Some of the areas Christie wants to fix are the same ones the Washington-based research and policy group says are broken.
"What the governor has proposed with evaluation and tenure would put New Jersey among the trailblazer states," said Sandi Jacobs, the council's vice president.
New Jersey's grade barely budged from the D it received from the group two years ago. Florida, where standardized test scores fall far short of New Jersey's, received the highest mark this year - and it got just a B.
Jacobs said several states are revising - or, like New Jersey, considering changing - how teachers are evaluated and granted tenure, upending long-standing job-security provisions. But few states have made much progress on raising requirements for teacher-education programs at colleges, she said.
Finding ways to make teachers more accountable for how well students perform has been a major trend in education policy debates in Washington and in many states, including New Jersey.
Christie wants half of teacher evaluations based on measures of student performance - including standardized tests and other measures that districts can choose. And he wants the evaluations to have consequences, including merit-based pay raises for top teachers and loss of tenure protections for those who repeatedly get low marks.
The governor also wants districts to be able to get rid of low-performing teachers, rather than the last ones hired, in the event of layoffs.
