Last year the Newark, NJ school system accepted a $5 million grant from the federal government to turn around the failing Malcom X. Shabazz High School. As part of the deal, the district agreed to replace at least half of the school’s teachers, believing that principals could then hire better ones. What happened instead was a swap similar to a mid-season baseball trade deal: teachers from Shabazz went to another failing school, and teachers from that schools replaced them.
In all, 68 teachers switched schools. Shabazz, with a total staff of 90 teachers, sent 21 teachers to Barringer High School; Barringer in turn sent 21 of their teachers to Shabazz. “Federal money may have unintentionally funded the infamous ‘dance of the lemons,’” said Tim Daly, president of the New Teacher Project, “If these teachers truly were not good enough for one struggling school, we have to ask whether it is a good idea to put them in another one.”
Justin Hamilton, a spokesman for the US Department of Education, called the swap “wrong,” and that turning around low-performing schools should not be treated as a game. He added that other urban districts around the country have made efforts to ensure that teachers from one failing school do not end up at another failing school.
Cami Anderson, the newly installed superintendent of Newark’s schools, fired back that “teacher shuffling is common and inevitable in a city with only a few comprehensive high schools and a slew of magnet schools where people are not going to leave.” However, she has changed the policy that allowed the swap to happen.
Principals and teachers are now encouraged to attend job fairs and have a more robust interview processes. Unfortunately, this new effort is severely hampered by the state’s tenure laws. Tenured teachers are guaranteed a paycheck regardless of whether a principal wants to hire or retain them; Anderson’s new policy then will cost the district an extra $10 to $15 million per year to pay teachers who are not teaching. “In other words, by doing the right thing, we created a massive budget issue,” she said. New Jersey is among ten other states that have such tenure policies.
Chris Cerf, Acting Commissioner for the New Jersey Department of Education, has announced that in the new round of school improvement grants, school districts must prove they will end “forced placement” (placing teachers at schools without an interview process), which is what happened in the Newark school system. Mr. Cerf is also making the implementation of a teacher evaluation system that takes student test scores and other measures of student progress into account a requirement for any district wanting federal funds—a nearly unheard of practice in New Jersey.
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