In response to the May 12 article regarding the Asbury Park Board of Education offices (“Asbury’s office decision questioned”), let me clarify a few points that were not written.

The board has people “bamboozled” into thinking that there is a required cost to renovate this building in the amount of $1.6 million to $2 million.

For the record, the Early Childhood Department and the Child Study Team have been working in that building for this entire school year at a renovation nowhere near the figure that was stated for the board move. The Alternative School is slated to move into that building this September.

I toured the second and third floor of that building to see the preparation made to have this building up to specifications. Those two floors never looked better. The staff did an outstanding job of preparation, only to be told that the board will not be moving there.

Here are a few questions that need to be answered:

• Why an exorbitant cost of $1.6 million?
• If our neighbors in Ocean Township can utilize an older school building for their central office, why isn’t it good enough for Asbury Park, when they have cut union staff for five years now?
• Why do they need to be on Mattison Avenue, the farthest point from the majority of the schools within the district?
• Shouldn’t the board office be more accessible to the community, at the same time being cognizant of every penny being wasted?

Here’s a suggestion: Take the $200,000 per year you spend on rent and do capital improvements to your own building. If you had done this from the start, you would have already improved the building by over $1 million.

John Napolitani
President, Asbury Park Education Association

ASBURY PARK — Asbury Park High school staff members have made a public vote of no-confidence against Colleen White, now finishing up her second year as a director of guidance in the Asbury Park School District.

John Napolitani, president of the teachers’ union, told school board members Wednesday night that “your staff has had enough” and that of 67 staff members who voted, 64 agreed to a vote of no-confidence in White. Two staff members disagreed with that vote and one abstained.

Napolitani asked that the vote “not be taken lightly.”

White, who attended the board meeting and was reached at her office at the high school Thursday morning, declined to comment. According to the school district website, she oversees guidance, assessment and testing and is the anti-bullying coordinator.

Union members asked that White not be renewed for next year. According to paperwork Napolitani gave board members, they listed a number of grievances about her direction and administration.

White, who has one more year before she would gain tenure, was up for renewal on a list of tenured and non-tenured staff that the board voted on Wednesday. But the board was unable to complete the process of getting staff members approved before a May 15 deadline to notify those not renewed.

Lester Richens, the state fiscal monitor working in the district, who has the final say on hiring and firing and all financial matters, said that because the board did not approve the appointment list, he would act on it by Friday to meet the upcoming deadline.

TRENTON — Gov. Chris Christie today will unveil a state budget that is expected to show how he intends to pay the first installment of his proposed income tax cut and how much state aid public schools will get.

The Republican governor will deliver an annual budget speech that kicks off what could be another contentious debate with the Democrat-dominated state Legislature. Last year, Christie sliced about $900 million in programs endorsed by Democrats in finishing a $29.7 billion spending plan.

Mayors, school administrators and residents are hoping the governor will restore some of the cuts he made during the recession. At the same time, Christie will have to chip in far more to the public employee pension system as a result of a reform bill he signed last year. Christie’s office refused to disclose details of the budget in advance of the speech.

Here are several things to look out for:

• Schools: Local school districts have felt the biggest brunt of Christie’s previous belt-tightening. He restored some last year, and most expect him to increase state aid. But the governor may also have something bigger in mind. For months, the Christie administration has signaled it wants to overhaul the current funding formula and perhaps send the issue back to a state Supreme Court that will likely include three of his appointments.

• Property Tax Relief: While his property tax caps helped keep the growth of local taxes to an average 2.4 percent last year, residents have seen a steep increase in the amount they actually pay. That’s because he slashed property tax rebate checks from their 2009 levels to balance the budget. He has slowly restored some of the cuts, but the current average rebate is still less than half the average $1,037 residents saw in 2009. The relief is funded through income tax revenue, which is on the upswing.

• Income Tax Cut: Christie announced a 10 percent income tax cut in January, and today is expected to show how he plans to pay for the first installment. If approved by lawmakers, the cut will be phased in over three years, starting on Jan. 1 of 2013. It would cost about $150 million in the upcoming budget and about $1.3 billion by 2016, according to the Office of Legislative Services. A Rutgers-Eagleton Poll released this morning shows 52 percent of registered voters support the income tax cut plan, but three-quarters would prefer to see a property tax cut come first.

• The Economy: While revenues from key economic indicators like income and sales taxes are growing — up 3 percent — they are still falling short of the administration’s conservative projections. If revenue continues to fall short, it will make it tougher for Christie to spend more on things like property tax relief and school aid.

• Pension: Christie will have to find a way to make a $1.06 billion payment into the state’s troubled pension system. While it represents one of the largest payments in years, it is still well short of the $3.74 billion payment that actuaries say is necessary. The lack of a full payment undermines the boost the system saw from last year’s health and pension overhaul.

Online Database by Caspio





Click here to load this Caspio Online Database.

TRENTON — New Jersey’s public school students racked up slightly higher test scores in most grades in the 2010-11 school year, despite Gov. Chris Christie’s cutting about $1 billion in state aid to schools that year, according to standardized test results released today by the state Board of Education.

Students posted slightly higher test stores in math and language arts in most grades, from 3 through 8, and in high school. In science, however, a subject in which students are tested only in fourth and eighth grades, scores dropped.

Many schools experienced cuts in staff and other areas in 2010-11, due to the steep drop in state aid. But results of the NJASK tests, given in grade school, and the High School Proficiency Assessment showed most weathered the storm.

“The year that generated that cut, actually turned out to be a year where we had decent student (achievement),” said Acting Commissioner Christopher Cerf, cautioning “I don’t want to leave you with the impression that means we can cut more. I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Christie, in fact, returned some of the money to schools the following year.

The state each year releases data from tests taken the previous spring, as a snapshot of how New Jersey’s students are learning. In high school, scores showed steady progress up. The percentage of students passing language arts rose from 94.3 in 2010 to 96.1 percent in 2011, and the math passing rate went from 82.8 to 83.6. A new high school biology test also showed improvement.

The scores are for students in the “general population,” and do not include special education students or those with limited English proficiency.

In the younger grades, most improved or held steady. Fourth-graders’ passing rate went from 82.5 percent, to 84.4 percent in math; and from 66.9 to 70.0 percent in language arts — bouncing back up after a drop there, the previous year.

Eighth-graders rose in math, from 77.4 to 80.4 percent proficient. In language arts, eighth-graders fell slightly, from 90.6 percent to 90.1 percent.

Science was the spoiler in each of those grade levels. The eighth-grade passing rate fell from 89.8 to 88.4 percent in science, and the fourth grade proficiency rate dropped from 96.0 to 93.8. Cerf pointed out that in science, the scores were very high to begin with, however.

Cerf said despite the overall positive year, the state needs to do more. The achievement gap, between poor and wealthier students, or between students of different minority groups, remains “extremely large,” he said. Numerous reform efforts are under way to address it.

“In some cases it is expanding and in some cases narrowing, but in all cases, it remains large,” Cerf said. “”We are not fulfilling the basic purpose of public education.”

TEWKSBURY TWP. – Think your property taxes are too high? State Sen. Mike Doherty, R-Hunterdon, says he has a solution.

As part of a tour that has taken him to municipalities throughout the state, Sen. Doherty came to Tewksbury Tuesday, Jan. 17 to pitch his controversial Fair School Funding Plan (FSF), legislation he maintains would increase school funding and lower property taxes for 85 percent of the state.

How? Currently, state education aid is calculated via a formula approved under former Gov. Jon Corzine as part of his School Funding Reform Act. The formula calculates aid per student by several designations, including whether a student receives free or reduced school lunches or speaks another language at home.

Sen. Doherty’s proposal would do away with the formula altogether, and instead give each New Jersey student equal state funding, at $7,481 per child. The legislation would increase aid to suburban and rural districts while drastically reducing funds currently reserved for urban schools in so-called Abbott districts, including Newark, Camden and Asbury Park.

