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5-24-10 njspotlight.com - in-depth reports focus on Race to the Top & Schundler's Jersey City Charter School
‘Yea or Nay: NJ Seeks Friends for 'Race to the Top' Bid’ ..."Christie wins Legislature's general support, but adds compromise and cash in quest for other backing..."

2 'The Charter School Bret Schundler Built'... "Jersey City's Golden Door Charter School was one of the first. It's faced administrative issues, financial shortfalls and some plateauing scores; it's also matured into a safe, supportive haven from a grittier city and its schools..."


njspotlight.com (2 articles follow RTTT and Charter/Schundler)

1 ‘Yea or Nay: NJ Seeks Friends for 'Race to the Top' Bid’

 By John Mooney, May 21  Education

Christie wins Legislature's general support, but adds compromise and cash in quest for other backing

 

Legislative compromises, last-minute conference calls, and now $100,000 guarantees: these are among the tools the Christie administration is pulling out to gain support for its bid for the federal Race to the Top school reform program.

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The stakes are high, up to $400 million from President Obama's federal program, which is demanding new accountability and school reform measures from states that receive the Race to the Top funds. And critical in the state's application is buy-in from a range of key players in the state's education system, from the Legislature in its votes yesterday to a continued wooing of school districts and teachers.

The deadline is June 1, and Gov. Chris Christie and his education commissioner, Bret Schundler, are trying to make friends everywhere they can for an application that is expected to propose teacher merit pay, tenure reform and other controversial measures.

No easy task when schools and unions aren’t feeling particularly friendly to the administration these days. So that’s where the politics and compromise begins.


So far, about 150 districts have signed memorandums of understanding that stipulate their support for the application, officials said. That’s well short of the 361 that signed up last time, but there are still two weeks to go. And now they will have an extra incentive.

Districts received a memo yesterday from the state Department of Education that all those that sign on in support will receive a minimum of $100,000 from the grant, even if it has to come out of the state’s own share.

The grant calls for half of the sum allotted—potentially $200 million—to go to participating districts, with a heftier portion going to so-called Title I districts with high numbers of low-income students.

But the memo said that even non-Title I schools would get the minimum as an extra incentive to join the program.

Districts that do not sign the MOU would not be eligible for any direct aid, either way, it said, although the state’s share would be for reforms and improvements such as new testing and teacher training that would apply statewide.

“We want districts to participate from the beginning, and to be discussing and contributing to reform with us,” said Alan Guenther, the department’s spokesman.

Schundler is on a barnstorming tour of the state to make the case as well, hosting a meeting in Harrison last night and making stops in Ocean City and Westhampton in the last week.

Next up is Raritan Valley Community College in Branchburg next Tuesday evening.


Schundler also needs the approval of the state Board of Education, and that proved a bit of a dance at the board’s meeting Wednesday, the last before the application was due.

.Or maybe not, with board leaving open the possibility of a special meeting by conference call next week to get its collective head around the application.

“I’m expecting the call,” said Arcelio Aponte, the board’s vice president on Wednesday.

There isn’t much question the board will sign on, but Wednesday’s meeting saw a few points where the board’s support of specific pieces in the application are by no means assured.

For instance, the board heard a plan to open up teacher certification to teachers from other states, as long as they meet certain requirements. One of them was a letter attesting to a teacher’s experience and skills.

“That’s too broad for me,” said board member Kathleen Dietz. “That doesn’t hold them to the New Jersey’s high standards. Anybody can write a letter.”

One asked if there was any urgency to approving this proposal? “It counts for points on Race to the Top,” Schundler told a somewhat surprised board.

“I don’t see too many brought in this way, but it does count for points,” he said.

Another point of contention was merit pay bonuses, maybe Schundler's most controversial piece of the application, and some board members quizzed him to the fairness of bonuses going to individual teachers versus schools as a whole.

"I think we'd leave the door open to a later decision," he said.

Still, other topics were more amenable. One requirement in the application is that states will participate in a set of national standards for literacy and math, known as the Common Core Standards. More than 40 states have signed on so far, even though the standards are not yet completed.

New Jersey has always been supportive of the core proposal, and state officials have gone so far as to suggest districts not buy new textbooks until the standards are completed. That didn’t change yesterday.

“Consider it a consensus,” said Josephine Hernandez, the board president.


The last stop on the checklist was the state’s Legislature, meeting for a voting session yesterday. And while both the Assembly and Senate gave their unanimous backing, it wasn’t for much.

“The Legislature expresses its support for the submission of the Department of Education’s application for a federal Race to the Top grant,” read the identical measures in the Senate and Assembly, approved unanimously in a consent list of uncontested bills.

That was pretty much it. No specifics. No mention of merit pay, charter schools, nothing.

But good enough for Schundler, after working late hours last week to devise a legislative bill that first and foremost would have widespread support for the Race for the Top application.

