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9-10-13 Education Issues in the News
NJ Spotlight - Justices Tough on Both Sides in Appeal of Montclair Charter Bid…Some on NJ’s highest court cite state’s decision-making flexibility but others wonder why education officials didn’t back up verdict.

NJ Spotlight - Agenda: State Board of Education Kicks Off New School Year …Teacher evaluations, student testing and Camden takeover among major topics to be discussed.

Star Ledger - N.J. group aims to reduce sudden cardiac deaths in students

Star Ledger - Top school superintendents' pay: After Christie pay cap, some still earn more

NJ Spotlight - Bottom of Form

Justices Tough on Both Sides in Appeal of Montclair Charter Bid…Some on NJ’s highest court cite state’s decision-making flexibility but others wonder why education officials didn’t back up verdict.

John Mooney | September 10, 2013

In the first such appeal before the New Jersey’s highest court, state Supreme Court justices yesterday didn’t seem to very sympathetic about a proposed charter school’s repeated but so far futile bid to win state approval to open in Montclair.

But the justices’ questioning during the hour-long oral arguments didn’t let the state off easy either, turning a sometimes harsh spotlight on the much-debated charter review process.

The appeal came from the founders of the proposed Quest Academy Charter School, who have applied six times but failed to win the state Department of Education’s approval to open a high school housing 250 students.

On their third try, they appealed to state administrative and then appellate courts, losing in each venue. But while they continue to try the application process, the appeal caught the eye of the Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case.

At issue before the court wasn’t so much the merits of the state’s repeated rejections, but the process and so-called “standard of review” employed by the department in deciding whether charter schools should be approved and allowed to open.

Quest’s lawyer, Michael Confusione, maintained that the process should follow rules of evidence much like a judicial review, but that the department had actually based its reasons on claims not in the record and that in some cases were contradicted by its own reviewers.

The state’s lawyer, Assistant Attorney General Michelle Miller, said the state’s charter school law gave the department and specifically the state education commissioner broad discretion to determine whether a charter school would thrive and succeed.

The justices had plenty of questions for both lawyers, but certainly started out harder on Confusione.

After the Quest lawyer’s opening comments, Justice Anne Patterson said the statute did lay out different criteria to consider, but did not include any requirements that a school must be accepted if it met a certain number of those criteria.

“There is nothing in the statute that says there is a cut-off where a charter must be granted,“ she said.

Confusione responded that the law was written in a way to “encourage” charter schools to open in the state, not prevent them, but Patterson shot back that encouragement is one thing, but requirement is another.

“The legislation provides no presumption that charters be approved,” she said.

Justice Jaynee LaVecchia said that when the court reviews any agency’s decision, it must look at whether the process was followed properly, and she questioned if Quest had proven its case otherwise.

“It does require a complete record and sufficient reason to come to an outcome,” she said. “I’m not sure that wasn’t followed by the state.”

Nonetheless, Quest’s argument that the state didn’t follow its own rules in its review did resonate with some of the justices.

The proposed school’s founders said the state’s initial rejection letter failed to give detailed reasons for turning down the application, and even its follow-up explanation cited reasons that were not backed up in the separate written evaluations of the charter application.

For instance, where the state maintained that Quest’s educational program was weak, its reviewers had said in their evaluations that those components of the application were adequate.

Miller, the assistant attorney general, said the Legislature granted the state authority to look at the entire scope of the application and not rate any one criterion over another. She said the court should not step in to inject its judgment into that authority.

“Given the complexity of the decision and the issues of educational quality, it would be inappropriate for the court to substitute its judgment,” Miller said.

But the justices said that doesn’t absolve the state from an obligation to follow its own process and citing evidence in its decisions. “There still needs to be substantial evidence,” said Justice Barry Albin.

He and Judge Mary Catherine Cuff said the state provided hardly any examples in explaining its decision on Quest, including its ruling on the education program.

“Wouldn’t you expect at least some illustrative reasoning?” asked Cuff, a temporary justice on the court.

Albin called the initial letter sent to Quest a “bare minimum.”

“Wouldn’t be better if the {explanation) had a little more meat?” he asked.

Chief Justice Stuart Rabner said the case would be taken under consideration, and a decision is not expected for at least a month or two.

 

 

NJ Spotlight - Agenda: State Board of Education Kicks Off New School Year …Teacher evaluations, student testing and Camden takeover among major topics to be discussed.

John Mooney | September 10, 2013

 

Date: Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2013

Time: 10 a.m.

Place: New Jersey Department of Education, 1st floor conference room, 100 River View Plaza, Trenton.

What they are doing: The state board will start off the school year with a full agenda touching on several big topics, from teacher evaluation to new student testing. It will also get an update on the state’s Camden school takeover. On a somber note, it will mark the passing of Ilan Plawker, the board’s vice president, who died in July.

