Red Bank Superintendent Reacts to State Plan for Tenure Reform

A new plan unveiled by the State Department of Education acting commissioner Wednesday would revamp the system by which teachers earn tenure, requiring them to meet performance standards.

The speech was met more with questions than criticisms from Red Bank School District Superintendent Laura Morana, who said she’s concerned about how student success is accurately measured.

In a speech at the Lewis Library at Princeton University, Christopher Cerf called for “demonstrated student learning” to be part of the tenure process, along with yearly evaluations and a plan to strip tenure from teachers who are not meeting requirements.

Under the proposal, teachers rated effective or highly effective for three years consecutive years would be granted tenure. Teachers would lose tenure if they failed to meet requirements for two consecutive years.

Tenure is a set of legal protections that kick in when a teacher starts his or her fourth year with a school district.

The proposal is expected to go the state Legislature in March.

“The effectiveness of the teacher in front of the class is the best way to determine how children learn,” Cerf said. “This alone is more important than the class size, or books we choose.”

Step one toward changing the system would be implementing evaluations, which would include yearly updates that are completely based on student learning, including test scores and other measurements.

What those other measurements are remains to be seen. Red Bank’s schools were recently identified by the state as struggling, and have not met state testing standards, though it’s not from lack of effort from the district’s teachers, Morana said.

There’s no template for educating all students. Red Bank students are learning and their test scores are improving, Morana said, though they, cumulatively, they’re not where the state would like them to be.

“I think we need to take into account every factor,” Morana said. “I hope we don’t paint all teachers with the same brush. We have some really amazing, talented teachers, and tenure is not an easy thing to achieve in this district.”

Progress would be measured primarily on how much growth is seen in learning, regardless of the starting point.

The methodology of effective teaching is something to be awarded. Merely withstanding the test of time, or in New Jersey’s tenured teachers’ cases, three years and one day, shouldn’t necessarily guarantee you lifetime job security, he said.

Morana said tenure is difficult to achieve in Red Bank. Here, she said, the focus is on high quality education. That goes beyond test scores, she said, because test scores don’t represent a complete education.

“You can’t really generalize and say our test scores aren’t where they need to be and that it’s a reflection on the teaching in our schools,” she said. “We spend a great deal of time analyzing, observing, and talking high-quality education. We have high standards of teaching.”

Cerf said the proposed legislation “does everything in it’s power to retain those achieving success and get rid of those who aren’t,” and that the proposed legislation is not “trying to bash teachers for our education’s failure.”

Instead, Cerf said that the proposal is very “pro-teacher,” and that excellence in the classroom should be emphasized.

The proposal also calls for an end to seniority in layoff decisions. Under current law, districts making staff cuts are required to lay off the most junior educators.

“Our proposal would be to fix this, and these decisions would be made on demonstrated effectiveness,” Cerf said.

Compensation also could be affected, he said, with raises being tied to student learning.

Ultimately, Morana said the best teachers aren’t working simply to make tenure. They want to make a difference in the lives of the students they teach. Morana dismissed the idea that the new system might keep new teachers away from the district for fear of not reaching tenure.

“It is about the passion of the work,” she said. “People come in with a passion, a knowledge, and a notion that they’re going to be impacting lives. Tenure shouldn’t be something that should concern anyone at all.”