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‘Poor attendance has been plaguing the beleaguered Newark schools—but the teachers are the ones missing class…’ The Wall Street Journal
‘Homecoming Day For a Reformer’ Forbes Magazine
‘Poor attendance has been plaguing the beleaguered Newark schools—but the teachers are the ones missing class…’ The Wall Street Journal
‘Homecoming Day For a Reformer’ Forbes Magazine
Poor attendance has been plaguing the beleaguered Newark schools—but the teachers are the ones missing class.
Nearly half of all Newark teachers took at least two weeks of sick leave last year, and more than a quarter of them took three weeks or more off.
The district instituted an attendance-improvement program in October, but even so about 7% of the district's teachers are absent on an average day, nearly twice the urban-district average of 4%, said Valerie Merritt, a spokeswoman for the system.
With more than 40,000 students, Newark represents one of the largest and most vexing school systems in the Northeast. The district was taken over by the state in 1995 and since then has seen three state-appointed superintendents and little change in student performance.
The teachers' contract, which will expire this month and is currently under negotiation, is one of Gov. Chris Christie's few chances to influence the work rules of a New Jersey school district. Newark's absentee numbers are "completely unacceptable," said Michael Drewniak, a spokesman for Mr. Christie, who would ultimately approve or reject the teachers' contract. "That kind of history certainly doesn't work in favor of the union and its negotiating position unless that problem can be fixed."
Under the expiring contract, most Newark teachers get 18 paid sick and personal days off during the school year, and those with 25 years or more of service get up to 28 days out of their 191-day school year. By contrast, in New York City, teachers get 10 sick days and three of those can be used for personal business.
Jonah Rockoff, a Columbia University business school professor who has studied the harmful effects on students of teacher absenteeism in New York City, said the rates in Newark suggest that for students of teachers out the most, it "surely makes the difference between passing and failing" certain subjects.
· Newark Teachers Face Tough Bargaining, Leaner Contract
· Newark Teachers Union Head Supports Merit Pay, Open to Abolishing Seniority
Forbes Magazine ‘Homecoming Day For a Reformer’
On The Cover/Top Stories
By John Koppisch, 05.20.10, 06:00 PM EDT
Forbes Magazine dated June 07, 2010
The commish: Bret Schundler, New Jersey's new education chief, has pushed for changes in schools over the last 20 years.
Bret Schundler, New Jersey's new education commissioner, comes across like the reassuring pastor he once planned to be. He's not a bomb thrower like his boss, Governor Chris Christie, who accused teachers of "using the students like drug mules" to talk their parents into voting for school budgets. But some of Schundler's ideas about education, formed 20 years ago, still sound provocative.
New Jersey schools run up a tab of $19,000 a year per pupil, more than any state after New York. Despite the lavish funding, Schundler says, "the state is failing to fulfill its responsibility." The U.S. has trailed badly in international comparisons for years, but what official has ever said his schools are part of the problem? He points out that only 42% of New Jersey's eighth graders are proficient in reading; that county and state colleges spend enormous sums on remedial classes; and that the elite districts with the huge property taxes could provide much better schools.
For Schundler, 51--a product of Westfield (N.J.) High, where he was All-State in football--the key to improving the schools is to improve the quality of the state's 110,000 K--12 public school teachers. That starts with tenure, which in New Jersey guarantees a lifetime job to the vast majority of teachers after a cursory review in their third year on the job. Pay raises have little to do with how hard teachers work or how their students perform; instead pay is calculated under a rigid, union-negotiated formula based on how many years teachers have put in and how many extra diplomas they've collected. "Our system is horrible," Schundler says.
Instead he would award tenure "based on effectiveness, not simply elapsed time." He would use state money to pay annual bonuses to the best teachers, especially if they volunteer to move to tough schools. He would make it easier for out-of-state teachers or career switchers to be certified in New Jersey. He would clear a path for the best teachers to start new schools in their district--what Schundler calls "achievement academies"--and "be compensated like true professionals." Salaries for New Jersey teachers range from $45,000 to $125,000; the median was $59,500 last year.
To shift from a seniority to a merit system, Schundler wants to kick the state into the information age, using data to help decide which teachers get tenure, bonuses, promotions--or the boot. The teachers' union "says you can't measure student learning," he says. "I reject that." He aims to assess every student's monthly, quarterly and annual progress. A central computer system will keep track of everything (and how students turn out--through college and in the workplace). This will help pinpoint the curricula, programs, schools and other factors most useful to turning out better students.
While the union hasn't lined up behind his reforms, the public is with Schundler, and there is wind at his back blowing from Washington. Education Secretary Arne Duncan is dangling $4.3 billion in front of states in his Race to the Top initiative to spur reforms such as New Jersey's.
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Some of this is like homecoming day for Schundler. It was his dogged but unsuccessful fight for vouchers in the early 1990s when he was mayor of Jersey City that earned him credibility as an education reformer. Later he started one of the country's early charter schools. Today much of the thinking on education reform has caught up with him. Says he: "There's a moral imperative to do what's right for kids and not worry about the political resistance."
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