NEWARK — In an historic reshuffling of the state’s largest school system, Newark Superintendent Cami Anderson Friday will announce a series of districtwide reforms that include closing seven failing schools and increasing charter school accountability.

The measures, which also call for an expansion of Newark’s elite magnet school system, are by far the most far-reaching — and potentially controversial — initiatives of Anderson’s eight-month tenure.

“It’s our responsibility to put kids in schools that put them on a pathway to college,” Anderson said, adding that the reforms will foster diversity among students with different socioeconomic backgrounds and levels of achievement.

“We can’t become a city where struggling students are isolated in some schools,” she said.

According to a list obtained by The Star-Ledger and corroborated by three district officials, the schools that will close are: Dayton Street, Martin Luther King, 18th Avenue, Miller Street and Burnet Street elementary schools, and the ninth grade academies at Barringer and West Side high schools.

Anderson would not confirm which schools are closing, but said the facilities were targeted, in part, because of declining enrollment and poor performance.

Except for Miller Street Elementary School, the others posted failing grades for most students on math and language tests, according to statewide results released Wednesday. At Martin Luther King, only 10 percent of seventh graders achieved minimum language proficiency on the statewide tests.

Anderson admitted the school closings will be controversial.

“I understand that schools are first community institutions,” she said. “If you went there, if your grandfather went there, you have an emotional tie to it.”

School board members and principals from the schools slated for closure were briefed on the plan Thursday.

Beginning in September, students from those schools will be “co-located” to other buildings. It was unclear what will happen to teachers and staff.

The closings come almost one year after a proposal to consolidate city schools sparked a major outcry and divided community members.

At least one city leader has already expressed concern with the reforms.

South Ward Councilman and Central High School Principal Ras Baraka said any school closing will carry unforeseen consequences.

“The gang lines, kids moving one place to another, it’s always an issue in Newark,” he said. “I’m sure that they thought this through downtown. The question is have they thought this through in the neighborhoods.”

Baraka has repeatedly called on the state to relinquish control of the district, which it has held since 1995.

In addition to the school closings, Anderson’s initiatives call for increased accountability among Newark’s charter schools. She said she wants those schools to enroll more special needs students and do a better job sharing achievement data with the district.

Anderson also wants to expand access to the city’s exclusive magnet schools because, she said, those schools too often admit only the highest performers. Magnet schools typically require an application process and tend to accept only the best students.

“In general, we need a better distribution of kids in schools across Newark,” Anderson said. “That goes for existing schools, magnet schools and charter schools.”

Anderson will formally announce the reforms this afternoon at Rutgers-Newark. Meetings will be held throughout the city with parents and community leaders to further explain the process and solicit input.

“We want to hear feedback,” she said, adding that the proposals emerged from a plan put forth two years ago by former superintendent Clifford Janey — drafted with exhaustive community input.

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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.”

IRVINGTON — Gov. Chris Christie told an inner-city audience Thursday he has high hopes his education reform agenda will boost overall student performance but conceded challenges remain in working with children from broken and dysfunctional homes.

“Kids who are not responding (and) don’t have the hunger to learn, as governor I can’t do anything about the parents. I can’t pretend I can go into every home and say, ‘Why don’t you care about your child learning?’ ” Christie said. “I don’t have any business going into somebody’s home and judging them. I don’t think they’d listen to me anyway.”

Christie went on to tout ideas on overhauling teacher tenure and increasing school choice during his town hall visit to the Christian Love Baptist Church.

Still, Christie said it will be difficult to turn around the failure of children where problems can be traced to parents who aren’t in the picture — because of working multiple jobs or being jailed or being deceased, he said.

“There are going to be a certain percentage of children (failing) because of their environment because their parents either don’t care or aren’t present,” the Republican governor said. “My problem is all those things are used as excuses for not getting at one of the things we know can be fixed, which is to make sure we have a quality teacher in front of the classroom.”

The event was held in the old church and was packed to capacity, with perhaps close to 500 people in the main worship area and a basement auxiliary room.

Christie shared some quick math, saying the audience was bigger than the number of people in the Democrat-dominated town who voted for him in the 2009 gubernatorial election.

Christie said “there are accusations sometimes that we pack the room with Christie supporters” at his town halls.

Not possible this time, said Christie, citing statistics showing he received 4.7 percent of the Irvington vote in 2009 election — 459 votes from a city of approximately 60,000.

Christie also rolled through questions about his proposed second-chance law that would steer substance abusers to treatment rather than jail and a bail reform initiative.

Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver, D-Essex, who was in attendance, said Christie demonstrated a willingness to consider urban priorities.

“I heard a door open up a little bit,” Oliver said. “I heard him address social issues that are of importance to the people that you heard here today.”

