NJASA's Rich Bozza on Superintendent Pay Cuts

The Daily Record published this report on December 21, 2010,  by Rob Jennings worth considering:

Gov. Chris Christie wouldn't last a


month as a school superintendent, a New Jersey

Association of School Administrators official jibed

Monday in charging that Christie's proposed salary

cap is both bad policy and a violation of state law.



In a meeting with the Daily Record editorial board,

NJASA Executive Director Richard Bozza - a former

Montville schools superintendent - said the

proposed cap would lead to massive turnover and

discourage prospective administrators from seeking

the top jobs.



Bozza said the state Legislature, not the Department

of Education, is responsible for setting salaries. He

accused Christie of not adequately considering the

potential ramifications on educational leadership,

arguing that top performers would be recruited by

districts in other states.



Referring to Christie's argument that no

superintendent has a tougher job than the governor

and therefore should not make more than his

$175,000 annual salary, Bozza countered that

Christie couldn't hack it as a local schools chief in

even the smallest of districts.



"If any superintendent acted the way he did, he

wouldn't last a month on the job," Bozza said when

asked about Christie's condemnation Nov. 9 of

Parsippany Superintendent Lee Seitz as a "poster

boy" for greed.



"No superintendent could get up in his or her

community and point fingers at people and degrade

them and still be kept by their school board,

because they expect more professional behavior,"

Bozza said of Christie, who has also criticized

Chatham Superintendent James O'Neill for similarly

seeking a contract extension beyond his proposed

cap.



Bozza's association filed an amicus brief last month

supporting the Parsippany school board's appeal to

the state Appellate Division seeking court-ordered

approval of Seitz' disputed contract extension,

which would bring his annual salary to $234,065

by the 2014/15 school year.



Christie's spokesman, Michael Drewniak, reacted

that Bozza's perspective is jaded by his position.





"His self-interest in on full display in his

comments," Drewniak said. "We are happy to be

defending the public and New Jersey taxpayers in

court, if that's what it takes, on this."



Bozza declined to say Monday whether his group

would eventually file a lawsuit challenging the

proposed caps, which would not take effect until

Feb. 7 and range from $125,000 in small districts to

$175,000 in large districts.



Acting Education Commissioner Rochelle Hendricks,

in the wake of the Seitz controversy, has ordered all

districts not to renegotiate any contracts expiring

after Feb. 7 unless the new terms complied with the

caps.



"It's not just a cap. It's a salary cut for 70 percent of

the people if they continue their employment," Bozza

said.



Bozza took issue with Christie's accusation that

school boards, such as Parsippany, renegotiating

ahead of the effective date are circumventing the

cap.



"There is nothing wrong or illegal about what

school boards are doing," he said.

Reform and Reinvention of Education in America

I read with interest an article by Federick M. Hess "The Same Thing Over and Over" in November 10, 2010, Education Week. Thought my readers would like to sample an excerpt that lays out an intelligent foundation for the need to change the way we do things in public education.  What do you think?


FREDERICK M. HESS is the director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, in Washington, and the author of the new book The Same Thing Over and Over: How School Reformers Get Stuck in Yesterday’s Ideas (Harvard University Press).



"It took more than three centuries after the first statutory education laws were adopted in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, in 1647 and 1652, until we actually got 90 percent of American students to show up in school every day. It’s hardly surprising that a system which spent centuries struggling to get students off the street and into schools, where they would be provided with minimal instruction, wasn’t built to educate every student to a high level.




This problem isn’t unique to education. Plenty of once-dominant private ventures—from Pan Am to Bethlehem Steel—have struggled to reinvent themselves when labor markets, technology, and customer demands have changed. Unable to refashion themselves, many have given way to younger, more agile competitors. Because that Darwinian process does not play out by itself in schooling, structural reform is essential to creating the room where problem-solving can happen.



We often seemingly fail to appreciate how much has changed since common-school and Progressive reformers shaped our schools in their battles to Americanize youths and get them out of the factories and in front of literate teachers.



Since the Progressive Era ended 75 years ago, our expectations have skyrocketed, with policymakers today insisting that all students need to master skills once thought the province of the elite. The expectation that our schools would mold students into “republican machines” has given way to an emphasis on diversity and tolerance, reducing the premium on homogeneity. The pool of available careerist teachers has dramatically shrunk as new opportunities have opened to women, even as professional mobility increased and the pool of educated professionals interested in teaching grew. And the ability of new technologies to assess student mastery, facilitate instruction, and enable virtual schooling has undergone a revolutionary expansion.



We’re hardly the first to be uncomfortable with change. While skeptics of technology today fret about the fate of the book, it was once books and the printing press that were feared by educators who worried that students would learn the wrong things, if left to read on their own. It was Sir Roger L’Estrange who wondered in the 17th century “whether more mischief than advantage were not occasion’d to the Christian world by the invention of typography.”



Reformers get swept up in enthusiasms and manias rather than in problem-solving. While some reformers tout mayoral control as a solution, the real challenge is the primacy of serial geographic monopolies that require every district to meet every need of every child—making it enormously difficult to do anything all that well. A century ago, this model was a best practice, as when people bought their tractors and their toothbrushes from Sears, Roebuck and Co. Today, however, coordination of provision is no longer a major challenge, enabling an array of providers to focus on the high-quality, cost-effective provision of particular goods or services.



Reformers wax enthusiastic about merit pay, while leaving intact notions of the teacher’s job description, school staffing, and the organization of instruction. Indeed, today’s “cutting edge” merit-pay strategies depend utterly on teachers’ retaining sole instructional responsibility for a group of students in a tested subject for 180 days. Rather than viewing pay reform as a tool for rethinking teaching, reformers wind up layering merit pay atop industrial-era pay scales.



Reformers celebrate alternative certification and extended learning time, yet seem to take for granted the primacy of colleges of education and the notion that all students necessarily require a standardized school year with a bureaucratically specified number of days and hours. Such assumptions learn nothing from promising ventures like San Diego’s High-Tech High School or New York City’s School of One.



The new decade ought to loom as a dynamic and enormously creative era addressing our educational challenges. We’ve set heroic goals, are constructing remarkable tools, and have an opportunity to rethink the very shape of teaching, learning, and schooling.



Yet we once again find ourselves rehashing tired debates between public school “defenders” and self-described “innovators.” On the one side are those who insist we cling to the rhythms of schoolhouses erected to sanitize Catholic immigrants. On the other are Race to the Top enthusiasts promising that data systems and more impassioned school leaders, along with a dollop of “science,” will set matters straight.



We don’t need “innovation” or to “protect” public schools. The truth is far simpler, and more frustrating, than that. Yesterday’s structures are ill-suited for today’s ambitions. Rethinking them is not an attack or a solution; it is just the inevitable precursor to crafting better answers to today’s challenges."

Rothstein on How to Fix Our Schools

The essay below from author Rothstein should be read and contemplated by all of us who work in the public school environment. There is a lot to consider in today's political environment but the truth speaks louder than words and Rothstein certainly lays it out in this policy brief. Please take the time to read his analysis below:



From Economic Policy Institute, Issue Brief #286, Thursday, October 14, 2010. See http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/ib286 . Our thanks to Michael Goldenberg for bringing this brief to our attention.

***************************

How to fix our schools



By Richard Rothstein



Joel Klein, chancellor of the New York City public school system, and Michelle Rhee, who resigned October 13 as Washington, D.C. chancellor, published a "manifesto" in the Washington Post claiming that the difficulty of removing incompetent teachers "has left our school districts impotent and, worse, has robbed millions of children of a real future." The solution, they say, is to end the "glacial process for removing an incompetent teacher" and give superintendents like themselves the authority to pay higher salaries to teachers whose students do well academically. Otherwise, children will remain "stuck in failing schools" across the country.{i}

Klein, Rhee, and the 14 other school superintendents who co-signed their statement base this call on a claim that, "as President Obama has emphasized, the single most important factor determining whether students succeed in school is not the color of their skin or their ZIP code or even their parents' income - it is the quality of their teacher."

It is true that the president has sometimes said something like this. But in his more careful moments, he properly insists that teacher quality is not the most important factor determining student success; it is the most important in-school factor. Indeed, Mr. Obama has gone further, saying, "I always have to remind people that the biggest ingredient in school performance is the teacher. That's the biggest ingredient within a school. But the single biggest ingredient is the parent."{ii}

There is a world of difference between claiming, as the Klein-Rhee statement does, that the single biggest factor in student success is teacher quality and claiming, as Barack Obama does in his more careful moments, that the single biggest school factor is teacher quality. Decades of social science research have demonstrated that differences in the quality of schools can explain about one-third of the variation in student achievement. But the other two-thirds is attributable to non-school factors.{iii}

When the president says that the single most important factor is parents, he does not mean the parents' zip code or income or skin color, as though zip codes or income or skin color themselves influence a child's achievement. Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee's caricature of the research in this way prevents a careful consideration of policies that could truly raise the achievement of America's children. What President Obama means is that if a child's parents are poorly educated themselves and don't read frequently to their young children, or don't use complex language in speaking to their children, or are under such great economic stress that they can't provide a stable and secure home environment or proper preventive health care to their children, or are in poor health themselves and can't properly nurture their children, or are unable to travel with their children or take them to museums and zoos and expose them to other cultural experiences that stimulate the motivation to learn, or indeed live in a zip code where there are no educated adult role models and where other adults can't share in the supervision of neighborhood youth, then children of such parents will be impeded in their ability to take advantage of teaching, no matter how high quality that teaching may be.

