As June wanes, the pressure on NJ legislators to pass some sort of tenure reform increases. How long have they been working on this? Years. But, as NJ Spotlight reports today, dueling bills threaten to forestall progress.
The first bill, thoroughly vetted by, well, just about everybody, is Senator Teresa Ruiz’s TEACHNJ bill (S 1455), would make teacher tenure conditional on classroom effectiveness and (depending on the version) end LIFO, or last in, first out when making lay-off decisions. It would also tie teacher evaluations to student outcomes and give principals more responsibility and authority.
(New Jersey School Boards Association supports the Ruiz bill. NJEA doesn’t.)
The second bill, sponsored by Assemblyman Patrick Diegnan, Chair of the Assembly Education Committee, isn’t even out there in final form (or any form for that matter), but it represents the greatest challenge to the possibility of tenure reform in NJ.