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GSCS take: the dust needs to settle before all the details emerge on what really has gone on. Folks need to know what the details are in order to make an informed judgement as to the pluses and minuses of the application, as well as to the stability of our education system overall.... Attached are various reports on the recent developments between the Department of Education(DOE), the NJEA and the Governor on what may be included and what may not now be included in New Jersey's application to the federal government. FYI, the RTTT grant application is posted now on the DOE website. For link to DOE application and various articles (‘N.J. teachers union joins Christie administration in 'Race to the Top' application’, ‘N.J. Gov. Christie revises bid for education grant; throws out compromise’)on the issues, click here on
NJDOE News
For More Information Contact the Public Information Office:
Alan Guenther, Director
Beth Auerswald
Richard Vespucci
609-292-1126
For Immediate Release: June 1, 2010
Christie Administration Submits Race to the Top Application Centered on Improving Student Performance
Application In Line with National Education Reform Movement
Trenton, New Jersey- The Christie Administration submitted today its Race to the Top application which focuses on the belief that student performance begins and ends in the classroom. It recognizes that after a child walks through the school house doors, no single factor influences that student’s academic success more than the quality of his or her teachers.
This second round Race to the Top submission is far stronger than the first, including aggressive reforms to help turn around the state’s failing schools despite the fact that New Jersey is currently the second highest state in per-pupil spending. New Jersey’s Race to the Top submission has been endorsed by a unanimous vote in both houses of the Legislature and has been endorsed by dozens of organizations focused on improving New Jersey’s public schools, as well as by hundreds of New Jersey’s school districts.No single factor influences a student’s educational experience and academic achievement more than their teacher. As such, the application includes several bold initiatives to strengthen teacher quality and ultimately improve student performance. These initiatives include elevating the importance of teacher evaluations, while enhancing school districts’ capabilities to measure student learning in the classroom and using those measurers to evaluate teachers’ effectiveness.
Additionally, a merit-pay system will financially reward highly effective teachers and serve as an incentive for adequate teachers to improve their own abilities. It also rewards effective teachers who accept assignments in low-performing schools.
Commissioner Schundler said, “These reforms are the beginning, not the end, to improving New Jersey’s education system. This bold reform agenda will continue regardless of whether we receive federal funding. It is critical that we continue to implement good ideas, regardless of special interests, if we are going to improve the quality of education we provide our children.”
Application Centers on Shared Belief By Governor Christie and President Obama that the Path to High-Level, Enduring Student Achievement Begins and Ends in the Classroom.
The Governor’s reform plans in this application include several programs that emphasize teacher quality through fair and thorough evaluations, including measures to enhance school districts’ capability to measure student learning and performance.
§ Incentivizing Quality Instruction with Merit-Pay. New Jersey will design, evaluate, and implement merit pay programs that pay individual teachers based on student achievement. The system will also reward effective teachers who accept assignments in low-performing schools.
§ Evaluating Teacher Training Programs. This application proposes to evaluate teacher training programs, so that the most effective programs can be identified and teachers schooled in those programs can be recruited.
§ Putting Educational Effectiveness Over Seniority. In addition to rewarding and promoting effective teachers, it is necessary to weed-out ineffective teachers. This application also proposes to make it easier for school districts to terminate ineffective teachers, using teacher evaluations based on student achievement as the basis for decisions to grant tenure, promote and develop teachers. In the event of layoffs or a workforce reduction, educational effectiveness will replace seniority as the main factor in determining who to retain.
§ Successful Schools are Led by Successful Principals. Governor Christie recognizes the role that principals play in fostering a successful, high-achieving education. This application proposes to offer a financial incentive to effective principals, as it does to effective teachers, to relocate to low-performing schools.
The Governor’s cover letter to the race to the top application can be found attached to this release at http://www.nj.gov/education/arra/grants/060110CoverLetter.pdf. The full Race to the Top Application will be available online at www.state.nj.us/education by the close of business today.
‘N.J. teachers union joins Christie administration in 'Race to the Top' application’
‘N.J. Gov. Christie revises bid for education grant; throws out compromise’
‘N.J. Gov. Christie revises bid for education grant; throws out compromise’
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Last updated: Tuesday June 1, 2010, 7:16 PM BY LESLIE BRODYThe RecordSTAFF WRITER
Governor Christie threw out the school reform blueprint endorsed by the state’s biggest teachers union last week and filed a new bid Tuesday for a high-stakes federal grant known as “Race to the Top.”