President Obama put it this way: "It's not just making sure your kids are doing their homework, it's also instilling a thirst for knowledge and excellenceŠ.And the community can help the parents. Listen, I love basketball. But the smartest kid in the schoolŠshould be getting as much attention as the basketball star. That's a change that we've got to initiate in our community."

Of course, there are exceptions. Just as not all children flourish with high-quality teachers, not all children fail to flourish just because their parents can't help with homework or because they live in communities where athletes are the most prominent role models. Under any set of circumstances, there will be a distribution of outcomes - that's human nature. And on average, disadvantaged children who have high-quality teachers will do better than similar children whose teachers are less adequate. But good teachers alone, for most children, cannot fully compensate for the disadvantages many children bring to school. As we noted, differences in the quality of in-school experiences can explain about one-third of the differences in achievement.

Even the president's more careful statement - that teacher quality is the most important in-school factor - is actually without solid foundation in research. It is true that some studies have found that variation in teacher quality has more of an influence on test scores than do the size of classes or average district-wide per pupil spending. In other words, you are better off having a good teacher in a larger class than a poor teacher in a smaller class. But that's it. It is on this thin reed that Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee are mounting a campaign to make improving teacher quality, and removing teachers whose students' test scores are lower, the centerpiece of national efforts to improve the life chances of disadvantaged students.

There are plausibly many other in-school factors, not quantified in research, that could have as much if not more of an influence on student test scores than teacher quality. Take the quality of school leadership. Would an inspired school principal get better student achievement from a corps of average-quality teachers than a mediocre principal could get from high-quality teachers? Studies of organizations would suggest the answer is yes, but there have been no such studies of school leadership. Take the quality of the curriculum. Would average teachers given a well-designed curriculum get better achievement from their students than would high-quality teachers with a poor curriculum? A very few research studies in this field suggest the answer might be yes as well.

Or take another in-school factor, teacher collaboration. Even when elementary school students sit in a single classroom for most of the day, several teachers influence their achievement. Teachers can meet to compare lesson plans that worked well and those that didn't. Teachers in lower grades can successfully align their instruction with what will be most helpful for learning in the next grade. Teachers of the arts can reinforce the writing curriculum, and vice-versa. Will average-quality teachers who work well together as a team with the common purpose of raising student achievement get better results than higher-quality teachers working in isolation? Plausibly, the answer is yes. Will promising to pay individual teachers more if their students get higher test scores than the students of another teacher reduce the incentives for teachers to collaborate? Again, a plausible answer is yes.

Of course, schools should try to recruit better-quality teachers and should remove those who are ineffective. After all, the quality of teachers is an important part of the one-third share of the achievement gap that can be traced to the quality of schools. But before making teacher quality the focus of a national campaign, school systems will have to develop better ways of identifying good and bad teachers. Using students' test scores as the chief marker of teacher quality is terribly dangerous, for a variety of reasons: it encourages a narrowing of the curriculum because only test scores in one or two subjects (math and reading) can be used for this purpose, and teachers who will be evaluated mainly by these test scores will have incentives to minimize attention to other subjects; it creates pressure to "teach to the test," that is, emphasizing topics likely to appear on our existing low-quality standardized tests rather than other equally important but untested topics; and it is likely to misidentify teachers - labeling many good teachers as poor and many poor teachers as good - because test scores can be influenced by so many other factors besides good teaching.{iv}

The necessary task of identifying good teachers and removing those who are inadequate requires more than student test score data. It requires a holistic approach, in which qualified experts observe teachers' lessons, evaluate the quality of their instruction, and examine a wide range of their students' work and how teachers respond to it. This requires a bigger investment of qualified supervisory time than most schools are prepared to make. Using student test scores as a shortcut will do great harm to American education.

Making teacher quality the only centerpiece of a reform campaign distracts our attention from other equally and perhaps more important school areas needing improvement, areas such as leadership, curriculum, and practices of collaboration, mentioned above. Blaming teachers is easy. These other areas are more difficult to improve.

But most important, making teacher quality the focus distracts us from the biggest threat to student achievement in the current age: our unprecedented economic catastrophe and its effect on parents and their children's ability to gain from higher-quality schools.

Consider the implications of this catastrophe for our aspirations to close the black-white achievement gap. The national unemployment rate remains close to an unacceptably high 10%. But 15% of all black children now have an unemployed parent compared to 8.5% of white children. If we also include children whose parents have become so discouraged that they have given up looking for work, and children whose parents are working part-time because they can't find full-time work, we find that 37% of black children have an unemployed or underemployed parent compared to 23% of white children. Over half of all black children have a parent who has either been unemployed or underemployed during the past year.{v} Thirty-six percent of black children now live in poverty.{vi}

The consequences of this social disaster for schools are apparent, and include:

Greater geographic disruption: Families become more mobile because they can no longer afford to keep up with rent or mortgage payments. They are in overcrowded housing; they often have to double up with relatives in apartments that were already too small. Children have no quiet place to study or do homework. They switch schools more often, fall behind in the curriculum, and lose the connection with teachers who know them well enough to adapt instruction to their individual strengths and weaknesses. Inner-city schools themselves are thrown into turmoil because classes must frequently be reconstituted as enrollment rises and falls with family mobility. Even the highest-quality teachers cannot fully insulate their students from the effects of this disruption.{vii}

Greater hunger and malnutrition: When more parents lose employment, their income plummets and food insecurity grows. More children come to school hungry and/or inadequately nourished and are less able to focus on schoolwork. Attentive teachers realize that one of the best predictors of how their students will perform is what they had for breakfast, if anything at all.{viii}

Greater stress: Families where parents are unemployed are under greater psychological stress. Such parents, no matter how well-intentioned, often become more arbitrary in their discipline and less supportive of their children. Children from families in such stress are more likely to act out in school and are less able to progress academically. The ability to comfort and support such students may be a more important indicator of a teacher's quality than her students' test scores, which may still be lower than the scores of students coming from stable and secure homes.

Poorer health: Families where parents lose employment are also more likely to lose health insurance.{ix} Their children are less likely to get routine and preventive health care and more likely to miss school days because of illness. They are less likely to get symptomatic treatment for illnesses like asthma, the most common cause of chronic school absenteeism. Children with asthma, even when they attend school, are more likely to come to school irritable, having been up at night with breathing difficulty.{x}

All these consequences of unacceptably high unemployment rates for disadvantaged parents contribute to depressing student achievement for their children. It is obtuse to expect to narrow the achievement gap in such circumstances. It is fanciful for national policy makers to pick this moment to raise their expectations for academic achievement from children of families in such stress and to single out teacher quality as the culprit most deserving of their public attention.

It would inappropriately undermine the credibility of public education if, in such an economic climate, educators were blamed for their failure to raise student achievement of disadvantaged children. Indeed, educators should get great credit if they prevent the achievement of disadvantaged children from falling further during this economic crisis.

Meanwhile, our political system is paralyzed, unable to take meaningful steps to reduce unemployment. Corporate profits are healthy, but an unjustified fear of short-term deficits prevents public spending from putting low-income parents back to work. Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, and the other superintendents who signed their manifesto are influential in states whose national and state leaders contribute to this paralysis. These school leaders should raise their voices in protest against economic policies that doom children to failure.

Of course, the superintendents should continue attempts to improve teacher quality. They should work on developing ways to identify better and worse teachers without relying heavily on the corrupting influence of high-stakes test scores.{xi} In addition to teacher quality, they should pay attention to school leadership, curriculum improvement, and school organization. They should consider what initiatives they can take, either themselves or in partnership with other community organizations, to improve children's opportunities to come to school in good health and with enriched experiences in early childhood and out-of-school time.{xii}

But they will have to embed all of this work in an insistence on broader efforts of economic and social reform if they hope their school improvements to make any difference.

Otherwise, their manifesto might appear to be more an example of scapegoating teachers than a reflection of serious commitment to the futures of our children.

----------------------

Richard Rothstein (RRothstein@epi.org) is a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute.

****************************



{i} "How to Fix Our Schools: A Manifesto by Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee and Other Education Leaders," Washington Post, October 10, B01.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/07/AR2010100705078.html

{ii} Barack Obama, Remarks by the President in Arnold, Missouri, Town Hall. April 29, 2009. Emphasis added. Pauses and word repetitions omitted. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-arnold-missouri-town-hall.

{iii} The 2/3 - 1/3 breakdown between family background and school influences was the core finding of the 1966 federal study, the "Coleman Report." But this interpretation of the report overstates its finding about the influence of schools, because Coleman and his colleagues considered the influence of a child's schoolmates ("peer effects") to be a school factor, not an out-of-school factor. (Coleman, James S., and Ernest Q. Campbell, Carol J. Hobson, James McPartland, Alexander M. Mood, Frederic D. Weinfeld, and Rober L. York, Equality of Educational Opportunity, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Government Printing Office, 1966.) Yet the only way to affect the composition of peers in the neighborhood schools he studied would be to change the composition of neighborhoods, with housing integration policies, for example. Of the in-school influences, the Coleman Report identified teacher quality (defined by teacher characteristics such as their educational attainment and experience) to be most important.