Final vote on TEACHNJ rules: After months of deliberation, the board is expected to give its final vote to the administration’s controversial regulations for how teachers are evaluated. Part of the state’s new tenure reform law, the regulations set the details for when and how teachers are measured each year, including the use of student performance in the equation. Schools were expected to institute the new system this fall, even without the regulations officially in place.

No more changes: The new rules have faced significant public criticism, with more than 600 people providing testimony, especially over the student-performance measures, and the administration scaled back the student component a little this summer. But no further changes are expected, and the regulations are all but assured of passing, said board President Arcelio Aponte. “There’s maybe some tweaking, but nothing substantive,” he said. “That looks ready to go.”

Teacher mentors: The board will continue deliberations on new licensing code for teachers, including raising the GPA requirement for new teachers to 3.0 and strengthening the state’s mentoring requirement.

Camden takeover: This will be the board’s first meeting since it held a special session in late August to approve Christie’s appointment of Paymon Rouhanifard to lead the district. That vote was 8-4, with more “no” votes than expected on a board that rarely dissents. Rouhanifard is not expected to be in attendance on Wednesday for a presentation by state Education Commissioner Chris Cerf on what other steps have been taken in the new state-operated district to start the new school year.

New testing: The administration is scheduled to give an update on new online testing slated to start in the next school year as part of New Jersey’s participation in the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career, known as PARCC. Assistant Commissioner Bari Erlichson, who will make the presentation, has said that field testing of the new exams will continue this coming school year in as many as 10 percent of the state’s districts. PARCC has faced plenty of criticism as well, including from educators who say it represents an even greater expansion of testing in the state and nationwide.

Resolution for Plawker: The board will honor Plawker at the start of the meeting, inviting his widow and family to attend and accept a board resolution marking his service on the board for the last six years. Plawker died of lymphoma on July 11.

 Star Ledger - N.J. group aims to reduce sudden cardiac deaths in students

Kathleen O'Brien/The Star-Ledger By Kathleen O'Brien/The Star-Ledger The Star-Ledger

on September 10, 2013 at 6:30 AM, updated September 10, 2013 at 6:49 AM

"I was told I could drop dead at any moment," she recalls.

The details vary, but the story’s always the same: A ninth-grader collapses during a lacrosse game and dies. A school mourns. An investigation is done and the verdict is he had a "congenital heart condition."

It’s a tragedy, everyone says with a sad shrug, but "nothing could be done."

Don’t say that in front of Lisa Salberg. As a person with that very congenital condition — her family tree is riddled with fatal heart episodes — she upended her life to help vanquish it.

Her efforts have resulted in better health screenings for New Jersey student athletes, after two bills she lobbied for passed the Legislature recently.

The Scholastic Student-Athlete Safety Act adds questions about cardiac symptoms and family cardiovascular history to the standard physical exam required for participation in sports. It also provides training for health-care providers so they can recognize the early symptoms of this condition. It applies to students from sixth through 12th grades.

Students also will be given a pamphlet that explains the symptoms, as well as what to look for in their family’s cardiovascular medical history.

The second law establishes a state registry of all child cardiac deaths or near-deaths, which will then be investigated with a goal of finding a better way to recognize at-risk children. (Parents can ask that identifying student information be omitted.)
Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, or HCM, is a congenital thickening of the walls of the heart, which narrows a crucial chamber. In normal hearts, the chamber is shaped like a lightbulb; in HCM hearts, it’s more like a narrow bud vase.

It generally doesn’t manifest itself at birth, when the heart still appears to be normal. By the age of 25, however, it has usually made its presence known. There is much that remains a mystery about its course: why teenage boys get hit harder than teenage girls; why older women die from it more than men of the same age, for example.

Salberg had long known that "heart problems" ran in her family. She’d been diagnosed after a school nurse in Rockaway Township noticed a heart murmur. She was 12. "I was told I could drop dead at any moment," she recalls. And that was about it, as there wasn’t much in the way of medication or other treatment to offer her.

Meanwhile, heart problems relentlessly stalked relatives on her father’s side. Over the years, her grandfather, great-aunt and uncle all died of cardiac episodes. She and her older sisters knew they were at risk, but felt that knowledge protected them. After all, they were getting the right care.

That illusion of safety was destroyed when her 36-year-old sister died of sudden cardiac arrest. Salberg was 26 and pregnant; her sister had just thrown her a baby shower.

Salberg ended up with custody of her sister’s children, then 13 and 10, and with the birth of her daughter, was now the parent of three. That made hypertrophic cardiomyopathy more than a danger to just her. She now saw it as something that could prevent her from being a mother to three kids.

