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Njspotlight.com ‘Charter and Choice, the Second Piece of Christie’s Education Reform Agenda’
Star Ledger ‘Gov. Christie interviews candidates for N.J. education commissioner’
Star Ledger ‘N.J. lawmaker to propose bill allowing property tax hike larger than 2 percent cap’
Press of Atlantic City ‘Christie creates task force to reform teacher evaluations as merit-based system’
Njspotlight.com ‘Charter and Choice, the Second Piece of Christie’s Education Reform Agenda’
Star Ledger ‘Gov. Christie interviews candidates for N.J. education commissioner’
Star Ledger ‘N.J. lawmaker to propose bill allowing property tax hike larger than 2 percent cap’
Press of Atlantic City ‘Christie creates task force to reform teacher evaluations as merit-based system’
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Njspotlight.com ‘Charter and Choice, the Second Piece of Christie’s Education Reform Agenda’
Elysian Charter to host Gov. Christie as he fills in his school choice philosophy
, September 30 in Education |1 Comment
Gov. Chris Christie will be at the Elysian Charter School of Hoboken today to present the second piece of his education reform agenda, this time dealing with charter schools and school choice.
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And in picking the K-8 school of nearly 300 kids to make his case, the governor has chosen a school emblematic of both the challenges and the promises of the state’s 15-year-old charter school movement.
Elysian was among New Jersey’s first class of charter schools, founded by parents and teachers. Like other charters in the state, it has had its facility and funding challenges.
As with many charters, it has had its run-ins with the community. Yet it also has made peace with the school district from which it now rents space.
In a movement accused of shunning special needs children, Elysian enrolls close to one in 10 special ed students, not much below the state average.
Rules, Regulations, and Red Tape
But don’t get business administrator Kathy Mone going about the regulations and red tape the tiny school must deal with.
The whole notion of charter schools -- small, independently run public schools -- is to be free of the bureaucracy of larger districts.
But Mone said she still finds herself filling out countless reports, many on an antiquated state reporting system, that do nothing for her school. Transportation regulations required of large schools cripple one like hers.
“New Jersey’s charter schools are some of the most heavily regulated in the nation,” she said. “We’ve proven ourselves, but the excessive oversight is just taking money and time away from the children.”
“Let us have to prove we’re better, but then leave us alone,” Mone said.
Sweeping Reforms
Christie has said he aims to address some of the rules and restrictions on charter schools as part of a sweeping platform to provide more education alternatives statewide, public and private.
In presenting the first part of his reform plan earlier this week, centered on teacher accountability and tenure, Christie said the next phase would include expanding and easing the way for charters through looser regulations and fairer funding.
He said it would include opening the way for outside for-profit charter school operators to enter New Jersey, and opening the use of public district buildings for charter use. His administration has also backed proposals to expand the number of charter authorizers for approving and overseeing the schools.
New Jersey now hosts 72 charter schools, serving about 22,000 children, most in urban districts like Newark and Jersey City.
Christie is expected to be accompanied by Geoffrey Canada, founder of the Harlem Childrens Zone, a famed charter school network in New York City that the governor heaps praise upon as a model.
Criticizing Charters
Charter schools continue to have their critics, especially suburban districts that are starting to see charters draw more of their students – and their dollars.
Charters still are accused of elitism and unaccountability, and the schools’ records on student achievement are mixed -- in New Jersey, and much of the nation. As measured by test scores, they’re some of the very best public schools in the state, as well as a few of the worst.
Planning to attend Christie’s presentation today, the head of the state’s charter school group said New Jersey is at a crossroads. It has a strong base of successful schools to learn from, but a law written in the 1990s prevents the state from scaling those lessons up.
“It’s not just charters for charters’ sake,” said Carlos Perez, executive director of the New Jersey Charter Schools Association.
“We’ve been doing this a while, and we know what works and what doesn’t,” he said. “The conversation now is training on quality. Charter schools are not the magic bullet, and where we need to focus now is on this improved quality.”
Mone said she has no doubt to the quality of her school, and she said the school welcomed the call from Christie’s office last week to schedule today’s event.
“It was a little out of the blue,” Mone said of the phone call. “He had visited us during the campaign, too. We welcomed him then and we welcome him now. We are certainly excited for his support of charter schools.”
Parking may be another matter, she added. The presentation is scheduled for 2:00 p.m., near the end of the school day. Police have already said that streets will be closed off for the additional traffic.
“It’s going to be crazy,” she said. “As anybody knows, Hoboken isn’t easy with parking to begin with.”
Star Ledger ‘Gov. Christie interviews candidates for N.J. education commissioner’
Published: Wednesday, September 29, 2010, 8:33 PM Updated: Thursday, September 30, 2010, 5:14 AM
Jessica Calefati/The Star-Ledger
TRENTON — Gov. Chris Christie will select a permanent commissioner of education in the next month and has already interviewed candidates for the job, he said tonight on NJ 101.5’s Ask the Governor radio program.
It’s been more than a month since Christie fired former Education Commissioner Bret Schundler following the state's failed Race to the Top application for $400 million in federal education dollars and appointed Rochelle Hendricks as acting commissioner. Christie would not comment on which candidates are on his short list because “most of them have jobs in other places,” he said.
For now, Christie said the department is in capable hands with Henricks at the helm. The governor applauded her 23 years of service to the department and described Hendricks as “one of the leading voices of school reform” and “someone I’ve been really impressed with.”
Star Ledger ‘N.J. lawmaker to propose bill allowing property tax hike larger than 2 percent cap’
Published: Wednesday, September 29, 2010, 7:50 PM Updated: Thursday, September 30, 2010, 5:15 AM
Chris Megerian/Statehouse Bureau
TRENTON — Assembly Majority Leader Joseph Cryan (D-Union) will announce legislation Thursday proposing towns be allowed to temporarily exclude the cost of public safety personnel under a new law capping annual property tax collection increases at 2 percent.
