New Jersey’s acting education commissioner on Wednesday unveiled a plan to overhaul the way teachers are evaluated — and the consequences of poor evaluations.
Under the concept unveiled by Christopher Cerf, many key decisions about teachers — including whether they receive lifetime tenure protections, how big their raises are and which ones are laid off when budgets are slashed — would be based largely on how much their students progress.
Cerf said making the changes are essential to improving schools in New Jersey, where the public education system by many measures is among the best in the nation — but with a serious caveat. Schools in the state’s impoverished cities generally perform poorly — and at great expense.