By Star-Ledger Editorial Board
An epic overhaul of tenure may be the most important measure to come out of Trenton this year. In urban districts where up to half the kids don’t graduate high school, it’s a travesty that we haven’t done more to make sure they have decent teachers.
State Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex) hopes to fix that. And the bill she’s put forward is a great achievement. Our hope is that Gov. Chris Christie signs it — even though it has one weak spot, its protection of absolute seniority rights during times of layoffs.
Ruiz’s bill makes vital changes, though. It seeks to evaluate teachers to make sure we keep the best ones in the classroom. It gives districts the power to fire teachers who perform poorly for two consecutive years. To make that judgment, it relies on evidence of student progress. And it topples the bureaucratic hurdles that can make firing a single bad teacher a tough ordeal, one that can cost districts hundreds of thousands of dollars and take years.
Her proposal is much stronger than a competing bill from Assemblyman Patrick Diegnan (D-Middlesex), which is backed by the state’s most powerful teachers union, the New Jersey Education Association. His version waters down the emphasis on student performance, saying it can’t be a final deciding factor in a teacher’s evaluation. It gives more leeway to teachers who underperform, allowing only the very worst to be brought up on tenure charges. And it delays any reform for at least one additional year.
The big losers here would be kids stuck in classrooms with poor teachers, for whom any modicum of change will come too late.
Reforming seniority rules should be next on the agenda. They were impossible to overcome in the tenure bill, but this fight is too important to give up.
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