He initially crafted a proposal for the Legislature that would specify his new accountability rules for teachers and schools, including merit pay and teacher evaluations in which at least half the points would be student performance.

But he was told anything that controversial was unlikely to gain broad support, at least not before the applications's deadline in two weeks.

The fallback was a broader resolution of general support, much like that adopted in Delaware with an application that did win in the last round.

So general even the New Jersey Education Association could like it, or at least testify in support.

With time short before the deadline, lawmakers agreed it was better to have a general resolution than none at all.

“There was an urgency and some action had to be taken” said Assemblyman Patrick Diegnan (D-Middlesex), the Assembly sponsor who helped craft the compromise: “So let’s get all the stakeholders together on what we agree on, as opposed to find reasons we can’t go through with it. That’s what this resolution is all about.”

State Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex), the sponsor of the Senate version, said the specifics of the application will still get their own discussion and debate when the time comes.

“But I think this is a first step,” she said. "For the first time in the last few months, we're on the same path."

And Christie in an evening press conference praised both chambers for getting on board, while pressing for the provisions in the application that could prove a tougher lift.

“I think everyone agrees the extra $400 million would be fabulous, but also important are the reforms embedded in these resolutions,” he said.

 

2 The Charter School Bret Schundler Built By John Mooney, May 24 in Education

Jersey City's Golden Door Charter School was one of the first. It's faced administrative issues, financial shortfalls and some plateauing scores; it's also matured into a safe, supportive haven from a grittier city and its schools

For all of Gov. Chris Christie’s talk these days about boosting charter schools in New Jersey, a telling lesson sits close to home: the charter school founded by his own education commissioner, Bret Schundler.

In 1998, Schundler as mayor of Jersey City, opened the way for the Golden Door Charter School to be one of New Jersey’s first charter schools. Today, they number more than 60.

Schundler used city bonds to erect a gleaming new building for the 500-student, K-8 school near the mouth of Holland Tunnel. One of his mayoral aides was the board’s first chairman, and Schundler would extol the new school’s rising test scores as immediate proof of the benefits of providing more options for families.

But in the years ahead, not everything went so well. Golden Door’s brief history is a testament to the common challenges many of these small, innovative schools face—and to some not so common.

Schundler's aide was ultimately expelled by the state after accusations of being a “one-member board.” The scores did not always continue to rise, although most still exceed the district's averages. What has risen is the city rent, which is now $80,000 a month. The school is being forced to move from the modern headquarters Schundler built for it.

Agility and Adaptability

Still, Golden Door has showed the agility and adaptability that is one of the hallmarks of charters. Without the constraints —or the unions—of the traditional schools, it employs a merit pay system for its teachers. In another hallmark of charters, parents and students describe the school as an intimate and warm place buffered from the crime and poverty of this city of 240,000 people.

And 12 years after the school’s opening, its leaders and others said it is now on much firmer footing, much like a child who has matured out of adolescence.

“You definitely need time, and need to learn from your mistakes,” said Brian Stiles, one of the school’s inaugural teachers and now its director. “There was nobody for us to follow back then. We had to learn on our own.”

Schundler is no longer involved aside from an occasional visit, but he said Golden Door remains a good example of what charters can provide in terms of choices to families. He said it is not just about having better test scores, but opportunities for success.

“I never said my school would be the best charter in the state of NJ; I said it would help kids, and it did that,” Schundler said recently. “If you take the economic background of these kids and some of the demographic factors, Golden Door is doing very well.”

Schundler and his boss in the governor’s office want to see a lot more charters in New Jersey. During the campaign and again in the first months of his administration, Christie has constantly extolled the merits of charter schools and said the state needs to promote and encourage them to a far greater degree.

Winning the Lottery

At a town hall meeting in Hoboken last week, the governor told of families who pine on wait-lists and cross their fingers to win the lotteries that decide who gets in these schools. The state now holds 29 proposals for new charters in its hands, one of the biggest application pools in years, and Christie indicated it could be a big acceptance class, too.

“You will see the Christie administration make a broad expansion of charter schools in this state,” he said.

Brian Stiles is glad to hear it, although the 45-year-old chief academic officer of Golden Door doesn’t have much time to think of anything but his own school these days.

The school’s upcoming move, planned for 2011, remains a daunting task, with a lease still to be signed for an undisclosed location in the city. That's not to mention the daily challenges of operating a school of 500 students and 44 teachers.

Golden Door is finally in a stable place, Stiles said, with a new reading curriculum and scores mostly on the upswing. Although the numbers still go through wide fluctuations, depending on the grade, student achievement is as strong as any school in Jersey City, he said, including a nearby elementary school that is arguably the top performer in the district. And in that case, it is a school in the gentrified section of the city, while still two thirds of Golden Door's students—taken from across the city—are poor enough to qualify for subsidized lunch.

