How to Debate Michelle Rhee

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The best way to debate Michelle Rhee is to make the topic her own record of failure: her record as a teacher, as a superintendent, as a proponent of testing, as a "reformer," and as a recruiter.

The reason this woman is allowed to continue to dominate our nation's conversation about education is because she is not challenged like this nearly enough. The plain fact, however, is that her record speaks for itself. Simply expose it, and she is toast.

ADDING: Hmmm... BBC embed code isn't playing nice. Just click on the link if it doesn't load quickly.

Vouchers Won't "Save" Anyone

Former New Jersey Governor Jim Florio has been making the rounds, speaking out against school vouchers... sorry, "taxpayer funded private school scholarships." More commonly known as... vouchers!

The financing of vouchers under pending proposals would authorize businesses to write off their state taxes, dollar for dollar, tax credits to pay for such vouchers. They would be creatively labeled “scholarships.” At a time of record deficits, each tax dollar lost to the state would make a very bad situation worse. You don’t have to be an economist to understand that tax credits are tax expenditures and, thus, revenues lost to be made up by someone else.

We should all be intellectually honest enough to label a business tax break as such and not call it an educational funding mechanism — especially when it undermines our, historically, successful universal system of public education. Fiscal irresponsibility and educational deprivation — perfect together? [emphasis mine]

The voucher cheerleaders have tried so hard to lose the word "voucher" because it doesn't poll well. The only problem is that these are vouchers, no matter how the Opportunity Scholarship Act (OSA) legislation tries to get around it.

So kudos to Florio for calling them out. But I am worried that this will be misinterpreted:

Voucher proponents, who are willing to jettison this uniquely American institution, justify their position on the basis of some failing schools in urban and remote rural areas.

They would segregate our most motivated students in such schools and transfer them to private and parochial schools. The vast majority of remaining students, 85 to 90 percent, would be intellectual residue.

Voucher supporters, rather than committing to improve educational opportunity for all, run up a white flag of surrender on the hallowed American tradition of universal education — opting instead for a European-style bifurcated system of quality education to some and a lesser system for the rest. Equality for all is apparently too much of an effort. [emphasis  mine]

Florio is correct that we are talking bout a form of segregation here - but not just segregation by "motivation." Bruce Baker shows that OSA overwhelmingly favors private Yeshiva schools in Lakewood; as much as $76 million could flow to them, far outstripping any funds going to students in other cities.

But that aside: I'm concerned Florio's construction here implies that the kids who move to private schools will receive a "quality" education; certainly, better than what they would get in their current, "failing" schools. Because we know that's not true.

We know that private school spending and quality varies greatly; it's a myth that every private school is a Lawrenceville or Pingry. We know that private schools do no better than publics - and often worse - when accounting for student characteristics. We know large-scale studies of voucher programs - like the one in Milwaukee - find they do not improve student achievement.

So there's no reason to believe any student will be "saved" by a voucher program, because there's no reason to believe they will attend a better school. And, once they're enrolled, there's no way to stop them from being exposed to nonsense like this:

We’ve written before on this blog about Louisiana’s new voucher program that will direct taxpayer funds to private religious schools of dubious worth, including one school that uses DVDs to educate children and has great plans to expand “on faith.”

Now comes word that another school taking part in the program, Eternity Christian Academy in Westlake, uses a “science” book that contains some unusual ideas – one of them the assertion that dinosaurs might still be roaming our planet.

Why would a fundamentalist school want kids to think dinosaurs might still be alive? They apparently believe this would somehow cast doubt on evolution, a well-established principle that fundamentalists have been at war with since at least 1925.

The book in question, Biology 1099 published by Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) in Madison, Tenn., contains the following passage: “Are dinosaurs alive today? Scientists are becoming more convinced of their existence. Have you heard of the ‘Loch Ness Monster’ in Scotland? ‘Nessie’ for short has been recorded on sonar from a small submarine, described by eyewitnesses, and photographed by others. Nessie appears to be a plesiosaur.”