The measure would allow municipalities and counties to raise property taxes outside the 2 percent cap to pay police officers, firefighters and emergency workers.
"When you move a cap quickly, sometimes you have to make some adjustments, and public safety is an area that requires one in my view," said Cryan, an undersheriff in Union County. "We haven’t provided local leaders an option to put a value on public safety."
Gov. Chris Christie signed legislation in July tightening the state’s cap on property tax increases from 4 to 2 percent. The law, which goes into effect next year, allows four exceptions: pension and health insurance costs, increased school enrollment, debt payments and states of emergency.
Police union leaders will hold a press conference today at the Statehouse to announce the number of cops in New Jersey has fallen 11 percent from January 2009 to earlier this month because of budget cuts — and that it could be cut further when the cap law takes effect next year.
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"We want to highlight that there’s a decrease in police protection across the state," said Jim Ryan, spokesman for the New Jersey State Policemen’s Benevolent Association. "It’s accelerating."
Ryan said 40 police officers are scheduled to be laid off today in Atlantic City.
"Without replacing these manpower levels, we’ll see a steady increase in crime," he said. "That’s our concern."
Bruce Stout, a criminology professor at the College of New Jersey, said lowering the number of police increases the risk of crime, although it’s not always a direct correlation.
"You can’t just add police. You have to be smart about policing as well," he said. "If you’re doing cutting edge policing, then those additional officers are likely to have an impact."
Cryan’s bill would allow public safety personnel to be an exception to the property tax cap for budgets enacted before 2014. He said the cap can be reinstated then because towns will have had time to renegotiate contracts and the economic crisis should have subsided.
Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver (D-Essex) declined comment, saying she needs to review Cryan’s proposal.
Spokesmen for Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester) and Christie also declined comment.
Press of Atlantic City ‘Christie creates task force to reform teacher evaluations as merit-based system’
By DIANE D’AMICO Education Writer | Posted: Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Gov. Chris Christie on Tuesday called for an overhaul of teacher evaluations to create a system largely based on student performance.
But while the proposals earned support from the New Jersey School Boards Association, there were accusations from the state’s largest teachers union that the governor is more interested in raising his political profile than in the academic achievement of students.
Christie, a Republican, signed Executive Order 42 on Tuesday, creating a new task force to recommend how to best evaluate and reward teachers and school leaders.
The New Jersey Educator Effectiveness Task Force recommendations, due by March 1, 2011, must include how student achievement should be used to evaluate teachers. Those student achievement measures should make up at least 50 percent of a teacher or school leader evaluation. The remaining recommendations should include other measures of effectiveness and how much they should be weighted.
Christie unveiled the the proposal as part of his education reform efforts during a town hall meeting in Old Bridge, saying the current system has fallen short of the needs of children and parents. He cited the achievement gap between wealthy and low-income students, saying it has not changed much in 19 years.
“For too long, we have accepted low expectations and failure — particularly in our urban school districts — which has stolen hope from generations of New Jersey families,” he said in a news release announcing the proposed reforms. “Today we begin to put an end to the cycle of inaction by challenging the status quo, demanding more of our children and restoring the promise of a brighter future for every one of our communities.”
The state Department of Education has already created a task force to develop a statewide teacher evaluation system. School districts are also expected to post the basic results of their teacher evaluations on their websites by Oct. 15 to meet federal guidelines for stimulus funding received in 2009-10. The postings must show the number and percent of teachers in each school that met district evaluation benchmarks.
Frank Belluscio of the New Jersey School Boards Association said his group likes the direction of Tuesday’s proposals.
“A discussion of the tenure system is long overdue,” he said. “School boards are reluctant to file tenure charges (to fire a teacher) because of the expense. But we also want an evaluation system that is fair and accurate to all.”
The state’s largest teachers union, the New Jersey Education Association, responded with the results of two recent studies showing that using student test scores to evaluate teachers is often unreliable and that merit pay does not translate into better student performance. They questioned whether Christie’s motives were educational or political.
“If he truly wants research-based policies, he will look at the research,” NJEA spokesman Steve Baker said.
The two reports cited were an Economic Policy Institute study from August that found that when student test scores were used as a primary factor for evaluations, teachers could be excellent one year and failures the next, depending on their students. It concluded that putting a lot of weight on student test scores was not an effective way to evaluate teachers.
A second study by the National Center on Performance Incentives of a pilot project in Nashville Tennessee found that giving bonuses to teachers did not dramatically improve student achievement when compared with teachers who did not get bonuses.
“There are many factors that contribute to student achievement,” Baker said. “(Christie) wants to lean almost totally on teachers, focusing on the mistaken belief that you can use test scores to measure teacher effectiveness. He’s good at the sound bite, not good at policy.”
Belluscio said he did not get the impression that student achievement would be based just on student scores on annual state tests, and he agreed it should not be.
“We do need to define what student achievement means, how it will be measured, and how that would be applied to teacher evaluations,” he said.
The new task force is the latest in a series of proposals that Christie said is challenging the status quo. The NJEA says his effort is intentionally designed to demean and defund public education.
Christie has supported the formation of more charter schools, signed into law a bill expanding the public school choice program, and called for caps on superintendent salaries.
“It’s a privatization agenda,” Baker said.
Christie said his goal is to give all students the education they deserve.
“If we are to be successful in our reform efforts,” he said, “we must be honest about our shortcomings, candid about our failures and open to the necessary reforms that are crucial to bringing positive change and innovation to our classrooms, no matter their ZIP code.”
Contact Diane D'Amico:
609-272-7241