“I think we do very well,” he said. “It is important to compare us with other Jersey City schools, and we do well against them."

Rocky Stretches Along the Way

Stiles has been at the school from the beginning, a former second grade teacher and now its second director. And he knows there were rocky periods, but said they come with growing any successful school.

“Things were crazy back then; we didn’t even know if charters would make it,” he said. “I had no idea.”

Those first years reflected the growing pains. Starting in trailers before moving to the new quarters on 9th Street, Golden Door’s test scores were a bright spot in its early years. Where just 15 percent of its first class of fourth-graders was proficient in language arts in 1999, the fourth-grade passing rate more than tripled by 2001 and was up to 68 percent by 2002. The math scores made a similar climb.

But the numbers belied some of the troubles behind the scenes. In the first year, state monitors came down on the school for a host of issues, from teachers without proper certifications to financial accounting problems that included a $600,000 deficit in its $4.4 million budget.

Some of its most-public difficulties came in the rise and fall of Paul Schaeder, an aide to Schundler in the mayor’s office and selected chairman of the board.

Affable and charismatic, Schaeder carried Schundler’s mission into the oversight of the school, putting the best face on both its successes and its troubles with the state.

Yet he ran into trouble himself in 2003 when he was accused of unilaterally firing the school’s first director and also hiring a former trustee to be technology officer for $750 a day.

The 'One-Member Board'

The entire episode roiled parents, as they filled board meetings and complained they weren’t getting the voice they expected for a charter school. Ultimately, the state department of education ordered Schaeder removed from the board.

Schundler to this day has tried to disassociate himself from the controversy, and this spring said only that Schaeder “should have known” not to make the moves he did.

“You will always have in any human institution people who will disappoint you, and you have to make a change,” Schundler said. “I liked Paul but clearly what he proposed was a conflict of interest, and he should have known.”

Asked why didn’t he step in himself, Schundler said he did recommend to the school’s board that it not approve Schaeder’s personnel moves. “I didn’t think it proper, and I’m glad it worked out the way it did,” he said.

Schaeder could not be reached for comment.

As those troubles eased, the school hit a plateau in some its achievement gains.

Strong Math Showing

The fourth-grade math scores have continued to rise, peaking at nearly 70 percent proficiency in 2007. But the reading scores have hovered around 60 percent since 2004, before dropping sharply last year due largely to changes in the state’s scoring that adversely affected elementary school scores across New Jersey.

In eighth grade, math scores have also steadily risen, although still only to about 50 percent proficiency in 2009. Reading and writing scores have been more of a roller coaster, before rising to close to 80 percent last year.

Still, visits to the school found classes orderly, hallways lined with updated student work, and children by and large engaged in their studies.

“Ooh, I love how quiet it is,” said Alison Kraft, a second-grade teacher, as she moved about her class of 21 students.

This segment of the morning had Kraft multitasking. She had literacy assessments to complete, four students at a time, while the rest of the class was left to independent reading or working in different “centers,” some donning headphones to listen to lessons, others at a giant chart matching words with suffixes.

 “When I say go, read this to me,” Kraft said to one of her charges as an assessment began, following and marking each word on her own copy.

Word Perfect

“Perfect, every single word, perfect,” she said.

The assessments are critical to the school, with Stiles back in his office pulling out binders of data for every class.

Evaluations are conducted of every teacher at 10, 20 and 30 weeks. The student data is included, but so is a range of other measures, from organization of lessons to the climate in the classroom. Teachers are rated from “distinguished” to “unsatisfactory,” and given raises accordingly.

“Say we have a pool that’s a 3 percent increase overall, the highest would get 5 percent raises and the lowest 2 percent,” he said. “I’ll be honest, it’s not easy to get distinguished.”

It’s not perfect, he said, and the school still struggles to maintain a steady teaching corps. Not organized into a union, the teachers make on average about $44,000—well less than Jersey City’s average of close to $55,000.

With the change of the reading curriculum three years ago, the school saw more than a dozen teachers either leave or not get asked back. "We wanted to see how they respond, and if they weren't going to be cooperative, it wasn't going to work," Stiles said.

Still, last year, every one returned who was asked back, and the same for the coming year, he said.

That’s enough stability for Bricke Lynn, a 14-year girl in the eight grade who will be attending Marist High School next year.

Coming from both parochial and traditional public schools in fifth grade, she said she had never heard of the charter school. But dressed in the school’s maroon and khaki uniform, Bricke said she immediately appreciated the order and comfort.

“Honestly, I never feel for my safety, and that’s important,” she said. “It is so family oriented, you know everyone.”

Bricke said there are some constraints of being in a smaller school, but she still takes several “specials,” like Spanish and music. And the benefits of teachers not letting you fall through the cracks are well worth the trade-off.

“They’ll fit their schedules for you, whether it’s recess, after school, before school,” she said. “Every school probably says they’re a home away from home, but it’s really true here.”