Archives for category: New Jersey
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New Jersey: Charter School Closing, Won’t Pay Teachers for last Two Months

By dianeravitch
June 23, 2017 //
23

The Merit Preparatory Charter School in Newark has been ordered to close down at the end of June due to low test scores. The school’s teachers are paid on a 12-month schedule for ten months of work. That means they are owed salary for July and August. At present, the school does not plan to pay what it owes the teachers. The teachers have turned to the Newark Teachers Union for help, even though they are not members of the union.

“Teachers at Merit Preparatory Charter School in Newark are not unionized and have individual employment contracts stipulating they work during the 10-month school year and have their paychecks spread out over the 12-month calendar year, according to the American Federation of Teachers New Jersey chapter.

“Some of those teachers’ contracts began in September 2016 and run through August 2017, with as much as $12,000 per teacher scheduled to be paid over July and August, the union said.

“The school, however, has informed teachers they will not receive their scheduled paychecks in July and August after it closes on June 30, a breach of teacher’s contracts, said John Abeigon, president of the Newark Teachers Union.”

“The bottom line is these people are employees in the state of New Jersey, they worked and they are owed and entitled to this money,” said Abeigon, who along with the AFT-NJ is helping the teachers try to secure their full pay though they are not union members.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, New Jersey, Privatization, Teacher Pay

New Jersey: Over-Testing is Hurting the Children It is Supposed to Help

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2017 //
20

From a teacher in New Jersey:

Testing Frenzy Steals Learning Time from Students

The public school testing frenzy is at an all-time high, and it is robbing our students of time to learn. Take it from me, an elementary school teacher from New Jersey with more than 30 years of experience. In an effort to be ready for the state-mandated PARCC tests, we are hurting the very students we most wish to help. School administrators and teachers are tasked with ensuring that state-mandated tests are properly administered. But the time it takes to plan and administer these tests takes away precious instructional time.

In the last several years, I have witnessed egregious misuses of student learning time. First, months of test prep are done in all the grades. In addition, test prep packets are sent home with students night after night. Then, PARCC testing itself lasts approximately 3½ to four weeks. After that, there are at least one if not two weeks of makeup tests.

Beginning one or two weeks before testing, support staff such as librarians and Basic Skills Instructors for reading and math are reassigned for days at a time to check equipment and do paperwork. Because these test-support teachers also monitor the tests, their classes are effectively cancelled for a month or more. Speech and occupational therapists are pulled out every morning during testing to monitor hallways.

English language learners (ELLs) have even more required testing. There’s a lengthy ELL test, ACCESS, which drags on for four to six weeks. After that, they must take the PARCC tests. As I write this in late April, ELL classes have been cancelled 49 times since the start of the school year, not including teachers’ absences. In my district we have a 185 teaching days in our school year. Do the math on lost instructional days, and remember this is time for learning that our students are legally entitled to.

And there’s more! My district has math and language arts benchmark tests at the beginning and end of the year. There are prep materials and computer-based practice tests given for a month or so prior to the state-mandated tests in grades 3-6, for about one and a half hours a day. In addition, the district has purchased a computer-based assessment for K-8 that they will begin using next year. (We have not settled our contract, but they have money for this.) I assume this will be used throughout the year to gauge progress. So still more test prep. Testing and data-driven numbers have become the single focus for districts.

The pity is that test-support teachers don’t take students when they are not monitoring the tests. What a waste of taxpayer money, not to mention students’ lost learning. Where are the administrators? Do they not know what is going on in their own schools and districts?

Knowing that most teachers are hard-working, caring individuals, I was so angered by students’ lost instructional time, I emailed the state of New Jersey. I wanted to know the minimum time requirement for support programs before they are deemed ineffective for student learning. After weeks and several follow-up emails, the state education department replied.

What I learned from the reply was that, technically, the state requires classes to continue even during testing cycles. But many principals do not enforce this, and classes are sometimes canceled by teachers. However, if the state did not require so much testing and follow-up paperwork, perhaps teachers and administrators would prioritize students’ instructional time. Nor, to my knowledge, does the state enforce its requirement.

