If the teachers of New Jersey didn't like him before,
they really hate him now:
Determined to turn New Jersey’s education system on its head, Gov. Chris Christie on Tuesday unveiled a tough-love reform package that will make classroom achievement — not seniority or tenure — the basis for pay hikes and career advancement in Garden State public schools.
Christie is turning his take-no-prisoner’s style to the classroom, demanding a top to bottom overhaul of how New Jersey students learn and teachers teach. And that means undoing tenure, seniority and other union work rules.
“We cannot wait. Your children are sitting in these classrooms today. We cannot wait to make it better,” Christie told CBS 2’s Marcia Kramer.
Unqualified teachers will feel the lash. The governor is demanding that teachers in kindergarten through fifth grade actually pass tests in reading and math in order to be certified.
“It might lead to the firing of lousy teachers and bad principals who hurt our children,” Christie said.
Los Angeles could take some lessons from Christie:
The Los Angeles Times should remove teacher performance ratings from its website after the apparent suicide of a teacher despondent over his score, the union representing Los Angeles school teachers said.
United Teachers Los Angeles also has asked school administrators to join with them in the request to the newspaper, which published the ratings last month, union president AJ Duffy said.
The body of 39-year-old Rigoberto Ruelas Jr., a fifth-grade teacher at Miramonte Elementary School, was found Sunday at the foot of a remote forest bridge in what appears to be a suicide.
The motive for Ruelas taking his own life is far from clear. But union officials said he had been upset since the Times published his district ranking as a "less effective" teacher based on his students' standardized English and math test scores.
The suicide occurred more than a month after the Times published the rankings, so drawing any kind of direct connection is speculative at best. My guess is the union is latching on to this to try and intimidate the LA Times. I have my doubts that it will work.
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1 comment:
I'm torn on this one.
I think good teachers should be rewarded, and bad ones sent packing. But I know some really good teachers who have unruly, ungrateful brats for students. Those students loudly complain about any homework; can't sit still in class with their cell phone off; and mouth-off to the teachers, threatening lawsuits.
The teacher has very little recourse in these situations, and the same teacher will be judged by the students' laziness?
Where does the students' responsibility for learning come into play?
And what if a teacher's rating is published and some unruly kid's unruly parent attacks the teacher in retaliation?
I think publishing the teachers' names with the ratings is like publishing ones personnel record.
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