In a more recent study, Meredith Phillips and colleagues analyzed data from a federal longitudinal study, "Children of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth." They controlled for factors such as whether anyone in the family subscribed to magazines or newspapers or had a library card, grandparents' educational attainment, a mother's own cognitive ability (test score) and educational attainment, how often a mother reads to her child, the size of a family and its income, single parenthood, parenting practices, child birthweight, and others. They concluded that "{e}ven though traditional measures of socioeconomic status account for no more than a third of the {black-white} test score gap, our results show that a broader index of family environment may explain up to two-thirds of it." There are other differences, for example health and housing, not considered by these analysts that might explain even more of the gap. (Meredith Phillips, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Greg J. Duncan, Pamela Klebanov, and Jonathan Crane, "Family Background, Parenting Practices, and the Black-White Test Score Gap," in Christopher Jencks and Meredith Phillips, eds., The Black-White Test Score Gap, Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1998.)

{iv} Eva L. Baker, Paul E. Barton, Linda Darling-Hammond, Edward Haertel, Helen F. Ladd, Robert L. Linn, Diane Ravitch, Richard Rothstein, Richard J. Shavelson, and Lorrie A. Shepard, Problems With the Use of Student Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers, Economic Policy Institute, 2010. http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/bp278

{v} These data are for 2009, and have been calculated by analysts at the Economic Policy Institute from the Current Population Survey. Current overall unemployment is slightly higher than it was in 2009 (9.7% vs. 9.3%), so it is unlikely that the differences in family unemployment for black and white children are now appreciably different from a year ago. Tables from which these data were drawn are available from the author upon request.

{vi} Elise Gould and Heidi Shierholz, A Lost Decade: Poverty and Income Trends Paint a Bleak Picture for Working Families, Economic Policy Institute, September 16, 2010. http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/a_lost_decade_poverty_and_income_trends

{vii} In 2009, 18% of African American children lived in households that had moved at least once in the previous year, compared to 11% of white children (U.S. Census, Current Population Survey, calculated from http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/migration/cps2009/tab01-02.xls and http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/migration/cps2009/tab01-03.xls). A national survey of nearly 2,000 school districts finds substantially growing numbers of homeless students, largely due to parental unemployment and home foreclosure (Barbara Duffield and PhillipLovell, The Economic Crisis Hits Home: The Unfolding Increase in Child & Youth Homelessness, National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth (NAEHCY) and First Focus, December 2008, http://www.naehcy.org/dl/TheEconomicCrisisHitsHome.pdf). A controlled study of homeless and stable children in New York City found that "homeless children perform at a lower academic level and have a higher rate of grade repetitionŠcompared with housed children {otherwise similar demographically} in New York City, despite our finding no difference in cognitive functioning" (Donald H. Rubin, Candace J. Erickson, Mutya San Agustin, Sean D. Cleary, Janet K. Allen, and Patricia Cohen, "Cognitive and Academic Functioning of Homeless Children Compared With Housed Children," Pediatrics 97(3):289-294, 1996).

{viii} From 2007 to 2008, the percentage of black children who lived in households without adequate food ("food insecure households") jumped from 26% to 34%, while the percentage of white children in such households jumped from 12% to 16%. From 2008 to 2009, the percentage of black children who at least some time were hungry, skipped a meal, or did not eat for a whole day because the household could not afford enough food nearly doubled, rising from 1.8% to 3.2%, while the percentage of white children in this category grew from 0.5% to 0.6% (Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics (ChildStats.gov) http://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/eco3.asp). By age 15, 85% of all black children have lived in a household that used food stamps at some time during their childhood, compared to 33% of white children (Mark R. Rank and Thomas A. Hirschl, "Estimating the Risk of Food Stamp Use and Impoverishment During Childhood," Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine 163(9):994-999, November 2009). The U.S. Conference of Mayors surveyed 27 cities and reported an overall increase of 26% from 2008 to 2009 in the number of requests for emergency food assistance, with unemployment by far the most significant causal factor (U.S. Conference of Mayors, Homelessness and Hunger Survey: A Status Report on Hunger and Homelessness in America's Cities: A 27-City Survey, December 2009 http://usmayors.org/pressreleases/uploads/USCMHungercompleteWEB2009.pdf).

{ix} In 2009, 11.5% of black children had no public or private health insurance, up from 10.7% the previous year. For white children, the percentage grew from 6.7% to 7.0% (Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic (ASEC) Supplement, http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/cpstables/032009/health/h08_000.htm and http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/cpstables/032010/health/h08_000.htm).

{x} Another Conference of Mayors report summarized the situation as follows: "When a child is unable to concentrate because they haven't eaten in days and misses a week of school because they could not fight off a simple cold, they cannot succeed in school. Lacking a solid education, they cannot find high-paying jobs. Ultimately, they are forced to remain in poverty, eventually placing their own children in the same situation" (U.S. Conference of Mayors and Sodexo, Childhood Anti-Hunger Programs in 24 Cities, 2009, http://www.usmayors.org/pressreleases/uploads/20091116-report-childhoodantihunger.pdf).

{xi} The accountability statement of the "Broader Bolder Approach to Education" campaign (www.boldapproach.org) describes the outlines of appropriate school accountability.

{xii} The initial call for a "Broader, Bolder Approach to Education" (www.boldapproach.org) elaborates on these points.

********************************************

--

Jerry P. Becker

Dept. of Curriculum & Instruction

Southern Illinois University

625 Wham Drive

Mail Code 4610

Carbondale, IL 62901-4610

Phone: (618) 453-4241 [O]

(618) 457-8903 [H]

Fax: (618) 453-4244

E-mail: jbecker@siu.edu







Dr. Charles Maranzano, Jr.

Superintendent of Schools for Hopatcong Borough

Hopatcong is a Leader in Concussion Assessment

High School athletics has always been an integral part of public education in America for young men and women of school age. The benefits of athletic participation extend beyond the playing field as many of our high school athletes also excel academically and represent the core of student leadership in our schools. One of the risks associated with athletic participation are the increasing numbers of sports-related injuries, particularly head injuries.




The number of sports-related concussions appears to be on the rise prompting awareness campaigns from athletic associations and medical advocates to protect our youth. The acute nature of concussion related injuries include symptoms such as dizziness, nausea, confusion, slurred speech, and memory problems. Visits to the emergency room for concussions for children ages 8 to 19 doubled over a ten year period from 1997 to 2007. The sports students are most prone to suffer a concussion in are football, soccer, lacrosse, ice hockey, and cheerleading. While brain injuries across the entire general population range from 1.6 million to 3.8 million annually, the range of football related brain injuries alone range from 43,200 to 67,200, annually placing it in the top risk category.



The National Athletic Trainers’ Association and the National Academy of Neuropsychology Foundation launched a campaign recently to educate athletes, coaches, teachers, and parents about the danger of concussions. Legislation has been introduced from the United States House, Education, and Labor Committee that would require schools to develop a plan for concussion safety and management.



Hopatcong Public Schools, New Jersey, implemented computerized preseason baseline and post-injury neuropsychological required testing for all student athletes in the fall of 2010. Athletic Director Tom Vara and trainer John Canzone obtained a computerized testing program with the support of the high school Parent Teacher Student Organization. The program helps establish a quantitative baseline assessment score for all athletes as one criteria to determine an athlete’s ability to return to sports after receiving a head injury. After an injury to the head, a post-test is administered to the student-athlete to determine if and when the student may return to participate. The athlete must sit out for a week and pass this post-test in order to return to practices.



“The stakes are too high,” said Vara, “We need to make sure we do everything we can to keep the kids on our teams healthy by preventing injuries and by making sure they’re able to return from injury at the proper time.” Hopatcong took the lead in this important area of physical health by conducting a region wide athletic clinic in early September and introduced the computerized baseline assessment program for other school districts to consider implementing. These efforts will go a long way to educating the general public about the dangers associated with athletic head injuries and the steps Hopatcong is taking to ensure student safety on and off of the playing field.

Oprah, Zuckerberg, Christie, and Booker's Education Gamble

The frenzied media attention concerning how poor American Schools are performing may have reached new heights with Oprah Winfrey’s recent announcement that billionaire Mark Zuckerberg will donate $100 million to fix the public schools of Newark, New Jersey. Somehow, Newark Mayor Cory Booker becomes the Knight in Shining Armor sent by Governor Chris Christie to fix an ailing system of urban public education. I tend to agree with Bob Braun’s take on this one reported in the New Jersey Star-Ledger (Friday, September 24, 2010) as it’s worth reading.




Not that public education in Newark or in any other urban environment is in need of a tune up, it certainly is. In fact, schools in rural areas face similar challenges. The main problem is twofold here in my humble opinion. First, schools in America are chronically underfunded given the challenges we face and required mandates we must meet. Second, schools were designed to be a one-size-fits-all institution and society contains far too much variation for a public institution designed over a century ago to effectively respond to.



Consider that America still is singularly the most significant social experiment in the world: a magnificent melting pot of cultures that places her people in the most non-homogeneous environment ever to populate a geographic area. In other words we are replete with diversity: not one other world country can claim this fame nor rise to this educational challenge.