Oliver added: “I think the governor has shied away from social issues during his two-year tenure, and he had his consciousness raised today.”

That was underscored when longtime Irvington resident Virginia Prescott told Christie, “I watched the school system deteriorate.”

That’s why a robust charter school program will help public schools improve, Christie said.

Christie said traditionally it’s been tough to impose “exacting standards” on public school districts under home rule.

Add in charters and let the competition begin, he said.

This is an article from the Asbury Park Press, here is a link to the article:

VOORHEES — A vocal foe of a planned charter school in Cherry Hill got under Gov. Chris Christie’s skin during a town hall meeting here Wednesday.

About an hour into a session that had been cordial and laced with applause, Cherry Hill resident Alan Erlich interrupted Christie as the governor was answering a question about the school, Regis Academy. Emotions quickly escalated.

“I don’t have a solution for every problem,” Christie said to Erlich immediately after the interruption. “You had an opportunity to speak before. Here’s the bottom line: I don’t have a solution for everything.”

But after Erlich charged the charter school’s approval was a favor for a Christie supporter, the governor denied the claim.

“Who are you talking about?” asked Christie, who went on to say he does not know Amir Khan, a pastor who is organizing the school at a church complex in the Ashland area. “I haven’t given one friend a charter school.”

After the heated exchange with Erlich, Christie briefly turned back to the woman who had questioned him and told her he’d get back to her in a second. He then continued his ire toward Erlich.

“It’s guys like you who are rude and yell out in the middle when I’m trying to answer this woman’s question that does not allow for civil discourse in this state,” the governor said, drawing applause from some audience members.

“Let me tell you something,” Christie continued, “If you don’t like the answer, I’m sorry. That’s the answer.”

Christie then fielded a couple more questions, without interruption, before ending the meeting.

“Him calling me rude didn’t bother me,” Erlich said Wednesday night from his home. “He called me rude, I called him a liar. What bothered me is that he’s still avoiding the questions asked of him about the charter schools.”

The charter school is to open in September for K-4 students from Cherry Hill, Voorhees, Lawnside and Somerdale. Residents and elected officials in those towns have been in an uproar, saying the publicly funded charter school will divert badly needed tax dollars from local districts.

Regis Academy’s initial funding includes $1.9 million from the Cherry Hill district and about $725,500 from Voorhees. The charter school is to lease space at Khan’s Solid Rock Worship Center.

Prior to the clash with Erlich, Christie seemed to appease charter-school foes, in part by expressing support for legislation that would require local approval for such schools. Christie said he hopes legislators will give him a reform bill within the next six months.

“My belief is that we should be focusing on charter schools in failing school districts,” Christie said.

“I do not believe that charter schools are best suited in districts, in general, that are successful districts,” he said to loud applause.

“I believe my feelings are very clear to the commissioner,” Christie responded when pressed by a Voorhees woman as to why he hasn’t put more pressure on Commissioner of Education Chris Cerf to stop the approvals of charter schools in successful dsitricts like Cherry Hill and Voorhees.

“I’ve been very direct to the commissioner. He’s got the message. Trust me that I will aggressively purse the (reform) bill and that will make things a lot easier.

“I have no interest,” Christie added, “in making the lives of parents, school board members and administrators in successful districts that are turning out college- and career-ready kids more complicated.”

Cherry Hill Councilwoman Melinda Kane said she was disappointed that “things got ugly.

“I certainly felt the frustrations of the Cherry Hill and Voorhees residents about (Regis Academy). And I wish (Christie) would have had a better way of dealing with the people’s anger,” Kane said.

“That left me with a bad feeling,” she said of the angry exchange. “But I understand the people are frustrated.”

Stephanie Jacovini, a Regis Academy critic from Voorhees, said residents are upset with the planned school. “But I think (Erlich) was out of line. There were quite a few questions about the charter school asked and answered. We’re all feeling angry, but the way he just blurted out in the middle of the governor answering a question was unprofessional.

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.

Gov. Chris Christie has declared war on the public school system and the teachers who work there.

First, he started his propaganda that the teachers were responsible for the economic crisis in the state. As absurd as this is, many people chose to believe it. Why? Because when things get complicated and scary, people want to find an easy target for all of their angst, anger and hardship.

The governor was eager to offer up the teachers as this target. He cut school aid and proclaimed that these cuts would not result in any loss of teaching jobs, nor affect the quality of education.

These claims were patently absurd, yet many believed. The laying off of teachers began immediately, and many students suffered a decline in their educational programs.

The governor declares that teachers are responsible for poor academic performance. This is also absurd.

