Student Test Scores to Carry Just a Little Bit Less Weight for Tenure Decisions

After an extraordinary amount of public comment and some high-level meetings, the Christie administration has hedged on its plans to use test scores to evaluate teachers -- but not by much.

State Education Commissioner Chris Cerf and his staff Wednesday presented revisions to the new teacher evaluation code before the State Board of Education that would slightly lessen the weight that test scores would have in a teacher’s annual evaluation. After first proposing that scores would amount to 35 percent of a performance evaluation for math and language arts teachers in grades 4-8, Cerf yesterday said that total would be trimmed to 30 percent for next year.

In addition, he said only the scores of students who had been enrolled with a given teacher 70 percent of the year would be applied to his or her rating. The previous level was 60 percent. The board gave its preliminary approval to the revised proposal -- known as Achieve NJ -- moving it to the next stage in a lengthy regulatory process that still has a few months and more public comment to come. But the vote was a critical step in the process: Changes now are much more difficult to make.

“There was a feeling that 35 percent was too much, and reducing it by 5 percent made sense,” said Arcelio Aponte, the board president, after the meeting. “Based on the many discussions we had on this, I think 30 percent is a fair number.”

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