Its not that American education is failing students on a wholesale scale like the critics, think-tanks, pundits, and (certain) politicians would have us believe. In fact its not that we are failing our students rather we are failing to change to adjust to our students. In fact by design, we are not able to adjust to the rapidly changing global and technological society that evolves around us.



Author Jim Collins of Good to Great, demonstrated this concept with his descriptions of corporate America at the end of the past century. In simplistic terms he suggested that corporations who were lean and adaptable were the most likely to survive the forward march of time and everyone else destined to fail.



Schools as an institution are no exception. Think about the typical school calendar public schools in America follow: A ten-month agrarian design that suited the lifestyle of this country well over a hundred years ago when the family farm dictated the pulse of most communities. How predominant are family farms in 2010? The same can be said about many of the rules and mandates schools must follow in this new century: all designed for a society that no longer exists.



The “failing” label that the federal government now attaches to schools that do not meet 100% of their annual targets reaches an even higher level of improbability as all schools and children in our nation under No Child Left Behind must be 100% proficient in a few short years. A goal worth reaching for but a reality not attainable unless the natural variation in the human population ceases to exist in the near future. Our children live in conditions far too overwhelming for schools to mitigate in the little time students attend school during their youthful lives.



American schools are far too understaffed and under-resourced in order to attain this objective, especially if we consider the overwhelming number of children with learning disabilities, developmental conditions, and physiological unmet needs entering schools each day. Factor in millions of immigrant children (legal and illegal) who are part of America’s peripatetic population attending schools far less than others in their age cohort. Think about the language barriers. How can schools overcome these challenges alone?



Richard Rothstein made a strong case for the problems that manifest themselves in American public schools as societal ones. His book, Class and Schools, identifies the problems America faces and encourages us to take a more complete approach to closing the academic achievement gap. He acknowledges that schools alone cannot fix the problems endemic in American society. Government needs to stop blaming schools for America’s problems and begin the massive effort of creating a lean and more flexible institution capable of responding to the challenges existing in the heterogeneous population living in our society present to educators nationwide.



This is a challenge that money alone will not fix. That is why I remain cynical about Zuckerberg’s latest move for Newark. The Abbott districts already receive the lion’s share of state funding (Newark receives $940 million presently) and after three decades of adequacy and equity funding we still do not see a measurable difference in student performance.



I agree with Governor Christie in this area that New Jersey’s system of public education needs reform in order to survive the future (given protracted poor economic conditions). The unionism that dominates the patterns of New Jersey government may be the biggest impediment to effective overall reform. If only the educational community would embrace the necessary changes and begin the process of needed reform instead of waiting for politicians to do it for them. We must not fail to recognize that we are on the verge of a paradigm shift in public education and our success as a public institution hangs in the balance.

Reflections on Pay to Play and other Educational Issues

I recently read with interest an article in the New Jersey publication the Daily Record on School Pay to Play policies:




http://www.dailyrecord.com/article/20100917/COMMUNITIES/100916097/NJ-Assembly-probes-pay-to-participate-student-fees-at-schools



In Hopatcong Borough Public Schools where I am superintendent, we studied the concept this year and choose to call it “Pay to Participate” so there would be no guarantee of actually "playing" at the varsity level, just participating. Having read the article, I am relieved my school board did not adopt a Pay to Play policy this year. Instead, we are studying the impact of such policies on other districts and looking at the wide variety of approaches to this problem. There appears to be several advocacy groups across the country (in California for example) where lawsuits are being initiated over the charging of activity fees. Where this ends up is beyond my imagination.



No one wants to deny any child of an educational opportunity...and in my opinion the “Four A's” of education all are an intricate part of the human development continuum for healthy growth and individual attainment (The “Four A's:” Academics, Arts, Activities, and Athletics). When we limit a student's access to any segment of a comprehensive education we in fact deny them an opportunity. So the very nature of Pay to Play may violate the expectations that a student has a right to an education inside and outside of the classroom. But school districts and divisions nationwide are forced to take such measures as a response to the drastic cuts we are experiencing due to the economic downturn and underfunding of public education.



The sad part of this discussion is the programs that are being lost as a result of the economic crisis and the outright attack on public education by federal and state "politicians gone wild". We are not immune here in Hopatcong as several programs were cut that were a long standing part of our educational system. Notably, the German language program, Field Hockey, Golf, Marching Band, and all freshman sports. The parents have brought back the Golf and Marching Band program with private funding and volunteer supervision, but these are temporary fixes to a long standing problem that will plague New Jersey and schools nationwide for years to come.



Public schools are not optional. They are created by the constitutional authority vested in each state (note: pubic education is absent in the U.S. Constitution). Every state over the past three decades has advocated for a "world class" education and accountability for reaching out to achieve a 100% success rate across the entire strata of student population in this country (well over 50 million), an ambition that thus far has eluded educators in every state. Reaching for the remarkable goal of pushing every child toward a high school diploma regardless of circumstances will require far more resources than available to public schools in America. For example, the effort to ensure and guarantee a high school diploma to every child enrolled in America’s public schools may require education to expand to 220 to perhaps even 260 days per year as opposed to the standard 180 days we currently operate under. So what are needed for public schools to succeed are more resources, not less.



In the meantime, when politicians attack public education and pull back significant portions of state support for education, we are left to ask the question: Who are we not supposed to teach this year? If schools followed an industrial model then a downturn in cash flow would be met with a reduction in output: For example, an automotive industry facing a 15% cut in revenue would respond with a similar reduction in production in order to survive. But public schools in America are being asked to do much more with far less funding...a formula for disaster in the long run. When you factor in the countless federal and state mandates that are underfunded or not even funded this problem becomes even larger.



The quality of a public school system depends upon motivating the student to succeed and creating a synergistic partnership with parents and community alike. The four "A's" are the bedrock of public education and must be fully supported in order for us to sustain a quality system for producing a citizenry that will support our democratic ideals long into the future. Having observed the fabric of society change significantly over the past five decades let me add that the public schools and perhaps the religious institutions in this country are the glue that keeps the fabric of our culture alive. Where else are the lessons of virtue, character, and honesty demonstrated and practiced on a daily basis?



Chip away at the foundation of public education and soon the very core of a civil society will erode. Isn't it time to rethink our priorities? Charging students to participate or selling ads on the sides of school busses will not resolve the financial issues in the long run. Let's do some serious thinking about what we want the future of America to look like...then adequately and generously invest in her public schools for the good of all people.

Period of Uncertainty, Change, and Innovation for Public Education

Anyone connected to public education is feeling a bit uncomfortable right now due to the dire state of the economy and the political pressure to reduce budgets at all levels. In most communities public schools represent the largest expenditure for state and local government and are experiencing unprecedented cuts to operational and personnel costs. The reduced revenue stream to schools has been met with a response by educators to cut programs and instructors all across the nation in order to produce a balanced budget for 2010-2011.



Think about this: No one is presently talking about reduced expectations for public education in spite of these recent record cuts to personnel and programs. In fact, the opposite is true-during a time of drastic cuts in educational resources the expectations for teaching our youth are actually elevated. Another key point: There are very few correlations to the dramatic budget cuts we are experiencing in terms of outputs. In other words, any other industry experiencing such reductions in cash flow would naturally adjust its production rates. For example, a fifteen percent reduction in the revenue stream of a manufacturer who produces light bulbs might be met by a fifteen percent cut in output or product. Not public schools. We are expected to produce the exact same results with many fewer dollars to accomplish this mission.



If you know of Joel Barker’s work with “paradigms” over the past twenty years set your sites on public schools. According to Joel, when the old rules don’t apply that represent the stable or accepted order of things you can count on one thing for certain: new rules take over. Public education is poised for such a paradigm shift that may dramatically alter the way we deliver educational services to youth. In fact, government officials may be counting on this as the frenzy to “privatize” educational delivery models as Charter Schools, Virtual Schools, School Choice programs, and even Home Schools gain increased credibility.



Leave no doubt about it. Public schools will have to embrace accelerated changes in the way we deliver educational services to youth or someone else will step in and do it for us. Oh, and we will have to do this with far less funding. The challenge is daunting given the multitude of unfunded (if not underfunded) federal and state mandates that account for huge parts of school budgets. Union contracts will have to be revisited in states that allow for collective bargaining practices. The existing regulations in place for the thorough and efficient operations of public schools will not make it easy to meet these challenges ahead.



Here’s where innovation fits into the big picture. Schools are embracing changes that were unimaginable just a few years ago but are now up for serious consideration given the pressures of the budget reductions. Recent news accounts in New Jersey point to new programs or initiatives here in the metropolitan area as the school year begins. For example, Toms River schools are incorporating cell phones into the curriculum for students to conduct research, write reports, or download books. In lieu of foreign language teachers some are schools are counting on DVD’s to deliver basic instruction in Spanish at the elementary school level.



Virtual learning classes are becoming a more widely acceptable way for students to earn advanced credits at schools that have eliminated or reduced advanced placement programs. In Mount Olive Township, parents of school-aged children are suddenly being asked to pay for transportation if they live within a two-mile zone of their schools known as subscription bussing. In Sparta, parents of student athletes are being charged a pay-to-play participation fee.