Under existing regulations, “It’s a very unequal distribution,” said the senator Tuesday. By his calculations, using figures he said came from the Department of the Treasury, the Department of Education and the Office of Legislative Services, the average Tewksbury resident contributes 14 times as much to the income tax fund as the average resident in urban Asbury Park, while Asbury Park receives 29 times more in state education aid.

Under Doherty’s plan, every town in Hunterdon County would receive an increase in state education funding, $130 million in total, that could then be used towards lowering income taxes.

In northern Hunterdon, he said Califon would receive an additional $884,565 in aid; Clinton an additional $1,209,546; Clinton Township $10,547,299; High Bridge $1,277,519; Lebanon $702,906; Lebanon Township $3,537,368, Readington Township $13,665,423; Tewksbury Township $5,131,403; and the North Hunterdon-Voorhees Regional School District $16,457,452.

Asbury Park, meanwhile, which the senator said currently receives $57,632,816 in state education funding for 2,316 students, would lose $40,306,820 in aid.

“I don’t think this is heartless. I think this is pretty fair,” said the senator. “Every student is treated equally.”

Doherty also railed against the State Supreme Court saying that it has interfered in education funding decisions that New Jersey’s constitution outlines as the legislature’s domain.

“It has been hijacked by the Supreme Court,” he said. “I think the constitution right now gives the power to the Legislature. We just have to take it back.”

Notwithstanding, the FSF plan also includes a constitutional amendment that Doherty said in his presentation “would specify a method of providing for the maintenance and support of public schools,” though he later acknowledged that the amendment might not be necessary.

Local Reaction

Tewksbury Mayor Dana Desiderio, who attended the meeting along with several other municipal and state officials, said she stands behind the senator’s plan.

“The current School Funding Reform Act is not only unfair to our students who receive far less per capita than the majority of other municipalities in our state but is unfair to our residents who pay an unfair percentage of the costs,” she said following the meeting.

Desiderio added, “The taxes assessed on Tewksbury residents are excessive. The result is catastrophic and the impact on property values is negative.”

Others, however, are not as supportive of the plan.

“It seems to be an overreaction,” said Nicholas Nacamuli, vice president of the North Hunterdon-Voorhees Regional High School Board of Education and a Tewksbury resident, who also attended Doherty’s presentation.

Nacamuli agreed that the current system “does seem very unfair,” but instead proposed a modification that would make the funding distribution more equitable. “The formula could be redone in a way that keeps more funds being sent to the districts that need it,” he said.

Following Doherty’s presentation, Assemblyman Erik Peterson, R-Hunterdon, who is also backing the plan, remarked, “This isn’t about rich versus poor. This is about educating kids.

“All our kids are the same,” he said. “They all deserve an equal opportunity.”

Officials pointed out that a public school student in Newark currently has a 23 percent chance of graduating high school, while almost all of Hunterdon County’s students go on to higher education.

Doherty cited corruption and misappropriation of funds as a primary factor behind the failures in many of the state’s urban public schools.

Current regulation “is supporting a system that’s failing,” he said.

When questioned, the senator suggested that urban students should be given the option of attending parochial or experimental charter schools at what he maintained would be a lower cost to the state, rather than sending those tens of thousands of students to faltering public schools.

Chance For Success

Actually getting the FSF plan passed in a Democratically-controlled state Legislature will prove a significant challenge, which is why the senator has been pushing his proposal at town-hall style meetings throughout New Jersey since introducing the plan in May.

He said he wants to encourage suburban and rural residents to talk to their representatives in support of the legislation.

“I think that people are going to have to demand change,” he said. “We can’t maintain the status quo.”

TRENTON — Gov. Chris Christie said he can institute an across-the-board 10 percent income tax cut and still increase state aid to education.

As part of a day-long victory lap Wednesday to promote the ideas unveiled one day earlier in his State of the State address, the Republican governor told a town hall audience in Vorhees he would phase-in the cut over three years at a cost of $300 million per year.

“The fact is there’s a lot of waste in government to be ferreted out over time,” he told hundreds of people in the atrium of a shopping mall, some perched over a balcony to get a good look. “I would tell you we’ll be able to do that not only without cutting aid to education but with increasing aid to education.”

The promise is a direct reaction to Democrats in control the Legislature who pounced on Christie’s income tax plan, calling it rhetoric aimed at boosting the governor’s national profile. They labeled it a gift to the wealthy that would decimate revenues so much that schools would suffer.

“Don’t let the Democrats who are opposing this fool you into thinking you have to make a choice between the two,” he said.

Christie, who said more details about how he’ll slash state spending would come in his Feb. 21 budget address, took his message of responsibly reducing the size of government around the state and over the airwaves. The whirlwind day started at 7 a.m. with an interview on NBC’s “Today Show,” followed by an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

As soon as the hour-and-a-half-long town hall ended, he held three quick-fire radio interviews before heading to the New Jersey Agricultural Convention in Atlantic City Wednesday night. He’s got interviews lined up today on CBS and Fox.

 Asked on WNYC whether he would sign the same sex marriage bill Democrats have made a priority of the new session, Christie said he remains unconvinced the Legislature can muster the votes to deliver a bill to his desk.

“This type of societal change is something we need to do very deliberately and have as much public input as we possibly can before people decide whether we can to overturn hundreds of years of social mores and traditions,” he said.

Christie said he would not “prejudge” the measure, and signaled he’d be open to strengthening the current law.

“I want to see what they come up with,” he said in an interview on New Jersey 101.5. “There might be other ways to address the issues, the legitimate issues that advocates have raised. I’d be willing to listen to all that stuff.”

Christie commands the national spotlight more than ever as GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s most outspoken surrogate – a position that may help him at home.

Though 60 percent of Garden State Republicans said it is “somewhat likely” or “very likely” the former Massachusetts governor will tap Christie as his running mate, 68 percent of them agree with Christie, who has said time and time again he that he does not have the “right kind of personality” to fill the number two spot.

The numbers, released in a Quinnipiac University poll Wednesday, found 53 percent of New Jersey voters approve of the job he’s doing.

Just as New Jersey prepares to revamp its tenure laws, an exhaustive new study on teacher quality indicates that Gov. Chris Christie is on the right track.

The study’s conclusion is simple: Getting rid of the worst teachers, and holding onto the good ones, leads to lifetime benefits for their students. And test scores are a tremendously helpful tool in helping to evaluate teacher performance.

The study, by a team of economists at Harvard and Columbia universities, tracked 2.5 million students over 20 years. When they started the study, the economist expected to find that judging teachers in part on test scores was a big mistake.

But they found just the opposite, that tests are telling. Understand that it’s not a simple matter of crediting teachers whose kids score the highest. That would reward a lazy teacher who is lucky enough to have classrooms full of attentive kids with supportive families, and punish a heroic teachers who works with the state’s poorest kids.

Instead, the study measured the impact a teacher had on a classroom full of kids, taking into account where they began. So a teacher who helps poor kids read more effectively gets credit, even if the students remain behind grade level. It’s known as “value-added ratings” and several school districts across the country have begun using it in teacher evaluations.

No one wants to rely exclusively on test scores. There is no substitute for classroom visits. And checking lesson plans and other nuts and bolts of the profession is important as well.

But the teachers union, and many obedient Democrats in the Legislature, are resisting all use of test scores in teacher evaluations.

Perhaps this study can help change their minds. It finds that the kids who attended classes with effective teachers were more likely to avoid teen pregnancy, attend college and to earn more money later in life.

TRENTON — A bill that paves a legal path toward new public-private schools in three cities – including the Lanning Square Elementary School in Camden – passed two legislative committees Thursday.

The Democratic-sponsored bill was amended to overcome Republicans objections, though a legal advocate for low-income students threatened to bring a lawsuit to stop the program if the bill becomes law.