Does anyone want to make the case that our public taxpayer dollars should be used to teach children that Nessie's existence has been confirmed by submarine? Let's be clear: any school that teaches such nonsense is NOT providing a "quality education."

Nessie says: "It's nae a voucher! 'Tis a scholarship program!"

ADDING: More bizarre private school "science."

Teachers Unions: Always Assumed To Be Evil

It appears that the only groups on Earth that we are allowed to assume have bad intentions are teachers unions:

Teacher tenure reform has been among the more delicate and misunderstood issues roiling New Jersey under Gov. Chris Christie. 

Reduced to its most basic elements, the simple goal is to allow truly bad teachers to be fired, rather than allowing them to enjoy virtual lifetime security after just three years on the job. Nearly everyone can agree on the wisdom of that — even the teachers union. Or at least the union recognizes that public support for change is too overwhelming to combat. 

So it was encouraging, although not entirely surprising, that a compromise reform bill offered by state Sen. M. Teresa Ruiz, D-Essex, last week received the backing of some stakeholders on all sides of the issue, including — perhaps most importantly — the New Jersey Education Association itself. [emphasis mine]

It must be a rule they teach you in Editorial Page Writing School: anytime you can impugn a union's motives - no matter how subtlety - make sure you take it.

Because we all know that only point of teachers unions is to protect the hordes of "bad" teachers storming through our schools, messing up learning for kids whose lives are otherwise just perfect. Because the union makes tons of money protecting bad teachers! Everyone knows that! Even though the same people who complain about this complain that there are so few tenure cases brought. Which means... well, OK, maybe that's not how they make their money... but there must be some scheme... just give me a sec to figure it out...

Give these folks credit where it's due, however:

The other specter that concerns teachers is the evaluation process itself. Under current regulations, teachers receive tenure after three years regardless of performance or student achievement. The reform bill calls for denial of tenure if teachers fall below a certain effectiveness threshold, and evaluations are based in part on student growth, although the measurements for that growth remain vague. 

Adding a degree of accountability to the process is long overdue. But once districts have more meaningful power in their hands to influence tenure decisions, those evaluations can be used as a weapon against teachers. We’d all like to think school officials across all the districts in the state have only the good of each student and classroom in mind as they conduct honest and open-minded reviews of their teachers. But that would be woefully naive. There are bad apples out there who will have their own reasons to oust teachers that have nothing to do with performance.

Gosh, you think?

What, for instance, would prevent those doing the evaluations from manipulating them to try to assure that teachers are unfairly denied tenure through the effectiveness ratings? Teachers do deserve continued protection from such incompetence. 

The last thing New Jersey needs is to have its entire education system shaped by arrogant ivory-tower politicians and their sycophants pontificating on what teachers should be able to accomplish in the classroom, with no understanding of the many underlying factors involved.

That is exactly right, and that is the exact problem with where all this is heading. New Jersey is implementing a teacher evaluation system that has left teachers out of its creation.


But I don't see how we change that by constantly questioning the motivations of the one organization that represents teachers.

Who "Won" the NJ Tenure Battle? Part I

So the Ruiz tenure bill flew through the legislature, and is on its way to Chris Christie's desk, where it will no doubt be signed in a ceremony replete with dancing elephants, a brass band, and several confetti canons. And there will be plenty of crowing from all sides about who "won."

Let's try our best to keep score, shall we?

Chris Christie: When all this tenure brouhaha started, Chris Christie was basically throwing any idiotic idea up against the wall and hoping something stuck. For example, back in January of 2011:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie wants to change that: He is seeking to end tenure and on Wednesday said he would support switching to a system that gives individual teachers five-year contracts, which districts could renew based on merit. He said he believes that if the worst 5% of teachers were churned, there would be a "quantum effect" on performance.

"I don't know what the justification is for it any longer, I really don't," Mr. Christie said of tenure during a meeting with The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. "At the end of the five-year period we evaluate. If we want to keep you, great. If we don't, we won't, based on merit."

