Christie proposes changes in how teachers are paid, promoted

Calling for a new system to "reward excellence in the classroom," Gov. Christie on Tuesday proposed changing how New Jersey public school teachers are paid, retained, and promoted.

In a town meeting in Mercer County, Christie outlined a plan to jettison seniority, advanced academic degrees, and tenure as automatic steps toward higher pay.

"Today, we begin to put an end to the cycle of inaction by challenging the status quo, demanding more for our children, and restoring the promise of a brighter future for every one of our communities," the governor said.

Christie is expected to elaborate on school choice and charter school ideas on Thursday.

Proposals to scale back public workers' pensions, tighten government ethics laws, and streamline business regulations were proposed at town halls earlier this month.

Christie's education proposal came days after the governor appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show to discuss education reform and accept a $100 million challenge grant from Facebook chief executive and cofounder Mark Zuckerberg to revamp the failing Newark schools.

His criteria for setting salaries "boils down to teacher evaluations relying on student test scores, which research show isn't effective" in gauging quality educators, said Steve Baker, spokesman for the New Jersey Education Association, the state's largest teachers union. "He's basing merit pay and continued employment on a faulty assumption."

But the New Jersey School Boards Association embraced Christie's ideas - particularly tenure reform - calling them "long overdue" and consistent with the negotiating trends in local districts.

"It's a totally different situation than when tenure began in 1903," said Frank Belluscio, a spokesman for the association. "We have protections now against patronage and unlawful firing. Tenure has devolved into a lifetime job."

Currently, teachers earn tenure after three years on the job.

Under Christie's plan, school districts could give teachers merit raises and offer incentives to work in low-performing schools or hard-to-fill positions.

The governor would put an end to raises based solely on seniority or graduate-school credits - except where advanced degrees have clear links to improved teacher performance, as in math and science.

To improve teacher preparation, Christie would add reading and math tests to the existing certification exams for elementary teachers.

He would designate "master" teachers, higher-paying positions designed to keep effective educators in the classroom, rather than chase them into administration ranks to seek more compensation.

Christie also proposed giving parents online access to more student test data and teacher evaluations via a data system called NJ SMART.

Christie said he would need legislative approval only to change tenure and create a statewide evaluation system.

Measured by test scores and graduation rates, New Jersey's schools are among the top-performing in the nation - and among the costliest. Public schools spent more than $17,000 per student in the 2007-08 school year. But students in the state's impoverished cities do not do nearly as well as those in suburbs.

"We are paying a king's fortune for an educational system that is not giving our children the royal treatment," Christie said, calling his proposal economically necessary.

There is room to improve teacher assessment, said Richard Bozza, head of the New Jersey Association of School Administrators, but changes need to be considered carefully.

"I have concerns about proposals made from a political standpoint before we know what works," Bozza said.

Teacher assessments based on student testing could have unforeseen effects, he said. For example, most testing is confined to math and language arts. "If we're not careful, we may just narrow the curriculum," he said.

To shape the details of the future teacher evaluation system, Christie has created a nine-member task force, which will report to him by March.

Before Education Commissioner Bret Schundler was fired amid controversy over the state's failed Race to the Top federal grant application, he was putting together a committee of experts from varied backgrounds to explore improving educator effectiveness and assessment, according to Bozza.

"It certainly was a broader group" than Christie's task force is likely to be, Bozza said.

The task force "is fixed from the start. They've been told what they're supposed to decide," said the NJEA's Baker.

The NJEA, which has feuded with Christie for months, objects to a provision in the executive order specifying that student test scores must represent "at least 50 percent of the teacher or school leader evaluation."

The NJEA cited two recent studies that recommend against tying teacher evaluations too closely to students' scores.

Other issues, such as students' experiences at home and at school in earlier grades, "mean that teachers cannot be accurately judged against one another by their students' test scores, even when efforts are made to control for student characteristics in statistical models," concluded an August study from the Economic Policy Institute.

Christie and the teachers union squabbled in May over similar issues regarding teacher evaluation and merit pay. The union found a middle ground with former commissioner Schundler, but Christie overruled it.

Baker said the union and governor could reach a compromise so that "every public school student has a good school."

"We tried to start that process with the former education commissioner, but ultimately that got the commissioner fired," Baker said.