Assemblyman drops bill, which called for central review board and local approval for new and expanded charters
By John Mooney

What it is: After considerable discussions, State Assemblyman Patrick Diegnan Jr. (D-Middlesex) this week dropped his bill for revamping the state’s 18-year-old charter school law. Assembly Bill A-4177 includes a host of new procedures and standards for the state’s burgeoning charter school movement. Diegnan was primary sponsor; no other primary or co-sponsors had been posted.

What it means: Diegnan chairs the Assembly’s education committee and is the lower chamber’s most prominent voice on school policy, so his vision for overseeing charters carries a lot of weight with its Democratic leadership. His latest bill contains a few of the ideas he’s been espousing for the better part of a year, including the creation of a new nine-member charter-school review board. It also pushes one of his more controversial positions: local voter approval of all new or expanded charters.

Its prospects: Diegnan has said he wants a consensus measure to be acted on to replace the 1995 law, but he has been saying this for a while. An equally important if not more important voice belongs to his parliamentary equal in the Senate, state Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex), chairman of the upper chamber’s education committee. She has said that she wants to work with Diegnan on a new charter law, and the two have met over the bill. Still, Ruiz has shown no support for local approval of charters, and she has pressed for multiple authorizing organizations outside the state Department of Education.

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James Cersonsky and StudentNation

Running a massive deficit of hundreds of millions of dollars, Philadelphia’s school system is planning to eliminate all sports, extracurricular activities, counselors and libraries—beyond which, for schools eviscerated by austerity politics, there’s not much left to lose. At noon today, May 17, thousands of students are expected to walk out of class and flood downtown.

“It’s time that the City Council and Governor Corbett started listening to students,” says Sharron Snyder, a junior at Benjamin Franklin High School and an organizer with the Philadelphia Student Union. “If they spent even one day in my school, they would know that already we don’t have the right resources to succeed.”

Walkout organizers state, “We are willing to break the stereotypes and expectations of urban youth, and are taking this opportunity to tell the world that urban school districts deserve funding, and it is your responsibility under the Commonwealth Charter to provide us with more than a ‘bare bones education.’”

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Mastering procedures alone can take up to a year, even if schools won’t have that long under new law

By John Mooney

New Jersey’s planned use of student test scores in evaluating teachers has drawn most of the fire so far, but researchers following the first tests of the evaluation system have found that training observers for classroom observations is neither quick nor easy.

The team from the Rutgers Graduate School of Education has been tracking the 10 pilot districts that have been up and running for the past two years, along with another 15 that began testing the system last year.

The new system is slated to be rolled out statewide next year.

In a six-page brief distributed to districts across New Jersey last week, researchers described the lessons and challenges specific to training both supervisors and teachers to the observation systems.

Observations make up at least half of a teacher’s overall evaluation, as mandated by the new teacher tenure law. The balance of the rating is made by measuring student performance, including state test scores — by far the most controversial piece of the system.

The report’s lead author, William Firestone, said in an interview yesterday that the report details the extensive amount of time needed to get all parties up to speed, both on the new procedures and on the broader concept of pinpointing the qualities of good teaching.

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By Jeanette Rundquist/The Star-Ledger

TRENTON — After hearing criticism about a plan to rely heavily on student test scores in evaluating teachers, the state Board of Education today cut back — slightly — the amount of weight given to the scores.

Assistant Education Commissioner Pete Shulman presented the change, which comes two months after a flood of educators and others addressed the proposal at a March board meeting. Many of the speakers railed against the plan to use test scores in evaluations.

“We are listening, we’re continuing to listen,” he said.

Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf also said districts may be able to seek a waiver from some provisions of the evaluation process _ but not the use of standardized test scores in measuring the effectiveness of some teachers.

The state’s new tenure law requires all teachers to be evaluated on both student progress and teacher observation. Student progress includes standardized test scores for teachers in grades 4 through 8, the levels where students take NJ ASK standardized tests.

The test results will count toward 30 percent of teacher evaluations under the change discussed today — down from 35 percent. Teacher observations will be worth 55 percent, up from 50, and other student progress measures — things like classroom work — will count for 15 percent. Those percentages are set every year, state officials said.

Under the tenure law, which takes effect this fall, teachers who receive the lowest annual evaluation rating will lose tenure and could lose their jobs. The measure has been controversial; more than 140 people offered comment on the original proposal.

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Bill sponsor — Assemblyman Diegnan — hopes to build consensus before Legislature tackles NJ’s 18-year-old charter law
By John Mooney

The outlines of a new charter school bill are taking shape, with a draft being circulated by Assembly Democrats that would add tighter controls on new charters and expand the number of organizations approving and overseeing the schools.

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Draft of Diegnan Charter Bill

State Assemblyman Patrick Diegnan Jr. (D-Middlesex), chair of the Assembly’s education committee, has completed a draft that would require local voters to approve new charter schools and would add up to three “reviewers” from colleges and universities.

The draft would also restructure parts of the application process for charter schools and place new requirements on them to annually report and post their enrollment breakdowns and budgets.

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