Christie Send Legislature Plan to Remake Tenure, Teacher Evaluations, Layoffs

Gov. Chris Christie has unveiled a series of bills that would radically redefine teacher tenure and evaluations—reform he's promised for several months as part of a controversial effort to reshape education in New Jersey.

The bills aim to establish a standardized statewide evaluations system for teachers and principals, tie tenure to those evaluations, provide merit pay to good teachers, and end last-in-first-out practices. 

“For too long, we have failed to adequately and honestly judge the performance of New Jersey’s teachers based on the only outcome that actually matters–how well our children are learning. Even as education spending has risen dramatically, too many students in too many schools and districts continue to be failed by the system,” Christie said in a press statement announcing he had sent the bills to the New Jersey legislature.

He continued: “If we are going to bring greater accountability to public education and turn around the 200 perpetually failing schools where 100,000 of New Jersey's children are trapped, then we must be unafraid to challenge the broken and antiquated status quo and stand up to support the very best teachers our state has to offer.  These reforms will reward great teachers through better pay and career paths, allow us to identify the struggling teachers and get them the help they need, and put in place a multiple measured evaluation system that will provide an avenue to remove the bad teachers who are not getting results in the classroom.”

Teachers are now paid based on a union-negotiated scale that takes into account their longevity and degrees. Tenure protections currently in place aim to prevent educators from being dismissed without reason—but disputes over removal of tenure often result in costly court battles. The New Jersey Education Association has proposed its own tenure reform, which aims to streamline the process and avoid courtroom confrontations.

Earlier this year, when acting state Education Commissioner Chris Cerf described Christie's vision for evaluations and tenure reform, Jefferson Township's representative to the New Jersey Education Assocaition said the plan would hurt collaboration among teachers.

"As a teacher, I love to share ideas," Ernie Fisher, a 10-year veteran math teacher at Jefferson Township High School, said of the plan, announced Wednesday. "If my pay is suddenly going to be better if my students do better, I'm not going to be so quick to share my ideas. ... There's a different force than making money that drives teachers. We want to help students succeed. The governor's plan just seems to me to be very disruptive to the teaching process."

Fisher also said tenure has an undeserved bad reputation for protecting bad teachers.

"I think people often misunderstand what tenure really is," Fisher said. "Essentially it's a process of dismissal. It says that certain things need to be proved before a teacher can be dismissed. It protects teachers from being indiscriminately released just when their salary starts to increase."

The bills, as described in an outline provided by Christie's office, would establish:

• Implementation of a multiple measured statewide evaluation system by the 2012-2013 school year that requires observation and evaluation of all educators at least twice per year with summative evaluation at the end of the school year using the rating categories of highly effective, effective, partially effective, or ineffective.
• Tenure attainment with recommendations for tenure eligibility only after four years of service and after ratings of “effective” or “highly effective” have been received for the proceeding three years with guidelines for lesser ratings. Tenure status is lost after an evaluation as ineffective for one year or partially effective for two years.
• Reforming laws governing reductions in force (“last in, first out”) so that any layoffs are based on effectiveness—not seniority—and determined by an evaluation system established by the commissioner of education.
• Mutual consent that calls for agreement by both the principal and teacher on all teacher assignments to schools. Where a principal does not consent to a tenured teacher's placement in his or her school, that teacher will continue to receive compensation for 12 months while searching for an assignment in the district, after which he or she will be placed on unpaid leave. 
• Reforming teacher compensation to focus on an educator’s demonstrated effectiveness in advancing student learning, as well as whether the educator is teaching in a failing school or is teaching in a subject area that has been identified as a difficult-to-staff subject area.
• Due process changes to eliminate a provision requiring a teacher against whom tenure charges were filed to begin receiving full salary and benefits after 120 days of start of the process as well as implementing a firm deadline requiring administrative law judges hearing tenure revocation cases to render a decision within 30 days. 
• Allow for school districts to opt out of the Civil Service System.

When Cerf laid out the fundamentals of the plan earlier this year, Barbara Keshishian, president of the New Jersey Education Association, the state's largest teachers union, released a statement saying: "If the governor’s goal is to cultivate anxiety in the heart of every parent and every teacher in New Jersey, he has done that today. "

"He just doesn’t understand teaching, the tenure process, or what constitutes a sound evaluation process," she said in the statement.