District applies for State Excellent Educators Program

**Now updated below: the state did not choose Marlboro as a pilot district.**

The Marlboro K-8 district applied for the Excellent Educators for New Jersey pilot program for the next year, a state effort to link teacher performance and student achievement.

The state did not choose Marlboro as a pilot district. However, Karen Kondek, Director of Curriculum, said the district has already been using many of the practices already.

For the past six years, Marlboro schools have already been using formal evaluations for teachers. Karen Kondek, Director of Curriculum, said the district’s evaluation is almost exactly what the state is requiring.

“We have been using a framework for evaluating teachers that almost item for item matches what the state is looking for,” Kondek said.

In June, the district applied to be apart of the pilot program, which combines an evaluation system for teachers as well as an evaluation of students.

“It is about improving instruction and linking that instruction to student achievement, because how else can you measure really good instruction without measuring student achievement,” she said.

Kondek said the state has not come up with a formal plan for teachers that do not meet evaluation standards within the program. Within Marlboro, the decisions are taken on a case-by-case basis and left up to the district. 

“I can tell you that using the evaluation model that we presently use, we will continue to do the same things we have always done” she said. “Evaluate fairly and make decisions about hiring or not hiring based on what we have been doing. What we choose to do with the student achievement information will depend on what the state comes up with in terms of how this will look.”