NJ Education Report

NJ Spotlight considers the dearth of action at both the State Department and Board of Education as election day approaches:

The state Board of Education’s monthly meeting in October was one of the first signs, with literally no agenda beyond announcing the state’s Teacher of the Year. That was despite a host of controversial and not-so-controversial regulations pending before the board. 

Elsewhere, while the state would normally announce new charter school approvals, it took reporters’ questions earlier this month to learn that three bids had been preliminarily approved out of more than 30 applicants. A formal announcement has yet to go out…Two final reports on the state’s teacher-evaluation system and how it fared in 30 pilot districts over the last two years have yet to be released. One by a team of Rutgers researchers and the other by a statewide committee of educators have been eagerly anticipated, as schools statewide are in the first year of implementing their own evaluation systems and looking for all the insight they can get.