A spokeswoman later said the concept of moving to five-year contracts was "only one idea of many" that was being explored.

Of course it was merely being "explored" - because it was transparently stupid. His people knew he would have to back off of such nonsense, so in April of 2011, they released a series of draft bills that ostensibly contained their best hopes for "reforming" tenure. Keep in mind: these proposals were already a withdrawal from Christie's original positions.

Still, the proposals were quite radical:

• The removal of tenure without due process; in other words, a district could remove a teacher's tenure status, and the teacher would not be able to appeal to an outside third party.
• The elimination of salary guides based on seniority.
• The elimination of the use of seniority in layoff decisions.
• Merit pay.
• "Mutual consent," a process that requires an administrator to sign off on a transfer of a teacher into the administrator's school.

None of this survives in the final bill.

B4K: According to its website, B4K supports "differentiated pay for hard–to-teach subjects," and an "end the common layoff policy known as “last in first out” or LIFO, which releases teachers based solely on how long they have taught and not how well." Well, differentiated pay was never in the bill, and gutting seniority was removed. Further:

As with teachers, principals must also be evaluated on their ability to drive student outcomes.  Principals must have the authority to assemble their team of educators, and teacher placement must be by mutual consent of both the principal and the teacher. [emphasis mine]

Again, mutual consent was removed.

NJEA: The teachers union put out a tenure plan in November of 2011. Pretty much everyone agreed with their provision to add a "mentor year" to the existing three years it takes now to earn tenure, so there was little controversy over that.

NJEA's proposal was more notable for what it didn't call for. It didn't agree to end seniority, or end salary guides. It didn't call for merit pay mutual consent. It didn't say a teacher could lose tenure without a hearing before a third party.

All of these were on the table. None survived the final bill.

Does all this mean the NJEA can claim victory? Well, on seniority, mutual consent, merit pay, salary guides, and due process, it's clear that they can.

But there's one area where they cannot claim a clear victory: the use of standardized tests in teacher evaluations. Then again, neither can Christie and the reformyists - this is a battle yet to be waged.

More on that tomorrow in Part II.

ADDING: From my link above to John Mooney's report at NJSpotlight:

Meanwhile, even the Assembly bill has gotten some new names at the top, with the original sponsors stepping back and new ones stepping forward.

Now named as prime sponsor is state Assemblyman Patrick Diegnan Jr. (D-Middlesex), the education chairman who had opposed any form of renewable tenure a year ago but slowly moved toward compromise in the last few weeks. The original sponsor, state Assemblyman Robert Coutinho (D-Essex) was named as a co-sponsor. [emphasis mine]

The implication here is that Diegnan now supports a bill that allows for a district to refuse to renew a teacher's tenure. That is not correct. The current bill explicitly states a tenured teacher always retains the right to a hearing in front of a third party before he or she can be fired. NJEA is quite clear about this:

The bill guarantees teachers facing dismissal with their right to a hearing, “which is the fair and just thing to do,” he added.  Under an earlier version of the bill, teachers could actually “lose tenure,” which meant they would have lost their right to due process.  That provision was struck from the bill at NJEA’s urging.

It's important to get this stuff right.

The "Hating Teachers Unions" Reflex

Want to write education op-eds for newspapers like the Star-Ledger? Follow this easy two-step process!

Step 1) State what you think the teachers unions are for (this need not be accurate).

Step 2) Oppose it!

Mark this as another landmark achievement for Gov. Chris Christie and Democratic leaders; more important in the end than even the pension and health reform.
State Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex) has spent two years drafting this reform, and the past few days greasing a deal that resulted in a unanimous vote in the Senate on Thursday. It is expected to land on Christie’s desk next week after approval in the Assembly.

How did this finally happen? In short, because the most potent special interest group in the state, the New Jersey Education Association, was backed into a political corner.  

Christie is the first governor in either party with the moxie to challenge the NJEA head-on, a fight that he won in a romp. Along with acting Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf, he made this a top priority.

