By Dari Kotzker
NJ Today
A busy day in Trenton for education issues. Outside, Senate candidate Steve Lonegan railed against common core state standards that govern classroom curriculum.
“The goldering of politics is when the government controls your children’s education. The best system for education is a parent, child and a teacher first. There is no role for federal bureaucrats in interfering in that education,” Lonegan said.
Inside, the State Board of Education officially adopted rules that radically overhaul how teachers get evaluated and tenured.
“A system to better evaluate our staff, our teachers and our principals, to provide them more feedback, provide them a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses and to better inform instruction,” said New Jersey Department of Education Chief Talent Officer Peter Shulman.
The NJEA president says he would rather see portions of the law phased in rather than apply the new rules all at once.
“We still have a concern about the over-testing of students and the use of it to evaluate teachers, but we supported the law, the final version, and so we are working to make sure it’s implemented well,” said NJEA President Wendell Steinhauer.
“It will require a period of adjustment and adaptation, but it is going to be a really critical part of the improvement of education in this state,” said New Jersey Department of Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf.
At its monthly meeting, the State Board of Education also got an update on the Camden schools takeover, which has been underway for roughly three months. The transition team had some surprising discoveries.
“If you look at last May, 20 percent of teachers on any given day were absent. And the substitute pool only allowed us to fill those classrooms 60 percent of the time, which meant that a number of students on any given day just had no teacher in front of the classroom,” said New Jersey Department of Education Chief Policy and External Affairs Officer Justin Barra.
They also found that teachers did not have coordinated lesson plans, so they will be providing ongoing professional development for them. Commissioner Cerf is pleased with what changes have taken place so far.
“It’s literally from updating the quality buildings to bringing in computers to assuring that every classroom has a teacher in front of it,” Cerf said.
The board president asked for another update on the Camden School District in December or January. As for the TEACHNJ regulations, although they were adopted today, there is still room for change.
“One thing we said to ourselves is we’re going to support the field and listen to the field. My hope is that, two, three, five years down the road, these regulations look significantly different because we’ve enhanced them and we’ve learned,” Shulman said.
New Jersey Department of Education officials say getting to the adoption of the new tenure rules took about three years.