Education Reform Proposals For Teachers Blocked, State Sees Education Funding Increase

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie announced last week that all school districts in the state will see at least a 2 percent increase in operating budgets. This signals an overall $850 million in state education funding, The Inquirer reports.

The announcement comes more than one year after the state saw some of the largest educational funding cuts in history.

It also comes a day after Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester) blocked two of Christie's education reform proposals from being introduced as bills. The governor suggests adjusting teacher tenure and evaluations by ridding the state of teacher seniority protections and linking teacher salaries to performance.

"I've never been a fan of merit pay. I don't believe in it," Sweeney told the Associated Press. "Sometimes when you have merit pay, you have the ability to have favorites. A real hard teacher gets less money than another teacher because he or she is not the favorite."

Sweeney and Christie have, for a while, butted heads on many issues, and The Star Ledger reports that Sweeney essentially has veto power over Christie and can block any bill from reaching the Senate floor. In a Star-Ledger interview last week, Sweeney called Christie a "rotten prick."

Although Sweeney supports some of Christie's tenure reform proposals, the senator and other critics say seniority protections keep districts from laying off older teachers just to save on retirement costs, the AP reports.

Comments

[Khurram Baig]

03:36 AM on 08/12/2011

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[mlaiuppa]

12:44 PM on 07/15/2011

Didn't a judge slap Christie for cutting education funding?

[dmessy]

12:35 AM on 07/15/2011

i'm sure favoritism will play a role sometimes -- but what is the alternative -- pay a teacher for just showing up and doing a lousy job?

[banzaimaur]

07:21 AM on 07/14/2011

A couple of things. I have always believed that other than a parent the next most important person(s) in a child's life is/are the teachers they meet along the way to adulthood. No one else has a greater impact, or lack of one, than the educator. (No, I'm not a teacher, never have been one nor could I (probably) be one). Being a teacher has all too often become a thankless, and unsupported/unbacked job.

[banzaimaur]

07:26 AM on 07/14/2011

Secondly, and yes, it's a controversial position, I've never completely understood or agreed with the concept of "No child left behind." If a group is marching toward a particular destination (valid graduation) but the leader has to stop repeatedly to gather up the intentional stragglers the group may never reach their goal. True, there are children that are "unintentional" stragglers, those with learning disabilities or other problems beyond their control but they should be recognized and dealt with in a separate manner and not "main-streamed" simply because their self esteem is in jeopardy. When a teacher has to take the limited amount of time they have to educate to address disruption the whole class suffers. The teacher should be given the power to eject the class clown without having to go through an inquisition later. Three strikes and Bozo (or the Incredible Hulk, etc.) gets sent to an alternative learning situation. It would not take long for the message to get out and a higher degree of decorum AND learning would return to the classroom.

I know (and apologize for) there are a lot of stories relative to "When I was a kid........" but, when I was a kid the teachers ruled the classroom, the principal backed them up and I knew that if I got in trouble during the school day I would pay and even greater price when I got home.

[banzaimaur]

07:27 AM on 07/14/2011

If they "straggle"......leave them behind and to their own devices. The group will reach their destination/goal much better prepared and eventually the stragglers will diminish. It's time to take the (kid) gloves off. What we've been doing isn't working.

Give the teachers the control they need and you won't have to talk about merit pay.

[Snookhookr]

01:31 AM on 07/14/2011

A state employee being paid on the quality of their performance. Whoda thunkit?
And the Democrats are against this, why?

[perlin]

08:45 PM on 07/13/2011

-NJ public schools students have the best AP scores in the nation.

-National Merit requires NJ public schools students to have the 2nd highest score in the nation to qualify for scholarships because our average scores are consistently among the top.

-92% of our public schools are graded against one of the strictest criteria in the nation and deemed successful. The 8% that aren't are located in low-income urban areas where schools across the country and throughout the world struggle.

-NJ public school students consistently rank in the Top 5 in the nation on NAEP tests (same test given nationwide) regardless of the grade or subject area tested (which also includes areas such as Science and Social Studies, not just English and Math).

[cbaker2692]

08:25 PM on 07/13/2011

The day Teachers can stop being a damn baby sitter, afraid of being sued or assaulted by students or thier parents and a principle and school board back them up then the education system in this country will come back to what it once was and not before. Here in Texas a school district actually tried to intoduce a policy that no kid would fail, take the test as many times as needed to pass, turn in home work when the student felt like it. The reason, didn't want to hurt the students Self Esteem. The teachers actually had to take this nonsense to court to get it stopped. Did the school district figure out how to save the students self esteem when they left and got jobs where you know a boss could care less about that then getting the job done? That was never brought up

[Dorothy Moody]

11:55 PM on 07/14/2011

Self-esteem is built and earned, not given. Good points!!!

