The front page of today’s New York Times features an article on the pension/employee benefits crisis faced by NJ and growing antipathy towards public employees. Buried at the end, this nugget on the flawed strategy of NJEA’s leaders:

This said, some union officials privately say that the teachers’ union, in its battle against cuts to salaries and benefits, misread Mr. Christie and the public temperament. Better to endorse a wage freeze, they say, than to argue that teachers should be held harmless against the economic storm.

Don’t miss Megan McArdle on measuring teacher performance.

Alyson Klein at PoliticsK-12 has a great list of the top ten political moments in 2010 for ed reform, including

5) Aspiring education big wigs learn that they must double check all budget numbers and show their work on federal applications if they want to keep a state chief job in New Jersey.

The New York Times solicits advice from school principals for Chancellor Cathie Black’s first day of school tomorrow.

The Star-Ledger takes the bird’s-eye view of Gov. Christie’s first year of education. So does the Asbury Park Press, which quotes “veteran school officials” who call this year “the most ‘tumultuous’ and ‘damaging’ they have seen in public education the past 30 years.”

Deja Vu All Over Again: You remember that mandatory standardized biology test for NJ’s 9th graders? Never mind. Half the kids failed the pilot last year, and State Board of Education members, according to The Record, expressed “grave concern” at the prospect of so many kids losing eligibility for graduation, so they’ve canned the test for this year.

PENewark finished its $1,000,000 survey intended to raise awareness and garner opinions regarding Newark’s Facebook-funded school reform efforts. However, the survey results are of little value because “the questions were too leading and the results could not be analyzed scientifically,”according to Paul Trachtenberg of Rutgers.

Jersey City, Paterson and Newark Public Schools were taken over by the State years ago and there’s little prospect of any of the three regaining complete local control, reports the Star-Ledger.

Central Jersey reports on a conference in Princeton entitled ”Education Reform in New Jersey: Superheroes vs. Real Solutions.” Moderated by John Mooney of NJ Spotlight, panelists included former NJ Education Commissioners Bret Schundler, Lucille Davy, William Librera, Vito Gagliardi and David Hespe. All five “agree that school choice is a necessity,” and “all the panelists agreed the teacher evaluation system needs to be evaluated and reformed and evaluations done based on teacher performance, not just student test scores.”