Christie, unions spar over history of skipping collective bargaining to change health benefits

Ex-counsel for N.J. public employee relations group says he was fired for being an 'obstacle' to Christie's plans

Cuts in N.J. school aid may lead to 'hotly contested' school board elections

School board candidates are spending more than double what used to be spent in election campaigns, according to the state Election Law Enforcement Commission.

And as school funding has tightened statewide, some expect board of education campaigns to be even more hotly contested.

From 2000 to 2010, campaign spending totaled $10.2 million, according to White Paper Number 21 released by ELEC last week.

This compared to $4.3 million spent during the 1990s.

For instance, in Newark Public Schools, Advisory Board Chairman Shavar Jeffries shelled out more than $29,000 during his campaign in April, an effort that yielded record voter turnout.

"We wanted to get our message to as many people as possible and that requires resources," said Jeffries, who hired a campaign manager, mailed advertisements and hired drivers to shuttle voters on election day.

"I wanted new parents, new community members who don’t ordinarily come out."

Ten years ago in Newark, the most spent on a campaign was $5,656, according to candidate finance records.

In Elizabeth, candidates spent $42,801 while campaigning this year. In 2000, the maximum reported spent was $25,303.

The report stated campaign spending statewide rose 125 percent, or 97 percent when accounting for inflation, in comparing the last two decades.

Meanwhile, the report noted, spending by state Assembly candidates rose only 10 percent and fell 70 percent for both state parties during the same period.

School candidates are still spending heavily in one aspect of their campaigns: advertising. Communication-related expenses make up 70 percent of reported spending in school elections.

Two-term board member Todd Simmens of the East Brunswick School District said he rallied support the old-fashioned way, by planting about 100 signs around town.

"Folks are stopped at lights and you can reach people that way," said Simmens, board president. "Signs can be very effective."

The report also highlighted that donations from the state’s most politically powerful teachers union have followed an even steeper upward trend.

The New Jersey Education Association’s campaign donations, made through its School Elections Committee, amounted to more than triple its contributions in the 1990s.

The NJEA spent $3.7 million from 2000 to 2010, or 36 percent of the total $10.2 million spent on school campaigns through this year. The association had spent an estimated $1.1 million, or 25.6 percent of the total, in local school elections during the 1990s, the report said.

The NJEA, however, does not directly fund candidates, but aims to get school budgets passed, according to the ELEC report.

Massive cuts this year in state school aid have led to more hotly contested school board elections, said Highland Park board member Adam Sherman. Residents are seeing the direct results of the budget crisis, he said.

"When their child is in a classroom with 30 children, or they don’t have any activities to do after school, more people are paying attention," Sherman said.

"We are seeing those impacts."

N.J. education chief nominee Christopher Cerf calls for reform of state's worst schools

TRENTON — Vowing to focus on "issues that have long been neglected" in public education, Gov. Chris Christie Monday introduced former deputy New York City schools chancellor Christopher D. Cerf as the state’s next education commissioner.

At a press conference in the Statehouse, Christie called Cerf, 56, of Montclair, someone whose "record of reform and innovation...is well known" and whose "philosophical approach in many areas of education is in line with mine."

Cerf, who now is CEO of Sangari Education, a global math and science technology company, called for the need to reform the state’s worst schools, closing the "shameful" achievement gap between "those born to economic circumstances that are positive and those born to poverty."

He praised Christie for drawing "clear lines" to address it, and offered a prescription that includes finding the best teachers and school leaders; increasing accountability in schools; allowing parents to choose their child’s school; giving schools more opportunity to make decisions for themselves; and more use of technology and other innovation.

News of Cerf’s nomination was first reported last week by The Star-Ledger and Wall Street Journal. His nomination now moves to the Senate Judiciary Committee for a confirmation hearing on the $141,000 a year cabinet post.

A former high school history teacher, and a member of the board of TEAM Academy, a Newark charter school, Cerf Monday also spoke of targeting issues that have long been sacred to teachers. He said he supports "differentiated pay" for teachers, with "rewards and consequences" based on how well children are learning, instead of the current system where salary is based on years of service and a teachers’ degree of education.