It is not a coincidence that the majority of failing schools are in inner cities and/or economically deprived areas. If only teachers could cure all the ills of society — addiction, crumbling infrastructure, crime, poverty, families in crisis — they surely would.

Despite the research to the contrary, the governor has declared charter schools to be the answer. Beware the red herring. The vilification of teachers serves to keep the public from asking the real questions and demanding answers.

What happens to the millions in lottery sales? The economic crisis in this state was caused by the downturn in the economy and the failure of government to be good stewards. We have failed cities — look at Camden. Who will he blame for that?

We need to get past the rhetoric and start dealing with the real issues in this state. We need to demand accountability, honesty and transparency in government.

Rosemary Richards

Little Silver

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.

New Jersey is about to take a giant step toward opening public schools to profit-making management companies, and the effort has a most unlikely supporter — the New Jersey Education Association.

In a move that displays either its weakness or cynicism — or both — the state’s largest teachers’ union has joined forces with archenemy Gov. Chris Christie and the powerful Camden County Democratic machine of George Norcross to endorse the “Urban Hope Act,” which would allow private companies to build and manage public schools using taxpayer money.

“We have always supported public school choice,’’ said Ginger Gold Schnitzer, the NJEA’s chief lobbyist.

Schnitzer’s words sharply contrast with previous comments from union leaders who condemned the same bill the organization now endorses. In June, for example, NJEA President Barbara Keshishian released a statement that read:

“The proposal is nothing more than an attempt to walk away from the state’s obligation to provide a thorough and efficient education to every student by handing over our students and our tax dollars to private companies.”

The union’s reversal of position came after the bill was amended to guarantee bargaining and tenure rights for teachers in privately managed schools — as many as 12 so-called “renaissance schools” slated for Newark, Camden and Trenton.

But the NJEA endorsed the proposed law while it still contained a provision that would require direct public financing of the construction of schools managed by private firms along with an exemption from competitive bidding laws.

That part of the law was excised — the companies will have to find private financing for constructing their schools, but they will be able to pay back those loans with school aid, public money. They still will not have to comply with bidding laws and the private firms will have access to publicly-purchased land, including an $11 million tract in Camden that George Norcross has sought in the past for a charter school.

“We’re not experts on the intricacies of bond financing,” Schnitzer said. “We’re concerned with education and the rights of our members. Once those concerns were met, we felt we could support the legislation.’’

The union’s flip-flop shatters the unity of a coalition that has consistently opposed the Christie administration’s efforts to bring privatization to public education. It left spokesmen for some of those groups literally speechless.

“You have to ask the union about that,’’ said David Sciarra, executive director of the Education Law Center. Sciarra continues to oppose the bill, likely to be passed today, the last day of the legislative session. The law center is financially supported by the NJEA.

“It was an NJEA deal,’’ said Joseph Del Grosso, president of the Newark Teachers Union, an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO (AFT). “They blatantly sold Newark out.’’

The NJEA does not represent Newark teachers, although it does represent Camden and Trenton instructors. Of the three districts in the bill, only Newark, a state-run system, does not have local control. The bill requires local school boards to investigate the private organizations seeking to start “renaissance” schools.

“Those are important checks and balances,” Del Grosso said. “Newark won’t have them.”

Privately, union allies say it had no choice but to support the bill. They say the union hopes its collaboration with the Camden County machine might forestall legislative action on Christie proposals the NJEA fears more than it does private management of public schools — private school vouchers and tenure reform.

“The passage of the Urban Hope Act certainly will remove the logic behind the argument for vouchers,’’ Schnitzer said. She denied reaching a quid pro quo for the union’s support of the Norcross bill.

Del Grosso called the imminent passage of the bill “demoralizing,” and added:

“Renaissance schools will be owned and operated by corporations and hedge funds and individuals whose prime objective is profit that will come at the expense of Newark’s children.”

NEW BRUNSWICK — A scholar who studies and blogs about education finance says improving the state’s urban schools will take more money — and that merit pay is not likely to help.

Bruce Baker, an associate professor at the Rutgers University Graduate School of Education, spoke with The Associated Press for an occasional series of interviews on public education reform in New Jersey.

Baker’s work is more often cited by those skeptical about the so-called reform movement in education. He’s skeptical about whether students’ standardized test scores should be incorporated into decisions about which teachers should be laid off and which should make more money. Those are among ideas promoted by President Obama, Gov. Chris Christie and New Jersey Acting Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf.

Baker, a former middle-school science teacher and tennis coach, has done research funded in part by teachers unions. But he’s also quick to point out that he once did consulting work for Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination and is a critic of teachers unions.

AP: What’s the state of New Jersey’s public education system?

Baker: It’s strong. It’s strong for some reasons within its control and it’s strong for other reasons that are just the luck of being geographically where it is and having an affluent, educated population.