Needless to say, other teachers are also frustrated by time lost to testing, but many are just starting their careers or otherwise do not want to speak out for fear of being be targeted by administrators. No one blames test-support teachers for doing what they are told during testing periods, but I do blame administrators for looking the other way when instruction can be given, for not abiding by the state’s recommendations, and for not providing substitutes for children in the classes that end up being canceled.

I am nearing the end of my career, so I will not hesitate to right a wrong when I see it. If we are afraid to speak out about what’s happening in our schools, how will parents ever know what their children have missed and how unlevel the playing field has become for so many students. We need noble, fair and decisive administrators to oversee well-run schools and districts, and, of course, less testing and more authentic learning.

Lisa Rodriguez

Categories Accountability, New Jersey, Testing

Rutgers Professor Prevails Over New Jersey Charter Lobbyists Who Tried to Silence Her

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2017 //
41

This is a sordid story with a happy ending. It tells how the deep-pocketed charter industry tried to silence and discredit a scholar who disagreed with them. The story appears in the Nonprofit Quarterly.

Professor Julia Sass Rubin is an associate professor at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University. She has researched charter schools in New Jersey, and one of her studies concluded that charter schools in the state were not serving the same demographic as public schools. She is also an active leader in the Save Our Schools New Jersey organization.

The New Jersey Charter Schools Association did not like her research. They particularly did not like a study she published in October 2014, demonstrating that charter schools enrolled smaller numbers of students with disabilities, English language learners, and poor children as compared with the public schools in the same school district.

They might have challenged her to a debate. They didn’t. They might have published a response, challenging her facts. They didn’t.

Instead the New Jersey Charter Schools Association registered complaints against her with the New Jersey State Ethics Commission charging that she had violated the state’s Conflict of Interest Law and its Uniform Ethics Code. It also complained to Rutgers University that she had violated the Rutgers Code and Policies for faculty employees.

In other words, they sought to destroy her reputation and her career.

The state board of ethics made no ruling. The university reported that there was no evidence for the charges against Professor Rubin. She was vindicated but it took two years.

Professor Rubin was the intended victim of a SLAPP lawsuit. This is defined in Wikipedia as:

“A strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP) is a lawsuit that is intended to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense until they abandon their criticism or opposition.[1] Such lawsuits have been made illegal in many jurisdictions on the grounds that they impede freedom of speech.

“The typical SLAPP plaintiff does not normally expect to win the lawsuit. The plaintiff’s goals are accomplished if the defendant succumbs to fear, intimidation, mounting legal costs or simple exhaustion and abandons the criticism. In some cases, repeated frivolous litigation against a defendant may raise the cost of directors and officers liability insurance for that party, interfering with an organization’s ability to operate.[2] A SLAPP may also intimidate others from participating in the debate. A SLAPP is often preceded by a legal threat.”

As Martin Levine writes in TNQ, more was at stake than Professor Rubin’s reputation.

“This story came to a happy end. After the state board made no finding, the university found none of the allegations were supported by the evidence. Yet, this remains a cautionary tale. The ease with which political opponents can make the debate personal can have a very chilling effect.

“We ended our piece two years ago with a challenge to others to speak out in defense of free, fact-based speech: “We’re waiting for state and national nonprofit associations to speak out against this travesty, as they should, and stand up for the core nonprofit value of free speech.” While Professor Rubin’s reputation and ability to freely go on with her important work has been upheld, it is more important than ever for others to speak loudly. As we see scientists removed from advisory panels and facts that don’t support political beliefs discarded, the collective voice is still critical.”

For her refusal to be intimidated, for defending the rights of others to write and speak without fear, I add Julia Sass Rubin to the honor roll of this blog. She really should be honored by the American Association of Universities, the ACLU, People for the American Way, and others who are passionate about protecting our freedoms.