Christie said his education commissioner had compromised too much in order to win the union’s blessing for a contest that could bring $400 million to the state. Christie said the new proposal reinstated key elements of earlier plans, such as merit pay for individual teachers, putting job performance over seniority when laying off staff, making it easier to fire poor teachers, and giving bonuses to successful faculty who relocate to failing schools.
The eleventh-hour change came as a shock to officials at the New Jersey Education Association, who said they learned on Tuesday afternoon – the contest deadline – that the governor had changed the application and taken off their signatures of support.
Union leaders and education commissioner Bret Schundler had spent weeks hammering out compromises on the plan, and on Thursday both parties expressed satisfaction that they had come up with a collaborative blueprint. Union buy-in wins points in the stiff competition.
NJEA President Barbara Keshishian reacted “with a mixture of deep disappointment, utter frustration and total outrage” to the news that the application had been rewritten, she said in a release. “The biggest losers in this entire fiasco are the state’s 1.4 million students.”
Christie told reporters Tuesday that he was not involved in the past weeks’ discussions between the union and commissioner Schundler, and that when he learned the details of the compromise on Friday, he told Schundler to spend the holiday weekend restoring principles such as individual merit pay. The union-endorsed plan had focused on school-wide bonuses for schools that made strong gains, and it kept seniority-based job protections.
Christie said he retained faith in his education commissioner and wanted “creative tension” within his staff.
“This is my administration, I’m responsible for it and I make the decisions and I’m happy to hear recommendations anytime that my cabinet officials want to make” them, he said. “But they need to understand, those are recommendations. I take them with real serious consideration but in the end, these are core principles that I’ve been campaigning on since I decided to seek this job.”
Schundler, reached by cellphone, said of the last-minute revision, “We made the decision together.”
“Clearly there are enormous disagreements within the administration on how they want to proceed,” said NJEA spokesman Stephen Wollmer. “That doesn’t engender much confidence among the ranks of teachers.”
The governor stressed that his Race to the Top application reflected President Obama’s push to tie teacher pay and evaluations to student achievement, judged in part by test scores. Christie’s office posted the massive application online for public review after 6 p.m.
In a letter to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Christie noted that the application “recognizes that after a child walks through the school house doors, no single factor influences that student’s academic success more than the quality of his or her teachers. … Special interests that have selfishly thwarted reform should not be permitted to hold good ideas hostage.”
Christie, who has sparred for months with the NJEA, wrote that he wanted to enhance schools’ abilities to measure student learning and use that data to evaluate teachers; merit pay would reward the best teachers and give “adequate teachers” an incentive to improve. Such evaluations would be the basis for tenure, promotions and job retention.
The NJEA has long fought merit pay, saying it undermines teamwork. The union also argues against relying on standardized test scores to judge teachers; it says doing so pushes them to “teach to the test” and penalizes teachers facing challenging kids. The NJEA’s rejection of the first-round Race to the Top application in January was one of several factors that hurt New Jersey’s bid.
Last week’s compromise plan called for a committee of educators that would take a year to formulate fair ways to assess teachers and school leaders using a combination of test scores, written assignments and other measures, with student performance accounting for 50 percent of a teacher’s evaluation.
Charles Barone of Democrats for Education Reform, a pro-merit pay group based in Manhattan, said Christie’s approach has been “ham-handed,” but the state’s application still has a chance for success despite the lack of union sign-on. A number of states, notably Louisiana and Illinois, have submitted proposals that don’t included full union support, he said.
Barone said he had been surprised Schundler had agreed to so many concessions since they seemed at odds with Christie’s agenda. “Why did they feel they needed NJEA support so badly that they shredded their application?” Barone asked. “Now they have a strong application but a lot of collateral damage.”
Frank Belluscio of the New Jersey School Boards Association said the compromise version of the application had “watered down” initiatives like merit pay, plus changes in seniority and tenure rules that his group supported.
The latest version – without NJEA backing — provides stronger support for those concepts and still has a good chance of winning the federal funding, he said. “Early on, Bret Schundler said union support was not integral to the application,” Belluscio said.
Senate President Stephen M. Sweeney, Assembly Speaker Sheila Y. Oliver and the heads of the Senate and Assembly education committees Tuesday blasted Christie’s “abrupt about-face,” saying it seriously jeopardized New Jersey’s chances of winning the aid. They said Christie was pressured by conservative pundits who criticized the compromise plan.
“The governor has apparently decided that hearing good things about himself over the radio is more valuable than $400 million for our schools,” said Sweeney, D-Gloucester. The compromise application “was crafted in good faith among everyone involved, and now that unity’s been blown up because some talking heads disagreed. If the governor was as thick-skinned as he likes to make people think, he would shrug off the criticism and stand by the team that put together the state’s application.”