The Urban Hope Act would allow for up to four privately operated public schools to be authorized and built each in Newark, Trenton and Camden.

The bill (A4426/S3173) passed both the state Assembly and Senate budget committees and is expected to be voted on in both chambers Monday, the last day of the two-year state legislative session.

South Jersey Democratic leader George E. Norcross III has been pushing for the bill, particularly because he wants to see a new private-public school in the Lanning Square section in the center of Camden.

Gov. Chris Christie had indicated earlier he would support it, but the administration has been reviewing the bill, which changed in recent days and on Thursday.

The bill is sponsored by Norcross’ brother, state Sen. Donald Norcross, D-Camden. It is controversial because it circumvents the state’s School Development Authority, which had been charged with constructing schools in 31 of the state’s low-income school districts that are protected under two decades worth of state Supreme Court rulings.

The bill is also controversial because it allows nonprofits that would eventually build the schools to be exempt from public bidding requirements.

However, school operators will have to find private financing. Republican Assembly members objected to a provision that allowed for public bonding for the schools, so it was removed.

George Norcross, in an interview Wednesday, said that public bidding laws have proven to escalate the costs of projects, not lower them.

“Public bidding causes all sorts of litigation, arbitration and change orders,” he said. “Why hamstring someone from going in and negotiating?”

Sen. Norcross reiterated the stance in comments Thursday. He said private school operators will be able to make payments on the buildings simply from the per-student aid they receive from the school districts, thus saving taxpayers millions of dollars.

David Sciarra, executive director of the Education Law Center in Newark, which has successfully sued the state to gain billions of dollars in additional state aid for the 31 low-income school districts, said that his organization was readying to file a lawsuit to block the bill. He contends the state, not a private entity, should build the school.

Sciarra said that state taxpayers have already spent $11 million to purchase the land at Lanning Square, demolish buildings that had been on the property and clean it from environmental hazards. A design for the new school has already been completed, he said.

And the state has cash on hand in its school building funds to construct it, and even if not, the state has already authorized $3.9 billion in new school construction statewide, Sciarra said.

“The money is there. It’s not a financial issue,” Sciarra said.

He estimated it would take another $25 million to $30 million to build the Lanning Square school.

The state’s school construction effort, however, has also seen its share of controversy. The agency burned through its initial $8.6 billion allocation and completed a fraction of the schools it was supposed to complete as projects faced cost overruns and were bloated with professional fees and project management contracts.

Camden resident R. Mangaliso Davis opposed the bill at the Assembly Budget Committee hearing. He complained that the community had no input into the program.

“This bill will take away the one school that we should have gotten 10 years ago,” he said.

Republican Assembly budget officer Declan O’Scanlon of Monmouth County, said he believed the pilot program would provide new alternatives for urban students.

“I think what you’ll find is the school will perform,” O’Scanlon said.

The bill allows school boards in the designated districts to approve up to four “renaissance” school projects in their districts.

The districts would be able to appoint non-profit organizations to build and operate the schools. But those groups may buy or rent land from for-profit entities or may authorize a for-profit company to build the new school.

If the school were to become defunct, the land would immediately be deeded back to the school district. That raised a question from some GOP Assembly members about how a bank might secure a loan for a building.

The school district would pay nearly all of the per-child education costs to the nonprofit agency, which could use that money to pay to construct and operate the schools.

The bill calls for renaissance schools to be authorized to operate for ten years, but will face an annual review on whether it was meeting goals and improving school achievement. An independent researcher is to review the program after five years, according to a provision in the bill.

The New Jersey Education Association backed the bill because the new school will still be considered a public school and all staff must meet state certifications.

“It provides innovation within public education, along with accountability,” said Ginger Gold Schnitzer, the top lobbyist for the NJEA.

JACKSON — The mother of two girls who became separated from them in Tunisia in a marital struggle in August was reunited with them and is back home in New Jersey.

Suzanne Feimster returned with one daughter on Nov. 15. Her husband, Walid Bensayeh, returned on Nov. 23 with their younger daughter and Suzanne’s mother, indicating that, at the very least, the couple had made some progress in attempting to work through their parenting difficulties. They have been separated for two years.

Now, they have begun proceedings to divorce and a hearing is scheduled soon in Ocean County, said Christine Hayes, a spokesperson for Feimster. Hayes is a teacher at Asbury Park Middle School, where Feimster also was employed before going to Tunisia with Bensayeh and the girls, Sumyra, then 4, and Rayhana, 3, for a visit with his parents.

“Now she’s in a secure, safe location with the kids,” Hayes said. “She has no idea where he (husband) is and he has no idea where she is.”

Feimster said in an email this week that she cannot comment at this time because of pending court cases, but added that “Sumyra, Rayhana and I are safe on American soil.”

Walid could not be reached for comment. Before the trip to Tunisia, he was living in the couple’s house that they owned in Pine Hill, Camden County. Feimster and the girls lived with her parents in Jackson.

Both in their 30s, the estranged couple became news when Bensayeh wanted to take the girls to the Tunisian capital of Tunis to visit his parents and Feimster went also. Although separated, they continued to do activities together with their children.

On their third day in Tunis, Feimster became very ill, she has said, and wanted to return to the United States with their daughters. But she could not take them back home without her husband’s permission under Tunisian law. He has dual citizenship in Tunisia and the United States.

Feimster’s mother joined her, bringing her medicine that she needed, and with support of other family members and a lawyer, Feimster worked with the Tunisian courts and American Embassy to eventually gain court custody of the children Aug. 29.

Still, she had to get Bensayeh to give the children back and also work out some form of agreement to be able to leave Tunisia. That evidently happened and they are in New Jersey, proceeding with the next stage to some form of custody decision.

My Mom Lee and her husband Matt sold all of their belongings and relocated their comfortable lives from New Jersey to Cebu, Philippines to start an orphanage that rescues impoverished kids from the dangerous streets. Street Kids Philippine Missions, a 301(c) non-profit corporation, is dedicated to giving those most vulnerable a place to live, learn, and be loved while being raised to be disciples of God’s Word.

On Saturday October 15th from 2pm-6pm, Street Kids PM is holding a fundraiser event at Chico’s House of Jazz in Asbury Park. With special guest performances by recording artists Sophie Dupin, Jay Loftus and others; win a Kindle Fire and other prizes in our raffle. Recommended donation is $50.

—I hope you can make it!

With that being said, and I speak of how we, as APEA members are a family, dysfunctional most of the time, but still a family, I must inform the Association that one of our members, Suzanne Fiemster from the APMS, is in a serious situation. Suzanne left for a visit to Tunisia on August 1st with her husband and two young daughters, Sumyra and Rayhana. Her husband has prevented the family from returning to the US on August 31st. He is keeping the children captive in Tunisia. Suzanne and her mother are being housed in a hotel by the US Embassy under an alias. She has retained a Tunisian attorney and was awarded custody, however the father will not comply with the order- making it extremely impossible to gain custody and return to the USA. As you can imagine, the legal costs for this battle are extraordinary and insurmountable. Once she returns to the USA she must repeat the legal process in the USA because Tunisian law does not apply to the USA. I am asking the AP Faculty and staff to keep her and her girls in your thoughts and prayers. A foundation has been set up to help offset the legal costs. For more information please speak to Christine Hayes at APMS.
I wish each and everyone a successful school year.

TRENTON — Gov. Chris Christie will announce legislation today to create public-private partnerships to run some schools in New Jersey, three people with knowledge of the plan said.

The governor is scheduled to make the announcement at noon at the Lanning Square Elementary School in Camden.

Two of the sources said Christie will be appearing with Camden Mayor Dana Redd, a Democrat who has worked with the Republican governor on education issues.

It’s unclear exactly how the public-private partnerships would work, and the sources said it would start as a pilot program. They declined to speak on the record in advance of the public announcement.

One source said individual districts would need to opt into the pilot program and approval from local school boards would be required.