Professional development for teachers appears to be rapidly changing as more and richer content is made available to them via online internet sites. One example is Hopatcong Borough which uses the School Improvement Network’s professional development software to deliver quality enrichment experiences via the internet. Over twenty percent of all advanced degrees for educators nationwide are now earned through virtual colleges such as The University of Phoenix, AspenUniversity, or Walden University (to name just a few).



In a period of accelerated change either public schools will join with others to create innovative opportunities for educational services or step aside as other institutions take over. These are the challenges we must contemplate as the shrinking economy will not allow for additional funding for our public schools. What was once valued as an ideal: low pupil to teacher ratios, is being replaced with much larger than sought after class sizes preK-12. The teacher of the future may be valued for his/her ability to teach students in much larger numbers than the teacher of today. Is this a change that represents an educational improvement? Possibly not, but a function of the new economic realities we must confront.



The future for pubic education may look entirely different than we imagine today. These are the times and challenges we face and like it or not we must be accepting of them. The educational leader of tomorrow will have to first usher in a period of transition and uncertainty as public schools that were once the bedrock of American society for the past hundred years reshape themselves for the profoundly different future ahead.

The Complex World of Internet Speech and Student Expression

The world of instant communications via the internet and instant messaging services has created an environment that schools find increasingly difficult to regulate or influence. Complicating the issue is the limited authority of schools and the individual rights of teens and children to express freely their thoughts and comments on social media. This area deserves much judicial attention and in fact will take many years of litigation in order to draw reasonable conclusions about the ability of school officials to intervene when student speech reaches a broad audience via cyberspace.




A review of fundamental issues regarding student free speech rights reveal how little school officials can control the content of student online expression especially if the student speech originates off campus. Students have a constitutional right to freedom of speech and expression as granted by the United States Constitution. The first Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech and applies this concept to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In my home state of New Jersey, the free speech clause is found in Article I, paragraph 6, and states that “Every person may freely speak, write and publish his sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of that right. No law shall be passed to restrain or abridge the liberty of speech…” The freedom of expression encompasses non-verbal and verbal speech, including expressive conduct which conveys a particularized message that must generally be understood by those viewing it. When expressed views are controversial the government must be tolerant of the rights of individuals to express their views. Students cannot be disciplined or even punished for expressing their personal views on school property unless school officials have reasons to expect that the speech or expressive conduct will substantially interfere with the operation of the school and this becomes more complex when student views are expressed off school property.



A school district can restrict certain speech depending on the forum in which the speech or expression occurs. This becomes clear if the speech originates on school grounds or at a school sponsored function when that speech is lewd, vulgar or profane, or if the speech advocates for the illegal use of drugs. When an observer would view student speech as that of the school’s own speech on the basis of legitimate pedagogical concerns, or if the speech were powerful enough to cause a substantial disruption to the educational process or the rights of other students at school, school officials may act to limit or restrict such speech. Three types of forums exist: open forums, limited public forums, and closed public forums. The open forum is a traditional place with a long-standing tradition of free expression such as sidewalks, streets, parks, shopping malls, and generally any public venue like the Internet. Limited pubic forums and closed public forums allow governmental limits to certain types or forms of public speech as long as government policies are reasonable and do are not based on a desire to suppress a particular viewpoint nor can such policies discriminate on the basis of the viewpoint of the speaker.



School policies are generally designed to control student speech and conduct attributable to actions occurring when students attend school or school sponsored events. It is wise to note that most children and young adults attend school only about one-sixth of their lives from birth to eighteen years of age. The other five-fifths in the lives of youth occur in public settings, communities, or homes and these actions generally are not within reach of school officials. This is an important component for consideration given that the majority of student speech originates in the public or private sector of society and not in school buildings.



School officials are confronted these days with complex questions when asked to deal with the phenomenon of what has become to be known as “Cyberbullying”. This area of student speech is largely unregulated and often results in what researchers have characterized as “willful and repeated harm” inflicted through phones and computers toward other children or students. Remember that cell phones have just recently evolved into tiny computers with internet capabilities including not only texting but photographic and video sharing of content. Often, school disciplinary codes of conduct define very little about the authority of educators to regulate online student speech and expression due to the lack of authority that school officials actually have regarding these matters. Whether the responsibility for regulating student conduct online falls to the family, the police, or the schools remains an open question for modern society to explore.



The issues of student speech and content of online speech will remain problematic for school officials unless such speech materially and substantially interferes with maintaining discipline and the general safe operation of the school. One example would be an off campus threat of violence made by a student such as a bomb threat or “hit list” against specific individuals. The more complex issues revolve around non-violent, non-threatening speech that may simply be vulgar, offensive or harassing. Courts are clearly divided on the ability of school officials to regulate or even react to student online speech that originates off campus. Numerous cases have risen in various circuit courts and the overwhelming majority of cases have been found in favor of the free speech rights of students or children.



It is increasingly more apparent that the Internet has created a revolution in the manner in which society communicates. Students will use the Internet as a vehicle for social interaction, communication, and information. Young people will use the online forum to criticize, attack, humiliate, embarrass and even anger other students or school officials. With respect to the type of speech that occurs on the Internet, the central question of whether such speech substantially interferes with the operation of the school will determine the appropriate reaction of school officials nationwide in future months or years. The facts or circumstances that may lead a reasonable person to conclude that the result of such speech will lead to classroom disruptions, acts of violence such as fights, defiant student behavior, and truancy, will be the determining factor guiding the actions of schools. The “materially and substantially interferes” threshold of law that applies to the appropriate discipline and operation of schools will continue to guide school officials in this confusing and complex area of student speech regulation. Until the courts have provided sufficient guidance to school officials, the Internet remains a wide-open public forum for expression that will evade restrictions or regulations due in part to the freedoms provided by the United States Constitution for all individuals in society including our youngest citizens.

The Connection Between Student Achievement and Teacher Evaluation

The debate concerning the use of student progress as a measure of teacher performance is beginning to receive considerable attention nationwide. With the recent election of Chris Christie as governor of New Jersey this idea gained further traction in the Garden State. The sought after federal “Race to the Top” U.S. Department of Education grant for hundreds of millions of dollars in funding is contingent on a renewed teacher evaluation process that formally recognizes a correlation between student achievement and teacher performance. Is this a valid idea whose time has come? Ask yourself this question: In an era of increased accountability for public education why would any reliable system for evaluation not include student performance?




Here is the problem: The current system of teacher evaluation in use throughout New Jersey is far too narrow in scope and falls short in many key critical areas. This is primarily due to overreliance on outdated methods for assessing teaching performance linked to limited criteria. For example, a major flaw in the current process for evaluation is the sole reliance upon direct observation of teachers by principals or supervisors. Direct observation limits the evaluator’s view to only a fraction of total annual teaching time. As a result the evaluation process fails to offer a complete picture of employee performance. Therefore by design the common evaluation process for assessing teacher performance in New Jersey limits school administrators to only a snapshot of employee performance. What’s needed is a full motion picture of performance over time.



The dual mandates of teacher accountability and improvement of instruction are among the most important components of our schools and should be the centerpiece for valid and reliable teacher evaluation practices. Consider that the quality of any school district is directly linked to the performance of the individuals who work there. Administrators are in need of accurate and complete measures of employee performance in order to assure the best connection between qualifications and assignment of personnel. By extension, administrative decisions concerning teacher placement typically correlate with the overall achievement of students assigned to specific courses within a school. These important components need to be infused into a reliable and defensible evaluation process.



Classroom observation as a primary data source for evaluation provides only one snapshot of teaching actions and limits the administrator’s overall view of performance. The exclusive use of direct observation presumes that observable, overt teaching behaviors provide a sufficient basis for judging teacher adequacy and competencies. Hidden from view are the elements of teacher planning, modification of instructional materials, context and depth, working relationships with colleagues, and student growth factors. Equally important are the teachers’ pedagogical knowledge, content mastery, and feedback from students and parents.



The reforms that are shaping America’s public schools include a movement toward increased academic rigor, learner-centered schools, distributed leadership responsibilities, professional learning communities, and collaborative problem-solving. A new era of rapid technological change implies that teachers will need sustained professional growth experiences and the ability to communicate with many constituencies. Outdated and subjective teacher evaluation practices exclude most of the elements described above and contribute little to the student learning and growth measures needed today in our public schools.



If teachers and principals together are to be held accountable for student performance then they will need to have genuine and sustainable professional interactions that support teaching and learning. What is also needed is a mechanism for performance evaluation that takes into account multiple measures of student success. If evaluation protocols intend to respect the professionalism and qualities of excellent teaching then a more inclusive system for collecting, collaborating, analyzing and disaggregating data is needed. At the center for all of our efforts must be the growth and progress of the students we serve.



Schools now have access to multiple views and longitudinal data about student progress thanks to a decade of content standard development and standardized testing in America. Why not use this rich data to inform us about the effectiveness of teaching practices and behaviors in our public schools? Outdated evaluative practices merely offer a glimpse into the act of teaching as opposed to the results of teaching. This is an important shift for educators. Why do many professional teacher associations appear fearful of analyzing the results of teaching when considering the overall effectiveness of teaching behaviors?



In fact, teachers should be making their own case for valid and reliable evaluation practices rather than avoiding or deflecting this discussion. The reason schools exist as a public institution is to meet the needs of the children we serve. Teachers who are unwilling to accept responsibility for student progress or demonstrate consistently mediocre professionalism need to be counseled and removed. Unfortunately, only in extreme cases are schools able to facilitate the dismissal of ineffective teachers. In order to prevail in cases of dismissal school boards must rely upon a wealth of data absent from common evaluation practices in New Jersey.



