Reformy Buyers Remorse
AchieveNJ: Operation Hindenburg
Ruh-roh:
As the Christie administration’s new regulations for teacher evaluation near a critical juncture, the prime author of the landmark tenure reform law behind the proposed rules said the administration may be moving too aggressively in some places.
State Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex), the legislator most credited for the new tenure law, said yesterday in some of her first public comments on the regulations that the administration’s plans to base 35 percent of certain teachers’ evaluations on state test scores, starting next year, may be too ambitious.
“If we are going to roll out regulations in the first year with the 35 percent component, I have severe concerns with that,” Ruiz said in an interview.
Ruiz, usually fairly circumspect in her public comments, said she is not against the system building to 35 percent over time, but not right away. “It would be a more responsible approach if we grew to that 35 percent,” she said.What would be "more responsible" would be to have an evaluation plan that made mathematical and practicalsense; AchieveNJ is clearly not that plan. Given the way the NJDOE apparently wants to convert test scores into