Steinhauer delivers 1,037 letters from concerned educators, parents

NJEA President Wendell Steinhauer used his testimony to reiterate NJEA’s longstanding support for well-designed, high-quality evaluation.

NJEA President Wendell Steinhauer delivered a blunt warning to the State Board of Education today: “Take a stand in favor of doing evaluation the right way, before it collapses under its own weight because we insisted on doing it the fast way.”

To underscore the point, Steinhauer hand-delivered 1,037 letters from concerned educators and parents to a board hearing in Trenton. The letters, which detail problems ranging from the overuse of standardized tests to the bungled implementation of the new evaluation system and the Common Core State Standards, were gathered online over the past several weeks.

“These letters were submitted as evidence that the New Jersey Department of Education is rushing to do too many things at once and is failing to do any of them well,” said Steinhauer.  NJEA is calling on the Department of Education to slow down implementation of the new testing and evaluation systems in order to fix significant flaws and ensure that they work appropriately.