Part of what’s made it strong is the state has put financial effort into its schools. The state has — through a back-and-forth between the Legislature, governor and courts over time — targeted resources to high-poverty areas, established one of the strongest preschool programs in the country and has made strides in high-poverty settings that are well beyond what other states have done.

AP: If you look internationally?

Baker: The international comparisons on tests are difficult to make. New Jersey and Massachusetts and Vermont, for example, would tend to compare favorably with Singapore and Finland.

AP. What needs to be reformed about New Jersey’s education system? What are its biggest problems?

Baker: From a research angle, if you looked at the high-performing and the low-performing schools and you asked yourself what’s different about them, well, our highest-performing schools also have step-structured pay scales, collective bargained agreements, tenure, union contracts as do our low-performing schools. That’s not a differentiating factor. The personnel factors aren’t hugely different.

When we look at the charter schools that are high-performing, the charter schools tend to be structured.

These things that we’re talking about like merit pay, disrupting union contracts and collective bargaining don’t tend to be the things that the high-performing schools are doing.

Any system ought to be looking at ways to increase efficiency — making it desirable for the best teachers on the labor market to want to go into Newark, Camden or Jersey City, solving that teacher quality inequity problem. But making their pay based on test scores is probably more likely to do the opposite.

AP: Is the biggest problem the difference between the high-performing schools and the low-performing urban schools?

Baker: We have concentrated poverty, concentrated minority populations, very highly concentrated in certain areas. The costs of getting good outcomes in a high-poverty, high-minority world … is very high. … Because when you’ve got 80 to 90 percent of your kids low-income, large shares of your kids non-English-speaking, kids from homeless families. To raise the outcomes in that kind of setting requires substantial investment in early-childhood, substantial investment in class-size reduction — kind of layering on all of the possible strategies to make things work.

The alternative is if you can actually break up concentrated poverty and have kids more integrated and better mixed across settings, you can reduce the costs of getting to the same outcomes. But typically what you find in the political dynamic is that people are much more willing to pay the price of extreme segregation than to actually move forward on desegregation.

AP. Why is it we’re so interested in using test data?

Baker: It’s what we’ve got. I certainly don’t want to get rid of it entirely. It’s all how you use the information. Testing data can be a useful tool for what I would refer to as system monitoring.

We ought to be giving these tests for a reason other than giving the tests and saying because they are tests, they therefore are an accountability measure. A lot of people are doing it. New Jersey’s not alone on that one.

I understand this obsession — that we’ve got to have something firm, we’ve got to have something quantitative that we can base these teacher ratings on. I think we’re also kidding ourselves when we say education is the only industry that doesn’t do this. … If there are productivity metrics in different settings, they’re often dealing with raw quantity of production, which would be more similar to number of sections taught or number of students taught.

AP: To hear Gov. Christie or Acting Commissioner Cerf talk about the state of the schools, it often sounds like, “if only the teachers were better,” to hear NJEA officials talk about it, it sounds like they’re saving, “Teachers are doing all they can. The problems are not our fault.” The truth lies somewhere in the middle of that range, right?

Baker: It’s certainly hard to distill that second one. It’s certainly, I don’t think, an effective form of messaging. I think any organization of teachers … has to be viewing themselves as possibly having an effect. I do think the message comes out that way. I think that’s problematic.

If you look at the biggest differences between the schools that are doing well and the schools that are doing poorly, there may be differences in teaching quality. There may be differences in skill-set of the teachers who are sorting themselves among the more and less desirable schools. We have evidence from a number of years of studies of teacher labor-market behaviors in disadvantaged, high-needs, high-minority, high-poverty settings. Teachers will avoid those settings to begin with and they’ll leave those settings when they can.

It may be that we’ve got some inequities in teaching quality. But to suggest that those inequities are a function of not having merit pay or they’re a function of having collective bargaining and a union presence doesn’t seem to fit when those structures also exist in the highly successful and affluent districts.

AP: If you were czar of New Jersey, what would you do to improve the school system?

Baker: I think we’ve got to keep up the effort of targeting resources toward the high-need districts, and the key is that equitable and adequate funding — and this is my big punch-line — is the necessary condition for everything. If you want to run a good charter school, if you want to run a good public school, you’ve got to have enough money to do a good job.

AP: These sound like ideas that are more likely than to lower taxes

Baker: We could take the money we have in the state aid as it is and target it more aggressively. Many towns that lost state aid would raise their property taxes more as they do and seem willing to do invariably anyway. … They’re willing to vote more taxes on themselves and maybe complain about perhaps it the next day.

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Follow Mulvihill at http://www.twitter.com/geoffmulvihill

One in a periodic series on efforts to remake New Jersey’s education system.

