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NJ Spotlight - Christie Gets Tougher With Charter School Teachers…According to the administration, making it more difficult for charter teachers to earn tenure gives the schools themselves "more flexibility"
Press of Atlantic City - New Jersey ranks low in teachers with National Board certification
By John Mooney, January 23, 2013 in Education|Post a Comment
Soon after proposing that certification rules for new charter school teachers should be eased, the Christie administration is moving to toughen what it takes those teachers to get and keep tenure.
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In a proposal posted on the New Jersey Register this month, the administration has suggested that new teachers at charter schools would receive tenure protections after five years -- a year more than the current four years for district teachers.
In addition, they would be subject to a different due process procedure in case of tenure charges, one without the arbitration process newly put in place for district teachers. Instead, the state commissioner would continue to have final say on appeals, short of the courts.
The proposal also specifies that teachers in a charter could lose tenure protections if the school failed to meet certain performance standards and was in peril of closing.
The administration said the new rules seek to provide a mix of flexibility for charter schools and protections for their teachers. Most of the rules would apply only to teachers hired after June 30, 2013.
"We believe the streamlined tenure regulations for charter school teachers strike a balance between providing flexibility for charter school leaders to make decisions about their staffing needs, while simultaneously providing job security for effective educators," said Barbara Morgan, the state Department of Education’s chief spokeswoman.
The distinctions are allowed under the state’s charter school law, which permits a “streamlined tenure” system for New Jersey's 80-plus alternative schools. This puts charter schools outside of the provisions of the landmark tenure law enacted last summer.
Gov. Chris Christie has long sought to change tenure requirements at charter schools, first proposing a law three years ago that called for the elimination of tenure altogether.
He hasn’t pushed that idea much since then, but the administration did move in the fall to ease the certification rules for charter schools to allow teachers to be hired more freely from outside careers and then trained on the job. That proposal is now pending before the State Board of Education.
The latest proposal has so far received little public comment, which may not be surprising, given that it was only filed in December and posted on January 7. Districts and charter schools were notified by the Department of Education about the proposal yesterday, and it is open for formal comment for 60 days.
Once the comment period is over and the input considered, the proposal can become formal code in March. It does not need further approval by the State Board of Education.
The New Jersey Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union with locals in nearly a dozen charter schools, voiced some concerns yesterday about the proposal and what it called separate rules for teachers in charter schools.
“This makes them [charter school teachers] second-class citizens, providing them with fewer rights and protections,” said Steve Baker, a NJEA spokesman.
Baker also chided the unilateral move by the administration after the more collaborative process over the past two years in rewriting the state’s main tenure law, leading to its unanimous passage by the Legislature last summer.
It is that law -- negotiated with the teacher unions and many others -- that tightened some tenure rules for district schools, requiring teachers to serve four years before receiving tenure, instead of the previous three, and putting in place the arbitration process for settling tenure charges.
“We just finished a long and careful review of tenure in New Jersey, and we came to a consensus before the law was passed,” he said. “This [latest proposal] is antithetical to that collaborative process.”
In the six-page proposal, the administration maintained that the new measures sought to strike a balance that would most benefit students.
Specifically, the provision allowing the commissioner to terminate tenure protections for teachers in the case the charter school is put on probation could help avoid closing the school altogether.
“The stipulation that streamlined tenure be withdrawn as a condition of a charter school’s probation is important to the ability of the Department to implement probationary terms designed to forestall closure of a school due to nonrenewal or revocation of a charter,” the proposal reads.
Press of Atlantic City - New Jersey ranks low in teachers with National Board certification
National Board expectations
The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards has five propositions for what teachers should know and be able to do. They are:
1. Teachers are committed to students and their learning. They understand how students develop and learn and the individual, cultural and family differences they bring to the classroom.
2. Teachers know the subjects they teach and how to teach those subjects to students. They are familiar with skill gaps and preconceptions students may have, and know how to use diverse instructional strategies.
3. Teachers are responsible for managing and monitoring student learning. They keep students motivated, engaged and focused. They can assess individual students as the class as a whole. They use multiple methods to measure student grown and understanding and can explain student performance to parents.
4. Teachers think systematically about their practice and learn from experience. They read, question, create and are willing to try new things. They stay abreast of new strategies and critically examine their own practice on a regular basis.
5. Teachers are members of learning communities. They collaborate with others. They are leaders and work collaboratively with other teachers and parents.
Source: National Board for Professional Teaching Standards
Posted: Wednesday, January 23, 2013 12:00 am | Updated: 8:28 pm, Tue Jan 22, 2013.
New Jersey ranks low in teachers with National Board certificationBy DIANE D’AMICO Education WriterpressofAtlanticCity.com
Every day Stafford Township fourth-grade teacher Daniel Breslow plans to work with his students in small groups. He develops lessons that are inquiry-based, encouraging students to ask questions.