Cerf also called tenure, the job protection that teachers earn after three years and one day on the job, something that was once "a guard against arbitrariness" but that has "massively mutated ... into essentially lifetime protection."

Both he and Christie called for making decisions on school reform based on what is good for children, not adults.

But Cerf also praised teachers, calling them "an essential component in student learning" and the "spiritual guides" who can lead a child to success in the classroom.

"The effectiveness of a teacher is far and away the single greatest determinant in closing the shameful achievement gap," Cerf said. "I have the highest regard and deepest appreciation for teachers in the state. I look forward to working with them."

In Cerf, Christie, a Republican, crossed the aisle to nominate a Democrat. Cerf is an attorney who worked in the Clinton White House. He was also former president of Edison Schools Inc., which at the time was the nation’s largest private sector manager of public schools.

Christie, who has waged a nearly year-long battle with the New Jersey Education Association over teacher pay and tenure, showed no sign of easing up, however. He said the tone of his administration going forward will be "determined by the partner we have on the other side."

"I am looking forward to the time when the teachers union wants to be part of real reform," Christie said. "I have seen nothing that indicates they will be. However, I wait in hope."

NJEA spokesman Steve Wollmer said later the union looks forward to meeting with Cerf and "hopefully establishing the type of dialogue that ought to exist between the commissioner and NJEA." He pointed to an agreement Cerf made with New York City’s teachers’ union, which created a system where schools earned bonuses when students excel.

Christie selected Cerf to fill the job left vacant when the governor, in August, fired former Education Commissioner Bret Schundler over the state’s failed Race to the Top bid for federal education stimulus money.

Acting Commissioner Rochelle Hendricks, who was assistant commissioner of education, and who was a candidate for the permanent post, has filled the role since Schundler was fired. Christie also thanked her, and said she will be staying on in his administration.

Cerf’s appointment has been praised by many in education.

Ryan Hill, CEO of TEAM Academy, said Cerf is "very bold and has high expectations for what education should look like."

"Fundamentally, Chris is about what’s good for kids," he said.

Hill also said Cerf is still a member of the TEAM Academy board, but he expects the commissioner-elect to have to step down from that post before becoming commissioner.

Gov. Christie's pick for N.J. schools chief hopes to bridge education gap in some communities

TRENTON — They would seem an unlikely pair: Gov. Chris Christie, who has bashed teachers for the past year, and his new education commissioner, Christopher Cerf, who has spent his career supporting them.

But Cerf said their goals are the same and he shares the governor’s concerns about inequity in public education today.

"New Jersey has one of the best education systems in the country, which can only mean it’s being led by a dedicated group of educators," Cerf said Saturday at his Montclair home. "At the same time, there are certain communities in this state where we should all be ashamed about the gap between children who are rich and poor and black and white."

In an exclusive interview with The Star-Ledger, Cerf said he considers teaching a craft for which he has the "highest imaginable respect." It’s an opinion he formed in the late 1970s while leading class discussions about the American Revolution and grading papers on women’s suffrage as a high school history teacher in Ohio.

"Teachers are some of the most unbelievably hard-working people in the country," Cerf said. "Everyone went to school, so everyone thinks they are an expert, but they don’t understand how hard it is to be a good teacher."

Christie will nominate Cerf as the state’s next education commissioner at a news conference in Trenton on Monday, said a person briefed on the appointment but not authorized to speak publicly about it. Cerf would not confirm his pending nomination.

The Illinois native who grew up in Washington, D.C., and Boston currently serves as CEO of Sangari Education, a global math and science technology company, and he previously worked as a deputy chancellor of the New York City public schools under outgoing Chancellor Joel Klein.

If approved by the state Senate, Cerf will use his 30-plus years of public- and private-sector experience to lead the state Department of Education.

Cerf, who is married and has three children, is a registered Democrat who has donated at least $7,750 to party candidates for national and state offices since 2002. His list of recipients include President Obama, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, and Democrats for Education Reform.

His name and résumé are not new to the Christie administration, said a member of the governor’s transition team not authorized to speak publicly. Cerf first became a contender for the state’s top education post in November 2009, following a recommendation from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. As a senior campaign advisor, Cerf helped Bloomberg win an election that hinged on his education reform record.

