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3-6-13 Teacher Evaluations, Student Testing, State Board hears new regulations
NJ Spotlight - Teachers Union Looks Askance at New Regulations for Tenure Evaluations…NJEA says law goes beyond what it agreed to, puts too much stress on student test scores

The Record - N.J. increasing tests for students

GSCS Note: Go to 'Issues' on top banner here to see Proposed Regulations for Teacher Evaluations

NJ Spotlight - Teachers Union Looks Askance at New Regulations for Tenure Evaluations…NJEA says law goes beyond what it agreed to, puts too much stress on student test scores

The Record - N.J. increasing tests for students

 

 

 

The Record - N.J. increasing tests for students

 

By Leslie Brody, 3-6-13

New Jersey students will spend eight or nine hours on annual state tests starting in the 2014-15 school year – roughly three more hours per year than current tests require, according to guidance released by the state on Tuesday.

State officials say these new, online tests will help teachers better understand students’ needs. Some parents and educators, however, worry the new tests will drain more instructional time and increase pressure to “teach to the test,” especially at a time when teachers’ evaluations will be linked in part to their students’ progress on tests.

Third-graders, for example, now spend roughly five hours, spread over four days, on the New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge or NJ ASK tests. The new exams will take eight hours, but will be split among nine short sessions.

In Grades 4 and above, the new tests will take nine and a half hours total — over nine sessions — up from about six hours now. Some sections will take place after three-quarters of the school year is over, and other sections at the end of the year.

The new tests for math and language arts are being developed by a 22-state, federally-funded consortium known as PARCC, or the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers. The tests are supposed to reflect what students must learn by each grade according to a new set of voluntary national standards called the Common Core. These standards, put in place this year, aim to be more coherent, clear and rigorous than many states had before.

The consortium released some details on the coming tests Tuesday. Bari Ehrlichson, assistant commissioner for the state Department of Education, said she was “very excited” about the new tests’ improved sophistication, which will be enhanced by technology. For example, a third-grader could be asked to click and drag the fraction “one-half” to its spot on a number line, rather than filling in a bubble on a multiple choice question. The child would type responses to writing prompts, which might spur schools to teach second-graders to use keyboards.

Some district chiefs, however, questioned whether the tests would dominate their schools’ computers during test days. The state is now surveying districts to see if they expect to have enough computers and bandwidth. The consortium recommends that a school with 100 students in its largest grade have at least 50 devices: half the students could take the test in the morning, half in the afternoon.

Daniel Fishbein, superintendent in Ridgewood, said he was optimistic the new assessments would be “quality tests” but he predicted a “big challenge” administering them. Due to budget cuts, Ridgewood uses online programs for foreign languages, for example, so some classes might not have access to technology on testing days.

Some parents complain standardized testing eats up too much time already.

Jean McTavish, a Ridgewood parent and principal of a New York City high school, said mass produced tests don’t truly measure students’ comprehension, and timed essays promote formulaic writing. Such tests are “just such a huge violation of what professionals understand about teaching and learning,” she said.

North Jersey Media Group Inc.

 

NJ Spotlight - Teachers Union Looks Askance at New Regulations for Tenure Evaluations…NJEA says law goes beyond what it agreed to, puts too much stress on student test scores

By John Mooney, March 6, 2013 in Education

Even before the new code is introduced, the state’s largest teachers union is pushing back against proposed regulations for implementing the state’s new teacher-tenure law and rekindling some of the old debates that led up to the new law.

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The New Jersey Education Association reacted quickly to Monday’s online publication of the proposed regulations to be presented to the state Board of Education today, contending the code goes further than the law they agreed to last summer, including in its use of standardized test scores in evaluating teachers.

“A lot of our worst fears are being realized,” Steve Wollmer, the NJEA’s communications director, said last night.

The law sets new standards for evaluation of teachers, using both observation of classroom practices and measures of their students’ learning and progress. The new system is to be in place next fall, when teachers will start to be rated on a four-tier scale ranging from “ineffective” to “highly effective.”

Teachers will need at four years satisfactory ratings to receive tenure, and could see tenure charges brought against them after two consecutive years of less than effective ratings.

The law took more than six months of sometimes-intense negotiations, but ultimately had the sign-off of the entire Senate and Assembly and the support of such disparate parties as Gov. Chris Christie and the NJEA, the teachers union that he has so often sparred with.

But some of those debates now seem hardly settled with the release new regulations. For instance, the regulations proposed by the Christie administration would allow schools to use student progress on standardized tests for as much as 50 percent of certain teachers’ evaluations.

The law – as the proposed regulations do, as well – reads that test scores will not be a “predominant” factor in the evaluations. State officials stressed this week that the 50 percent is only a maximum and said they would announce more precise “weights” when they present the code today.

Wollmer said that even writing such maximums into the code goes against what the union agreed to: the use of multiple measures of student achievement in judging teachers. And he said the state unilaterally setting those weights each year doesn’t make it much better.

“The overarching concern is that they promised districts they would give them maximum flexibility,” Wollmer said, “and this instead is one of the most intrusive pieces of policy ever in terms of how top-down, state-controlled.”

State officials have said any judgments on the new regulations are premature until they can make a full presentation today. A full public campaign is also planned for the coming months to seek feedback from teachers and other educators. State Department of Education officials would not comment further last night.

Wollmer said he wished that conversation had taken place before the regulations were put forward.

“There’s a lot of talk about collaboration and openness, but in the end it’s as we predicted,” he said. “So let the conversation begin.”