Gov. Christie Offers Legislation To Remake Education In New Jersey
TRENTON, N.J. (CBS) - New Jersey governor Chris Christie has sent the state legislature a seven-bill package aimed at reforming education in the Garden State, with the emphasis on teacher performance and local control.
Christie has put to paper what he's talked about all along: setting up district tenure reviews. Under his proposal, if a teacher gets three good reviews, he or she gets tenure. But one really bad one, and the teacher loses it.
"Teachers in New Jersey should be held to the same standards of accountability that everybody else is held to in their job," the governor told reporters today at the statehouse.
Layoff rules and school assignments would also change under Christie's plan, and good teachers would be paid more that mediocre ones.
Steve Wollmer (right), a spokesman for the New Jersey Education Association, which represents the teachers, suggests that much of the governor's plan is based on bad assumptions.
"Teachers can't control a lot of the factors that go into student test scores," he notes by way of example, "and really, the research says don't proceed with a system that says you're gonna make high stakes personnel decisions based on student test scores."
Under the governor's plan, student test scores would only be half the grade. The rest would come from in-class evaluations twice a year.
Reported by David Madden, KYW Newsradio 1060