"He was an incredibly strong candidate in that initial process," the transition team member said. But the job instead went to Bret Schundler, who was ousted in August following the state’s loss of $400 million in federal education aid.

In New York City, Cerf worked alongside Klein, the schools chancellor and his longtime friend, to transform one of the country’s largest, lowest-performing school districts — with 1.1 million students, 1,500 schools and 80,000 teachers — into a national model for reform.

"Zip code was destiny in many respects," Cerf said of the public schools before Bloomberg and Klein assumed control. "If you went to a neighborhood school back then, it was typically inferior."

The hope is the size and scope of what Cerf helped accomplish in New York City approximates what’s possible for New Jersey’s public schools, which serve about 1.4 million students.

From 2006 to 2009, he closed 90 failing schools, broke up overcrowded public schools into 400 smaller academies and opened 100 charter schools. He strengthened the requirements for teacher tenure, promoted school choice and created accountability for student achievement at the school level.

He also compromised with the city’s powerful teachers union, something Christie has refused to do in New Jersey. With support from New York City teachers union president Randi Weingarten, Cerf offered bonuses to schools whose students excelled in the classroom.

"Chris may not have agreed with us, but he always listened," Weingarten said. "Our union was constantly at the table with the Department of Education discussing what teachers need to do their jobs well."

Communication and compromise are skills Cerf honed during nearly a dozen expeditions to Canada’s Labrador and Quebec provinces with groups of public school students from across the country. During these 50-day summer adventures, Cerf taught "scholarship kids" and students from Philadelphia’s inner city how to survive in the woods with a compass and how to cook over a campfire.

"They learned how to engage the wilderness and support those not having a good day," Cerf said of the expeditions. "After rafting through rapids, we would have to carry all our gear — the heavy canoes included — around a waterfall. We had to support each other because there was no other way."

New Jersey was not the only state pining for Cerf’s expertise. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said Cerf’s name "topped a list" of candidates the federal Education Department created last month for states seeking new schools chiefs. Duncan and Cerf have known each other since Cerf’s days in New York, when Duncan was Chicago’s schools czar.

"Chris’ level of creativity and innovation and entrepreneurship are very refreshing," Duncan said. "He really wants to do the right thing for children, and he’s someone I’ve watched closely for a while now."

Staff writers Ted Sherman and Chris Megerian contributed to this report.
 

Ex-education chief Schundler openly blames Gov. Christie for Race to the Top loss

TRENTON — Gov. Chris Christie and the education commissioner he fired in August were again at each other’s throats today in a public display that proved the controversy over the administration’s loss of $400 million in federal school aid will not disappear any time soon.

As Bret Schundler told a state Senate committee the governor placed fighting with the state teachers unions and his persona on talk radio above education reform, Christie told reporters Schundler was trading in "revisionist history" and interested only in seeking "the spotlight."

In different corners of the Statehouse, Schundler and Christie took their public shots at each other to new levels while the governor’s allies and adversaries in the state Senate engaged in a rare, open display of hostility.

The showcase was a hearing of the Senate Legislative Oversight Committee, called as part of an investigation into what caused the state to lose the Race to the Top competition this summer.

Under subpoena, Schundler returned to Trenton to testify that he took responsibility for a clerical error that cost the state up to 4.8 points on a scorecard that determines which states get grants for education reforms. New Jersey was 3 points shy of getting the money. The error ultimately cost Schundler his job.

For the first time, Schundler openly blamed Christie for reneging on a compromise application for the grant that Schundler worked out with the New Jersey Education Association teachers union — something he said cost the state 14 points.

"It was intolerable for him to be perceived as giving in to the NJEA," Schundler said of the governor’s reaction to the compromise. After having battled with the NJEA through last year’s campaign and in his first months as governor, Schundler said Christie called him after learning about the negotiated application and said "he was not going through the fire, with all the attacks on him, merely to cave into the union ... the money was not worth it."

Schundler added that Christie was most upset after he heard the coverage of the compromise on Jim Gearhart’s morning radio show on New Jersey 101.5 FM.

