By Laura Waters, of NJ Left Behind
(From Newsworks NJ, August 9, 2012)
This is commentary from education blogger Laura Waters of NJ Left Behind.
Talk about group hugs: this past Monday, in a vignette difficult to imagine mere months ago, Gov. Christie, the presidents of New Jersey’s teacher unions, Sen. Teresa Ruiz, Ed. Comm. Chris Cerf, and officials from education reform groups like Democrats for Education Reform and B4K joined hands to celebrate the signing of the N.J. teacher tenure and evaluation reform bill.
From NJEA’s press release:
“We’re proud of the work we did in helping to write this law,” [NJEA President Barbara] Keshishian said. NJEA made significant contributions to the final version of the law, which dramatically reduces the time and cost of teacher dismissal proceedings, while maintaining a strong fairness standard to guarantee teachers’ due process rights.
“The evolution of this law is a blueprint for effective public policy,” Keshishian said. “Every key stakeholder — principals and supervisors, school boards, legislators, the state Department of Education, and NJEA — worked hard to bring it over the finish line.”
Now that our kumbaya moment is over, the real work begins: implementation of TEACHNJ, Senate Bill 1455. So much depends on the N.J. Department of Education’s ability to oversee the transformation of teacher and principal evaluations. Many people believe that our system for measuring classroom and management effectiveness must evolve beyond the meaningless toggle of satisfactory-unsatisfactory designations towards meaningful assessments, tied to both student growth and best practices.
But starting a year from September? For 591 school districts?