By David Cruz
Correspondent
Most kids are too preoccupied with the dread of summer’s end to think much about what legislators and education officials are up to, but during this school year, there could be major changes to how teachers teach, how kids learn and how their schools are run.
“The greatest equalizing factor we have in this country is access to quality education and that starts in a pre-school setting and so that committee should be dynamic and robust and passionate all the time,” said Sen. Teresa Ruiz, who chairs the Senate’s education committee. “Education is not stagnant; it’s something that we should always be talking about, whether we’re meeting the needs of all of our students in this state and how we can get better.”
Issues bound to affect students, teachers and administrators this year include implementation of the common core, a controversial federal initiative that sets curriculum standards for states, legislative tweaking of the charter school system and teacher evaluations, which Wendell Steinhauer, president of the state’s largest teachers’ union, the NJEA, says has been badly implemented.
“We’ve seen that this has been rushed through, training wasn’t provided, so we’re happy to see that a commission has been set up to look at all of these factors to make sure that things are done correctly, so we’re hopeful about that,” he said. “We see the commission being implemented in September and to actually have some reports come out from that, which will help us.”
This year also marks the first full year of state intervention in the Camden schools, the fourth time the state has intervened in a school system (with decidedly mixed results). Fixing the 25-year-old school takeover law will go a long way toward making that process less traumatic for all involved, says Ruiz.
“We also have to look at the state takeover bill in the sense that there should be benchmarks in place for the state as well as the district,” she said. “What does that look like? In the first two years what does that look like? In the next two years what does it look like and what does a true transition back to the district look like? We’ve seen that 20 years hasn’t demonstrated that, and so it gives us an opportunity, everyone involved, including the department, to take a look and see how we can do things better.”
The governor will be away for the start of this school year, but promises to have a lot to say about the state’s education system, including resurrecting his school voucher idea and keeping a close eye on any plan to change school takeovers, which he says haven’t gone well in the past mostly because he wasn’t the one doing the taking over.
Meanwhile, the implementation of the One Newark school reform plan is the biggest ticking time-bomb that everyone — kids, teachers, lawmakers and even the governor — face. The school year starts Thursday.