As the hearing progressed, Christie’s office summoned reporters for a major announcement — the governor’s decision to kill the long-awaited trans-Hudson train tunnel to Manhattan.

Christie insisted there was no ulterior motive to the timing of his announcement but proceeded to tee off on Schundler and his opponents in the Senate who had called the hearing.

"This (tunnel) decision was timed based upon the 30-day timetable that I gave almost 30 days ago," Christie said. "I didn’t know 30 days ago that Bret Schundler was to be subpoenaed this morning to be before that partisan circus."

Christie would not discuss Schundler’s specific points, saying "I’m not going to waste any more of my time continuing to respond to Bret Schundler." Christie added: "I understand his yearning for the spotlight. I really do."

Christie’s comments came at the end of a dramatic day that started at the Mercer County Courthouse, where Superior Court Judge Linda Feinberg ordered the state’s consultant on the Race to the Top application to appear before the Senate under the terms of the legislative subpoena. The consultant, Wireless Generation, had made a motion to have the subpoena thrown out.

Once Feinberg issued her ruling, the committee hearing began with partisan sniping between Majority Leader Barbara Buono (D-Middlesex) and Minority Leader Tom Kean Jr. (R-Union). Kean, a Christie ally, made procedural moves to slow down the hearing and limit Schundler’s testimony. Buono grew openly impatient with Kean, telling a staffer to turn off his microphone and threatening to throw him out of the hearing.

Kean said "no new information has been derived today." Buono said Schundler offered a troubling "portrait painted today of a governor who has sacrificed $400 million for education reform for our children to further a personal vendetta with the NJEA."

Some of Schundler’s time was spent explaining the clerical error, how it happened, and what he told Christie and the governor’s senior staff about it. Wireless Generation did provide many of the documents subpoenaed and senators said they would reconvene after they have a chance to review the records.

By Josh Margolin and Jeanette Rundquist / The Star-Ledger

Staff writer Chris Megerian contributed to this report.

N.J. parents will get to see teacher evaluations online

TRENTON — Parents in New Jersey will soon get to see teacher evaluations online.

The names of the teachers won't be included. Instead, districts must show ratings categories and how many teachers are in each group. Districts must do the same for principals if they have more than 10.

Deputy Education Commissioner Willa Spicer told The Record newspaper disclosing the ratings was a condition of receiving federal 2009 stimulus funds and aims to boost transparency.

New Jersey Education Association spokesman Stephen Wollmer says the plan would lead to a "witch hunt" as parents tried to figure out if their children had teachers in the lowest category. Wollmer says transparency doesn't translate into "sensible policy."

Source:  NJ.com

Merit pay for teachers who improve students scores may not work, research shows

TRENTON — Paying teachers bonuses to improve student test scores may not work after all, according to a new study researchers say is the first scientifically rigorous test of merit pay.

Vanderbilt University researchers studied a program in Nashville that offered bonuses of $5,000 to $15,000 to middle school math teachers if their students scored higher than expected on a statewide exam, according to a report released today.

After three years, the program proved to be a bust, the study said. Except for some temporary gains, students did not progress any faster in classrooms where teachers were offered bonuses.

The small study could be a cautionary flag to the Obama administration and state governments — including New Jersey — that consider tying teacher pay to students’ academic performance as a central piece of their education reform efforts.

Gov. Chris Christie is expected to propose a statewide performance pay program for New Jersey teachers next week. Today, the governor’s spokesman questioned whether the Vanderbilt study would have any impact.

"The study has limitations, which its authors acknowledged," said Michael Drewniak, Christie’s spokesman. "It does not support any sweeping conclusions."

But officials at the New Jersey Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, said the study’s results were no surprise to teachers who have fought the introduction of pay-for-performance for years.

"We’ve maintained for a long time that many proponents of merit pay promote an oversimplified scheme that’s not likely to work in the real world," said Steve Baker, a NJEA spokesman. "This was a real world test where you reward people for supposedly helping their students achieve better test scores, and frankly, it failed."

The Nashville experiment was studied by the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of Education in cooperation with the nonprofit RAND Corporation.

