AFTNJ President Donna M. Chiera delivered the following testimony to the State Senate Education Committee today in Trenton.
QSAC asks districts to evaluate their compliance in five categories. Though streamlined from a survey with more than 300 indicators that were required when the system launched in 2007, the evaluation process is often time-consuming, labor-intensive, and in many cases, repetitive. While we strongly believe in a thorough accountability system for our school districts, QSAC can be intrusive.
For instance, I served on the QSAC team in Perth Amboy and we submitted our financial information as part of our QSAC review in addition to our Abbott district audit, a Title I audit, and a County Superintendent audit. Complying with the requests from these entities takes time away from delivering a high quality education to our students and the demands on district time could be eased with improved communication between the requesting agencies. Additionally, there needs to be more distinction between the indicators and categories QSAC looks at. In Perth Amboy, we failed the Instruction category because our curriculum didn’t fully align with Common Core Standards. Ultimately that also led to the district failing the Governance category. Districts should not be penalized twice for one mistake.
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