public or private — trying to convince the world it isn’t really a union. Or not just a union, but also a powerful yet selfless engine for educational reform.
"We have always been committed to making sure New Jersey has the very best teachers and school employees, skilled in the very best practices, to help their students succeed," said Barbara Keshishian, its president.
"This organization was founded 157 years ago around the goal of improving the teaching profession, and I stand here today to tell you that NJEA will always be committed to quality teachers and quality public schools for all children."
But a lot has happened in those 157 years. The most important is the evolution of the association from toothless pleader to powerful union that, until recently, determined the nature of the relationship between public school teachers and their employers. Along the way, it became a political player, winning in the Legislature much of what it could not win in bargaining.
That served the union well until now. Now, in an intractable economic crisis, the very success of the union won the jealous enmity of strapped workers who lost — or never had — union protections and advocacy. That enmity has found a powerful voice, Republican Gov. Chris Christie, whose relentless attacks on the union and its members are red meat thrown to the desperate to help them forget the rich are doing quite well, thank you.
All that set the scene for the news conference the other day when the NJEA leadership tried to regain its footing with a call for its own "vision for education reform."
Some ideas were good — veteran teachers mentoring teachers, grants to allow the development of teacher-run schools (not unlike the first charter schools), centers for continuing science education.
But, because Christie already has set the agenda, the NJEA had to talk about tenure reform and there, because a union is a union, it could not help but come down on the side of protecting its own. Its proposal to have arbitrators make tenure decisions might reduce the cost and time involved in firing a teacher but it would do nothing to change the standards by which teachers are judged.
The idea got bad reviews. A spokesman for the governor said the proposal "wasn’t enough." The New Jersey School Boards Association didn’t like it." Joseph DePierro, dean of Seton Hall’s education school, said, "They don’t go far enough to cause real change."
The unkindest cut — who would expect else? — came from Christie himself who noted the NJEA wouldn’t be talking about tenure at all unless he made an issue of it. The union was forced to play to Christie’s greatest strength, his image as a leader — even in education where he has made horrendous mistakes.
The NJEA leaders then proceeded to make matters worse by calling for expansion of the scope of collective bargaining to make issues like class size and textbook selection part of labor negotiations. That’s the union inexplicably doling out is own share of red meat to union haters because it leads to charges that unions are trying to take over the schools.
Keshishian’s comments ran aground on this issue. "Collective bargaining," she said, "has benefited the quality of our public schools and research shows quality public schools are a primary driver of high property values."
What? Labor talks mean higher property values? She said a broader scope of bargaining would lead to educators being held "responsible for education reform initiatives." But how would a union, or its members, be held accountable by the public for the results of bargaining? The lack of logic results from feverishly trying to marry policy to bare-knuckles bargaining.
Frank Belluscio of the school boards group makes more sense: "There are public policy issues, that should be determined in an open public meeting, rather than behind closed doors in negotiations. They should be deliberated upon by school boards, which represent the public, in public. These education policy decisions should be based on the recommendation of the administration, and not be subject to the give-and-take (or armed warfare) of negotiations.’’
Teachers, because of their expertise, should participate in decisions affecting the schools, but collective bargaining is too blunt an instrument. A good policy might be too easily traded away for another percent raise. That’s good bargaining, perhaps, but not good policy making.
Teachers may say bargaining is the only instrument they have, and that is at the heart of NJEA’s problem. It might want to portray itself as something else — some of its leaders might wish it to be something else, like a reform advocate — but in the end, a union is dedicated to the protection and economic advancement of its members. The law requires it.
To call it selfish is not a knock. What are corporations but selfish organizations dedicated to the protection and economic advancement of shareholders? Many prefer only to think of beleaguered workers — including teachers — demanding raises as selfish while corporations seeking profits are viewed as engines of economic recovery.
DePierro has it right: "The NJEA is a union and its top priority is protecting membership. And that’s okay; that’s what they’re supposed to do. They do have a responsibility to the profession and they do care about children, but they will never be reform leaders or change agents."