About two thirds of Nashville’s middle-school math teachers volunteered to participate in the experiment. Half of the 296 teachers were placed randomly in a control group, while the rest were eligible for bonuses of $5,000, $10,000 or $15,000 if their pupils scored significantly higher than expected on a statewide exam.

The bonuses amounted to as much as 30 percent of teachers’ yearly salaries in Nashville, where teachers are paid between $36,000 to $64,000, union officials said.

Over the next three years, 34 percent of the eligible teachers received a bonus at least once because their students did well on the exam. Eighteen of the teachers received bonuses all three years.

However, the study concluded students in the classes where teachers received bonuses did not progress any faster than those in classes taught by instructors were not eligible for the cash.

Pay-for-performance is not "the magic bullet that so often the policy world is looking for," said Matthew G. Springer, director of Vanderbilt’s National Center on Performance Incentives.

At least in this experiment, "it doesn’t work," Springer said.

However, researchers said the experiment was limited. The Nashville teachers who received bonuses did not receive any additional mentoring or professional development. Principals and fellow teachers did not know who participated in the experiment or who received cash awards.

Frederick M. Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., said he did not believe the study had much value and said he was concerned it would only confuse the issue.

"The fact that that teachers don’t respond to cash bonuses like rats do to food pellets does nothing to diminish my confidence that it’s good for schooling if teacher pay better reflects the contributions that teachers make," Hess said. "Serious proponents of merit pay believe the point is not any kind of short-term test score bump but making the profession more attractive to talented candidates."

The study was released at a two-day conference, "Evaluating and Rewarding Educator Effectiveness," at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College that drew participants from Colorado, Georgia, Tennessee, Washington, D.C., and other places conducting their own experiments with performance pay.

The study did not shake the faith of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and other education officials who have encouraged states to adopt merit pay programs.

"While this is a good study, it only looked at the narrow question of whether more pay motivates teachers to try harder," said Sandra Abrevaya, a spokeswoman for Duncan.

The study did not address the Obama administration’s push to "change the culture of teaching by giving all educators the feedback they need to get better," Abrevaya said.

In New Jersey’s application for $400 million in the federal Race to the Top competition for education reform money, the state proposed spending $63.5 million to provide merit pay and incentives for teachers willing to work in the lowest-performing schools. Though the state failed to win the Race to the Top money, the governor has said tieing teacher pay to student performance is an important part of education reform in New Jersey.

"I don’t believe that we should be rewarding failure," Christie said earlier this month. "That’s why I believe in merit pay."

Liz Willen of The Hechinger Report at Columbia University’s Teachers College contributed to this report.

Christie reserves right to invoke executive privilege despite giving up Race to the Top documents

TRENTON — Gov. Chris Christie said he’ll give Democrats documents related to the state’s failed bid for Race to the Top education funding Wednesday — but they shouldn’t expect an open book.

Christie Tuesday said he reserved the right to invoke executive privilege, which shields the governor from open records laws, despite an understanding reached Monday with Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester) that he would provide papers Democrats wanted.

Last week, Democrats said they did not receive all the documents they requested from the governor’s office and threatened to use subpoenas to force the administration to provide them. They canceled a vote Monday to give a Senate committee subpoena power after Sweeney met with the governor

But Christie, a Republican, denied making a “deal.”

“We’re still asserting executive privilege,” he said. “We’re going to turn over those documents which we believe are appropriate to turn over. If there are areas that we believe are covered by executive privilege, we’ll assert them and we’ll go from there.”

Democrats are investigating the state’s bungled application for up to $400 million in federal education funding. Last month, the state lost points — and the money — in part because a wrong answer was substituted for a correct one. The mistake and its aftermath led Christie to fire Bret Schundler, his education commissioner.

This week, Christie and Sweeney had what the governor described as an amicable conversation.

“All I agreed to (Monday) was a date certain to turn over the documents to the Senate that (Senate Majority Leader) Barbara Buono has requested,” Christie said. “I said, ‘How about Wednesday?’ He said, ‘Okay.’ And that was it.”
Sweeney declined to comment on the conversation.

