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The Record - Governor Christie hopes Newark teachers bonuses will serve as model for the state “Many educators will be watching closely to see whether performance pay leads to student progress, said Lynne Strickland, executive director of the Garden State Coalition of Schools. “Everybody is blown away by the fact it’s happening in Newark first,” she said.”
Philadelphia Inquirer – Christie exults over Newark's pilot school deal
NJ Spotlight - Facebook Fund Helps Seal the Deal for Newark Teachers' Contract…Money funneled to high-profile performance bonuses, and nuts-and-bolts retroactive pay
The Record - Governor Christie hopes Newark teachers bonuses will serve as model for the state
“Many educators will be watching closely to see whether performance pay leads to student progress, said Lynne Strickland, executive director of the Garden State Coalition of Schools. “Everybody is blown away by the fact it’s happening in Newark first,” she said.”
Friday, November 16, 2012 Last updated: Saturday November 17, 2012, 12:33 AM
BY LESLIE BRODY
Governor Christie on Friday called for schools across New Jersey and the nation to emulate the performance-pay provisions in Newark’s new teachers’ contract, but some skeptics were asking how other districts could afford to follow suit.
About $50 million of a 2010 gift from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg helped pay for provisions in the five-year contract, including higher base salaries for all Newark teachers plus annual raises for teachers who are rated well under a new evaluation system. The contract, which the Newark Teachers’ Union ratified Wednesday, also includes additional bonuses that could add up to $12,500 annually for teachers deemed “highly effective” in the most struggling schools and hard-to-staff subjects.
The deal was hailed by many education advocates as one of the boldest performance pay plans in the country. Christie acknowledged that, in the next few years, other districts would likely need outside donors to finance such incentives.
“There are lots of people who have benefitted from the greatness of public education in this country who want it to be great again for everybody and are willing to use their money … to give back,” he said. “But in the long term, this is a role government should play, incentivizing good teachers to be excellent.”
Speaking in a Newark elementary school gymnasium, Christie touted a collaboration with the American Federation of Teachers and said he hoped other unions would agree to performance pay, rather than salaries guided mostly by longevity.
“If they don’t, they will become dinosaurs,” he said.
The New Jersey Education Association, which represents the vast majority of districts in the state, was quick to argue that merit pay undermines collegiality and fails to boost achievement. A spokesman for the union, Steve Wollmer, also questioned how Newark’s bonuses could continue after the Facebook money runs out, but Chris Cerf, the state education commissioner, said the rewards would be sustainable through public funds.
The NJEA has also balked at another key point of the Newark contract – putting teachers on panels to help review their peers, with administrators getting the final say.
“We don’t feel it is appropriate for people within the same bargaining unit to be evaluating each other,” Wollmer said.
In Paterson, where contract negotiations have been at an impasse, the union rejected a merit-pay proposal. Peter Tirri, president of the Paterson Education Association, said his members didn’t believe rewards would be given out fairly. “Nobody is going to see that money unless they’re the cousin of the principal,” he said.
Three North Jersey superintendents said performance pay was a worthy idea if it is implemented fairly, but they didn’t see how they could afford it.
“With 2 percent caps [on tax levy increases], you’re looking at redistributing pools of money in order to put in some merit system,” said Christopher Nagy, superintendent of the Northern Valley Regional School District. “Right now everybody is running very lean.”
Many educators will be watching closely to see whether performance pay leads to student progress, said Lynne Strickland, executive director of the Garden State Coalition of Schools. “Everybody is blown away by the fact it’s happening in Newark first,” she said.
Philadelphia Inquirer – Christie exults over Newark's pilot school deal
Samantha Henry, Associated Press
Posted: Saturday, November 17, 2012, 3:01 AM
NEWARK, N.J. - A new teachers' contract in New Jersey's largest city, funded in part by a donation from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, should be a model for the nation on how to remake a struggling public school system through private-public partnership, Gov. Christie said Friday.
Christie, visiting a school with education and union officials, called the signing of the contract "the most gratifying day of my governorship by far."
"In my heart, this is what I was hoping for, that Newark would lead a transformational change in education in America," Christie said.
The contract, ratified this week, allows educators to earn more earlier in their careers, and offers bonuses for teaching in low-performing schools and hard-to-staff subjects. The performance pay is funded primarily through a $100 million grant from Zuckerberg, with the district allocating $100 million - half from public sources, half philanthropic - to fund the entire contract.
The agreement allows for teachers to receive up to $12,500 in pay tied to performance reviews. Teachers will be evaluated by factors including test scores, a panel of peers and administrators, and other student performance benchmarks.