Christie’s acting education commissioner, Christopher Cerf, has experience in public-private school partnerships. He previously led Edison Schools, a for-profit company that became the largest private-sector manager of public schools. Cerf left the company, now called EdisonLearning, in 2005.

Christie is also connected to for-profit education companies, including Cerf’s.

From 1999 to 2001, Christie was a registered lobbyist at a law firm that lobbied New Jersey government on behalf of Edison Schools, according to filings with the state Election Law Enforcement Commission. While the firm was representing the multinational education company, Chris Cerf was its general counsel.

The firm, Dughi, Hewit and Palatucci, also represented Mosaica Education, a for-profit charter school operator, and the University of Phoenix, a for-profit online university. At the time, the firm listed two lobbyists, Christie and William Palatucci, a longtime political ally of the governor who is a named partner in the firm.

During the 2009 gubernatorial campaign, then-campaign spokeswoman Maria Comella said the “overwhelming” majority — “over 90 or 95 percent” — of the firm’s lobbying was done by Palatucci, who remains a close friend of Christie.

The governor’s office declined to comment before today’s announcement.

Since Christie’s campaign for governor two years ago, he has criticized the state of urban education in New Jersey, saying public schools and teacher unions have perpetuated a failing system.

Angel Cordero, who helped create the Community Education Resource Network, an alternative school for dropouts, applauded the plan for public-private schools.

“It’s time we think out of the box and break up the monopoly” of the teachers unions, he said. “This is the perfect storm right now. People are ready.”

Christie was in Camden for the Community Education Resource Network’s graduation ceremony on Friday, where he and other political leaders called for a shakeup in the public school system.

Steve Baker, a spokesman for the New Jersey Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, expressed skepticism about the partnership proposal.

“Anything that turns public schools over to private operation, and reduces public accountability, would be very problematic,” he said tonight.

Christie has enraged the NJEA with his push for more charter schools and a voucher program.

The voucher proposal, called the Opportunity Scholarship Act, has stalled in the Legislature despite support from both sides of the aisle as some Democrats have pushed to downsize it.

Star-Ledger staff writer Jessica Calefati contributed to this report

NJ Senate Democrats Consider Budget That Would Increase School Funding By $600M, Reintroduce ‘Millionaire’s Tax’

TRENTON — Senate Democrats are thinking of introducing their own budget that would increase school financing by as much as $1.1 billion, including about $600 million for non-Abbott school districts, according to four people familiar with the plan.

The money would come from a combination of additional revenue, some cuts in spending, and possibly a millionaire’s tax, said the sources, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the plan.

The proposal is emerging less than three weeks after the state Supreme Court ordered the state to increase financing for poor school districts, known as Abbott districts, by $500 million, and with three weeks to go until the legislature is required to approve a budget for the next fiscal year.

The plan was unveiled by State Senate President Stephen Sweeney at a recent Senate Democratic caucus, the sources said. Derek Roseman, a spokesman for the Senate Democrats, said he would not comment on internal deliberations, nor would he confirm or deny the proposal.

The state Supreme Court stopped short of ordering the restoration of the full $1.7 billion in cuts that Gov. Chris Christie relied on to balance this year’s budget. The governor said he would comply with the order after giving some mixed signals, but left it to the Democrat-controlled legislature to work out the details — as long as there is no tax increase.

The Senate plan would satisfy the court ruling as well as provide additional money for up to 240 other districts that are not spending as much as they should be under the school funding formula. Many of those districts have high numbers of at-risk students, but were not granted any financial relief by the court.

David Sciarra, executive director of the Education Law Center, who has lobbied lawmakers and Christie to restore the funds, said the additional money would go to all students who need it, not just to those in the poorer districts.

“If this were done it would go a long way towards fulfilling the commitment made by the Legislature in the (school funding) formula, which was to make sure that at-risk students, whichever district they were in, received the funding they were entitled to receive,” he said.

Woodbridge, a district with 13,000 students, about 30 percent of whom are low income, would receive $18.6 million in additional aid, he said, while Hamilton Township in Mercer County, also with about 13,000 students, would get an additional $9.8 million.

To pay for the proposal, Democratic Senators would rely on the revenue estimates provided by the non-partisan Office of Legislative Services instead of the less optimistic figures put forth by the Christie administration, sources say. The OLS figure of $913 million is $400 million higher than the administration’s figure.

The Democrats would also rely on up to $300 million in budget cuts that have not yet been determined, sources said. A millionaire’s tax has been discussed despite Christie’s objection to it.

The sources said Democrats are divided on whether to pursue the strategy in part because it would require them to sponsor the budget and make it difficult for them to criticize the governor for his handling of the state’s finances.

Last year, the budget was approved with the slimmest of Democratic support, handing Republicans ownership of a plan that included huge cuts and froze property tax rebates.

Lawmakers have until June 30 to approve Christie’s $29.6 billion budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1. Christie has called for tripling current property tax rebates next year, but only if legislators agree to make changes to health and pension benefits for state and municipal workers.

Kevin Roberts, a spokesman for the governor, said he wouldn’t comment on a plan put forward by lawmakers until it was more than a rumor.

“We will review a budget bill once the legislature fulfills its own obligation to pass such legislation and it reaches the governor’s desk for consideration,” Roberts said in an e-mail message. “We won’t be responding to abstract proposals in the interim.”

A spokesman for the Assembly Democrats, Tom Hester Jr., said the governor’s budget puts the heaviest burden on working-class residents, and that lawmakers are committed to doing everything possible to resolve that problem.

“But as everyone is also well aware, nothing gets to the governor’s desk without garnering Assembly support,” Hester said. “We look forward to a cooperative discussion in the month ahead built around the goal of advocating for working class residents.”

By Jarret Renshaw  (jrenshawstarledgercom)   and Matt Friedman  (mfriedmanstarledgercom)  /Statehouse Bureau

TRENTON — An opinion by a divided state Supreme Court on Tuesday sets up a state budget confrontation between a Republican governor who vows not to raise taxes and a Democratic-controlled state Legislature seeking to funnel even more money to local schools.

The state Supreme Court, in a 3-2 decision, ordered New Jersey to provide full funding for 31 school districts that have long received massive state aid under previous court orders.

The ruling presents the state with a much smaller bill — estimated to be $500 million — than it would have if the court had ordered New Jersey to provide full state aid, some $1.75 billion more, to all school districts.

But the decision also marks a rebuke for Gov. Chris Christie, who has criticized the court over the school funding issue since he was a gubernatorial candidate.

Christie, who had broached the idea of defying the court in a radio appearance, said in a press conference that he would comply with the order. Christie said the Legislature should now determine the state budget that takes effect July 1, but he said he did not want to see new taxes.

Christie also castigated the decision.

“As a fundamental principle, I do not believe it is the role of the state Supreme Court to determine what programs the state should and should not be funding, and to what amount,” he said in a news conference. “The Supreme Court is not the Legislature. It should not dictate policy…and it should not have any business deciding how tax dollars are spent.”

State Democratic leaders called for the state to find additional money for local school districts. State Senate President Stephen M. Sweeney, D-Gloucester, wanted some $500 million more for lower and middle-income school districts.

The decision was the latest hearing in the state’s long-running school funding case. Advocates for children in 31 low-income school districts had asked the court to enforce a state aid formula agreed to in a 2009 ruling that provided additional funds to districts across the state.

The ruling then had finally moved the state from protecting the 31 districts and allocating aid on a statewide basis. Tuesday’s decision moves New Jersey back to the prior position of having select school districts protected by the court and those that are not.

In the majority opinion, Justice Jaynee LaVecchia wrote that the court could only order funding for the Abbott districts because of the precedent set by prior rulings.

The 2009 formula had determined how much money was expected to be spent educating various types of students and required the state to provide full funding after the school district’s “fair share” of property taxes was raised.