Gov. Christie visits Edison to push pensions, health benefits reforms

EDISON — Gov. Chris Christie this afternoon held his second town hall meeting on pension and health benefits reform, stressing that the changes are needed to keep the system afloat and pinning a share of the blame for its troubles on his political enemy, the New Jersey Education Association.

Christie again outlined his plan to fix the pension system — currently underfunded by at least $46 billion — by rolling back a 9 percent pension increase from 2001, upping employee contributions to 8.5 percent, suspending cost of living adjustments and increasing the number highest-paid years by which pensions are calculated, among other proposals.

“We need to step up to the plate collectively as a society and fix this problem, because if we don’t we will careen and land in disaster,” said Christie, who said both political parties “whistled a happy tune” when the stock market was doing well and allowed the system to become unsustainable.

Christie also addressed complaints that police and fire personnel still got more generous benefits than other public workers, allowing them to retire at an earlier age.

“I don’t think we want 65-year-old people chasing criminals down the street. And with some rare exceptions, I don’t think we want people 65 or older climbing buildings and putting out fires. It is a younger person’s profession,” he said. “The benefits need to be different in order to compensate for that.”

Christie said he “has every intention” of making a contribution to the pension system that he skipped in this year’s budget, but said the state needs to lower its estimate of the fund’s rate of return from investments from 8.5 percent to 7.5 percent, which will mean a larger contribution from the state.

Christie went on to say that the teachers union should accept a “disproportionate” amount of blame for the troubles in the pension system because “they’re the ones who continue to demand more and more benefits and they don’t raise their amount that they pay.”

But the NJEA upped its payment into the pension system by 10 percent in 2007 – from 5 percent to 5.5 percent – spokesman Steve Baker said.

“There were no new benefits included in that,” said Baker. “This typical Christie union bashing. He’s trying to create a scapegoat to distract attention from his failures as governor, and one of his biggest failures as governor is his failure to fund the pension system.”

Christie plans another town hall meeting next week to address how to encourage private sector job growth, followed by a final town hall the last week of September on education reforms.
 

N.J. top court upholds lower court's ruling saying state not mandated to pay full teacher pensions

TRENTON — The New Jersey Supreme Court has declined to hear a case in which the state’s largest teachers union sought full funding for its pension fund.

In rejecting the case Tuesday, the court let stand a ruling by a three-judge appellate panel that said New Jersey is not constitutionally required to pay the millions it owes every year into the fund for teachers’ pensions.

That ruling in March came amid contentious discussion over how to fix the state’s underfunded pension plan — including a proposal that could make full funding a constitutional requirement.

The New Jersey Education Association, which represents more than 200,000 workers in the state’s school systems, sued in 2003, saying its members’ pensions were at risk because the state did not pay its pension bills in full.

"Nothing about this ruling changes the state’s legal obligation to meet its pension obligations," NJEA spokesman Steve Baker said of Tuesday’s Supreme Court rejection of the case.

"It has to pay the pensions people have earned and are earning."

Baker also said the more the state doesn’t pay now, the more it will have to pay later and labeled that "irresponsible."

Gov. Chris Christie did not have an immediate comment on the court’s action.

For more than a decade, the state’s legislatures and governors of both parties have overriden a law requiring full payments. When the state does not pay its bill one year, it makes future bills larger — which could lead to fewer services or higher taxes.

As of last June, New Jersey owed nearly $46 billion more than it had available to pay its $135 billion bill for current and future retirees’ pensions, according to calculations released in March.

Proposed bills would reduce benefits for future workers and require current workers to pay 1.5 percent of their salaries toward health care — though some workers already do this.

Meanwhile, nearly 6,500 New Jersey school employees have filed for retirement so far this year, almost double that of all last year.

Most of the filings came in recent months, with 5,106 putting in their papers to step down in July, a common time to retire.

Some teachers say they are retiring sooner than planned because of anxiety over the possible changes in pension rules, severe budget cuts and a harsh climate for educators existing during the state’s fiscal crisis.

Earlier this month, Christie administration officials said they temporarily delayed plans to push for the money-saving reforms. Even so, some teachers want to leave while benefits they have long counted on remain intact, such as free post-retirement health insurance.