Many other states have embraced the use of student data and multiple criteria for evaluation as part of a complete picture of employee performance. It is time for New Jersey to usher in a new era of accountability and cooperation based upon more modern and reliable assessments. Evaluation of teachers should contain multiple rating categories and procedures that value student growth and achievement. Evaluation must be fair, inclusive of constructive feedback, and connected to a foundation of support and shared professional development in schools.



New Jersey’s new administration has a golden opportunity to depart from the past practices that have limited the overall view of educational performance and innovation by advocating for evaluation reform. These reforms need to be consistent with the federal Department of Education’s Race to the Top funding goals as millions of dollars in federal support could be gained. This alone is reason enough to pursue some much needed reforms in educational evaluation.



If New Jersey is to embrace any form of merit pay for school employees it will first have to address the inconsistencies and shortcomings of current evaluation processes. The Commissioner of Education would be wise to inspect the educational changes that have taken root in other places and be prepared to break from outdated thinking about evaluation and accountability practices. This may finally be the best time for us to place students at the center of our renewed efforts to build excellent public schools in New Jersey. Isn’t that why our schools exist in the first place?

A Superintendent's Perspective on Budget Cuts to Public Education

The economic realities that confront the nation and particularly the state of New Jersey at this critical time have created a “perfect storm” for public school educational funding. We face the largest budget shortfall for school financing in at least half a century. The federal, state, and local commitment to fully fund public school budgets has been seriously eroded and the nationwide taxpayer frustration over increased taxes and spending have placed schools at serious risk of becoming underfinanced for 2010-2011 and beyond. As a result public schools nationwide are curtailing programs and cutting staff. According to one national survey by the American Association of School Administrators more than 275,000 teachers risk a loss of employment on July 1, 2010.




New Jersey is a good example of the current economic maelstrom. The recently elected New Jersey governor Chris Christie began a public campaign this winter to discredit the New Jersey Education Association and its membership. Governor Christie then cut educational funding statewide by $820 million. When school budgets were presented for elections in April Governor Christie encouraged taxpayers to turn out in record numbers to defeat ballot initiatives. As a result most of the school budgets in New Jersey were defeated. Following the defeat municipal governments were then empowered to further reduce school funding resulting in unprecedented and deep budget cuts.



In the district of Hopatcong, New Jersey, the above scenario had a dramatic effect on our total school budget for 2010-2011. Couple this with almost two decades of defeated budgets in Hopatcong (school budgets passed only four times in sixteen years) and the cumulative affect is proving to be devastating for our schools. The state reduced its share by 13.2% of the total budget resulting in a formula decrease of $1,700,962. The town council imposed an additional cut of $730,000 to this number resulting in a net loss of more than $2.4 million dollars. The impact will be immediate. Over twenty-four teaching positions will disappear from next year’s workforce in tiny Hopatcong.



Expected increases in required expenditures for 2010-2011 exacerbate these cuts by adding an additional burden of another $2 million to Hopatcong’s school budget. The cumulative effect is a net overall loss of about $4 million to accomplish the mission of our schools. The unprecedented cuts and projected costs will cause the Hopatcong school board to make reductions in positions and programs that will have profound implications for future years. In the past two years alone over forty teaching, operational, and administrative positions have been parsed from our workforce.



The overall impact of these projected cuts to next year’s school budget result in the reduction of the number of teachers available to teach courses, the downsizing of certain programs, the elimination of some sports and activities, and the curtailment of some advanced course offerings for students at the secondary level. Class sizes are expected to increase at all levels from Kindergarten through high school, and the ability of our teaching staff to personalize education for students has been seriously reduced. Activities that extend student learning outside the four walls of the classroom are also negatively affected. It is becoming increasingly harder to preserve the arts, student activities, and athletic programs for students.



The impact of the sudden and serious reductions to school funding may not be known for several years. What is recognized is the profound jeopardy that the reduction in resources and funding has placed our public schools in. The risks are very real that students will not receive the benefits of a comprehensive education they have come to expect. Ironically, New Jersey has built a national reputation on the accomplishments of its public schools with the highest math and language arts test scores in the nation, a dramatic reduction in the minority achievement gap, and the highest graduation rate of all the states.



Missing from this conversation are the realities that schools may not be able to deliver the high quality of services and educational experiences necessary for the future. The state demands a “thorough and efficient” education for each child yet it appears content to provide a “less than complete and effective” amount of funding to accomplish this. Let us not forget that quality public schools are not optional but necessary. We cannot fail to educate all of the children who enter our doors each day and prepare them for a profoundly different 21st century than the one we knew.



Superintendents and school boards will try to preserve as many programs as possible and our outstanding teachers will continue to strive for high outcomes in the years ahead. It is clear that all of us will have to embrace change and adjust to the new economic realities that are destined to alter the face of public education for years to come. What is not clear is our ability to predict the total net impact of all these changes on the people we employ and students we serve. Please know that the leadership of the Hopatcong Public Schools and many others across the state and nation will try our very best to analyze, assess, and adjust to the changing and challenging economic climate ahead for the sake of our children and our future.

A Superintendent's Perspective on Budget Cuts to Public Education

The economic realities that confront the nation and particularly the state of New Jersey at this critical time have created a “perfect storm” for public school educational funding. We face the largest budget shortfall for school financing in at least half a century. The federal, state, and local commitment to fully fund public school budgets has been seriously eroded and the nationwide taxpayer frustration over increased taxes and spending have placed schools at serious risk of becoming underfinanced for 2010-2011 and beyond. As a result public schools nationwide are curtailing programs and cutting staff. According to one national survey by the American Association of School Administrators more than 275,000 teachers risk a loss of employment on July 1, 2010.




New Jersey is a good example of the current economic maelstrom. The recently elected New Jersey governor Chris Christie began a public campaign this winter to discredit the New Jersey Education Association and its membership. Governor Christie then cut educational funding statewide by $820 million. When school budgets were presented for elections in April Governor Christie encouraged taxpayers to turn out in record numbers to defeat ballot initiatives. As a result most of the school budgets in New Jersey were defeated. Following the defeat municipal governments were then empowered to further reduce school funding resulting in unprecedented and deep budget cuts.



In the district of Hopatcong, New Jersey, the above scenario had a dramatic effect on our total school budget for 2010-2011. Couple this with almost two decades of defeated budgets in Hopatcong (school budgets passed only four times in sixteen years) and the cumulative affect is proving to be devastating for our schools. The state reduced its share by 13.2% of the total budget resulting in a formula decrease of $1,700,962. The town council imposed an additional cut of $730,000 to this number resulting in a net loss of more than $2.4 million dollars. The impact will be immediate. Over twenty-four teaching positions will disappear from next year’s workforce in tiny Hopatcong.



Expected increases in required expenditures for 2010-2011 exacerbate these cuts by adding an additional burden of another $2 million to Hopatcong’s school budget. The cumulative effect is a net overall loss of about $4 million to accomplish the mission of our schools. The unprecedented cuts and projected costs will cause the Hopatcong school board to make reductions in positions and programs that will have profound implications for future years. In the past two years alone over forty teaching, operational, and administrative positions have been parsed from our workforce.



The overall impact of these projected cuts to next year’s school budget result in the reduction of the number of teachers available to teach courses, the downsizing of certain programs, the elimination of some sports and activities, and the curtailment of some advanced course offerings for students at the secondary level. Class sizes are expected to increase at all levels from Kindergarten through high school, and the ability of our teaching staff to personalize education for students has been seriously reduced. Activities that extend student learning outside the four walls of the classroom are also negatively affected. It is becoming increasingly harder to preserve the arts, student activities, and athletic programs for students.



The impact of the sudden and serious reductions to school funding may not be known for several years. What is recognized is the profound jeopardy that the reduction in resources and funding has placed our public schools in. The risks are very real that students will not receive the benefits of a comprehensive education they have come to expect. Ironically, New Jersey has built a national reputation on the accomplishments of its public schools with the highest math and language arts test scores in the nation, a dramatic reduction in the minority achievement gap, and the highest graduation rate of all the states.



Missing from this conversation are the realities that schools may not be able to deliver the high quality of services and educational experiences necessary for the future. The state demands a “thorough and efficient” education for each child yet it appears content to provide a “less than complete and effective” amount of funding to accomplish this. Let us not forget that quality public schools are not optional but necessary. We cannot fail to educate all of the children who enter our doors each day and prepare them for a profoundly different 21st century than the one we knew.



Superintendents and school boards will try to preserve as many programs as possible and our outstanding teachers will continue to strive for high outcomes in the years ahead. It is clear that all of us will have to embrace change and adjust to the new economic realities that are destined to alter the face of public education for years to come. What is not clear is our ability to predict the total net impact of all these changes on the people we employ and students we serve. Please know that the leadership of the Hopatcong Public Schools and many others across the state and nation will try our very best to analyze, assess, and adjust to the changing and challenging economic climate ahead for the sake of our children and our future.

