Jersey Jazzman warns that New Jersey’s new teacher evaluation plan is expensive, wasteful, inaccurate, and has no basis in research whatever. Other than that….it stinks.
In short, he calls it Operation Hindenburg, and if you don’t know about the Hindenburg, I suggest you google it. (Watch out, as the data miners will start offering you bargain deals on used blimps.)
New Jersey’s new teacher evaluation system — code name: Operation Hindenburg — is not cheap. Superintendents around the state have been warning us about this for a while: the costs of this inflexible system are going to impose a significant financial burden on districts, making this a wasteful, unfunded mandate.
JJ writes:
But if you don’t believe me, and you don’t believe these superintendents, why not listen to a couple of scholars who have produced definitive proof of the exorbitantly high costs of AchieveNJ:
In 2012, the New Jersey State Legislature passed and the Governor signed into law the Teacher Effectiveness and Accountability for the Children of New Jersey (TEACHNJ) Act. This brief examines the following questions about the impact of this law:
• What is the effect of intensifying the teacher evaluation process on the time necessary for administrators to conduct observations in accordance with the new teacher evaluation regulations in New Jersey?
• In what ways do the demands of the new teacher evaluation system impact various types of school districts, and does this impact ameliorate or magnify existing inequities?
We find the following:
On average, the minimum amount of time dedicated solely to classroom observations will increase by over 35%. It is likely that the other time requirements for compliance with the new evaluation system, such as pre- and post-conferences, observation write- ups, and scheduling will increase correspondingly.
The new evaluation system is highly sensitive to existing faculty-to-administrator ratios, and a tremendous range of these ratios exists in New Jersey school districts across all operating types, sizes, and District Factor Groups. There is clear evidence that a greater burden is placed on districts with high faculty-to-administrator ratios by the TEACHNJ observation regulations. There is a weak correlation between per-pupil expenditures and faculty-to-administrator ratios.The change in administrative workload will increase more in districts with a greater proportion of tenured teachers because of the additional time required for observations of this group under the new law.
The increased burden the TEACHNJ Act imposes on administrators’ time in some districts may compromise their ability to thoroughly and properly evaluate their teachers. In districts where there are not adequate resources to ensure administrators have enough time to conduct evaluations, there is an increased likelihood of substantive due process concerns in personnel decisions such as the denial or termination of tenure. [emphasis mine]
– See more at: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2014/03/nj-pays-high-cost-for-bad-teacher.html#sthash.ytDauLdH.dpuf
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Take a look at what’s going on in Dallas ISD. http://live.dallasnews.com/Event/Talk_DISD
Oh❢ The Inanity❢
Well, the cost of this pig is intentional: while targeting teachers, especially seasoned one’s, it becomes yet another pretext for proclaiming a budget crisis and enforcing austerity on the public schools, leading to non-seniority based layoffs, more charter schools openings and morehiring of TFA scabs.
It’s a win-win for the privateers.
Personally I totally agree with you, anything that the deep pocketed privateers can do to aid in the cost of public schooling brings them one step closer to a new school. though as harsh as it sounds i prefer the idea of non-senoirity based layoff. as bad as it sounds i had a few teachers when i was in high school who were absolutely awful and the only reason why they where kept around was because of seniority. so in that aspect i wish non-seniorty based layoff was already a thing.
Regarding your point about seniority based lay offs and not liking some of your teachers when you were in school:
As a long time teacher, I have often heard (but never encouraged) kids talking about other teachers.
It is interesting.
Group of kids A will be carrying on about how wonderful Mr Z is. Some time later Group of kids B will bash the hell out of Mr Z.
Difference?
The kind of kids.
High achievers or struggling.
Popular “in crowd” kids or outsiders.
Athletes or nerds.
Girls or boys.
ESOL students or native born
Not all kids want, need, appreciate the same type of teacher.The point I am trying to make is that perhaps that teacher who you thought to be awful was actually doing a good job for a totally different type of learner, student, person.
Just a thought.
the only thing i have to say to that is that when you become a teacher part of what it means to run a classroom is to accommodate for all learners, and accommodate for all types of students, and in my book if you are not able to make those accommodations at least to the best of your ability then are failing your students.
It is true that one should make every effort to reach every child every day.
Every child deserves our best effort.
Every child should be treated with respect.
Every child deserves our best attempt to accommodate his or her needs every day.
Every child deserves a teacher who is well versed in what they are to teach.
Yes, yes, yes.
And not what I was trying to get you to consider.
Some kids will appreciate the jokester and some kids will be offended.
Some kids will love the kindly old lady and others will see her as as push over.
Some kids respond well to ritual and routine while others chafe.