Some Democrats pushed hard, too, breaking with a union that is a pillar of their coalition. And private players, such as hedge fund billionaire David Tepper, engaged in this as an act of philanthropy, putting enough money on the table to give the NJEA another big incentive to come along.

And so editorial page chief Tom Moran once again acts like a doctor's mallet to your knee-cap: a purely reflexive spasm against the NJEA without the slightest hesitation for a moment of conscious thought. Let's break this down:

- "...more important in the end than even the pension and health reform." Well, that's easy to do: even Tom's page admits the Pen-Ben bill did little to address the real problems with public employee benefits: exploding health care costs and a state government that refuses to meet its obligations in favor of tax gifts for the rich (would someone please explain to me how Tom can be so right about taxes and so wrong about teachers?).

- "...the most potent special interest group in the state, the New Jersey Education Association, was backed into a political corner." First of all, I just love how Tom reflexively terms a professional association that represents people doing a job he knows nothing about an "interest group." And yet David Tepper's B4K, with its ties to Michelle Rhee and Rupert Murdoch, is somehow untainted by base motives in Tom's mind. A reminder:

Rupert Murdoch has a direct financial interest in "reform," yet he gets a pass in Tom's mind. Teachers? Yeah, not so much...

But here's the real problem with Tom's assertion: he actually thinks the NJEA got played! He thinks the union lost this battle! I'll tell you what, Tom:

Here's the original NJEA tenure proposal. Here's Ruiz's original bill. Here's a comparison from the NJEA of the two. And here's Chris Christie's original draft bill.

I dare you, Tom, to make a case that the final Ruiz bill is more like Christie's or Ruiz's original bill than the NJEA proposal. Even though the final bill, which you are cheering:

• Retains seniority, 
• Rejects mutual consent, and 
• Keeps due process.

The original Ruiz bill did exactly the opposite of the above. But go ahead, Tom - I'd love to see you try to twist this into anything but a win for the NJEA. Try to convince us that retaining seniority and due process and no mutual consent is a loss for the union.

Good luck with that...

- "Christie is the first governor in either party with the moxie to challenge the NJEA head-on, a fight that he won in a romp."

Tom, see above. Look at what Christie gave up: less than two years ago, he wanted to "eliminate" tenure and replace it with five-year contracts. (Check out the video: Christie does explicitly say "eliminate.") I know it gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling inside to believe that teachers got the shaft; too bad that's not the case.

Again: there are times when Tom Moran shows insight and sophistication about a subject; taxes are a good example. But he is hopelessly clueless about education and teachers. Time and again, he relies on people who have developed a talent for selling themselves to the media, but lack expertise or experience in the topics at hand.

I still have serious concerns about the Ruiz bill, but if Christie signs it, there is one big upside:

It will probably be a good long while before I have to read another ill-informed, illogical editorial in the Star-Ledger about tenure. Not all is lost...

NJ Tenure Update

For my national readers: tenure in New Jersey is largely a parochial issue, but it does have national implications. Chris Christie is a darling of the Republican party and has been put on the short list for Romney's VP candidates for some time (although it will be considerably harder for him to stay there after this). The majority of Christie's schtick has been his war with the teachers unions; specifically, the NJEA. He has very specifically cited tenure "reform" as one of his signature issues.

So it's not far-fetched to say that Christie's battle against tenure has been a proxy for the national battle against teacher workplace protections (in fairness, that's a battle being waged against teachers and their unions by both political parties).

Further: NJEA is one of the strongest teacher unions in the country, and New Jersey has arguably the highest-performing state-wide education system, if you account for the diversity of the student population. If this state can't fight back against the gutting of tenure, it's hard to imagine any state doing so.

