Schools
Updated: State Education Commissioner Announces Teacher Tenure Plan
OEA President Terry McGill and RDEA President Lisa Torress responds to the news
The acting education commissioner unveiled a plan this afternoon that would revamp tenure for teachers, requiring them to meet a set of performance standards.
In a speech at the Lewis Library at Princeton University, Christopher Cerf called for “demonstrated student learning” to be part of the tenure process, along with yearly evaluations and a plan to strip tenure from teachers who are not meeting requirements.
Under the proposal, teachers rated effective or highly effective for three years consecutive years would be granted tenure. Teachers would lose tenure if they failed to meet requirements for two consecutive years.
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Tenure is a set of legal protections that kick in when a teacher starts his or her fourth year with a school district.
"The proposed reforms could effect a teacher in many ways," OEA President Terry McGill said in a phone interview. "Tenure was enacted to protect teachers from outside influences and those old demons could come back. There is a misunderstanding that just because a teacher has tenure that a 'bad' teacher could not be fired. A poor teacher can still be dismissed for violating tenure, but there is a process involved - first by going through a hearing."
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"Everybody is for accountability - of that there is no question," Torres said in a Thursday afternoon email. "However, any efforts to reform tenure, or any aspect directly linked to the improvement of the education of our youth, should only be implemented if those changes are known to produce actual improvements. History has shown us that change for the sake of change helps no one, and we owe our students more."
The proposal is expected to go the state Legislature in March.
“The effectiveness of the teacher in front of the class is the best way to determine how children learn,” Cerf said. “This alone is more important than the class size, or books we choose.”
Step one toward changing the system would be implementing evaluations, which would include yearly updates that are completely based on student learning, including test scores and other measurements.
Progress would be measured primarily on how much growth is seen in learning, regardless of the starting point.
But McGill questioned how progress could be measured in classes such as gym, art or music.
"Those subjects are a gray area, there are no evaluations to gauge progress in those," McGill added.
The methodology of effective teaching is something to be awarded. Merely withstanding the test of time, or in New Jersey’s tenured teachers’ cases, three years and one day, shouldn’t necessarily guarantee you lifetime job security, he said.
Cerf said the proposed legislation “does everything in it’s power to retain those achieving success and get rid of those who aren’t,” and that the proposed legislation is not “trying to bash teachers for our education’s failure.”
Instead, Cerf said that the proposal is very “pro-teacher,” and that excellence in the classroom should be emphasized.
The proposal also calls for an end to seniority in layoff decisions. Under current law, districts making staff cuts are required to lay off the most junior educators.
“Our proposal would be to fix this, and these decisions would be made on demonstrated effectiveness,” Cerf said.
According to McGill, by having the ability to layoff those teachers with the most seniority is a convenient scapegoat and an easy way to get rid of those that make the most.
"The big worry in OPS and even anywhere is that you could be let go based on the whim of someone," McGill said. "The series of evaluations sounds well and good, but we don't know what they will be - more classroom observations that we already do or something else. Not all children proceed at the same level, it's like saying you put a child on a baseball team but they're not the greatest player. Do you blame the coach because the child doesn't hit a home run every game? It's unrealistic to think that a child will always hit a home run. We all want children to succeed and grow but as individuals, not as the entire class."
"'Tenure Reform' as it has been discussed is an attempt to reduce complex issues and problems to a simple solution - one that plays easily to political rhetoric and one that will not have the desired impact," Torres added. "The current reform agenda makes many unfounded and erroneous assumptions about teachers (there are "lots" of bad teachers) and the system (NJ schools are failing). It contradicts existing research on student performance and leaves a critically important group out of the discussion. How can you reform a system without including the experts whose profession you wish to improve upon? Currently the manner for addressing the problems with tenure - proposed by politicians - ignores functional political realities inherent in the teaching profession and effectively eliminates any constructive discourse with those who live and breathe it."
Compensation also could be affected, Cerf said, with raises being tied to student learning.
He said re-evaluating how teachers achieve tenure should be a bi-partisan issue.
“Are we politically too timid to give our children the best chance in life through an effective public school education?” he asked.