Some kids love to be challenged while others want to know what they have to do to pass.
Some students want a buddy and some think familiarity is creepy.
Some students need strict discipline, while others need freedom.
Some students have issues with certain genders, races or accents in positions of authority and others do not.
It is a big world and very rare is the universally perfect teacher who can be all things to all children.
PS; You will note that nowhere did I suggest there is no such thing as a bad teacher. If you encountered one of these, I am sorry. Some people were just not meant for this job.
However, I am suggesting that as you stand in judgement of your teachers, understand that your own experiences can be narrow. One may miss the perspective of others who are unlike ourselves. Especially through our teenage eyes, it may be hard to accept that your perspective on a teacher may not have been the only perspective.
Just think about it.
Self reflection is an important tool we teachers work to acquire.
It helps us to bridge some of the gaps.
Give it a shot.
No need to get defensive.
i didn’t mean to come off as defensive, and though I think some of what you say about different students could be accommodated by the teacher, I just didn’t fully understand what stance you were taking. when i read your comment i thought you were talking about the mind set of the students more than the mind set of the teacher.
but yes i do agree that it is impossible to meet the requirements for every student in a classroom, and that though you may try as hard as you can there will always be students who do not like what you as the teacher have to offer.
as far as my experience, the teacher i was referring to did end up being relieved from her position the second her tenure was up. but i will agree that sometimes a single students perspective is not the only one that matters.
smeusehassinger,
While in the abstract it may seem to make sense to not base layoffs – which shouldn’t be happening anyway – on seniority, since we all remember the bad/insane teachers from our past, in practice you’ll have no guarantee that the “bad teachers” will be removed.
If layoffs occur, the only way way to have some semblance of fairness is to base them on seniority. There’s also the added benefit that if they are seniority-based, they are less likely to happen at all – as occurred in NY a few years ago – since there are then fewer financial incentives to proceed with them.
Give the choice of whom to lay off to principals or upper-level administrators, and I promise you that in practice you’ll see senior/expensive teachers, teachers who advocate forcefully for their kids or colleagues, and teachers who just refuse to suck up to toxic principals (and here in NYC, many arrogant know-nothings barely out of diapers were strategically made principals over the past decade) showing up on the layoff lists. This is what Cami Anderson is trying to do in Newark at this very moment.
Just as there are bad teachers, there are bad, vindictive Principals (I happen to be fortunate in not having one of those), and It’s not uncommon for weak teachers to also be the Principal’s pet, for a variety of reasons. In fact, if I was a bad teacher, wouldn’t it behoove me to get in the Principal’s good graces, by hook or by crook?
Eliminating seniority is one of those projects of the so-called reformers that is masked by the rhetoric of helping children; in practice and reality, it’s another one of their venal deceptions.
Fair enough, i understand where you are coming from.
Great conversation on seniority – thank you, Ang and Michael F, for providing some details and nuances for a policy that is being painted in very black and white terms in the media. Thanks, Sam, for sharing a personal perspective that prompted those replies.
Another thing the NJ evaluation act wastes is the teacher’s time. I cannot tell you how many hours I had to put into my pre-observation and post-observation reflections. I felt like I was defending a dissertation. When it comes to the time I’ve put in on just ONE observation, I’ve done a comparable amount of work on a final semesterly project in a graduate school class.
The short, unannounced observations do not require the pre-conference reflection, but still, one needs to put in the time to adequately reflect afterward. There is an opportunity to learn from this experience, but instead, the evaluation process is designed to point out the teacher’s deficiencies on a scale of perfection where not everything that is expected to be scored is going to be observed, and not every score is weighted equally when you average all three observations together.
As well, the observers, in an effort to remain objective and find “evidence,” are not all scoring the same way. There are huge gaps from one observer to another which brings the validity of the scoring into question. In essence, the outcome of this process is highly dependent on the ability of the observer to identify “evidence,” a task that is still very subjective. The post-conference is a way to explain what was missed by the observer and essentially “beg” for high scores. It is demeaning to have to argue every last detail so that the score can be raised after it was already given by an observer who just couldn’t see everything you did in the lesson while it was happening because he was too busy typing up the one out of ten things he didn’t miss.
The only way to make this fair and relatively objective is for three outside observers to score the lessons and then have a robust discussion about how and why they scored the way they initially did, coming to one consensus not unlike a jury of peers with a unanimous verdict. Of course paying for three observers to come in three times a year for every staff member (and then paying them for time to discuss) would never be affordable.
These evals should not be used punitively by giving a numbered score that can be scaled to some arbitrary descriptors–they should be used to inform best practices. They are not doing the latter so that they can be used to do the former. This is an outrage and needs to end.