Acting Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf recently reiterated his desire to be able to act more quickly to close or restructure failing schools.

We could be on board with that — if we had any confidence that our state government can, with any credibility, identify truly failing schools. But we don’t. Instead of trying hard to make those determinations in a fair, meaningful fashion, the Gov. Chris Christie administration appears focused on validating its own claims about teachers union excesses and their impact on education.

Most of all, the would-be “reformers” continue to downplay the root problem in schools with substantial numbers of failing students: poverty. Most schools “fail” not because of what does or doesn’t happen within the classroom but because a community fails its children. Urban youths from troubled, broken families with poor nutrition and little if any parental support walk through school doors every day at a distinct disadvantage compared to most suburban students. Even the very best teachers can only do so much to compensate for those shortcomings.

Fighting poverty is extraordinarily hard work, however. So instead, our leaders keep pretending that the disparities in student performance can be corrected by “fixing” the schools.

What New Jersey — and the entire nation — truly needs is a far more comprehensive understanding of the vast differences among students outside the school setting, and how those differences carry over into the classroom. Performance expectations should then be adjusted accordingly. Recounting lists of test scores or graduation rates at a particular school tells us little about the quality of that school or its teachers without the necessary context.

Some schools do fail, of course. But most New Jersey schools are succeeding. And some of the best may well be hidden in our urban districts, obscured by low raw performance numbers that don’t begin to reflect the burdens that have been overcome to reach even those levels.

There is plenty of room for change and experimentation. Charter schools, for instance, have their place in struggling urban districts, in hopes of developing educational models that may be more effective with certain types of students who are not succeeding under the current system. Some schools are so poorly run, their available resources mismanaged so egregiously, that state intervention is indeed necessary — and the sooner the better.

But Christie’s educators don’t have all the answers in large part because they don’t want to ask the right questions. It is much easier to blame teachers and schools than to address the more daunting specter of the underlying poverty that plays a far bigger role than schools in influencing student achievement.

New Jersey’s chief of schools says the state should be quicker to reconfigure or close failing institutions.

Acting Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf tells The Associated Press that would be one of his top priorities if he had free rein to modify the state’s education system.

Cerf says data show that New Jersey has one of the nation’s top public school systems — but that low-income students do relatively poorly. And he says the gap is bigger than in most states.

He says the New Jersey Education Association does not seem serious enough about addressing that gap. That’s the state’s main teachers union.

Cerf says the goal of the education system should be to give every student an equal opportunity “regardless of birth circumstances.”

One in a periodic series on efforts to remake New Jersey’s education system.

Would streamline firing steps; expand preschool, kindergarten

TRENTON — The state’s largest teachers union said Monday it would support a streamlined process to fire ineffective tenured teachers, but it also unveiled a package of proposals that would require a considerable increase in funding for public schools.

In addition to revamped tenure rules, the New Jersey Education Association called for an increase in preschool programs and full-day kindergarten, smaller class sizes for elementary schools, and new state grants to pay for parental involvement initiatives.

The package comes as state officials have signaled that education reform measures would move through the Legislature this fall. The NJEA lost a key battle over pension and benefit reform legislation in June and is looking to regroup on tenure reform, charter schools and school voucher bills.

Lynne Strickland, director of the Garden State Coalition of Schools, which lobbies for suburban school districts, said she was doubtful the NJEA package would be received enthusiastically while money remains tight.

“It’s positive that they’re talking education issues at the top of the agenda,” Strickland said, and then added: “You’re talking billions of dollars. There are a lot of big ideas. Will there be enough money to support some of them?”

Steve Baker, a spokesman for the NJEA, said the proposals reflect what educational research shows is effective for student learning. The union did not develop a cost estimate for the programs, he added.

“We’re making the argument that, if you’re going to talk about education reform, let us look at the things that are demonstrated to be effective,” Baker said. “If you want to talk about what’s best for students, what will help student outcomes, these are the things you should be pursuing.”

Baker said it would be up to the Legislature to prioritize funding for the programs.

In its package, the NJEA said:

Cases against tenured teachers should be judged by an arbitrator and decided quickly under shortened timelines for preparing, hearing and ruling on the cases. State officials have long said that current rules make it practically impossible to fire bad teachers.

Nontenured teachers should be evaluated four times a year, while tenured teachers should be reviewed twice. Tenured teachers rated ineffective who are unable or unwilling to improve could be fired.

All school districts should have full-day kindergarten and many more should offer preschool classes, which is similar to earlier proposals by former Democratic Gov. Jon S. Corzine.

School districts should receive state grants for parental involvement programs, and the state should pass a law that would require businesses to grant up to 24 hours of unpaid leave to workers so parents can attend school functions.