[YunekFlava]

08:14 PM on 07/13/2011

What happened to the 100.million dollars pledged by Facebook's Zuckerberg? Remember when Tubbs vowed to turn the city's failing school system in a national model of excellence, while he was on Oprah Winfrey?
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iHVRn-pDeAyNbxC_FY6hQUjkIb1A

[heymjo]

06:48 PM on 07/13/2011

I keep posting this and will continue to do so until I've broken all of you who think teachers are at fault for the failure of our education system read it. I have posted the link to this article on others boards, so for those who have not seen it, please read it and pass it along. It has to do with the Grand Coalition against teachers. It is compelling reading and quite accurate:

http://dis­sentmagazi­ne.org/onl­ine.php?id­=504

[Consequence]

04:16 PM on 07/13/2011

Retention based on seniority and not qualification?


No wonder the Unions are a dying dinosaur.

[broui]

06:16 PM on 07/13/2011

Please define a "quality" teacher. How would you measure one in such a way that the process is resonably fair and unbiased?

[sokkrkid710]

12:21 PM on 07/15/2011

Read the article posted by heymjo, it addresses this point

[Hlynn]

08:55 PM on 07/13/2011

Being a good teacher and being a teacher with seniority are not mutually exclusive. What is this obsession for youth and inexperience in teachers all of a sudden?

[DMure]

03:27 PM on 07/13/2011

is that a Walrus?

[Snookhookr]

01:34 AM on 07/14/2011

Thank for your input, Mr. Alynski.

[heymjo]

03:07 PM on 07/13/2011

Ridding seniority protection is wholesale slaughter of experienced teachers. Rather than putting money into education where it belongs, budgets can be cut and the experienced teacher will get cut, not because he/she is under-performing but because it saves money (once again at the expense of the kids). When you pick a doctor, or lawyer, or dentist or plumber or electrician, what is one of your first criteria? How much experience does he/she have! Yet when it comes to teaching, we want young, dynamic, creative teachers, as if experienced teachers can't be creative and dynamic. There is also something to be said for traditional methods of teaching. Look at how many programs get introduced and are then eliminated within a few years because they don't work. (Did I hear someone say NCLB and standardized testing to measure teachers?) Yes,t here are many young excellent teachers, but when you consider the additional hours for no pay a teacher puts in, is this how you repay him? And once this becomes the practice, how many people will go into teaching knowing that their lifespan in education may be only 10 years and then eliminated for a younger person?

[keraz]

03:20 PM on 07/13/2011

I understand your position but how do you deal with a teacher who has tenure and simply tells her students to spend the class reading the chapter and then asking her if they have any questions? What do you do about teachers in districts where the graduation rate is 23% or lower? These same districts continue to get more and more money each and every year and yet the performance of many of these districts stays the same or declines.

[FreireTeacher]

04:49 PM on 07/13/2011

Tenure does not mean a teacher can never be removed from a classroom. It means that they are entitled to due process and a procedure outlined by the local school district. People get hung up on this tenure scenario of a lazy and complacent older teacher. For starters, I would argue that these cases are rare. Secondly, if an administrator was doing their job, then this teacher would be identified and a process to remove the teacher would begin. Tenured teachers who put their feet up and don't teach CAN be fired...there's simply a lack of will in most administrations/school bureaucracies to do this. But it can be done.

As far as chronic underpermance goes... the reasons stretch far beyond the teachers in the classroom. We haven't figured out how to education impoverished children yet and we believe that teaching them with the same pedagogy/culture of affluent districts is the answer. I don't believe it is. Address poverty and we address the chronic underperformance.

[perlin]

07:54 PM on 07/13/2011

It shows that you have no idea how the classrooms are these days . Try to ask the kids to read quietly for more than 10 minutes and you will a mayhem in 5 minutes. In this day and age our sweet kids keep the teachers on her toes all the time. The teacher must keep them engaged every second, otherwise the teacher would be eaten alive.
Kids are not docile creatures anymore. LOL

[Snookhookr]

01:38 AM on 07/14/2011

Hey, I know!
Let's get rid of teacher's unions and tenure and put the well being of the child and their education first.

[charterteacher84]

03:00 PM on 07/13/2011

I think if merit pay is attached to various observations and write-ups by school and department heads throughout a school year and the GROWTH of student learning is assessed, it can be a great way to reward teachers who are doing an upstanding job. The observations and write-ups can also aid in identifying others who may need more help in specific areas such as classroom management, effective reading strategies to use, etc, and then getting those teachers help in those areas of concern... I feel like there are so many people afraid of standing out from their fellow teachers, if you are doing your job, and doing it well, why be opposed to being recognized for that with merit pay?

[FreireTeacher]

10:38 PM on 07/13/2011

I think many teachers would prefer autonomy and more resources as a reward rather than a salary bonus. Plus, in what fairy tale world do you see merit pay being attached to all the things you describe? Policy on measuring student achievement is still heavily grounded in standardized test data...that's why so many teachers oppose it--that and the underlying assumption of the idea itself--that teachers need an added incentive to actually do their jobs well. It's insulting. It's not about actually helping teachers and students either. Both of these contentions are supported by contemporary research.(see Vanderbilt's study on merit pay: teachers receiving achievement based bonus incentives were no more effective than teachers who were not).