Categories Academic Freedom, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Ethics, Freedom of Speech, Honor Roll, New Jersey

Jersey Jazzman: The Facts About Charter Schools in Newark

By dianeravitch
May 31, 2017 //
6

Jersey Jazzman, aka Mark Weber, experienced teacher and doctoral student at Rutgers, follows the claims of charter promoters in New Jersey, especially Newark. His latest post is simply “Facts About Newark Charter Schools.”

Bottom line: the charters do not enroll the same students as public schools. Why is that so hard for the media to understand?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, New Jersey, Newark, Privatization

Paterson, New Jersey: A City of Forgotten Children and Abused Techers

By dianeravitch
May 28, 2017 //
14

Bruce Lowry, an editorial writer for The Record in New Jersey, writes here about the neglected public schools of Paterson, which have been under state control for more than 25 years.

http://www.northjersey.com/story/opinion/columnists/bruce-lowry/2017/05/22/lowry-teachers-students-forgotten-paterson/333586001/

Paterson is one of the state’s Abbott districts, an impoverished district that the courts ruled must get extra funding.

But layoffs have become an annual ritual, and no teacher knows how long her job will last.

The former state commissioner has announced he will work part-time in the district for $95 an hour. Nice.

Meanwhile, the consultants and overseers come and go, and the district has gained nothing from its long period of state control.

New Jersey has proved the futility of state control.

Categories Inequality, Inequity, Injustice, New Jersey

New Jersey: Democrats Enable Christie to Quash Dissent on the State Board of Education

By dianeravitch
May 25, 2017 //
32

Darcie Cimarusti, a school board member in New Jersey, reports with disgust that Democratic legislators are helping outgoing Governor Chris Christie punish and replace independent members of the State Board of Education.

http://mothercrusader.blogspot.com/2017/05/dont-like-chris-christie-blame-democrats.html?m=1

Christie, whose poll ratings now hover around 20%, proposed new deregulations for charter school teachers, which would allow uncertified teachers in charters.

The state board voted 5-2 against Christie’s bad idea (with one abstention).

Christie wants to replace three of the five board members who stood up against him, including the president and vice-president of the board.

The Democratic leader of the State Senate, Steve Sweeney, is faithfully supporting Governor Christie’s vengeful power play.

Why? Democrats in New Jersey rolled over for Christie at his last election, abandoning their own candidate, the well-qualified Barbara Buono, who preceded Sweeney as President of the State Senate.

Now they are on the verge of ousting three board members who dared to insist that all teachers should be qualified and credentialed.

Why are powerful Democrats in New Jersey enabling the lame-duck Governor Christie to oust board members who dared to stand up for the importance of having qualified teachers in every public school classroom?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, New Jersey, Scandal, Teachers

Good News: Vergara-Copycat Lawsuit Tossed Out by Judge in New Jersey

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2017 //
11

A judge in New Jersey threw out a lawsuit intended to remove teachers’ seniority rights. This is the third loss for the corporate reformer groups that have tried to use the courts to strip away teachers’ job security. The “reformers” blame teachers and unions for low test scores while ignoring overwhelming evidence that poverty is the proximate cause of low scores.

The first was the Vergara lawsuit in California, where a group called “Students Matter,” founded by a Silicon Valley billionaire, claimed that teacher tenure (due process of law) denied poor children equal opportunity. The plaintiffs won in the lowest court. They lost on appeal. And they lost again when they appealed to the states’ highest court.

A group found by former TV personality Campbell Brown called the Partnership for Educational Justice filed copycat suits in other states. One was tossed by a lower court.

Earlier this month, a judge in New Jersey dismissed a legal challenge to teacher seniority rules.

Rachel Cohen of The American Prospect reports on the corporate reformers’ latest defeat in court:

“Another legal effort to weaken teacher job protections through the courts has been dismissed, this time in the Garden State. On Wednesday afternoon, a New Jersey Superior Court judge tossed the latest case, ruling that the plaintiffs—six parents from Newark Public Schools—failed to prove that seniority-based layoffs harmed their students.