Economic Downturn Devastates Public Schools

In my prior blogs as Superintendent of Hopatcong Public Schools I emphasized the unusual challenges we face this year as a result of the uncertain economic times. These circumstances cause us to do things as a school board that under normal conditions would not be even thought of. The idea that a massive reduction-in-force is taking place nationwide seems unreal given the potential that 275,000 public school employees may out of work this July 1, 2010 (AASA 5/4/2010). This is unprecedented. The Public Schools of Hopatcong are in a similar position with a serious budget shortfall looming, increased mandated expenses, and other necessary contractual obligations pending.




We anticipated the loss of about twenty-four key positions prior to our budget election. Due to the defeat of the school budget it appears that the governing bodies may reduce the proposed budget even further. Historically and unfortunately, this has been the pattern in Hopatcong. During these difficult budgetary times of increased expenses and state reductions any further cuts will no doubt result in the additional loss of staff members. By extension, the loss of additional teachers will be certain to affect instruction at the classroom level as class sizes rise across grade levels.



According to the American Association of School Administrators (5/4/2010), Projection of National Education Job Cuts for the 2010-2011 School Year, a survey documenting personnel cuts in education found that school systems across the nation are facing serious challenges as a result of the economic downturn. AASA asserts that 82% of school districts reporting will cut or eliminate education jobs by July 1, 2010. The 300,000 jobs saved last year by virtue of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act will likely be reduced by 92%.



According to the Economic Policy Institute every 100,000 education jobs lost translates into roughly 30,000 jobs lost in other sectors due to reduced spending by school districts. Schools have been insulated from the impact of the economic conditions to this date due to the lag in contracts and the variation in their fiscal year - typically from July 1 through June 30. However, when July 1, 2010, rolls around the educational community could find itself short over 300,000 jobs. This will not be a good thing for the American economy nor her schools. Regardless of this fact, over 48 million students will show up for the 2010-2011 school year in all fifty states and we will have to be prepared to teach them.



American schools may be unwillingly entering a new chapter in the long history of public education. The progress that we have made over the past decades may take a back seat as valuable resources shrink or disappear from view. The future remains very uncertain as we attempt to find the means to individualize and customize educational experiences for a wide variety of young people. We must prevail in these uncertain times-our very future depends on it.

Open Letter to NJ Governor Christie

The following letter was penned by a colleague and fellow superintendent Dr. David C. Verducci, of Glen Rock, NJ public schools. I find the content to be exactly on target regarding the persistent attack on public school teachers and administrators by the recently elected Governor Christie of New Jersey. Please take the time to read through the excerpts below:


“Governor Christie, most people in New Jersey, myself included, agree that the State's financial situation is dire, that the funding process for public schools is broken and needs to be fixed, that pension reform is critical, and that the time to begin addressing these issues is not tomorrow, but now. But where we disagree comes to the fore with regard to how this all came about and how we/should go about fixing it.

What follows, then, are concrete suggestions for remedying this crisis situation without decimating our public schools. These ideas are designed to form the basis of a larger plan to place the state on firmer fiscal ground. Simultaneously, the implementation of the roadmap outlined below is also intended to build up our weakest schools with out driving our very best public school districts -institutions which could serve as models of "how to do it right'-into an inevitable downward spiral.

Make us -ALL of the stakeholders here-a partner in the process. This first item is the most important of all. Please stop talking ill us! Talk to us! We are not the enemy! Make us a partner in the endeavor to fix New Jersey. From the superintendent of schools to the part-time cafeteria worker, the overwhelming majority of us who spend our professional lives in the public schools are hard-working people who want to see children succeed. Building a coalition with the educational community for the betterment of the common good will not happen if you simply continue to dictate the terms of change. We have a lot of good ideas. We can help you accomplish your goals. We also want things to be different, but true systemic change will not take root if the only tools you use are blunt instruments that punish instead of encourage. We are people of intellect who want to be treated as such, not like the victims of a school-yard bully. Governor, I think you will find a very receptive audience among educational professionals and the citizens-at-Iarge if you simply approach the whole situation differently. Leaders don't just demand or dictate. They build consensus through persuasion and reason. Change this dynamic and you have a chance to change things even beyond your own greatest aspirations.

New Jersey's fiscal problems did not occur overnight and should be fixed over a period of time. Consider the case of an individual who doesn't use credit responsibly and gets into financial trouble. Should the person be required to pay back his or her debt at such a rate (i.e., in time and amount) that he or she could no longer afford food &shelter? Doesn't it make much more economic good sense to phase in controls that will get the system onto the right track -and then keep it there-over a period of time? Sustained change needs time. It is not accomplished overnight, or in our case, one or two budget years. As it stands now, all that is happening is that districts, in an effort to avoid the dismemberment of their school districts, are in many cases just shifting the burden. In Glen Rock, we are very sensitive to the financial condition of our residents. Since we won't burden them with a school tax rate any higher than it absolutely must be, my only choice is to make drastic cuts in staff programs. No matter how you slice it, no matter how it is portrayed politically, kids WILL be hurt by what you are doing and how you are doing it. Students know this, and Governor, please give kids a bit more credit. Our students, like those who staged a walk-out recently in Cliffside Park, are not "pawns" of teachers or administrators, no matter how much more palatable it might be to believe. Our kids are Vibrant, intelligent people who think for themselves, see what is really happening, interpret their own experiences, see things clearly, and, il1 short, are seething with anger over the cuts that THEY will be forced to endure.

Stop demonizing public school teachers and administrators! I have been a professional educator for almost thirty years and along the way teachers somehow stopped being thought of as a noble breed. What is fascinating to me is that this transformation over time roughly corresponds to the timeframe of professional educators actually beginning to earn a livable wage. In the early 1970s, my first teaching job paid $5,000 with no benefits! For years teaching salaries were so bad that in 1985 Governor Kean had to sign the Teacher Quality Employment Act into law, guaranteeing teachers a minimum salary of $18,500! At the time, more than 80% of New Jersey's teachers made less than that amoul1t. Benefits and a decent pension were the only inducements available to encourage good teachers to stay in the profession over the long term. Look at tenure for superintendents, abolished in 1992. Despite the warnings of the New Jersey Association of School Administrators, this created a system of "free agency," forcing up salaries for a position that requires decades of training and experience in a wide range of fields. The long and short of it is when salaries began to rise to a level approaching something like a "livable wage," and the true cost of a quality educational product became more widely known and understood, things changed. These days, many of those who are now demanding teacher salary cuts conveniently forget that in boon times we were not the ones who received huge cash end-of-the-year bonuses. Further, our teachers and administrators are "giving back." Glen Rock's union contracts already have an employee pay component for health benefits. Tuition reimbursement programs and the like are already tightly regulated. We do not get paid overtime. We do not fly to work in helicopters or chauffeur-driven cars. Teachers and administrators are not in the top one percent of wage earners (and this even includes well-paid superintendents!) who make over $400,0001 While deserving the merit of full and fair consideration, pay freezes are not a panacea. Ultimately, what it will serve to do is to drive the "best and brightest' out of the education field completely. Where will our schools be then? Incidentally, Governor, do you pay for your own health benefits or do benefits for you and your family come as a perk of being a state employee, albeit an elected one? If this is the case, why has no one heard you speak of your own voluntary pay-back? I think everyone would certainly love to see some of your leadership by example.

Amend the proposals to repair the State's Pension System so that the "fixes" are more equitable to everyone concerned. Governor Christie, as teachers and as administrators, we have paid our share of pension costs for all of these years; we simply did not have a choice as it was deducted automatically from our paychecks. It was the State which did not. Not only didn't Trenton pay its share but it raided the pension system for cash and then promptly "took a bath" as the markets tanked and the huge fund of cash -OUR MONEY, PAID FOR BY OUR HARD WORK!-was lost in the markets through highly dubious investments such as the financial instruments known commonly as derivatives. Teachers and administrators were not responsible for this investment fiasco. Neither did we have any say when Trenton unilaterally raised our contributions from 5°1o to S1J2°/0 to make up, in part, for its own shortfall and poor decisions. We don't "double-dip" into the pension system. We never asked for the formula change a few years back which increased pension costs. Most importantly, why are legislators who take advantage of double-dipping (as well as lawmakers who serve on a part-time basis) and in the pension systems grandfathered when public school employees with 25+ years of service are not? What ever happened to what is "good for the goose is good for the gander?" To paraphrase George Orwell (a writer whose work I first explored in a public high school English class, by the way), it seems that when it comes to New Jersey lawmakers, some animals are, in fact "more equal than others." This is fair, how?

Enhance the size of the State's fiscal pie through increased revenues and eliminate the many absurdly wasteful and expensive subsidies that Trenton doles out. For starters, reinstate the "Millionaires Tax" on the top one percent of wage earners. I thought we were in a crisis. Most of us would probably agree that if an individual is in this top 1%, you are probably not in a bad way financially despite how it might personally feel to you. This would solve the 2010-2011 state aid problem in one fell swoop. Second, get rid of subsidies and "tax-incentives'! (read giveaways) to rich business owners who are making or stand to make multi-millions of dollars off the backs of school children. Xanadu. The Prudential Center. Atlantic City Casinos. These three areas alone have cost New Jersey, literally, hundreds upon hundreds of millions.

