New Jersey governor signs tenure overhaul bill

On Monday, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie signed a sweeping bill overhauling teacher tenure laws. The new law will allow teachers to get tenure after four years based in part on student growth; layoffs will still be seniority-based. You can read related coverage in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, and watch the governor's statement on the bill below.

Christie Hails Tenure Bill as Victory

New Law Links Teacher Job Performance to Student Test Scores, Makes It Easier to Fire Educators

Original article in The Wall Street Journal by Heather Haddon.

MIDDLESEX, N.J.—After signing a bill to overhaul teacher tenure rules Monday, Gov. Chris Christie said the changes represented one of his signature political achievements, ranking only behind a successful effort to limit government employees' pension and benefit costs.

"It's right behind pension and benefit reform just because the level of skepticism that we would get anything done," Mr. Christie said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal following a news conference at a middle school here. "There had been such inertia on this topic. I always enjoy defying expectations."

The new law doesn't go as far as tenure bills passed in other states in the past year. But it marks a significant shift in the nation's oldest teacher job-security law, requiring all teachers to undergo annual performance reviews and making it easier to fire poorly performing educators.

...The final legislation didn't include a measure Mr. Christie has pushed hard for: the scrapping of the "last-in/first-out" rules that ensure the most senior teachers are the last to be laid off. At least five states have ended last-in/first-out in the past three years, and Mr. Christie said he would continue to push the issue. ...

To read the complete article, visit The Wall Street Journal.

Christie Signs Bill Overhauling Job Guarantees for Teachers

Original article in The New York Times by Kate Zernike.

...Some superintendents in the state’s big-city school districts, particularly Cami Anderson, who was brought in by the Christie administration to try to turn around Newark’s schools, have argued that without ending seniority rights, they cannot afford other meaningful changes.

Ms. Anderson has said that Newark spends $8.5 million a year to maintain about 100 teachers in an “excess teacher pool” of teachers who are deemed not qualified to teach but have been hard to fire.

To read the complete article, visit The New York Times.