The NJEA has battled publicly with Gov. Chris Christie’s administration since the Republican took office in January 2010. Citing falling tax revenues, Christie exhorted the teachers to voluntarily take a pay freeze that year, which the union refused.

Then this spring, Christie and state Democratic legislative leaders pushed through changes to pensions and benefits. The NJEA, along with other unions, fought the measures every step of way.

This fall, the NJEA has limited its considerable campaign contributions to only staunch allies in the Legislature. At the same time, however, top leadership has conducted a series of private meetings with South Jersey Democratic power broker George E. Norcross III and Christie’s acting education commissioner, Christopher Cerf.

Christie and Cerf seek to put in place a system that would force teachers to remain effective in order to retain tenure, as well as a faster procedure for firing bad ones. Cerf is scheduled to talk to teachers at their annual convention in Atlantic City this Friday.

Christie spokesman Michael Drewniak said Monday that the NJEA’s effort was not comprehensive enough.

“While it is good to see the NJEA moving in the right direction, and basically admitting that change is coming, its proposals are, once again, far too weak and do not represent true reform,” Drewniak said.

The administration wants to expand the number of charter schools and pass a limited school voucher program. The administration is testing teacher evaluation programs in 11 districts. State Sen. Teresa Ruiz, D-Essex, also has introduced another tenure reform bill.

In a statement Monday, the New Jersey School Boards Association said it backed the concept of renewable tenure, and said tenure should not be construed as lifetime job protection. The association said the education commissioner should have the authority to decide tenure dismissal cases.

New Jersey’s bid to waive the requirements of a federal education law includes proposals to reward high-performing schools and force low-performing ones to remove ineffective teachers, according to a draft of the state’s application.

The “No Child Left Behind” law requires all public school students to demonstrate proficiency in math and reading by 2014, but it would be nearly impossible for New Jersey to comply — 55 percent of the state’s public schools have students who do not meet that standard, test data show.

In seeking the waiver from 100 percent compliance, the state’s application proposes a new system for public school accountability that would group schools into three tiers based on students’ performance on standardized tests. The federal law deems any school not in compliance as failing, a penalty that could result in withheld funds after the 2014 deadline.

According to the state’s application, the 5 percent of schools with the lowest test scores would be deemed “priority.” Another group with low graduation rates or wide achievement gaps would be considered “focus.” The state’s best schools would be called “reward.”

Acting Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf said the proposed accountability system would support struggling schools and offer credit for progress toward the “flawed” federal law’s goal of having all students demonstrate proficiency in math and reading.

“There is no one-size-fits-all approach to school improvement, which is why we must focus our resources and most significant interventions on those schools with a longstanding history of low performance,” Cerf said.

The Department of Education released a draft Thursday of the state’s waiver application to seek public comment on the proposals. Comments must be submitted through the department’s website by Nov. 9.

Under the application, “priority” schools could be forced to fire their principals, remove ineffective teachers and extend the school day to boost achievement. “Reward” schools would be given financial bonuses.

The application notes swift passage of Gov. Chris Christie’s education reform bills would make it easier to implement the state’s proposals. Legislation the governor supports includes overhauling teacher tenure, offering bonuses to the best teachers and expanding access to charter schools.

Changing state law would make the application’s proposals more effective, a Department of Education spokesman said.

Martha DeBlieu, a research director for the New Jersey Education Association, the state’s largest teacher’s union, said the application is not an appropriate venue to advocate for legislative proposals the union does not support.

By Jessica Calefati/The Star-Ledger The Star-Ledger

They’re among the best, but they have a long way to go.

Fourth- and eighth-graders in New Jersey ranked near the top in the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests in math and reading, posting the second-highest reading scores in both grade levels, according to data released today.

The state’s fourth-graders ranked fourth nationally in math — up from fifth in 2009 — while eighth-graders got the third-highest scores, up from fifth two years ago.

Massachusetts students posted the highest scores in all four areas.

But results of the NAEP assessments, often nicknamed the “Nation’s Report Card,” also showed fewer than 40 percent of students nationwide were “proficient” in all of the categories tested.

New Jersey fared somewhat better, with 43 percent of fourth-graders and 45 percent of eighth-graders scoring proficient or better in reading. In math, 51 percent of fourth-graders and 47 percent of eighth-graders were proficient or better.

NAEP defines proficient as “solid academic performance” and “competency over challenging subject matter.”

“Being basic isn’t good enough,” Newark School Superintendent Cami Anderson said. “The NAEP is sort of the gold standard. It’s the best thing we have to measure true proficiency.

“We want highly proficient,” she said. “Obviously, we need to make leaps.”