If a student doesn’t perform well, he thinks about how he might approach the topic, or the student, differently.
Since earning certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, or NBPTS, two years ago, Breslow said he just spends more time thinking about how he teaches and how he can teach better.
“Reflection is such a big part of it,” he said of the certification process. “I think about how can I meet the needs of every student.”
Considered a gold standard of teaching, national board certification is a demanding process that can take as long as three years to complete. Currently, only 242 of approximately 110,000 teachers in New Jersey have achieved the certification, ranking the state 39th in the nation.
Why more teachers don’t get it appears to be a combination of politics, pay and public relations.
New Jersey does not require national certification, and except in a handful of districts, teachers do not earn more for achieving it, unlike pay increases they get for earning master’s degrees. Many teachers don’t really know what the NBPTS is.
New Jersey Education Association spokesman Steve Wollmer said a few districts have negotiated pay increases for national board certification, but it is not common.
“It is a pretty prestigious level to reach,” he said. “But having a master’s degree is more ingrained in the culture here.”
Advocates hope that as the national core content standards and teacher evaluations are implemented in the state, more districts and teachers will also see the value of national certification, which focuses not just on subject matter, but on how well it is taught and how well students learn.
“In today’s discussion about teacher effectiveness, districts are looking for a way to evaluate teachers,” said MaryAnn Joseph, a board-certified teacher who coordinates support services for aspiring NBPTS-certified teachers through the Educational Resource and Information Center in Mullica Hill, Gloucester County. “Every teacher-evaluation program is consistent with National Board standards.”
Developed in 1987 following a national Carnegie forum on 21st century teaching, there are now more than 102,000 NBPTS-certified teachers in the United States. Patrick Ledesma, director of Research and Knowledge Management at NBPTS in Arlington, Va., said some states have policies that support teachers and encourage them to pursue certification.
Florida and North Carolina have offered financial incentives of as much as $10,000, and those two states have about a third of all certified teachers nationwide.
The certification process costs about $3,000, and some grant funds through the state Department of Education can cover about half the cost. But deciding to become nationally certified in New Jersey is a largely personal decision. Every teacher interviewed talked about how time-consuming and difficult the process was — but also how rewarding.
“It was probably the best professional development I’ve ever done,” said Mark Haviland, a social studies teacher at the Belhaven Middle School in Linwood who was certified in 2006. “It was a bit overwhelming, but it really makes you think about why and how you are teaching. It gave me a lot of confidence. I’ve gotten better at evaluating students and giving them feedback.”
Teachers complete 10 assessments, which include videotaped lessons of themselves teaching and tests of their own content knowledge. They submit a packet to the NBPTS and have as many as three years to pass all sections.
Joseph said only about half of all applicants receive certification in their first year, and about 75 percent earn it within the three-year period. It must be renewed every 10 years.
Keith Hodgson, a music teacher at Mainland Regional High School in Linwood, decided to get certified in 2003 after being asked to serve on a panel that developed the music certificate.
“That changed my career,” he said. “It’s about teaching every child, not a group or a class.”
Teachers are required to have at least three years’ experience before they can apply. Hodgson said even almost a decade later, he still uses what he learned every day, reflecting on his lessons.
Stafford Township included a financial incentive to encourage teachers to attempt the process, and of about 15 who expressed interest, six have been certified. Some dropped out, deciding it was too demanding and time-consuming.
Susan Kilgallon, who teaches a science lab to third- and fourth-graders at the McKinley School, remembers taking her newborn daughter with her to the library to study while she was on maternity leave.
“It was difficult, but it’s also motivating,” she said while teaching a class on phases of the moon that required students to use the scientific method. “I use what I learned every day now. I know what I want to do, and what I don’t want to do. I look at the science standards more closely.”
Maria Stout and Hope Scherlin teach individual students and small groups as reading-intervention teachers, but said the process was still intense.
“It has changed how I communicate with the classroom teachers,” Stout said. “Everything I do has a purpose.”
Scherlin said the importance of parental and community involvement made an impression on her, and she focuses on how she can bring parents in as part of the learning process.
“It’s about adapting your teaching to meet each student’s needs,” she said.
Kindergarten teacher Stacey Suydam, who was certified in November, said she has a much better understanding of her goals.
“It’s like taking a giant magnifying glass to what you do,” she said. “I still get down on the floor with the kids. But now I really understand why I’m doing it. Kindergarten doesn’t always get a lot of respect. But this is the beginning of teaching for children. It sets them up for life. Teaching them to be a good person starts here. This helped me think about the big picture of education.”
Contact Diane D’Amico: 609-272-7241 DDamico@pressofac.com