By the 4:30 p.m. deadline, 35 states and the District of Columbia had submitted bids. The Obama administration said 10 to 15 winners of a total $3.4 billion will be announced by the end of September.
“This took a lot of hard work and political courage,” U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a news release to commend applicants. “It required administrators, elected officials, union leaders, teachers, and advocates to work together and embrace a common reform agenda.”
Staff Writers Patricia Alex and Charles Stile contributed to this report. E-mail: brody@northjersey.com
Governor Christie threw out the school reform blueprint endorsed by the state’s biggest teachers union last week and filed a new bid Tuesday for a high-stakes federal grant known as “Race to the Top.”
AMANDA BROWN/THE STAR-LEDGER
Christie, seen at a Tuesday press conference, said his education commissioner had compromised too much in order to win the union’s blessing for a contest that could bring $400 million to the state.
Christie said his education commissioner had compromised too much in order to win the union’s blessing for a contest that could bring $400 million to the state. Christie said the new proposal reinstated key elements of earlier plans, such as merit pay for individual teachers, putting job performance over seniority when laying off staff, making it easier to fire poor teachers, and giving bonuses to successful faculty who relocate to failing schools.
The eleventh-hour change came as a shock to officials at the New Jersey Education Association, who said they learned on Tuesday afternoon – the contest deadline – that the governor had changed the application and taken off their signatures of support.
Union leaders and education commissioner Bret Schundler had spent weeks hammering out compromises on the plan, and on Thursday both parties expressed satisfaction that they had come up with a collaborative blueprint. Union buy-in wins points in the stiff competition.
NJEA President Barbara Keshishian reacted “with a mixture of deep disappointment, utter frustration and total outrage” to the news that the application had been rewritten, she said in a release. “The biggest losers in this entire fiasco are the state’s 1.4 million students.”
Christie told reporters Tuesday that he was not involved in the past weeks’ discussions between the union and commissioner Schundler, and that when he learned the details of the compromise on Friday, he told Schundler to spend the holiday weekend restoring principles such as individual merit pay. The union-endorsed plan had focused on school-wide bonuses for schools that made strong gains, and it kept seniority-based job protections.
Christie said he retained faith in his education commissioner and wanted “creative tension” within his staff.
“This is my administration, I’m responsible for it and I make the decisions and I’m happy to hear recommendations anytime that my cabinet officials want to make” them, he said. “But they need to understand, those are recommendations. I take them with real serious consideration but in the end, these are core principles that I’ve been campaigning on since I decided to seek this job.”
Schundler, reached by cellphone, said of the last-minute revision, “We made the decision together.”
“Clearly there are enormous disagreements within the administration on how they want to proceed,” said NJEA spokesman Stephen Wollmer. “That doesn’t engender much confidence among the ranks of teachers.”
The governor stressed that his Race to the Top application reflected President Obama’s push to tie teacher pay and evaluations to student achievement, judged in part by test scores. Christie’s office posted the massive application online for public review after 6 p.m.
In a letter to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Christie noted that the application “recognizes that after a child walks through the school house doors, no single factor influences that student’s academic success more than the quality of his or her teachers. … Special interests that have selfishly thwarted reform should not be permitted to hold good ideas hostage.”
Christie, who has sparred for months with the NJEA, wrote that he wanted to enhance schools’ abilities to measure student learning and use that data to evaluate teachers; merit pay would reward the best teachers and give “adequate teachers” an incentive to improve. Such evaluations would be the basis for tenure, promotions and job retention.
The NJEA has long fought merit pay, saying it undermines teamwork. The union also argues against relying on standardized test scores to judge teachers; it says doing so pushes them to “teach to the test” and penalizes teachers facing challenging kids. The NJEA’s rejection of the first-round Race to the Top application in January was one of several factors that hurt New Jersey’s bid.
Last week’s compromise plan called for a committee of educators that would take a year to formulate fair ways to assess teachers and school leaders using a combination of test scores, written assignments and other measures, with student performance accounting for 50 percent of a teacher’s evaluation.
Charles Barone of Democrats for Education Reform, a pro-merit pay group based in Manhattan, said Christie’s approach has been “ham-handed,” but the state’s application still has a chance for success despite the lack of union sign-on. A number of states, notably Louisiana and Illinois, have submitted proposals that don’t included full union support, he said.
Barone said he had been surprised Schundler had agreed to so many concessions since they seemed at odds with Christie’s agenda. “Why did they feel they needed NJEA support so badly that they shredded their application?” Barone asked. “Now they have a strong application but a lot of collateral damage.”
