NJ Education Report

• “The vast majority of principals are – as we have always known – performing at a high level. About three-fifths of principals were rated Effective by their supervisors and a third were rated Highly Effective.”

NJ Spotlight notes that “teachers had little to worry about. Ratings were overwhelmingly positive and student performance had little influence on them, compared with other measures, including classroom observation, state officials said.”

The Star-Ledger quotes Ed. Comm. David Hespe, who says that “one of the goals, to be able to identify teachers who were struggling so we could help them.”

NJEA President Wendell Steinhauer said, “Given the challenges teachers, administrators, and districts faced in the first year of evaluations under AchieveNJ, these results are exceptional.”

But he also threatened, “”NJEA will vigorously represent any member who believes his or her evaluation is flawed or inaccurate,” he said. “This evaluation system is tremendously complex, and we will work to ensure that it is not misused to target or punish teachers unfairly.”Mark Weber, a researcher and Rutgers University doctoral student [who blogs as Jersey Jazzman], chimed in, “Problem is we don’t really know if they are ‘bad,’ or if the system is now prone to giving false negatives.”

C’mon, Wendell and Weber. What other profession calls foul when 97.2% of its members receive laudatory evaluations? Time to celebrate N.J.’s teachers and principals, not grumble that a tiny portion was identified as instructionally-ineffective. Surely the effective education of students is more important than protecting the jobs of 2.8% of ineffective instructors. Let’s remember why we’re here,