For example, that formula then determined the base cost of a general elementary student’s education was $9,649.

More money was allocated to educate students from low-income families, as well as for students who had trouble speaking English or who suffered with physical or educational disabilities or speech problems.

The Supreme Court decisions in the case, beginning in 1990, have been highly controversial because they have directed tens of billions over the years into large urban districts like Newark and Trenton, as well as poorer small districts, such as Keansburg and Asbury Park.

Even now, more than half of the state’s $7 billion in local state aid goes to those districts. But in many cases, test scores have remained low and dropout rates have held high, which has prompted criticism of the program.

In legal arguments, the Christie administration had said it planned on fulfilling the school funding formula, but had to cut state aid last year because of declining tax revenues amid the financial crisis.

Yet Christie often publicly criticized the court’s long-running decisions on school funding.

He had said that the notion that more money can lead to better results is “failed legal theory.’’

Christie had refused last year to reappoint Justice John Wallace and cited the court’s previous decisions as a reason, though he did not name the school funding case specifically as the reason Wallace was not reappointed.

The court has operated short-handed on the school funding case. Chief Justice Stuart Rabner, who was an Attorney General for then Gov. Jon S. Corzine, had worked on the school funding formula and has recused himself from the case.

Justice Virginia Long recently had recused herself from the case.

The reason was not announced.

LaVecchia was joined by Justices Barry T. Albin and Judge Edwin H. Stern, who was appointed to temporarily fill Wallace’s seat.

Justices Roberto A. Rivera-Soto and Helen E. Hoens dissented in the opinion.

“Like anyone else, the State is not free to walk away from judicial orders enforcing constitutional obligations,’’ LaVecchia wrote in her opinion.

She later added “the state may not use the appropriations power as a shield from its responsibilities.”

Rivera-Soto called the court’s school funding decisions, stretching back to the 1970s, a “well-intentioned but now fundamentally flawed and misguided approach.’’

Rivera-Soto questioned how the court could order full funding for children in some districts, while allowing others not to receive funding that met the state’s constitutional requirement.

Hoens, in a separate opinion, said the state’s budget cuts were necessary and showed no defiance of the court.

She questioned the finding in March by a special master that Christie’s budget cuts had violated the constitution.

INSIDE: Jerseyans split on continuing growth of charter schools, poll finds.

Gov. Chris Christie, spelling out his teacher tenure reform plans in the most detail yet in front of an audience of national experts, wants each school district to have significant discretion in constructing its own teacher and principal evaluation systems.

Appearing at an event hosted in New York Thursday by the prominent Washington-based think tank, the Brookings Institution, Christie said growth in test scores, grades and other metrics should serve to make up half of each teacher’s annual evaluation. Districts should also design their own subjective evaluation based on administrators’ in-class observations and other criteria.

Christie again attacked the state’s powerful teachers union through much of his speech, but also praised teachers and said they needed to be part of reform. Christie said he had learned much from meeting with small groups of teachers privately in recent weeks.

“If you empower teachers to be a large part of the decision-making process, it will work,” Christie said in response to a question. “I think that will lower the fear level.”

He stressed that he would not allow the unions to influence the creation of local evaluation criteria. He also said teachers and administrators know their local students best and should have influence on how staff is measured for raises and tenure.

“What needs to be done in Short Hills is significantly different than what needs to be done in Paterson,” Christie said.

Acting Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf said in an interview after the event that the state still planned to create a more complete statewide database of student test scores and other information.

The state would provide guidance to districts on how to create a teacher measurement model, Cerf said.

Grover J. Whitehurst, director of an education policy center at Brookings, said in an interview afterward that although Christie’s proposal would help gain support of some educators, it would lead to a range of standards across the state.

“The details will be worked out by the local school districts, and that’s hard and difficult work,” Whitehurst said. “”But can the state tolerate a system where it is much easier, say, to be (classified) an exceptional teacher in Asbury Park than it is in Trenton?”

In other details, Christie said:
Teachers should not be paid based on seniority, adding that they should not automatically receive raises because they have obtained advanced degrees.

Tenure should be revoked for teachers who receive poor evaluations for two years in a row. In order to obtain tenure, new teachers should have to be rated effective for three consecutive years.

The state should offer teachers more money to teach in urban districts or in subject areas where there is a shortage of teachers, such as science.

Echoing comments he made on ABC-TV on Wednesday, Christie called lobbyists for the state’s largest teachers union, the New Jersey Education Association, “bullies and thugs.”

Christie, a Republican, said that he is better able to drive educational reform than the Democratic Party, which he described as beholden to the campaign contributions of the teachers union. He also said that he can better bridge the political divide between low-income areas and the suburbs.

“In the same way that only Nixon can go to China, you need a Republican governor who can go into the urban areas and say he cares about those kids,” Christie said.

The NJEA contended the proposals are an expansion of high-stakes testing that has proved ineffective.

“Anytime someone resorts to that much name calling, he’s not that confident in his ideas,” Baker said. “When people focus on the substance of what he’s saying, they’ll realize what a disaster this is.”

Christie again criticized the state Supreme Court on the day the administration and a nonprofit advocacy group were scheduled to file their final briefs in the long-running case over school funding.

A special master had ruled last month that Christie’s budget cuts had violated a constitutional requirement that the state provide a “thorough and efficient system” of education by leading to reductions in programs for low-income and other students considered at-risk for failure.

The state Supreme Court is expected to order the state to spend more money on local education to support a formula the court endorsed in a 2009 decision. Christie mocked the idea that more money would “tip us over into raging success” in low-income schools.

In a report released last year, Brookings advocated a school choice program in which parents would choose schools for their children, though it favored choice among public schools. The program also called for the creation of virtual schools so that students would have the option of taking classes online.

In comments before Christie’s speech, Whitehurst said that if school funding followed the students, who had the opportunity to transfer out of district, it would create much pressure for schools to perform better.

Whitehurst said that would be an especially powerful incentive in New Jersey if students in certain low-income districts, which receive massive amounts of state funding, were able to take those dollars with them upon transferring.

“The entire U.S. economy operates through choice and competition,” Whitehurst said.

“Public education does as well for affluent parents, who choose their schools by purchase of a residence,” Whitehurst added. “Eliminating or severely restricting choice for low-income parents generates striking inequities in the quality of educational opportunity.” Christie’s address comes a day after President Barack Obama visited New York and called the disparity in school test scores between black and white students a civil rights problem. He urged reinvigorated efforts to close the achievement gap.

Christie, who has criticized Obama on a number of issues, has repeatedly said his policy positions on education are virtually indiscernible from the president’s. On Thursday, he praised Obama for “speaking strongly and firmly about education reform.”

Christie Tells Diane Sawyer He Won’t Run for President in 2012, But Will His Friend Donald Trump?

By BRADLEY BLACKBURN
April 6, 2011

In an interview with ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer, Christie offered no apology for his often tough talk that has left some teachers feeling bruised. He also talked about the presidential possibilities of both himself and his “friend” Donald Trump, and criticism by Jersey rock icon Bruce Springsteen.

While sitting in the school library at Lincoln School in Kearney, N.J., Christie told Sawyer that it’s essential for his state’s education system to change and he blames the teachers union for the harsh cuts his administration is making, that includes layoffs and larger classrooms.

“I believe the teachers in New Jersey in the main are wonderful public servants that care deeply. But their union, their union are a group of political thugs,” Christie said.

He said the New Jersey Education Association refused to negotiate on a salary freeze last year. “They should have taken the salary freeze. They didn’t and now, you know, we had to lay teachers off.”

“They chose to continue to get their salary increases rather than be part of the shared sacrifice,” he said.

Dismissing objections to his blunt talk, Christie said, “We’re from New Jersey and when you’re from New Jersey, what that means is you give as good as you get.”

Christie is also suggesting a dramatic change in the state’s tenure program, forcing tenured teachers to undergo a yearly review and face removal from tenure if they’re found to be ineffective.