Frank Belluscio of the New Jersey School Boards Association said the compromise version of the application had “watered down” initiatives like merit pay, plus changes in seniority and tenure rules that his group supported.
The latest version – without NJEA backing — provides stronger support for those concepts and still has a good chance of winning the federal funding, he said. “Early on, Bret Schundler said union support was not integral to the application,” Belluscio said.
Senate President Stephen M. Sweeney, Assembly Speaker Sheila Y. Oliver and the heads of the Senate and Assembly education committees Tuesday blasted Christie’s “abrupt about-face,” saying it seriously jeopardized New Jersey’s chances of winning the aid. They said Christie was pressured by conservative pundits who criticized the compromise plan
‘N.J. teachers union joins Christie administration in 'Race to the Top' application’
By Statehouse Bureau Staff May 28, 2010, 5:05AM
TRENTON — In a rare accord between two warring factions, the state’s largest teachers union has joined Gov. Chris Christie’s administration in supporting an application for a federal grant that could bring up to $400 million to New Jersey’s public schools.
The New Jersey Education Association refused to endorse the state’s first Race to the Top application, but relented after both sides compromised on what had been the biggest sticking points — merit pay, teacher seniority, evaluations and tenure.
"We are extremely pleased that the 200,000-member NJEA has agreed to endorse our application and its bold reform agenda designed to improve education in New Jersey," Education Commissioner Bret Schundler said in a statement.
Administration officials would not say whether the agreements reached for this application represented a long-term policy shift from goals Christie has been pushing since he took office in January.
Previous coverage:
• N.J. teachers union backs 'Race to the Top' application
• N.J. education chief gets mixed reviews for reform plans, 'Race to the Top' grant
• N.J. education chief proposes sweeping school reform, urges NJEA cooperation
• Coalition of Newark educators form unlikely alliance trying to reform city schools
• N.J. schools reach deadline to join bid for $400M federal 'Race to the Top' grant
• Half of N.J. six-figure teachers work in Bergen, Passaic counties
• N.J. education chief plans to lay out merit pay, benefits cuts for teachers
• N.J. Gov. Chris Christie pushes for education changes with speech in Washington
• Gov. Chris Christie criticizes N.J. schools for not stopping student walkouts
• Complete coverage of the 2010 New Jersey State Budget
The agreement came after several days of marathon negotiations between the state Department of Education and the NJEA over the application, which includes linking student achievement to teacher evaluation and pay.
Race to the Top is an initiative by the Obama administration which rewards states for school improvement plans. Chances of winning federal grant money increase with broader support. In March, Delaware and Tennessee were awarded $600 million.
According to the state’s latest application, student achievement will account for 50 percent — not 51 percent, as originally proposed — of a teacher’s evaluation and include not just test scores, but other measures of learning such as portfolios of students’ work, NJEA spokeswoman Dawn Hiltner said.
The original application included a "bonus pool" of money from the state for strong teachers. The funds would be split between teachers or teacher teams and their schools.
The new application proposes a merit pay pilot program that districts could opt to join. Instead of individual merit pay for teachers, half the money awarded by the state as bonuses would be used for schoolwide programs, such as technology upgrades or teacher training, Hiltner said.
A school’s staff would decide how to award the rest of the money. It could go to individual teachers, or divided among the entire staff, or used for a school program, Hiltner said.
"Our feeling on merit pay is, teaching is a collaborative effort," Hiltner said. "This helps people in schools work together, instead of pitting teachers against each other because they are vying for a bonus."
A second merit pay initiative, which awards bonuses to effective teachers who work in high-needs districts, remains in the state’s proposal, Hiltner said.
"We’re willing to see how it works," she said.
The Department of Education originally proposed extending the time to achieve tenure to five years, or three years of "effective" teaching. The proposal the NJEA agreed to keeps the time required to earn tenure at three years, Hiltner said.
Schundler said the NJEA’s support for the Race to the Top application supplements endorsements already received from the American Federation of Teachers affiliate in Newark, and from superintendents and school board presidents in more than 430 districts statewide.
Ben Dworkin, an political science adjunct at Rider University, said the union and administration were standing together to avoid squandering any chance the state had of receiving the money.
"The Race to the Top initiative, which is relatively small in the grand scheme of federal support for education, is really about trying to get everybody in a particular state on the same page, moving toward better educational outcomes," he said. "It was embarrassing to New Jersey — and to the governor’s office as well as the NJEA — that they couldn’t get on the same page during the first round."
By Lisa Fleisher/Statehouse Bureau and Kristen Alloway/The Star-Ledger
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