Given all this: how is the fight to save tenure in New Jersey going? If you ask the NJEA, it's going very well:

It was not always certain that tenure reform efforts would achieve broad consensus.  An earlier version of the Senate legislation, S-1455, contained a number of provisions that were unacceptable to NJEA and other education groups.  Among our concerns with the original legislation were:

• New teachers could have been kept in a permanently nontenured state simply by giving them a single rating of partially effective once every three years. 
• It would have eliminated seniority rights in layoffs.
• It would have given principals de facto authority to fire tenured teachers simply by blocking their ability to transfer from one school to another.
• Evaluations would have been conducted by teachers, rather than by certified administrators.
• Worst of all, it would have eliminated due process rights by taking away the ability of teachers to contest the loss of their tenure or their job as a result of poor or unfair evaluations. 
• And the whole process would have remained in the court system, with its long and costly hearings.

Put simply, that proposal would have eliminated tenure in all but name and left New Jersey’s teachers vulnerable to political manipulation and other mistreatment, with no meaningful recourse.  When a version of the bill with those elements still included was discussed by a Senate committee earlier this year, NJEA testified strongly in opposition.

As a result of extensive discussions and negotiations over the last several months, the bill has been amended to deal with all of those concerns.  Under the version NJEA supported this week:

• Teachers are guaranteed a year of mentoring to begin their career.
• They will earn tenure in four years, providing they have at least two ratings of effective or highly effective in the three years following the initial mentorship year.
• Seniority rights are preserved, preventing districts from targeting experienced teachers for layoffs as a cost-saving measure. 
• Evaluations will be conducted by certified administrators.
• Due process rights are protected, so that no tenured teacher can be fired without the opportunity for a hearing before a highly qualified and neutral third-party arbitrator. 
• And the cases are moved out of the courts, ending the costly and time consuming process that generated so much bad publicity and ill will toward tenure.

NJEA remains in discussion with the sponsors of both bills, as well as with other legislative leaders.  We are working to ensure our members’ rights to defend themselves against spurious tenure charges.

Let's stop right here and acknowledge something: these are big wins. When Christie started his tenure jihad, he was talking about doing away with the process altogether, and he had both the political wind and the local punditocracy at his back. The original Ruiz bill - a bill that would have taken away due process and eliminated seniority - was actually a compromise position. It was no small feat to change the final bill to include these provisions; everyone should take a moment to understand that this was, in fact, a significant victory for teachers and the NJEA (and, for that matter, students).

However...

While this op-ed from members of the New Jersey Teacher Activist Group does not acknowledge these wins - and I do think it should - it nonetheless explains the current situation quite well:

The tenure reform bill also calls for teachers to be evaluated in terms of student outcomes -- a.k.a, student test scores. Evaluations based on student performance, especially ones closely tied to tenure decisions, will have devastating effects. Not only will we see narrowing of the curriculum and teaching to the test, but places like Newark and Paterson, frequently cited as places with the most need of quality teachers, will have even more difficulty recruiting and retaining those good teachers. Within districts and schools, classes of struggling students and challenging populations, such as English language learners and students with disabilities, will be difficult to staff. Even teachers who love a challenge, of which there are many, will have a hard time rationalizing what could be career suicide.

[...]

This tenure bill feeds into the national meta-narrative around education in the past few years, casting the teacher in the role of villain. Placing the focus on tenured teachers takes the blame off the actual guilty parties -- those that relentlessly cut the education budget, forcing districts to lay off teachers and cut already inadequate resources, and champion privatization measures like charter schools and voucher programs (we are looking at you, Chris Christie). These moves disproportionately affect our most vulnerable children, those who cannot afford to lose quality, experienced teachers to a poorly hidden political agenda. In erroneously offering up individual teachers as the cause of the failure of disadvantaged kids and communities, we also ignore realities that reproduce societal inequality: poverty, institutionalized racism, and school structures and policies that perpetuate both. [emphasis mine]

Well put - but allow me to say it another way. As I see it, we have three big problems with the current legislation:

1) The premise that "reforming" tenure will change student achievement is simply wrong. There is no evidence - none - that tenure has any effect on student achievement. There is no evidence - none - that instituting a state-wide teacher evaluation system will have any effect on student achievement.

