NJ Education Report

Senator Teresa Ruiz, architect of the TEACHNJ tenure reform bill, tells the Star-Ledger that “this month, I intend to post a bill that will be passed and a bill that will be signed.” Her bill would institute a one-year mentorship for new teachers, require three years of consecutive good evaluations to earn tenure, and strip tenure rights after two consecutive years of ineffective teaching. The competing bill, Assemblyman Patrick Diegnan’s version, adds an additional year to acquire lifetime tenure rights and submits disputes to binding arbitration. See my analysis here.

I reported last week that data for Trenton Public Schools was missing from the DOE’s School Report Cards. The Times of Trenton explains why. Also, Trenton’s Board President says that the DOE’s calculation of the district’s graduation rate — 47% — is wrong because “our numbers were wrong.”

Also, the Trenton Times Editorial Board presses Gov. Christie and the School Development Authority to fund Trenton Central High’s essential structural improvements: “[t]he state’s mandate to provide a thorough and efficient education is compromised at Trenton Central High School by insistent and inescapable problems that thwart the best efforts of teachers and keep students at a disadvantage.”

In some positive news for Trenton, the Trentonian reports that the Trenton Central High School valedictorian, Jayah Feliciano, is off to Bryn Mawr in the Fall.

The Asbury Park Press totes up the cost per pupil for students in Seaside Park on Long Beach Island (Ocean County) to send 40 kids to Central Regional Intermediate and High School: $112,000 per year per student, “more than double the tuition for Harvard Medical School.” Chalk it up to a peculiarity of the funding formula. “We are the poster child of bad legislation in school funding, but we don’t have the population of votes for anybody to care,” said Bob Martucci, the borough’s administrator. “People look in disbelief and say how can that even happen? The (state) funding formula allows that to happen.”

Atlantic City Public Schools has a new superintendent, Donna Haye. (Press of Atlantic City)

An editorial in the Press of Atlantic City urges the state to adequately fund poor South Jersey districts like Commercial Township and Woodbine and to specifically “take another look at the administration’s school funding proposal, which – in an effort to placate suburban taxpayers – is taking funding away from some of the poorest districts in the state.” (Also, see my analysis here at WHYY Newsworks.)

NJ Spotlight looks at the rising opposition to online charter schools.

Laura McKenna, a political science professor, blogger, and NJ resident, responds to the charge that special education students “steal money” from typical students, disrupt classes, and could be educated for less money.

Welcome to new education blogger Jacob Waters at A Skeptic’s Politics. (Full disclosure: he’s my kid.)