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The New York Times
New Jersey School
Checks Are Defended
After Audit
By WINNIE HU,
nytimes.con the Web, August 21, 2007
The New Jersey education
commissioner, Lucille E. Davy, yesterday defended the state’s new monitoring
system for school districts, disputing an audit last week that found the
Education Department lacked the staff and resources to carry out its increased
oversight responsibilities.
Ms. Davy said she was redeploying the department’s 690 employees and filling
about a dozen vacancies in 21 county offices that will work directly with the
school districts to address problems cited in the monitoring reports. In
addition, department workers will receive additional training to assist the
districts better, she said.
“We’re taking this process very seriously,” Ms. Davy said during a telephone
conference with reporters yesterday to release the latest batch of monitoring
reports for seven districts, including Atlantic City, Elizabeth and Plainfield.
“I’m not sure in the past how committed the department was to doing the kind of
reviews we’re now doing,” she said.
On Friday, state education officials released an audit conducted in May and June
at the behest of the Legislature. The audit, by the consulting firm KPMG,
was intended to evaluate the department’s ability to carry out the new
monitoring system and other responsibilities it has been recently charged with.
The Education Department began rolling out the new monitoring system, known as
the New Jersey Quality Single Accountability Continuum, in 2006 after spending
more than a year consulting with superintendents, school boards and teachers’
unions, among others, to develop an evaluation system that would combine
existing state and federal standards into one streamlined process.
The system will evaluate every public school district in each of five categories
— instruction and program, personnel, fiscal management, operations, and
governance — and requires the districts to develop a plan to address problems
cited in the monitoring reports. The department will then review the
district in six months to make sure that progress is being made.
Education officials have said the new system calls for more follow-up and allows
the state to assist troubled districts without taking them over entirely.
It also provides a way to return local control to Newark, Jersey City and
Paterson, which have been under state control for more than a decade.
To implement the new system, the department spent more than $814,000 to contract
with Montclair State University to perform the first 15 evaluations, which
included some of the state’s most troubled districts.
Peter E. Carter, interim superintendent of the 6,100-student Plainfield School
District in Union County, which received its monitoring report yesterday, said
it noted problems that had already been resolved. For instance, he said,
the district had made several teaching changes and tightened fiscal operations,
and has begun to look at revising the curriculum.
“My team and I came to the district nine weeks ago, and we have already
addressed many of the items,” he said.
Michael E. Glascoe, the state-appointed superintendent of the Paterson district,
who received a report about two weeks ago, said it was the most comprehensive
evaluation ever made of the district. Dr. Glascoe, who took over the
28,000-student district in 2005, said the report had provided a lot of data that
could be used for continuing improvements.
He said the evaluation team spent 55 days over four months visiting the Paterson
schools, interviewed more than 300 district officials and teachers, and held a
community forum.
“This is a step in the right direction,” Dr. Glascoe said, “but with any new
assessment tool, there’s going to have to be some tweaking and adjustment.”
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