The entire point of this exercise is to replace allegedly bad teachers with good ones. But there is no evidence - none - that we are overrun with "bad" teachers! The only "proof" that reformyists put forward is that there have been only 17 tenure cases in the last several years. That doesn't mean plenty of teachers weren't dismissed through other means, or before they earned tenure. And it doesn't mean the remaining teachers suck. Are there some bad ones? Yeah, of course. Is this a serious problem that could be fixed by tenure "reform"? Highly doubtful. The burden of proof remains on the reformyists, and they have yet to make a solid case.

2) Any teacher evaluation system largely based on student test scores runs the risk of narrowing the curriculum and promoting teaching to the test; further, that system will be far too unreliable and invalid to do much good anyway. Teachers teach the test when the test tests teachers - it's really that simple. Is teacher quality that large of a problem that it's worth subjecting students to a testing regime that will consume vast amounts of their time and vast amounts of school resources?

We also know that the current evaluation system in New Jersey will be based on Student Growth Percentiles and not Value-Added Modeling. VAM is a bad system prone to high error rates, but at least it attempts to account for student differences when evaluating teachers. SGP doesn't even make the attempt: if the student fails to improve on standardized tests, the teacher is punished, not matter who that student is or the circumstances in that student's life.

This is unacceptable. An error-ridden, unaccountable, secretive testing regime is simply not up to the job of making high-stakes decisions for teacher employment. But this is exactly what the Ruiz bill calls for.

3) The central problem in closing the "achievement gap" - childhood poverty - is being ignored while we focus on teacher "quality." Every country in the world demonstrates a correlation between socio-economic status and student achievement. The notion that the difference in all of these children's lives is the quality of their teachers is absurd on its face. We will not close the "gap" while we continue to put all of our focus on improving teacher quality - especially since no one has proved teacher quality is all that bad anyway.


Again: the bill going forward is far, far superior to its predecessors. No one should diminish the work of teachers, parents, unions, legislators, real reformers, and even snarky bloggers in removing some truly dangerous stuff from the Ruiz bill.

But neither should anyone think this legislation is fine the way it is. I am open to the political calculus of supporting an imperfect bill, but I am also gravely concerned that supporting this legislation will pave the way to an expansive testing regime whose only purpose is to inaccurately evaluate teachers.

Obviously, that is completely insupportable. No one should back this bill unless and until they are prepared to outline a strategy to make sure this testing regime never sees the light of day.

Tenure Confusion in NJ Eases; However...

So I got a copy of the actual Ruiz tenure bill here in NJ from someone in the know. I was worried because there was some confusion as to what was actually passed. I can tell you that the bill has some changes from the latest version posted at NJ Spotlight. They are significant, but I wouldn't consider them earth-shattering.

One change is that the state has to provide training not only on the evaluation rubrics, but also on "demonstrations of competence on the evaluation system." I'm not sure if that means the evaluator has to demonstrate competence, or the evaluatee, but whatever.

A more significant change is that if you are rated "partially effective" one year, and if you're then rated "ineffective" the next, you are up on inefficiency charges. The original bill said you had to be "ineffective" two years in a row. Not a small difference.

Other than that, the bills are the same - which means:

• Seniority is still being used in layoff decisions, and not teacher "effectiveness."
• There is still due process for all tenured teachers who districts want to fire.

Let's be clear - these are big victories for students and teachers in New Jersey. Given the rhetoric a year ago, I am very, very pleased that these issues are now off the table.

However...

The Ruiz tenure bill, as it stands now, is far from ideal. For all intents and purposes, it institutes an evaluation system that has no evidence to support it. It sets up teachers to be evaluated in categories when there is no research to back up such a scheme. It rushes to implement a testing regime without thorough vetting.

Again: some very pernicious and dangerous nonsense has been removed from the debate. Bravo! Let me be the first to cheer!