“Partnership for Educational Justice (PEJ), a national education reform group that aims to challenge teacher job protections across the country, funded the New Jersey lawsuit. Originally filed in November, the case marked the third time PEJ has gone after tenure provisions. Their first case filed in New York in 2014, is currently before the state Supreme Court. In October, a Minnesota district judge dismissed PEJ’s second suit, filed there in 2016. That case has since been appealed.”

Campbell Brown’s news site, The 74, reported the outcome of the case.

“A New Jersey judge swiftly dismissed a lawsuit Wednesday that challenged state rules requiring school districts to base teacher layoffs on seniority regardless of performance in the classroom.
New Jersey Superior Court Judge Mary C. Jacobson told a Trenton courtroom that the plaintiffs had failed to establish how seniority-based layoff rules known as “last in, first out” were harming their children.

“I don’t see any link other than speculation and conjecture between the LIFO statute and the denial of a thorough and efficient education to these 12 children,” Jacobson said.

“The lawsuit, HG v. Harrington, was filed in November on behalf of a dozen Newark students, claiming that “last in, first out” mandates governing teacher layoffs violate their right to a “thorough and efficient” and “equal” education system under the state Constitution.

“The complaint was sponsored by The Partnership for Educational Justice, a national education reform nonprofit founded by 74 co-founder Campbell Brown. Named defendants include the New Jersey State Board of Education and Newark Public School District.

“The American Federation of Teachers and the New Jersey Education Association, considered “intervening” defendants in the case, filed the motion to dismiss.”

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, New Jersey, Newark, Teacher Tenure, Teachers

A Teacher in Newark Writes: “Chaos by Design” Is Not Good for Students or Teachers

By dianeravitch
May 6, 2017 //
7

Ryan Heisinger is teaching in Newark. He is in his fourth year. He loves teaching. He wants to spend his career as a teacher. But he and everyone else in Newark has been subjected to constant disruption, on purpose.

For me, this year is mainly speeding by because of how much I’ve enjoyed it. This school year has reinvigorated me, further convinced me that I want to spend my career around kids. But after four years of teaching at three different schools with four different principals, I’d love to find a school at which I could settle in and make a long-term difference. The education landscape in my city, however, has left me worried that no such opportunity exists.

I’ve noticed a similar concern among many of my friends who became teachers around the same time I did. Indeed, my friends and I—and we’re not alone—feel that to stay in urban education and make a meaningful impact, we must make a major sacrifice: leave behind the kids who need the most support or forfeit our job stability.

These concerns are relatively new, the products of an alarming trend in urban education through which public school systems have become increasingly unstable as charter schools continue to take up a greater share of students in cities…

Lasting relationships with teachers and peers aren’t forged over just a few months. An amazing arts program takes years to build. It takes a long time to develop a wide variety of student-led extracurricular opportunities. School pride comes when students feel they are a part of a community in which they’re able to express themselves and show off their talents. But in a marketplace in which schools compete for test scores, narrowed priorities and school closures erode the stable soil teachers and administrators need to put roots down and grow an enduring culture of success and school community and pride.

I began my teaching career in a public high school just down the road from my current school, and while I remember it fondly and miss it in many ways, I have no illusions about the education my kids were receiving there. It was a mess. But the higher-performing charter I taught at last year had no art, no music, and no physical education, yet somehow the network was lauded as a model for urban schools. Indeed, in the marketplace, this is the model.

So while reformers tout my city as a school choice success story, I know the improved reading and math scores they cite as proof have come at a tremendous expense. The very system that produced those higher test scores is also denying my students and others like them across the city vital experiences and opportunities.

There must be a better way.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Disruption, New Jersey, Newark, Privatization

Former Aide to Chris Christie Will Be Governor Cuomo’s Chief of Staff

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2017 //
7

In a surprising move, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo hired New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s chief political strategist as his chief of staff.

Governor Christie is term-limited and will soon leave office. His popularity rating is at a historic low, about 20%. His presidential campaign blew up after the scandal called Bridgegate, in which his staff coordinated the closing of a major bridge (the George Washington Bridge) between New York and New Jersey to punish the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee (where the bridge is based in New Jersey) for not supporting Christie’s re-election bid.

