By Kathleen Nugent, DFER NJ State Director
Sometimes it’s hard to realize progress when you’re caught up in the daily grind. You tend to take for granted where you are since the focus is always on what’s next. So, this post is a glance back at where we were a year ago in three priority areas in New Jersey education: tenure reform, leadership at the NJ Department of Education, and the search for Newark Public Schools’ superintendent.
1) New Jersey’s tenure reform debate
On December 9, 2010, Senator Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex), Chairwoman of the NJ Senate Education Committee, held the state’s first-ever hearing on tenure reform. Although conversations on tenure reform today are commonplace in New Jersey, there was no substantive discussion of it before Ruiz’s hearing.
Witnesses at the hearing included officials from NJ Department of Education (NJDOE), Colorado state Senator Michael Johnston (sponsor of Colorado’s “Great Teachers and Great Leaders” bill – aka SB 191, considered to be one of the strongest teacher evaluation and tenure reform bills in the nation), TNTP’s Executive Vice President and General Counsel Daniel Weisberg, and the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA), among others. A few highlights from the day’s testimony:
• The NJDOE stated there were 35 tenure cases open in 2008, which equated to less than two cases for every 10,000 educators;
• Senator Johnston noted the impact of a highly effective teacher is 2.5 times greater than class size reductions. According to Johnston, under the new teacher evaluation system in Colorado, tenure will be a “badge of honor;”
• Daniel Weisberg summarized findings from a national survey which showed that district evaluations typically fail to differentiate between teachers and do not provide useful feedback or support. He urged that a fair and credible evaluation system must be in place to measure performance, provide teachers with quality feedback, reward excellence, and address the small percentage of persistently poor-performing teachers;
• The NJEA asserted that a process was already in place to remove a teacher if a district believed he or she was not performing up to its standards. They outlined a few suggestions for improvement including a state-mandated and funded mentoring program for new teachers.
Fast forward to today… Senator Ruiz, after diligent research and broad stakeholder engagement, introduced her tenure reform bill called TEACHNJ in June. TEACHNJ ties tenure acquisition and retention to effectiveness, empowers principals by giving them more authority over staff in their schools, ends seniority-based layoffs for new hires, and overall outlines the foundation for a system that would greatly elevate the teaching profession in New Jersey. At the same time, the NJEA introduced a revised education reform agenda building from its previous testimony. Last but not least, the state, under the leadership of Acting Commissioner Chris Cerf, launched a new pilot educator evaluation system.