Teacher’s union representatives remain critical about the use of standardized student testing to measure teacher effectiveness, a core component of a pilot program for a statewide educator evaluation system now underway in 10 districts across the state, including Secaucus.
During Gov. Christopher Christie and Acting Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf’s press conference in Secaucus on Nov. 16, they proposed major education reforms and said they intend to make sweeping changes as part of the state’s recent application for a waiver from the federal “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) education requirements. The state is required to implement an evaluation that is partially based on student assessment as part of a federal requirement.
“There is a lot of work to be done in a short amount of time. This is a long-term project,” said Cerf after the press conference. “We are really focusing on all the schools to some degree, but targeting our energies at the schools with the highest levels of needs.”
The statewide educator evaluation program is part of the proposed School Children First Act, which would evaluate teachers 50 percent on input and observation of teachers at work in the classroom and 50 percent on student output – 35 percent of which can be on assessments and how well students perform on standardized testing.
The education reform plans include increasing support for charter schools, providing scholarships for low-income students, increasing support for five of the state’s worst-performing districts, and making changes to teacher evaluation that would affect their tenure and compensation. The proposed changes would also provide greater financial flexibility in how the state administers school funding.
Cerf said success of the effort will be based on increasing the numbers of high school students prepared to graduate from high school and go on to college.
Secaucus has formed a district committee that includes administrators, a teacher, a union representative, a board member, a principal, a community member, and academic coaches. Committee members have gone to meetings in Trenton to undergo training and workshops in the pilot program.
The program started in Secaucus this year.
Who’s designing this program?
Middle school guidance counselor Joan Cali, the union representative on the district committee and a former math teacher, came away from sessions in Trenton with many questions that she said went unanswered during the training meetings.
“We posed so many questions that things are changing as they go along,” said Cali. She said that a new timeline for the evaluation program came out after the first meeting in Trenton.
“Most of the people [in Trenton] are statisticians…they can’t answer our questions,” said Cali. “We threw out questions and terms an educator would know [and] they didn’t know what the acronyms were…They are putting together categories [and] policies and they don’t know what it is about.”
For example, she said the individual leading the training did not know what “IEP” was, which is an Individual Educational Plan designed to meet the needs of children with disabilities as mandated by the federal government.
Robert Presuto, director of educational technology, data assessment, and grants for the Secaucus schools, said that some of those in Trenton do have classroom experience, but it’s the technical individuals who give presentations on how they will use the data.
Bob Anderson taught at Clarendon Elementary School for 33 years, and is president of the local teacher’s union, representing 230 educators, custodians, and secretaries. He said he was in total disagreement with basing half of the evaluation on test scores.
“When they start worrying about test scores, then that is all they worry about…Everything is to make the test scores show what a great job we are doing. If we do that, nationwide, education will go down the drain,” Anderson said. “You can see all the cheating that is going on already. You can’t base teacher evaluation on a one day test or two day test.”
Cali echoed the sentiment.
“There are 180 days in the school year. [Students] have one day when they are tested in math, one day in science, and two days in language arts,” said Cali. “It is a snapshot of 180 days of their performance on that particular day and that particular test…It doesn’t give you a true picture.”
Cali also pointed out that not all grades or all subjects are tested.
“There is nothing in there that says it has to be a standardized test,” said Presuto. “You have to use a research-based evaluation system.”
Schools Superintendent Cynthia Randina said during the Nov. 16 press conference that the evaluation program will allow for flexibility at the local level to determine how to improve the school district. She said she thought it was important that the governor was going to allow school districts to determine their own methods of reform and improvement.
“Everything is not going to be dictated from on high,” she said.
During the press conference, the governor also indicated there would be room to measure educators who teach in challenging environments based on student growth from one year to the next.
Christie vs. NJEA
The evaluation program has come under heavy criticism by the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA), the statewide teacher’s union, for putting too much weight on standardized testing scores as a way to measure educator performance.
The relationship between the NJEA and Gov. Christie has been tenuous. Christie called the NJEA obstructionist and said he was still angry with them during the November press conference.
NJEA president Barbara Keshishian wrote in a guest column that appeared in the Star Ledger, “Far too often, those who are not in the classroom assume that standardized test scores and student achievement are synonymous. They are not.”
Anderson and Cali both said they would support the process if the weight of standardized student testing was reduced to one quarter or less of the teacher evaluation.
“I have no problem with the actual evaluation. I think [the observations] are a little lengthy,” said Anderson. “In a district like Secaucus, you are going to have a tough time getting everyone evaluated with this tough, long process.”
Adriana Rambay Fernández may be reached at afernandez@hudsonreporter.com.