Christie has been a disaster for public schools. Although New Jersey has one of the best records in the nation for public school performance, Christie treats the public schools with disdain and favors charters and vouchers. He put a salary cap on administrators, causing many to retire or relocate. He has fought publicly with the teachers union and disparaged its leadership. He never had a good word to say about public schools, even though New Jersey schools consistently rank either 2nd or 3rd in the nation on NAEP tests.

Let’s hope that Governor Cuomo’s new chief of staff does not share Governor Christie’s hostility to public schools.

Categories Cuomo, Andrew, New Jersey, New York

Sarah Blaine Calls on New Jersey Legislators to Block Use of PARCC as a Graduation Requirement

By dianeravitch
March 21, 2017 //
8

Sarah Blaine, a lawyer and parent in New Jersey, calls on the legislature to block the use of PARCC as a graduation requirement for students in the state.

As she notes in this article, the New Jersey Assembly voted overwhelmingly to block the State Board of Education from imposing this nutty requirement.

The bill now moves to the State Senate, and she urges senators to vote for the bill.

She writes:

On March 16, the New Jersey Assembly overwhelmingly passed ACR-215, which is a resolution declaring that the state Board of Education’s new regulations requiring students to pass the PARCC Algebra 1 and the 10th grade PARCC English Language Arts tests to graduate from high school are “inconsistent with legislative intent.”

The existing law requires a comprehensive 11th grade test (which these two PARCC tests, neither of which is generally administered in 11th grade, are not). The resolution will not stop New Jersey’s schools from having to offer PARCC each year, but if adopted by the state Senate as well, it is a step toward ensuring that students will not have to pass PARCC to graduate from high school.

With this resolution, the Assembly took the first step in one process by which our New Jersey legislators can check the authority of our governor and his appointees (in this case, the state Board of Education): invalidating regulations that our Legislature determines are “inconsistent with legislative intent.” In English, that means that if the Legislature passes a law, and the executive branch decides to ignore the law and do something different, the Legislature can tell the executive branch: “No, you’re wrong, please go back to the drawing board.” Because this is a check on the executive branch’s authority, the governor’s signature is not required.

As at least 180,000 New Jersey students demonstrated by refusing to take PARCC tests in 2015 and 2016, opposition to PARCC testing is widespread. But leaving the substantive issues surrounding the PARCC test aside, important as they are, ACR-215 and its senate companion resolution, SCR-132, are about governance. That is, in considering these resolutions, the key question our legislators must decide is whether they are willing to allow Gov. Chris Christie and the Christie-appointed Board of Education to openly ignore New Jersey law.

Blaine writes about the issue as an open conflict between the executive and the legislative branches.

But the substantive issues are worth reviewing.

The PARCC test was created by Pearson as a test of the Common Core standards in grades 3-8.

PARCC was never intended to be a graduation test. Most states that signed up to use it as a test of annual student performance in grades 3-8 have dropped it. New Jersey is one of the very few states that still require this test.

No standardized test should be used as a high school graduation test. Standardized tests are normed on a bell curve, and they are designed to differentiate from best to worst scores. They are designed to have a certain proportion of students who will fail, no matter how hard they try.

The state of New Jersey should not substitute the SAT or the ACT or any other standardized test for PARCC, because they all suffer the same fatal flaw.

There are many ways to set graduation requirements and make them rigorous for some, but reasonable for all. It is not reasonable to establish a high bar that some students will clear, but most will not, or that a substantial minority will not. There must be a reasonable path towards winning a diploma, especially for students with cognitive disabilities, and students who for other reasons will never ever pass the PARCC.

It is a basic rule of psychometrics (the study of testing) that tests should be used only for the purpose for which they were designed.

The legislature should force the governor and the state board to drop PARCC as a graduation requirement and give thought to reasonable standards that match the diverse needs of the state’s students.

If the state keeps

Categories High School Graduation, New Jersey, Opt Out, Pearson, Standardized Testing
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