No teacher is opposed to recognition, but too often the only time a teacher is recognized is when they boost student test scores. What a joke! T

[Dorothy Moody]

12:14 AM on 07/15/2011

When I start my education revolution, I'm recruiting you. Be ready. :)

[heymjo]

02:55 PM on 07/13/2011

The problem with merit pay, aside from what Sweeny accurately described, is that the subtext of merit pay implies that teachers don't work hard enough. If we give them the incentive of more pay, they will somehow pull a rabbit out of the hat and improve the kids' achievements. Yes, there are lazy teachers in the system, but all teachers I know work to the best of their ability to produce results. Paying them more is no magic bullet. Additionally, none of this takes into account the role of parents in how well or poorly kids do. Further, how do you determine merit for an arts teacher? a gym teacher? And are teachers of advanced students at a disadvantage because they are already working at a high level and their improvements might be slighter or how do you rate merit in a community where education is not valued int he homes of many students who might end up in yuor class. The merit system is fraught with problems of evaluation.

[charterteacher84]

05:11 PM on 07/13/2011

I see what you are saying and there is no magic bullet to solve the issues that go beyond the school such as family involvement and socioeconomic status, I just think that people need to be open to change in the field of education. Any proposed idea seems to get shot down right away with why it won't work or isn't fair before it's even tried.

[Hlynn]

09:10 PM on 07/13/2011

People need to be open to feasible and fair changes in education. Merit pay does not fit those criteria.

Maybe in your experience ideas are shot down too quickly, but we collaborate often (long past contract time) in our school and we share and test ideas with other schools in the district, too. We also take some prep times to observe and critique each other and talk about what works and doesn't with our students. This helps all the students in the school, just just the ones in our own rooms.

Merit pay is really an insult, as was mentioned before. Paying me more will not make me work harder or care more about my students. What merit pay will do, though, is put an end to collaboration and sharing ideas because if teachers are in competition with each other for limited funds (and funds are always limited), no one will help anyone be a better teacher.

[Snookhookr]

01:42 AM on 07/14/2011

It appears to me that out country was producing a better educated populace BEFORE education was "open to change" the first time. How about getting back to basics and get rid of the social engineering.

[DMure]

02:22 PM on 07/13/2011

But education does needs reform...CLEARLY look at the global student stats, USA is far down the list. someone shut this walrus up?!

[keraz]

03:17 PM on 07/13/2011

I'm confused. Governor Christie wants to reform the system, you believe it needs to be reformed but you want him to shut up?

Our state has one of the worst educations systems in the country. Not all areas of the state, mind you, but much of it. The Abbott districts are a shining example of how bad it is. Areas such as Trenton and Newark average around a 23% graduation rate.

While much of this can be blamed on the parents and their lack of interest in the children's education or their lack of time, some can also be blamed on the teachers themselves.

A teacher's inability to get the message across to the students is reflected in their grasp of the content and in their grades. If a teacher has tenure, there isn't much you can do about it. And the NJEA will make sure there's nothing you can do about it.

New Jersey is in bad need of education reform. We need something done and we need it soon.

[candoworker]

09:05 PM on 07/13/2011

I do not know any teachers who don't want reform. They just want responsible, fair, and quality reform. This includes NJEA. The problem with the "reform" sweep is rarely are educators are included in the reform process. Virginia went through this back in the 1990's under Governor George Allen. He put together a "Commission on Champion Schools" to rewrite all three of the state's standards (SOLs/SOQs/SOAs). This "commission" had everybody but educators. Social Studies=600+ criteria. SOL testing is all or nothing...pass or don't progress to the next grade. TRANSLATION: if the class validictorian fails 11 grade test he/she doesn't graduate. No avenues for appeal, retake test, make up test if absent. Tests were administered in MARCH CONTAINED questions on subject matter NOT TAUGHT until APRIL, MAY, and JUNE. RESULT: Virginia teachers have been forced to "teach to the SOLs" to achieve mandetory student score percentages their system would receive state funding for the next year. Biggest complaint-no opportunity to be creative because all teaching must comply as dictated by the SOLs.
SOOOO, I put to you, if you really want quality education reform in New Jersey (or anywhere), then you need to ask yourself and Governor Christie WHY he isn't talking to/working with the education professionals on how to best reform your school systems? Most of the teachers that I know are pretty creative people.
~~the daughter of two Virginia educators who does IT for a living~~

[FreireTeacher]

04:53 PM on 07/13/2011

If you actually understood the test data, you would be far less alarmed. Does anyone actually read these days, or are TV and media soundbites good enough to pass off as facts? Geessh! Go look at some of those international comparisons and you'll see the truth. Are best and brightest are still at the top of the world. We simply don't educate our poor as well as other countries and this brings our scores down (and we have the highest poverty rate in the industrialized world--it makes a HUGE differencee).

Also, other countries don't report data for a majority of their students and will often only test higher achieving students, givin their scores misleading data on the high end. So, those international comparisons are usually bunk and really reveal little about how our educational system ranks among the world.

[Hlynn]

09:15 PM on 07/13/2011

Exactly. Many countries track their students into academic and trade paths. Not everyone is tested, and certainly not those with special needs. We test and report on EVERY student.

Plus, Thomas Friedman's article explains why other countries are doing so well as compared to a USA of decades ago and why it will never be like that again:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/opinion/12friedman.html