The vast majority of New Jersey school districts will not experience the state’s new monitoring process until 2007-08, Acting Commissioner of Education Lucille Davy told the Assembly Education Committee last Thursday.

The new system—the New Jersey Quality Single Accountability Continuum, or QSAC—will go into effect in the three state-operated districts in September 2006. Within one year, the state will begin deciding if the three districts—Jersey City, Paterson and Newark—will return to local control, according to Davy.

After implementing QSAC in the state-operated districts, the state will extend it to seven school districts currently at an intensive level of state review (Tier 2).

Five Areas QSAC provides benchmarks for school district performance in the areas of personnel, instruction and programs, operations, fiscal management, and governance.

Districts scoring below 50% in any category could face partial or full state intervention. Those scoring between 50% and 79% would be labeled “moderately performing,” and must devise an improvement plan to be submitted to the education commissioner for approval. Districts in that range would have two years to bring their ratings up to 80%. For districts ranking 80% to 100%, no state action would be required.

The state would assign highly skilled professionals to those districts under improvement plans and state intervention.

Under the law, districts would also have to conduct annual self-evaluations.

District Friendlier NJSBA successfully advocated board-friendly changes in the 2005 QSAC law. These amendments provided for state payment for at least half the cost of “highly skilled professionals,” piloting of the program in selected school districts, inclusion of the state Board of Education in developing code to implement the system, and due process for school districts.