Back from a hurricane-related hiatus,

Laura Waters August 30, 2011

I’ll jump right into the new Monmouth University Poll that shows that New Jersey support many of the tenets of education reform. The majority of

NEA Takes a Step Forward; Will NJEA?

Laura Waters July 6, 2011

Today’s Wall St. Journal ponders two newsworthy items that emerged at this week’s National Education Association Annual Meeting and National Assembly in Chicago. First, the

Quote of the Day

Laura Waters July 5, 2011

Catching up to the reality already faced by many of its members, the nation’s largest teachers’ union on Monday affirmed for the first time that

A Value-Added Model that Works

Laura Waters May 3, 2011

A new report out from Education Next asks whether “classroom observations—when performed by trained professionals external to the school, using an extensive set of standards—could

VAM!

Laura Waters March 14, 2011

Dr. Bruce Baker, in his column in yesterday’s Record, makes the case that the use of any sort of value-added models (VAM’s) to assess teacher

NJEA as Stock Character

Laura Waters March 4, 2011

Here’s some tweets from NJEA’s twitter account, “stopthefreezenj” on the Interim Report issued by the NJ Education Effectiveness Task Force. @GovChristie crock of BS –

Hold Your Horses!

Laura Waters March 3, 2011

In response to the Acting Commissioner Cerf’s tenure reform proposal, a group calling itself “Educators for the Quality Assessment of Teachers” or EQuATE has produced

Quotes of the Day

Laura Waters March 3, 2011

NJEA President Barbara Keshishian in a new press release warns against tying teacher evaluations to student test scores: We believe student test scores have a

Tweaking NJ’s Tenure Reform

Laura Waters February 18, 2011

All’s curiously quiet in the aftermath of Ed. Commissioner Christopher Cerf’s speech on Wednesday describing his five-part proposal for tenure reform. Sure, the leadership of