Christie: I’m Not Running for President

Christie’s tough talk for teachers unions has found a receptive audience beyond his state borders. A political unknown on the national stage just two years ago, Christie, 48, is now mentioned as a possible presidential candidate.

But the governor repeated his claim today that he has no plans to run in 2012.

“No, I’m not running for president,” Christie said. “I don’t feel ready in my heart to be president. And unless I do, I don’t have any right offering myself to the people of this country.

“I don’t want to participate in the vanity exercise just because people ask me to do it or because people say, ‘You could win.’ That’s not the point,” he said.

Will Donald Trump Get In the Republican Race?

Christie also downplayed the idea that Trump might actually seek the Republican presidential nomination.

“Donald’s a really good friend of mine. I don’t know that Donald really wants to be President,” he said.

“We’ve spoken about it, and all I can say to you is that, you know, I’ll believe it when I see it,” Christie said. “I think he likes what he does. I think he likes building things. And I think he likes being on TV, and you know, he does that well.”

Referring to Trump’s hints about running, Christie added, “I wouldn’t call it stunt, but I think he’s very outspoken and… he loves to be on the stage and to express his opinions.”

Christie’s Advice to the President on Budget: Get in and Lead

As the nation’s political leaders wrangle over the federal budget in Washington, Christie said his experience cutting billions from the New Jersey state budget in 2010 taught him some lessons about the importance of executive power.

“We had the same kind of situation a year ago, and I just got in the room with the Democrats in the legislature, and we came to a principled agreement,” Christie said. “I have a particular message for the president: He should get in and lead and bring them together.”

Christie said that no matter the differences, a government shutdown is unacceptable.

“Shutdown is a failure of everybody, including the president. Because in the end, we’re here to stand up for principles, to say the things that we believe in, but we’re also here to lead and run a government,” Christie said. “It would be a failure of everyone involved, of the Congress and the president, if they don’t get this done.”

Christie Slims Down, Responds to Criticism from Springsteen

Christie, who has an outsized frame to match his bold personality, has recently begun to slim down. With the help of a trainer, he’s exercising several times a week and says he has lost weight, though he won’t reveal a number.

“Let’s just say this — I feel better, I have more energy, and my wife’s happier because, you know, we’ve got four kids,” Christie said.

“What do you say to psyche yourself into it?” Sawyer asked.

“I just look in the mirror, Diane, and I go, ‘Okay, I’ve got to get healthier,’” Christie said. “This job has really forced me, because it’s such a draining job from an energy perspective… If I want to be good, I’ve got to do this.”

Christie, born and raised in the Garden State, is also a huge fan of Bruce Springsteen, but the musician and Jersey icon hasn’t been shy about criticizing his fan.

Springsteen, who declined to play at the governor’s inauguration, recently wrote to a New Jersey newspaper saying that Christie’s policies favor the wealthy.

Christie’s “cuts are eating away at the lower edges of the middle class, not just those already classified as in poverty, and are likely to continue to get worse over the next few years,” Springsteen wrote.

“Are you surprised to hear that from Bruce? I mean, you know, Bruce is liberal,” the governor said. “Doesn’t mean I like him any less.”

Christie’s direct, even confrontational nature has certainly grated on some, even as its drawn him millions of fans who click on YouTube videos of the governor berating teachers that he says have disrespected him at town halls.

For his part, Christie says he’s determined to defend his positions, stridently if need be.

“If you treat me with respect even when you disagree with me, I’ll treat you with respect back. You treat me with disrespect, that’s what you’re going to get back,” Christie said.

“I kind of wake up every morning excited to get going and to get to work,” he continued. “Cause the things that we’re working on are so important. And I have a chance to actually do something, not just talk about it, but actually do it.”

Pay Teachers More
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

From the debates in Wisconsin and elsewhere about public sector unions, you might get the impression that we’re going bust because teachers are overpaid.

That’s a pernicious fallacy. A basic educational challenge is not that teachers are raking it in, but that they are underpaid. If we want to compete with other countries, and chip away at poverty across America, then we need to pay teachers more so as to attract better people into the profession.

Until a few decades ago, employment discrimination perversely strengthened our teaching force. Brilliant women became elementary school teachers, because better jobs weren’t open to them. It was profoundly unfair, but the discrimination did benefit America’s children.

These days, brilliant women become surgeons and investment bankers — and 47 percent of America’s kindergarten through 12th-grade teachers come from the bottom one-third of their college classes (as measured by SAT scores). The figure is from a study by McKinsey & Company, “Closing the Talent Gap.”

Changes in relative pay have reinforced the problem. In 1970, in New York City, a newly minted teacher at a public school earned about $2,000 less in salary than a starting lawyer at a prominent law firm. These days the lawyer takes home, including bonus, $115,000 more than the teacher, the McKinsey study found.

We all understand intuitively the difference a great teacher makes. I think of Juanita Trantina, who left my fifth-grade class intoxicated with excitement for learning and fascinated by the current events she spoke about. You probably have a Miss Trantina in your own past.

One Los Angeles study found that having a teacher from the 25 percent most effective group of teachers for four years in a row would be enough to eliminate the black-white achievement gap.

Recent scholarship suggests that good teachers, even kindergarten teachers, increase their students’ earnings many years later. Eric A. Hanushek of Stanford University found that an excellent teacher (one a standard deviation better than average, or better than 84 percent of teachers) raises each student’s lifetime earnings by $20,000. If there are 20 students in the class, that is an extra $400,000 generated, compared with a teacher who is merely average.

A teacher better than 93 percent of other teachers would add $640,000 to lifetime pay of a class of 20, the study found.

Look, I’m not a fan of teachers’ unions. They used their clout to gain job security more than pay, thus making the field safe for low achievers. Teaching work rules are often inflexible, benefits are generous relative to salaries, and it is difficult or impossible to dismiss teachers who are ineffective.

But none of this means that teachers are overpaid. And if governments nibble away at pensions and reduce job security, then they must pay more in wages to stay even.

Moreover, part of compensation is public esteem. When governors mock teachers as lazy, avaricious incompetents, they demean the profession and make it harder to attract the best and brightest. We should be elevating teachers, not throwing darts at them.

Consider three other countries renowned for their educational performance: Singapore, South Korea and Finland. In each country, teachers are drawn from the top third of their cohort, are hugely respected and are paid well (although that’s less true in Finland). In South Korea and Singapore, teachers on average earn more than lawyers and engineers, the McKinsey study found.

“We’re not going to get better teachers unless we pay them more,” notes Amy Wilkins of the Education Trust, an education reform organization. Likewise, Jeanne Allen of the Center for Education Reform says, “We’re the first people to say, throw them $100,000, throw them whatever it takes.”

Both Ms. Wilkins and Ms. Allen add in the next breath that pay should be for performance, with more rigorous evaluation. That makes sense to me.

Starting teacher pay, which now averages $39,000, would have to rise to $65,000 to fill most new teaching positions in high-needs schools with graduates from the top third of their classes, the McKinsey study found. That would be a bargain.

Indeed, it makes sense to cut corners elsewhere to boost teacher salaries. Research suggests that students would benefit from a tradeoff of better teachers but worse teacher-student ratios. Thus there are growing calls for a Japanese model of larger classes, but with outstanding, respected, well-paid teachers.

Teaching is unusual among the professions in that it pays poorly but has strong union protections and lockstep wage increases. It’s a factory model of compensation, and critics are right to fault it. But the bottom line is that we should pay teachers more, not less — and that politicians who falsely lambaste teachers as greedy are simply making it more difficult to attract the kind of above-average teachers our above-average children deserve.

Behind the scenes of standardized testing
By Jessica Lussenhop
published: February 23, 2011

Dan DiMaggio was blown away the first time he heard his boss say it.

The pensive, bespectacled 25-year-old had been coming to his new job in the Comcast building in downtown St. Paul for only about a week. Naturally, he had lots of questions.

