NJPSA released its findings from the first of three surveys given to school leaders and teachers on evaluation during its Regional Meetings.
Background
For the past three years, the issue of educator effectiveness has been a focal point of education reform discussions in New Jersey and the nation. As reform studies such as “The Widget Effect” sparked discussions among education policymakers, a Taskforce on Educator Effectiveness, appointed by Governor Christie, began examining reforms to New Jersey’s educator evaluation systems. NJPSA has been an active part of these discussions through initial testimony in 2011 before the Taskforce, strong advocacy efforts throughout the resulting legislative process leading to the enactment of the TEACH NJ statute, P.L. 2012, c. 26 on August 6, 2012, and ongoing advocacy as implementation efforts including the development of state regulations and an evaluation pilot program got underway.
In school year 2013-14, the evaluation reforms required by TEACH NJ go into effect for all teachers and principals for the first time with high stakes consequences. At this critical juncture, NJPSA is committed to supporting our members in both implementing the new teacher evaluation reforms and simultaneously experiencing the new system of leadership evaluation through the provision of extensive professional development opportunities at FEA and ongoing advocacy.
“Voices from the Field” – A Collaborative Evaluation Survey
In an effort to pro-actively assist our members, NJPSA reached out to other education associations representing teachers and superintendents concerning our common goal of fair and effective implementation of educator evaluation. The practitioner groups (NJEA, NJASA and NJPSA) agreed to jointly develop and administer a survey of their respective members on the implementation of new evaluation requirements at three distinct points (fall, winter and spring) during the 2013-14 school year. Our collective goals are to:
- gather statewide data on the implementation process from the perspective,
- identify issues that need to be addressed,
- provide constructive input and recommendations to the NJDOE and lawmakers, as appropriate, oncerning the implementation process, and identify members’ professional needs.
NJPSA, NJASA and NJEA collaboratively developed a set of ten common questions for the first survey point in the Fall 2013. In addition, each association had the opportunity to develop a unique set of questions for its membership beyond the common questions. NJPSA did add additional questions focusing on the professional development needs of members and administrative capacity/workload concerns. Each association disseminated the survey to its members separately during the months of October and November 2013, but a common data collection system was utilized.
The document outlines our findings from the first survey and has been used in ongoing conversations with stakeholders, including the Department of Education and sister organizations. The second round of surveys are expected to be issued next week.