The NAEP tests were administered between January and March this year to a representative sample of about 200,000 fourth graders and 170,000 eighth-graders across the country. In New Jersey, that included 3,100 fourth-graders and 2,500 eighth-graders.

The tests — which are scored from 0 to 500 — are the only nationally representative assessments given.

Nationally, the results showed an upward trend in math for both fourth and eighth graders, with a one point increase in overall scores since 2009, when the tests were last given. In reading, however, fourth-grade scores remained unchanged from 2009. Eighth grade reading scores went up by a point from two years ago.

The results also offered a few tidbits that help student performance. Among them: Fourth-graders who read for fun almost every day scored higher in reading.

The national results also showed the size of the ‘achievement gap” between wealthy and poor students, or between students of different races. In New Jersey, the results showed an “achievement gap” between wealthy and poor students that is among the highest in the country.

New Jersey Acting Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf praised the state’s “significant achievement” on the exams, but also said much work needs to be done to help lowest-performing students.

“We must find the right balance between celebrating our successes and a sense of urgency to improve,” he said.

David Sciarra, executive director of the Newark-based Education Law Center, also noted the nagging achievement gap “reflecting the growing inequality in our state.

“The challenge now is to work together on proven efforts that will improve and strengthen NJ’s public schools for all of our students,” he said.

Anderson, the Newark superintendent, said she believes there is “hope” of improving.

“There are schools all over the country, hundreds of schools where 90 percent of students receive free or reduced-price lunch, and 90 percent are going math and reading at proficiency,” she said. “There are core things they do very well. And I find that very hopeful.”

The math and reading results are available at http://nationsreportcard.gov.

By Jeanette Rundquist/The Star-Ledger The Star-Ledger

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 — Throwing down another challenge to the state’s education establishment to embrace reform, Gov. Chris Christie unveiled a task force report Thursday that called for rigorous teacher and principal evaluations based in large part on student performance on standardized tests.

The recommendations of the New Jersey Educator Effectiveness Task Force, headed by North Brunswick Schools Superintendent Brian Zychowsky, include creating evaluations that would be based entirely on student learning — with test scores being a vital part of that. Four grades would exist for teachers and principals: highly effective, effective, partially effective and ineffective.

The recommendations, Christie said, “will help to improve education for all the kids in New Jersey.”

Standing between Zychowsky and acting Commissioner of Education Christopher D. Cerf, Christie repeatedly said the effort was designed to help make good teachers better, and allow excellent teachers to continue to excel.

Zychowsky praised Christie for setting the tone for an aggressive look at teacher effectiveness.

“Your bold initiatives have really allowed us to get into much needed and long overdue conversations about improving the quality of teaching and learning, and how we measure effectiveness and the importance of that effectiveness relative to the growth of the student,” Zychowsky said to the governor.

In addition to Zychowsky, the task force included current and retired teachers, a PTA member from Lacey Township, education reform advocates and a number of academics.

The New Jersey Education Association reacted Wednesday to the anticipated release of the report, saying that research showed test scores were not reliable enough to form a basis for teacher evaluations.

“We believe student test scores have a place in the evaluation process,” NJEA President Barbara Keshishian said in a release Wednesday from the union, “but we also agree with highly regarded researchers that they should not play a determining role in high-stakes personnel decisions.”

The governor and Cerf both criticized the NJEA for reacting to the report before it was released. But union officials rejected that criticism, saying the effort to tie test scores with teacher evaluations was well known before Thursday.

“His executive order. . .stipulates that at least 50 percent of evaluations would be based on test scores,” said Steve Wollmer, NJEA communications director. “Everyone’s known that for months. It’s not like that’s been a state secret. And we knew (the task force report) was coming out this week, so that’s why we issued our report yesterday.”

Cerf also dismissed complaints about the means proposed for teacher evaluations, and said it was past time for doing nothing.

“Any intelligent, responsible observer of teacher evaluation systems today will have to conclude that they’re badly broken,” he said.

“No accountability or evaluation system is perfect,” Cerf added. “But only in public education do we go that “because we can’t get it right to the thousandth degree, we ought not to do it at all.’ And that is, in effect, what we have been doing as a nation and in this state.”

Wollmer said: “That is not our position. We’ve even gone so far as to say that there is a place in the evaluation process for using student test scores, just not the deciding percentage.”

While Cerf criticized the teachers union in nearly academic terms, Christie heaped on the vitriol.

“These people are a joke,” Christie said of the union leadership. “Barbara Keshishian and the executive director (Vincent E. Giordano) over there are a joke, and they’re an expensive joke.”

He later referred to Keshishian as “Miss $265,000-a-year,” a remark about the union president’s salary.

Those comments drew an impassioned response from Wollmer.