"I thought, ‘I need to be here for these kids,’" she said. All three of them ultimately learned they carry the genetic defect.

You can say this for anger and grief: they’re fantastic motivators.

In the months after her sister’s death, they gave Salberg the energy she needed to plow through a thick book on HTML coding in order to craft a rudimentary website to get information to others.

They gave her the tenacity to stick with her quest, even as the paperwork took over first a bedside table, then her basement, then a one-room office in Rockaway Township. Now, she works from a spacious office across the street.

It gave her the staying power to turn what was essentially a personal quest — Why did my sister die of this? — into a public-service mission: Why should anyone die of this?

The result is the Hyperthrophic Cardiomyopathy Association, whose website (4hcm.org) is one of the major sites consulted by the estimated 625,000 Americans with the condition.

One of those is Salberg’s daughter, Rebecca, who had genetic testing that became available when she was 7.

Barred from soccer, lacrosse or basketball, she ultimately ended up as an equestrian. "She’s an equestrian athlete, but the horse is doing the running," said Salberg. (Her daughter knows that if she ever faints while on horseback, the riding will stop until the cause is determined.)

Salberg is proud New Jersey chose a "sustainable" — i.e, not too expensive — way to screen for risks. Elsewhere around the country, some have proposed giving every student an electrocardiogram, an approach that is expensive and can be ineffective. The readings turn up enough false positives and false negatives to render a third of them useless, according to Salberg.

Instead, students and their families will learn about the subtle — and often-ignored — early warning signs of the genetic condition.

Eventually, she’d like to see schools hold cardiac arrest drills, much like they now hold fire drills and armed-intruder "lockdowns." After all, she points out, more students die of cardiac arrest than fires or shootings.

Her ulterior motive, she says, is to get parents to learn about their own health risks. After all, the peak age of death from HCM is 54, meaning if HCM runs in the family, the parent is probably at more immediate risk than the student-athlete.

As for her own health, Salberg, 45, has had a pacemaker installed just in case and monitors her cardiac status carefully. At some point down the road, she’ll probably need a heart transplant.

She’s already made peace with that by realizing she might be able to get her own heart preserved to use as a visual aid during her speeches. She finds that prospect hilarious and even uplifting.

"I’ve been called ‘obsessed,’ I’ve been called ‘driven,’ I’ve been called ‘passionate,’" she said. "But Im really just a survivor."

RED FLAGS TO WATCH FOR:

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is sneaky; its signs are often silent, with no telltale symptom unique to it. That results in it often being ignored or misdiagnosed. In addition, the patient often has grown so accustomed to the condition that these traits seem normal. But here are some classic red flags that warrant mentioning to a doctor:

Fainting episodes. These are typically chalked up to being fatigued or dehydrated, and students often will instruct friends or teammates not to tell parents or coaches for fear of having to miss a game.

Shortness of breath.
Usually this comes during exertion, but may also appear at rest. In students, this is often misdiagnosed as "athletically induced asthma."

Palpitation, or the uncomfortable awareness of the heartbeat. Sometimes, this is accompanied by sweating or light-headedness.

Dizziness or blackouts.

Family history. When it comes to family history, an early death (before age 55) due to heart-related ailments or episodes, or any family history of heart murmurs, atrial fibrillation or mitral valve prolapse.

— Kathleen O’Brien

Star Ledger - Top school superintendents' pay: After Christie pay cap, some still earn more

Newark Schools Superintendent Cami Anderson was one of the top 10 earning superintendents during the 2012-2013 school year

 

Jeanette Rundquist/The Star-Ledger By Jeanette Rundquist/The Star-Ledger The Star-Ledger
on September 09, 2013 at 3:56 PM, updated September 09, 2013 at 9:29 PM

Shortly after taking office in 2010, Gov. Chris Christie took aim at the costs of public schools — and their superintendents' salaries.

Christie's much-discussed superintendent pay cap linked schools chiefs' salaries to the size of their district, with most maxed at $175,000.

The key word, most.

Three years after the pay cap, according to a report in NJ Spotlight, state data showed that during the 2012-13 school year, some superintendents still earned more. Some were exempt from the limit because of the size or type of district; some were still on contracts signed before the limit.

Tops in the class of the top 10 salaries, in 2012-13, was Passaic County Technical Institute Superintendent Diana Lobosco, according to the report. County vocational schools were not covered by the caps. Lobosco, who earns $264,579, also serves as superintendent of the Passaic County Educational Services Commission.

Newark Schools Superintendent Cami Anderson had the 10th highest paycheck, at $240,000. Her large district is one of 16 that are outside the cap.

The salaries do not include bonuses — and some superintendents may be eligible for bonuses of up to 15 percent