At one point, DiMaggio approached his increasingly red-faced supervisor at his desk with another question. Instead of answering, the man just hissed at him.

“You know this stuff better than I do!” he said. “Stop asking me questions!”

DiMaggio was struck dumb.

“I definitely didn’t feel like I knew what was going on at all,” he remembers. “Your supervisor has to at least pretend to know what’s going on or everything falls apart.”

DiMaggio’s question concerned an essay titled, “What’s your goal in life?” The answer for a surprising number of seventh-graders was to lift 200 pounds.

Although DiMaggio had been through a training process, he found himself tripped up as he began scoring the essays. What made the organization “good” as opposed to “excellent”? What happens when the kid doesn’t answer the question at all, but writes with excellent organization about whatever the hell he wants? Did it matter that it was insane for seventh-graders to think they’d be benching 200 pounds?

DiMaggio had good reason to worry. His score could determine whether the school was deemed adequate or failing—whether it received government funding or got shut down.

DiMaggio soon learned that his boss was a temp like him. In fact, the boss was only the team leader because he’d once managed a Target store.

DiMaggio found out that the human resources woman who’d hired them both was a temp. He realized that their office space—filled with long tables lined with several hundred computer monitors and generic office chairs—was rented.

Eventually, DiMaggio got used to not asking questions. He got used to skimming the essays as fast as possible, glancing over the responses for about two minutes apiece before clicking a score.

Every so often, though, his thoughts would drift to the school in Arkansas or Ohio or Pennsylvania. If they only knew what was going on behind the scenes.

“The legitimacy of testing is being taken for granted,” he says. “It’s a farce.”

THOUGH THE EFFICACY of standardized testing has been hotly debated for decades, one thing has become crystal clear: It’s big business.

In 2002, President George Bush signed the infamous No Child Left Behind Act. While testing around the country had been on the rise for decades, NCLB tripled it.

“The amount of testing that was being done mushroomed,” says Kathy Mickey, a senior education analyst at Simba Information. “Every state had new contracts. There was a lot of spending.”

The companies that create and score tests saw profits skyrocket. In 2009, K-12 testing was estimated to be a $2.7 billion industry.

The Twin Cities were early beneficiaries of the gold rush. Minnesota’s history as an early computer hardware hotbed led to the creation of some of the earliest data-scanning and numbers-crunching businesses here, including Scantron and National Computer Systems. By the ’90s, NCS was grading 85 percent of the standardized tests for the nation’s largest school districts.

In 2000, NCS was bought by Pearson, a multinational corporation based in London, making it a part of the largest education company in the world. In 2009, it posted $652 million in profits.

Today, tens of thousands of temporary scorers are employed to correct essay questions. This year, Maple Grove-based Data Recognition Corporation will take on 4,000 temporary scorers, Questar Assessment will hire 1,000, and Pearson will take on thousands more. From March through May, hundreds of thousands of standardized test essays will pour into the Twin Cities to be scored by summer.

The boom in testing has come with several notable catastrophes. The most famous happened in 2000, when NCS Pearson incorrectly failed 8,000 Minnesota students on a math test. Pearson shelled out a $7 million settlement to the students, and Gov. Jesse Ventura participated in a makeup graduation for students who were wrongly denied their diplomas. In 2010, Pearson again miss-scored two questions on Minnesota’s fifth- and eighth-grade tests. Delays in its Florida scoring resulted in a $3 million fine and glitches in Wyoming led the company to offer a $5.8 million settlement.

But while a mistake on a bubble form is a black-and-white problem, few scandals have broken on the essay side of the test-scoring business.

“It requires human judgment,” says Michael Rodriguez, of the University of Minnesota’s educational psychology department. “There is no way to standardize that.”

Now scorers from local companies are drawing back the curtain on the clandestine business of grading student essays, a process they say goes too fast; relies on cheap, inexperienced labor; and does not accurately assess student learning.

“The entire testing system in the U.S. needs to be restructured,” says Robert Schaeffer, public education director for FairTest. “That would likely result in the disappearance of these essay-scoring sweatshops.”

DANI INDOVINO DIDN’T want to score tests. She wanted to work in nonprofit administration.

But she was fresh out of school in September 2008, just as the economy was entering its freefall. Desperate to get out of her parents’ house, she perked up when some friends told her about becoming a “reader” for one of the local test companies. It was easy work to get and there was lots of it. All you needed was a college diploma.

“I was like, ‘Yeah, I have a degree, I can do that,’” she recalls.

On Indovino’s first day, she drove out to Questar Assessment in Apple Valley, a beige warehouse, and followed the signs that said “Scoring Center” in bright red letters. During her brief interview, she’d been asked repeatedly if she was able to follow a “rubric”—a set of guidelines to assess the essays in as uniform a way as possible.

“I guess they’ve had bad experiences with English teachers,” she says.

Inside Questar, Indovino took a seat in a room that looked like a classroom, crammed with as many computers and desks as could fit. It was here that the team leaders unveiled the scoring rubric, which was like a secret decoder ring for the job.

The rubrics are most often developed in conjunction with the state’s department of education and its testing contractor. Currently, Minnesota contracts both its test writing and scoring to Pearson. Local teachers are included in the rubric-writing process, as well as test-writing academics called “psychometricians.”

At first blush, the rubric seemed simple enough to Indovino. It was a chart with one- or two-sentence explanations of each number grade. Scorers are forbidden from taking the rubrics out of the Questar building or talking about them, but they generally look something like this:

6. An excellent response, the essay includes

• excellent focus and development

• excellent organization

• excellent language skills and word choice

• excellent grammar, usage, and mechanics

5. A good response, the essay includes

• good focus and development

• good organization

• good language skills and word choice

• good grammar, usage, and mechanics

4. An adequate response …

On down to 1s, which were reserved for barely decipherable language.

As part of their training, Indovino and her co-workers read through pre-graded examples out loud, then discussed why each had been scored the way it was. The process quickly divided the room into two camps—the young, unemployed kids who were just there for a paycheck, and the retired teachers.

“The retired teachers would argue everything,” says Indovino.

After two days of going through example papers, each scorer had to pass a qualifying exam. Indovino scored three sets of ten pre-scored papers. In order to be approved to work on the project, she had to pass two of the sets with at least an 80 percent “agreement rate” with the rubric. She did so with relative ease; most of the rest of the room passed on their second try.

Her first project was from Arkansas, an essay written by eighth-graders on the topic, “A fun thing to do in my town.”

And that’s where the troubles began.

Suddenly, she was being asked to crank through 200 real essays in a day. The scanned papers popped up on the screen and her eyes flitted as fast as they could down the lines. The difference between “excellent” and “good” and “adequate” was decided in a matter of seconds, to say nothing of the responses that were simply off the reservation. How do you score a kid who rails that his town sucks? What about an exceptionally well-written essay on why the student was refusing to answer the question?

All over the room, the teachers were raising their hands and disputing the rubric. Indovino preferred to keep her head down and just score the way she was told to.

“I was good at the bad system,” she says.

Over the next several months, Indovino got to know her co-workers better. The young people were mostly laid off or in foreclosure. They came straight from paper routes and went off to waitressing jobs afterward.

They also made for a very dedicated workforce. Indovino says she saw her co-workers hung-over, extremely ill, and even fresh from surgery.

“I scored a full day without glasses on,” Indovino says with a shrug. “I sat with my nose up to the glass all day. I couldn’t read it.”

When she eventually got a full-time job, Indovino quit scoring. Although she’d done well by the company’s standards, following the rubric provided little sense of accomplishment.

“Nobody is saying, ‘I’m doing good work, I’m helping society,’” she says. “Everyone is saying, ‘This isn’t right.’”

DAVID PUTHOFF WAS an experienced reader with Questar when he started getting the warnings that his job performance wasn’t up to snuff.