Teachers who do not perform well can be frozen at a pay grade but will have the opportunity to receive mentoring and move up the following year. Those who receive an "ineffective" rating also can elect to be rated by an independent "peer validator," and that review will be considered before determining their final rating.
School Superintendent Cami Anderson will have the final say if an agreement on a teacher's competence cannot be reached.
The contract also includes $31 million in retroactive pay increases for teachers, who had been working without a contract since 2010.
Christie praised the parties involved in the negotiations, including Anderson; American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten; Newark Teachers Union president Joseph Del Grosso; and New Jersey Education Commissioner Chris Cerf. He also lauded the leadership of Mayor Cory Booker, who, although he does not have direct control over the state-run district, has made reforming Newark's struggling schools a priority of his administration.
The Republican governor said the negotiations leading to the agreement were also a model of how politicians should come together to get things done. He joked that if he could find common ground with Weingarten, who was present at Friday's announcement, then President Obama should be able to get along with Republicans in Washington.
Cerf called the contract "revolutionary," saying it was the first of its kind to offer teachers pay bonuses based on performance and allow them to review one another.
"There are many that believe that public education, especially in our urban centers, is irreparably broken, that it simply cannot be repaired," Cerf said. "Newark will prove them wrong."
NJ Spotlight - Facebook Fund Helps Seal the Deal for Newark Teachers' Contract…Money funneled to high-profile performance bonuses, and nuts-and-bolts retroactive pay
By John Mooney, November 16, 2012 in Education
The fund created by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to help Newark schools will contribute a little less than $50 million to the contract ratified this week for the city’s teachers, but not necessarily in the ways many expected.
The chief executive of the Foundation for Newark’s Future, Greg Taylor, said yesterday that the fund would pay roughly $18 million for the teacher performance bonuses that have been the centerpiece -- and the most controversial piece -- of the new contract.
But in some of his first public comments since the deal was ratified by union members on Wednesday, Taylor said $31 million of the total -- close to two-thirds -- would go to the far less glamorous retroactive pay for teachers to cover two years in which the 4,000 members of the Newark Teachers Union went without a new contract.
Taylor lauded the performance bonuses that have gained the most attention and called them a “remarkable shift” in how the district pays its educators. The bonuses will provide up to $12,500 a year extra for teachers with the highest ratings working in the schools with the greatest needs.
“This is a monumental day for Newark, and for Newark’s schoolchildren and their families,” Taylor said. “We couldn’t be more excited about the direction that the contract has taken the district.”
But he said that FNF also recognized the need to also help pay for the nuts and bolts of the contract, and that included the retroactive pay. FNF will provide virtually all the funding for the retroactive pay in the five-year pact.
“The members earned their cost-of-living increases, and we felt it was important to compensate them for what they earned,” he said.
“We really view both as essential pillars to establishing this contract,” Taylor said of the bonuses and the retroactive pay.
FNF’s overall $48.5 million contribution to the new contract, including matching funds from other foundations, represents close to a quarter of the overall $200 million that Zuckerberg hoped to raise for the city’s schoolchildren with his $100 million gift two years ago.
Up to now, the fund had paid out roughly $16 million of its total to a variety of purposes, Taylor said, from start-up money for new schools to small grants for teacher teams. It is also expected to make a big contribution to the city’s charter schools, although that total has yet to be announced.
But the help on the labor contract is a big step forward for the FNF and, by most accounts, one that was critical to the landmark deal being reached. It is the first large-scale use of performance pay for teachers in the state, and one that Gov. Chris Christie has pressed as a key piece of his education reform agenda.
Christie is slated to be in the city today to lead a press conference at the district’s Speedway School to highlight the contract, with district and NTU officials also on hand. Other key players in the agreement and expected to be in attendance include Newark Superintendent Cami Anderson, NTU president Joseph Del Grosso, and state Education Commissioner Chris Cerf.
Randi Weingarten, the president of the national American Federation of Teachers, the parent union to the NTU, is also expected to be on hand. Weingarten had been part of the final negotiations in the Newark deal and has since gone out of her way to promote the deal as a big step for unions to play a central role in education reforms.
For his part, Taylor stressed yesterday that the FNF played no part in the labor talks themselves. “We left that to the experts,” he said of the negotiators, which included Anderson and Del Grosso.
Anderson, the Newark superintendent, said that about $100 million in additional funds will be required to fulfill the deal, half of which would be provided through Newark public schools and the rest through the FNF.