But this is far from over. This bill should not pass as it stands.

Stand by for more...

Will Democracy Come to Jersey City?

The circus train that is the NJ Department of Education pulled into Jersey City this week:

Superintendent candidates Debra Brathwaite and Marcia V. Lyles made their first appearances at a public meeting on Friday, answering pre-selected questions on district issues at a four-hour special session attended by about 200 residents. But their appearance at School 11 seemed to take a back seat to drama that unfolded, centered on one candidate who failed to make the final cut – interim superintendent Franklin Walker, a 33-year district veteran.

During the emotionally charged meeting, critics of the board’s handling of the search process vowed to try to postpone a final appointment until certain concerns are resolved. They are seeking an inquiry into whether perceived political and state interference has hampered the board’s legal authority to make the final choice.

Trustees were advised efforts could be launched to subpoena documents explaining how the board arrived at its final choices as well as a possible bid for a recall of board members. [emphasis mine]

Three things:

1) Good luck with that subpoena, folks: ACTING Education Commissioner Chris Cerf is on the review board that controls what you will get to see. Do you really think you'll be able to pull back the curtain?

2) The good people of JC know that Newark and Paterson and Camden have been under state control for years - and it's been a disaster. If you really want to turn around urban districts, the very first thing you have to do is give the residents of those districts control of their schools.

3) We used to live in a country where loyalty, perseverance, and hard work were rewarded. You could start as a teller at a bank and work your way up to become its president some day. This notion is now considered quaint.

So no one should be surprised that refromyists with a corporate mindset think it's a good thing to bring in outsiders as "disruptors"; again, this plays to the vanities of the CEOs who fund this nonsense.

Of course, the fact that this way of thinking has arguably ruined the American economy, and will probably ruin our schools, doesn't much seem to matter to these people. We can't have people who have roots in a community run things; we have to have folks who "challenge the status quo," no matter how dangerous those "challenges" may be:

Both candidates conceded they have been in the unenviable position of closing schools due to poor academic performance, though they promised to take numerous steps to try avoiding the process in Jersey City.

Lyles noted that while in Brooklyn, she launched the closure of Paul Robeson High School.

“It was really hard for me,” she said, citing the school’s “consistently underperfoming” over a five-year span as the reason. “There is a point in a process where closing a school has to be a consideration, because of our expectations as to how we should support children.”

“It is not an easy decision to close any school,” Brathwaite said, though she said the option must be on the table. [emphasis mine]

Gosh, I'm so sorry it was "hard" for you. No mention of how it affected the kids, the teachers, or the community, though.

I'm glad to see the parents of JC are not going to take this crap lying down. I've said it before: the reformies may be fighting for money, power and ideology - but the parents are fighting for their kids. Who do you think will win that battle?

Tenure Confusion in NJ

I posted a summary of the two competing New Jersey tenure bills over at Blue Jersey earlier today. And the invaluable Deciminyan posted video of today's testimony a few posts above mine.

I was actually feeling a less pessimistic about the ways things are going - but still with some substantial reservations - until I read this post over at Diane Ravich's blog. A reader of Ravitch's reports that tenure can still be revoked with an appeal to a third party.

I don't think that's right... but then I realized that I'm probably reading a different version of the bill than Ravitch's source. The bill on the NJ Legislature's site is the old bill from this winter. But I've been working from the latest revision, posted at NJSpotlight.

According to this report from the Star-Ledger's Jeanette Rundquist, NJEA is supporting the current Ruiz bill. I can't believe they are talking about the old version: that one still bypasses using seniority in layoff decisions, something the union was dead set against. Hell, even Ruiz has admitted she's letting that fight go.

So I think what we might have here is a case of too many versions of the bill floating around. And maybe a little imprecise reporting as well:

The idea of making tenure tougher for New Jersey teachers to get and easier for them to lose took a big leap forward on Monday when a state Senate committee advanced a bill and Gov. Chris Christie endorsed it.