Dramatically scale back the N.J.A.S.K. I H.S.P.A. standardized testing program and do so immediately. Want to give me, as a superintendent of schools, tools that I could use (and would be happy to do so!) to Significantly reduce the local tax burden? Here is an important example. Specifically, immediately drop four of the seven years of state testing that are now required of all public schools, but particularly for those districts designated as "high achieving" by your own Department of Education. Students who can score an 85% passing rate year-over-year do not need to have instructional time wasted with over-testing. The solution is elegantly simple: return to the former system of testing in grades four, eight, and eleven. It is educationally valid, statistically reliable as a measure of student progress (assuming a sound standardized instrument), and millions upon millions upon millions of dollars cheaper! I assure you, sir, that Pearson Corporation, the State's test publisher, doesn’t need the money anywhere near half as much as we do!

Cut over burdensome unfunded mandates NOW! While the goals of these mandates are, in many cases, laudable, they are expensive to administer and require very substantial amounts of tax-payer dollars, running into the tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars when taken en toto. Just a few examples include bilingual education, "Right to Know" laws, bio-hazard training, radon testing, overboard anti-bullying and anti-violence & vandalism program and reporting requirements, "Pest Management" (i.e., bugs), school security overregulation, standardized testing, and many, many, many more. The elimination of the regulatory requirements of just the programs mentioned have the potential to plug a very large part of our budget deficit.

Reduce the rate of health care increases in the State Health Benefits programs. Reign in Horizon Blue Cross/Blue Shield's 20%-35% annual increases and your financial worries for New Jersey will be well on their way to being solved forever. How can we possibly be expected to stay within a spending cap of 2.5% in 2011-2012 and not destroy our school systems unless there are cost-containment efforts that are external to the individual school districts.

Place schools in New Jersey on a level playing field. For one, stop subsidizing the per-pupil costs of the students attending the Bergen Academies. The audited per-pupil expenditure is well over $20,000 per student per annum. Who even knows what the true costs are? Most public schools are somewhere in the neighborhood of half that amount. Secondly, stop the approval of charter schools in communities with high-achieving schools; save these approvals for failing school districts that need it. There is absolutely no reason to believe, for example, that a recent Charter School application filed from Bergen County will provide greater educational opportunities than its public counterparts, when the proposed school would almost exclusively from Fair Lawn, Paramus, Glen Rock, and Ridgewood. Schools in communities such as these do nothing, in the end, but siphon off public funds from these local school districts (which we should not forget is paid by the local taxpayer) and simply subsidizes private, and often religiously-based, schools. As I read recently, "Charter schools are, in most cases, for-profit operations that do not always make the right decisions for children based on education standards. They make decisions that affect their bottom line and in so doing the quality of education suffers." Governor, give public schools a fair chance. Either take away the unfunded mandates outlined above and/or require charter schools to operate in the same regulatory environment that we do. Now that would be fair.

Use positive incentives not negative inducements to promote change. This costs so very little -in some cases nothing-and has the potential to profoundly change the system. Go back to our example of the individual who over-used his or her credit cards. Doesn't it make more sense to set up tighter controls (on both future credit and repayments) on the individual instead of everyone? Is it fair for the credit-card issuer to place punitive credit controls on individuals who are responsible and meet their financial obligations? Do the same for public school districts. Provide some regulatory relief to those of us who consistently demonstrate that we play by the rules and get the job done well. For once try rewards instead of punishments. From the standpoint of school districts that are doing well, all we ask is that Trenton and the Department of Education leave us be in order that we can continue to do well. Let us just do our jobs. Concentrate your scarce resources on those places that need it. That would certainly save everyone time, energy, and most of all, money!”

What do you think?  Thanks for reading this.

The New Jersey Budget Dilemma in Public Education

Overview

On March 16, 2010, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie delivered a historic speech demanding serious if not unprecedented budget cuts in response to the lagging economic conditions. There are serious implications for New Jersey public schools as we expect an $820 million reduction in state support for education. In order to help offset budget reductions, the Governor proposed additional legislative changes as follows:

1) A proposal that would require all employees to contribute a percentage of salary to their health benefits;

2) A proposal that would assist districts in contract negotiations by helping to sustain the last best offer;

3) A proposal that would affect pensions for anyone retiring after August 1, by proposing changes to the way pension benefits are calculated, and also by requiring contribution to health benefits for retirees.

Please note that these proposals would require legislative approval and therefore are not certain to be passed (but are likely to be passed in some form or another).

The Governor has also proposed a Constitutional Amendment that would require voter approval that would reduce the current 4% tax levy cap to 2.5%. This reduction would not only affect school districts, but also municipalities and the state budget as well.

Implications for Suburban School Districts

The Governor made no apologies for his stance and was clear about the need to halt the spending in New Jersey. We applaud him for demonstrating fiscal restraint at a difficult period of time, but are very concerned for the disproportionate means utilized to calculate funding cuts to localities that depend upon a significant portion of state aid for operational purposes. Hopatcong ranks 2nd of forty-nine area school districts in the percent of state aid to the district (38% of total budget). Eighty per cent of our school budgets account for salaries and benefits with the balance toward supplies, transportation, energy costs, maintenance, etc. Any reduction in state aid will have a devastating impact on our overall bottom line for 2010-2011.

The problem with the approach that the New Jersey Governor has outlined is that suburban districts like Hopatcong will suffer the lion’s share of budget cuts. Over the past several years the Hopatcong School District exercised serious restraint and cut its administrative team by 1/3 and implemented several other significant cost saving measures.

In the past two years Hopatcong’s budget has only grown by a little more than 1% in 2008 and less than ¼ of 1% in 2009 while expenses have increased by 22%. The gap promises to be much wider this year as our funding tanks into the negative digits (thanks to the state funding cuts). On the other hand, expenses in fuel, electric, textbooks, supplies, maintenance, health insurance, buildings and grounds insurance, liability insurance, paper, ink, pencils, crayons, markers, out of district tuitions, services for special needs children, charter school expenses, and yes, salaries & benefits continue to rise.

The only way to produce a balanced budget when you are operating as lean and mean as possible (as Hopatcong is) is to reduce expenses. The only expenses that can be controlled will result from the dismissal of employees. We have no ability to increase the revenue stream. So if Governor Christie and the New Jersey State Legislature impose a 2.5% tax cap on localities, every school district in the state that depends on state aid will begin a process of lay off employees to balance budgets. (Remember the effect of Proposition 13 on California’s public schools?) We are not empowered to reduce the number of days we operate, we cannot suspend the thousands of state mandates imposed on us, we cannot decide not to teach anyone, we cannot reduce services to our student population of special needs for example.

The Governor and Legislature assumes that there is excess in school budgets and thus we can afford to cut 5%, 10%, 15% or even 20% of our budgets. But this is where they are absolutely wrong. Every penny Governor Christy is determined to extract from our state aid budget will find its way to the classroom. This means that our teachers will have classes much larger in future years, they will have less resources with which to practice their craft, they will be accountable for more results, and will have to work with less technology. But the same number of students will enter our classrooms with the same needs as they always have. So, how can we produce the same results with less funding, less resources, or with less teachers?

If we cut our budget input and in balance were able to cut our product output this would make sense. But the Governor wants to cut input (revenue) and expects the same output (results: number of students taught, number of days worked, exceptional state test scores, etc.) without regard to consequence. Let’s use a business model: If one cannot produce a balanced equation (input vs. output) and revenues do not match expenditures the only logical choice is bankruptcy. That is the cumulative effect of the current state reductions and may be where public education is heading.

I agree that the State of New Jersey must restrain spending but object to the “quick fix” that will certainly take its toll on the children of public education. A much more mature approach will be to reduce expenses incrementally over time and not place our most valuable resource at risk: our children.

The Hopatcong School Board will continue its analytical and thoughtful options as more budget information is revealed. Our business team is doing an excellent job of complying with all state regulations and mandates and produces accurate and accountable public records that are recognized by our auditors as exceptional. We will produce a balanced ledger as we finish out the 2009-2010 school year, as we have done every year for the past several decades. Unfortunately, the state has not been as fiscally responsible as school districts have over the years. The State of New Jersey is about to change the face of public education in forever.

One last thought for Governor Christy and the State Legislature: The teachers are not the enemy- you are. Our teachers are hard working individuals who have pursued multiple college degrees and thousands of hours of professional development in order to work in an honorable profession of service to our community and to America. They deserve to be compensated adequately, to have health benefits, to look forward to retirement, and to raise families. For years the teachers of this country were underpaid and expected to produce exceptional results when the whole of society was failing American children.

The American teaching force endured and persevered many decades as undervalued and underappreciated professionals in our society. They negotiated their status into a highly respectful professional and competitive one over the years. I respect all of them for their achievements in American education.

No other society on earth can educate the diverse population that exists in these United States in public schools. We are a heterogeneous mix of the world’s population and the diversity of individualism is the greatest challenge in America’s classrooms. When critics of American education make international comparisons they would be wise to remember this.

American education has been the envy of the world and over the course of the last hundred years our country has led the world into the 21st century. When foreign dignitaries visit American schools they wonder and marvel at the level of differentiation that exists and variations in our learners. We have excelled at leveling the playing field for children from all walks of life in our public schools.

When state or local officials publically discredit our teachers for the excellent work that they do and then decide to summarily dismantle public education they need to be aware of the damage that they will do-now and in the future.