NJ School Leaders Say They're Drowning in Mandates

The flux in New Jersey public education these days was all too evident this week as nearly 5,000 New Jersey school-board members and administrators traveled to Atlantic City for their associations’ annual conference.

The two-day New Jersey School Boards Association’s Workshop 2013 featured many of the usual programs for the annual event, including sessions on board relations, collective bargaining and the like.

But front and center was a new emphasis on the latest hot topics in New Jersey education: tenure reform, national testing and the new Common Core State Standards.

Technology vendors were especially evident in the cavernous exhibit hall of the Atlantic City Convention Center, looking for business connected to new online testing and other programs.

One pavilion – with a half-dozen corporate sponsors – focused specifically on building up school districts’ capacity to provide the new online tests known as PARCC that are slated to start in 2014-15.