“Your numbers are down a little bit,” his supervisor said at the end of one day. “Make sure you bring those back up.”

Most essays, depending on the criteria established in the state, are scored by two readers. As Puthoff and his fellow scorers whipped through their essays, their supervisor had their own eyes glued to a screen, keeping them apprised of whether Reader #1 agreed with Reader #2. If so, both got a 100 percent agreement score for that essay. If one differed by a point or so, the essay would be counted as “adjacent” agreement.

Puthoff had thus far been an agreement-rate superstar. He was consistently in the high 80s.

Then came the question from hell out of Louisiana: “What are the qualities of a good leader?”

One student wrote, “Martin Luther King Jr. was a good leader.” With artfulness far beyond the student’s age, the essay delved into King’s history with the civil rights movement, pointing out the key moments that had shown his leadership.

There was just one problem: It didn’t fit the rubric. The rubric liked a longer essay, with multiple sentences lauding key qualities of leadership such as “honesty” and “inspires people.” This essay was incredibly concise, but got its point across. Nevertheless, the rubric said it was a 2. Puthoff knew it was a 2.

He hesitated the way he had been specifically trained not to. Then he hit, “3.”

It didn’t take long before a supervisor was in his face. He leaned down with a printout of the King essay.

“This really isn’t a 3-style paper,” the supervisor said.

Puthoff pointed out the smart use of examples and the exceptional prose. The supervisor just shook his head and pointed out how short the paragraphs were.

“You know, it’s more of a 2,” the supervisor repeated. “Not enough elaboration.”

Puthoff quickly learned these were not arguments he could win. But as time went on, he found himself having more and more of them.

There were the students who wrote extremely well but whose responses were too short—in his mind he saw them, bored with the essay topic, hurrying to finish. Or the essays where the handwriting got rushed and jumbled at the end, then cut off abruptly—he imagined the proctor telling the frantic student to lay down his pencil on a well-written but incomplete response.

And there were the kids who just did what they wanted. Like the boy from Arkansas who, instead of writing about the most fun thing to do in his town, instead wrote a hilarious essay on why his town is terrible and how he wanted to burn it down and pee on the ashes.

“I wanted the kid to get the score they deserved,” Puthoff says of his time in the business. “But they want to put them in boxes.”

In defiance, Puthoff started giving creatively written essays an illicit score bump. His agreement numbers noticeably suffered.

The industry calls this “scorer drift,” a well-documented tendency to begin deviating from the rubric over time. One case of scorer drift actually resulted in some 4,100 teachers failing the essay portion of their certification exams. The teachers successfully sued for $11.1 million.

What was different about Puthoff’s scorer drift was that he was doing it on purpose.

“I’ll bring them up, don’t worry,” he’d say of his agreement rate, then go back the next day and do the exact same thing.

“I know this kid is good,” he’d tell himself. “I know this kid’s a good writer.”

TODD FARLEY TREATED his supervising position at a scoring company like a joke.

“At the time, testing wasn’t that big,” he says. “I never had to feel like I’m actually deciding someone’s future. It was just silly.”

Farley had started at the bottom rung of the testing industry in Iowa City. A part-time graduate student with bills to pay, he was more interested in partying and trying to become a writer than he was in getting a real job. So he took one scoring job after another for NCS.

“It was always a temporary gig,” he remembers. “It was a lovely, slacker-y life.”

Farley had no official training in teaching, education, or test writing, but the longer he remained at NCS, the more responsibilities he was handed. He took the offer to become a team leader because it paid a little extra money and got him out of scoring.

Teaching his first group of scorers, Farley walked them through the rubric the same way he’d been shown. He fielded the inevitable bombardment of confused questions as best he could, in particular from one man: Harry the laid-off refrigerator plant worker.

Even though Harry eventually passed his qualifying exams, he was a disaster. As Farley monitored Harry’s scoring, he found himself walking back over to Harry repeatedly.

“Look,” Farley would say. “You’re giving this essay a 2 even though it’s perfectly formatted.”

Harry would nod. But a short time later, another ridiculous low ball from Harry would land on Farley’s desk. Before long, Harry began to drag down the all-important agreement level.

Farley now understood the reasons why, when he’d been a scorer, his team leaders would tell the room he wanted to start seeing more 3s or 4s or whatever. Supervisors were expected to turn the test scores into a nice bell curve. If his room did not agree at least 80 percent of the time, the tests would be taken back and re-graded, wasting time and money. The supervisor would be put on probation or demoted.

When Farley complained to a fellow supervisor about his problem, she smiled wryly and held up a pencil.

“I’ve got this eraser, see,” she told him. “I help them out.”

So Farley simply began changing Harry’s scores to agree with his peers’. The practice soon spread well beyond Harry.

“I’d just change a bunch of answers to make it look like my group was doing a great job,” Farley says. “I wanted the stupid item to be done, and so did my bosses.”

There were a few other tricks to keep the numbers up. One was to send a wayward scorer off into a corner to study example papers long enough for the group’s numbers to rebound. Another was to pair up a couple of bad scorers and make them decide together what to give a paper.

Or he could make the same announcement he’d heard from his supervisor back when he was a scorer.

“It’s time we see more sixes,” Farley would tell the group, which was code that his bell curve was off. “We’re in trouble here, we need higher scores, give higher scores.”

Though Farley and his fellow team leaders were fudging the numbers, even he was shocked when a representative from a southeastern state’s Department of Education visited to check on how her state’s essays were doing. As it turned out, the answer was: not well. About 67 percent of the students were getting 2s.

That’s when the representative informed Farley that the rubric for her state’s scoring had suddenly changed.

“We can’t give this many 1s and 2s,” she told him firmly.

The scorers would not be going back to re-grade the hundreds of tests they’d already finished—there just wasn’t time. Instead, they were just going to give out more 3s.

No one objected—the customer was always right.

Eventually, Farley was hired away by a rival testing company and moved to the East Coast. As he saw standardized tests becoming more and more important to the fate of schools and kids, he got fed up, quit the industry, and decided to write a whistle-blowing book.

Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized Testing Industry, came out in 2009. Though the tell-all chronicles Farley’s many misdeeds while scoring tests and supervising, he has nonetheless been invited back to work for the testing companies several times. The boom has just made his experience too valuable.

“They get paid money to put scores on paper, not to put the right scores on papers,” he says. “They have a bottom line. Why anyone would expect anything else is beyond me.”

PEARSON SPOKESMAN ADAM Gaber warns against taking the opinions of former scorers too seriously.

In an email, he characterized their concerns as “one-sided stories based upon people who have a very limited exposure and narrow point of view on what is truly a science.”

Questar declined a request to visit their facilities, but reached by phone, Susan Trent, vice president of assessment services, said that the essays are scored as objectively as is possible.

“We’re really insistent that readers understand they’re dealing with kids,” she says. “Decisions are being made about these kids based on these scores, and we’re absolutely committed to getting them right.”

She denies that graders are pressured to work too quickly and says that any evidence of scorer drift results in test re-scoring. She is also adamant that well-trained temps are the best way to score essays objectively.

“You do not have to be a teacher in order to score student response,” adds Terry Appleman, vice president of performance assessment. “You have to have a good rubric and good training.”

Asked what to make of the former Questar employees who felt they couldn’t do a good job given their training and time constraints, Appleman quickly answers: “If they don’t think they’re qualified, it’s not the job for them.”

Most of the scorers interviewed for this story agree, but nearly all plan to return to the scoring center. They say they need the money.

In a recent interview Ryan spoke out against the bill saying it is just an effort by Republicans to divide the work force:
“This isn’t the old New England moderate Republican we’re seeing now.  This Tea Party radicals, quite frankly, and ideologues who are trying to jam this agenda down the throat of a very moderate state in Ohio.  I think there is  going to be some backlash. They may have the ability to get it passed, but they will feel the blowback from it.”