“There is no lie that this governor won’t tell about NJEA. We’ve come to accept that,” Wollmer said. “And now he’s calling our leadership names. That is the last refuge of the totally clueless. If you’ve got no other ideas, start calling people names.

“What an insult — not very gubernatorial and certainly not very presidential,” Wollmer said, referring to speculation by some political observers that Christie should run for the nation’s top job.

Christie also said again that he would not meet with the union leadership until a Bergen County union official who sent an e-mail to fellow union members jokingly wishing for the governor’s death was fired. Wollmer said Keshishian, who apologized to Christie about the incident, could not fire the Bergen official.

The majority of the evaluation would focus on the “teacher’s contribution to his/her students’ progress on a statewide assessment,” according to a prepared release from the governor’s office. Smaller portions would hinge on a state-approved student performance measure. There would be an optional area in the process for quantifying performance.

The governor said he would work with the Legislature on making the proposals law, but he also said he would authorize Cerf to use regulatory powers where possible to forward the reform agenda. The reforms would be phased in over a number of years, Christie said, but he stressed the need to begin implementing them now, adding that a pilot program could be ready by the fall.

Christie cited records that show only 17 teachers were fired because of competence issues in the past 10 years as evidence that poor teachers are being protected by the current system. The NJEA disputes those figures, saying scores of teachers every year leave the profession rather than face scrutiny of their competency.

Cerf indicated that there needs to be a way to distinguish the top performers from those who are not adequate.

“Teachers are extraordinary professionals,” he said, “but they are not interchangeable commodities.”

While a good portion of the news conference was given over to criticism of what Christie said is union intransigence, Cerf sought at one point to sound a conciliatory note:

The proposed teacher evaluation process, he said, “is not an effort to root out or find or pick on those very distinct minorities of teachers who are really not up to the job. It should not be threatening. It should be a contribution to the professional discourse about teachers.”

Christie also said again that he would not meet with the union leadership until a Bergen County union official who sent an e-mail to fellow union members jokingly wishing for the governor’s death was fired. Wollmer said Keshishian, who apologized to Christie about the incident, could not fire the Bergen official.

The majority of the evaluation would focus on the “teacher’s contribution to his/her students’ progress on a statewide assessment,” according to a prepared release from the governor’s office. Smaller portions would hinge on a state-approved student performance measure. There would be an optional area in the process for quantifying performance.

The governor said he would work with the Legislature on making the proposals law, but he also said he would authorize Cerf to use regulatory powers where possible to forward the reform agenda. The reforms would be phased in over a number of years, Christie said, but he stressed the need to begin implementing them now, adding that a pilot program could be ready by the fall.

Christie cited records that show only 17 teachers were fired because of competence issues in the past 10 years as evidence that poor teachers are being protected by the current system. The NJEA disputes those figures, saying scores of teachers every year leave the profession rather than face scrutiny of their competency.

Cerf indicated that there needs to be a way to distinguish the top performers from those who are not adequate.

“Teachers are extraordinary professionals,” he said, “but they are not interchangeable commodities.”

While a good portion of the news conference was given over to criticism of what Christie said is union intransigence, Cerf sought at one point to sound a conciliatory note:

The proposed teacher evaluation process, he said, “is not an effort to root out or find or pick on those very distinct minorities of teachers who are really not up to the job. It should not be threatening. It should be a contribution to the professional discourse about teachers.”

ANALYSIS OF RTTT PROPOSAL
Based upon the discussion at that meeting, NJEA leadership’s discussions with NJ DOE staff, and review of New Jersey’s grant application, NJEA believes the grant application is severely flawed and that it contains numerous objectionable provisions as it now stands.

Among the provisions causing the greatest concern are those which would tie teacher evaluation, compensation, and tenure to student test scores.

In addition, it appears that the application would commit New Jersey to a massive expansion of its standardized testing program and a significant increase in the educational bureaucracy.

Finally, the provisions dealing with merit pay, evaluation, and length of school day/year have significant collective bargaining implications for local associations.

Based on our assessment of the proposal as it now stands, we are advising our local associations NOT to sign the memorandum of understanding because it includes merit pay, pay for performance, and/or the utilization of student test scores for teacher evaluation.

NEXT STEPS
The Department of Education has created a Memorandum of Understanding and is asking each district to obtain signatures from the superintendent, the president of the board of education, and the local association president.

On the form, it reads that the signatures are required. Please be advised you are not required to sign this form and be aware that your signature on the form would commit your local association to support all of the items included in the state’s RTTT application.

TO DO
If your district is applying for a Phase 1 RTTT grant, we strongly urge you to contact your UniServ representative for more information and for an in-depth discussion of the potential negative impact on your members and your district.