Monday's action by the Senate's budget committee means that bills on the issue have won committee approval in both chambers of the state's Legislature in the past five days — and they have done so with the support of the state's education-advocacy cottage industry. 

The Senate bill was put together by Sen. Teresa Ruiz, a Newark Democrat who worked out the details with groups representing interests from middle-class schools to school boards to teachers and principals. 

A stream of those advocates, from officials with two teachers unions to a socially conservative group, urged passage of the bill in testimony before the state Senate's budget committee, which approved it unanimously. 

"After watching these disparate groups come up here in unanimity, I have a new assignment for you," Sen. Loretta Weinberg, a Democrat from Teaneck, told Ruiz. "We're going to send you to the Middle East to take on the peace process." [emphasis mine]

Ha! I love Senator Weinberg!

The problem is the bolded sentence. Yes, it will be tougher to earn tenure: four years instead of three, mentoring year, etc. But my reading of the latest version of the bill is not that anyone will "lose tenure"; it's that they will lose their job.

Once again: "tenure" is nothing more than a guarantee of due process. You could lose your job and still have tenure; you just lost your job because your employer demonstrated to a third party that you deserved to lose it.

And that's a good thing. I've said before that I think we ought to have more tenure hearings. The problem is when you keep the process bottled up inside the district; that's a recipe for disaster.

I'll be watching carefully and using my completely non-existent legal skills to parse whatever version of the bill comes out. Believe me, I still have my problems with the latest version I'm assuming is the correct one. But let me articulate those after I'm sure we have the right version in front of us.

Until then: don't let the Tenure Boogeyman keep you up tonight!

Yaarrrgghh! Do you spell my name with one "o" or two?

Chris Cerf Will Tell You What He Thinks You Need To Know!

If you blink, you'll miss it:

The entity that handles appeals of rejected requests for public information meets once a month in a first-floor office in Trenton. Windows offer a view of an atrium outside, but it's difficult — literally and otherwise — to look from the outside in. 

Called the Government Records Council, this agency adjudicates appeals from all levels of New Jersey government, from your school board on up to Christie's office. I reviewed its records, excluded obviously frivolous complaints, and found that under Christie, the GRC has ruled on 44 cases involving state departments. 

And all 44 times, the GRC sided with the Christie administration.

The GRC is supposed to have five members appointed by the governor, but Christie has left it with three for most of his term. There are now four, including a Christie campaign donor, Christie's education commissioner, and Christie's community affairs commissioner. [emphasis mine]

Wha, huh, wha!? The ACTING education commissioner - yes, he is unconfirmed - is determining whether or not records about his department are released or not?

Oh, I'm sure he recuses himself when the DOE is involved. I'm sure he has no influence on the ultimate decisions about his own department...

And though the 44-0 record compiled by the short-staffed GRC is interesting, if you were to show up at a GRC meeting, you wouldn't be able to keep score yourself. 

You might hear cases involving, say, the Department of Environmental Protection or the Camden City school board. And you would hear votes tallied by council members. But in a novel approach to governing that only Kafka could appreciate, you would not know what those votes meant. Who won? Who lost? 

Who knows? 

Rulings on whether documents can remain secret are secret themselves — pending formal notification to the parties involved informing them of the decision.

Gimme a break. We can't even tell whether the ACTING Commissioner is engaging in a conflict of interest?

There has been a slew of secretive machinations taking place at the DOE since the day Cerf first showed up. When it looked like Cerf might actually have a confirmation hearing back in February, I had a list of questions for him. And that's before the big DOE consultancy fees, and the plans to take over Camden, and the Broadie infestation, and the delay of the charter report, and lord knows how many other things came to light.

Now you're telling me ACTING Commissioner Cerf controls the flow of information out of his office and to the public? Are you freakin' kidding me?!

This is outrageous - and who knows how it has spread to other parts of the Christie administration? The Legislature would be well advised to stop wasting its time with unproven "problems" and start cleaning this mess up immediately.

It's good to get to decide what the public needs to know!