New Jersey Governor Calls for Change
Gov. Chris Christie has announced that he wants to change the system so that New Jersey teachers will have their performance reviewed every five years.
Last Thursday, on January 13, 2011, Chris Christie took the podium at a town hall meeting in Paramus N.J. to make the suggestion that teachers should be hired on the basis of five-year contracts. This would give schools the chance to review a teacher’s performance before choosing to renew contracts. Earlier in the week, the Republican governor had called for ending automatic tenure for teachers.
Enough Time
- Governor Chris Christie, Photo Courtesy: CHRIS FAYTOK/The Star-Ledger
Christie feels that while teachers need to have enough time to get hands-on experience and learn how to teach the current system just makes it too hard to get rid of
poor teachers. Right now, the idea of having five-year teaching contracts is still just an idea. Christie’s office has yet to make an official proposal. The controversial governor, who is known to speak his mind, has not yet provided details on just how he will accomplish the abolition of teacher tenure. Furthermore, the teacher’s union has promised him a rousing fight.
The governor of New Jersey didn’t stop with teacher tenure when throwing out his creative ideas for improving the educational system, but also said he’s looking into a plan for the development of schools that would specialize in educating children with autism. These schools would be set up in each of 21 counties in New Jersey, if Christie has his way. During his speech at the town hall meeting, the governor said that his plan would provide a cost-effective alternative for those districts that were attempting to develop their own curriculums for educating special children.
- Governor Christie of New Jersey Photo Courtesy: NYdailynews.com
“Visionary Concept”
Linda Meyer, the director of Autism New Jersey made a statement to the media to the effect that Christie is sincere about trying to provide both equality and access to education for every sector of society. She called his concepts, “visionary,” but other people are less convinced that the governor’s idea is such a good one. The director of one private school for children with autism said that the idea would put schools like his, which rely on referrals from the public school districts, out of business.
During the past ten years, the neurological disorder known as autism, which impairs social interaction, has proven a serious challenge that has driven New Jersey special education costs to an annual $3 billion. The number of students with autism has doubled over the past decade, to almost 12,000 students in the Garden State.
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