Bob Ingle, Trenton Bureau Chief for Gannett New Jersey newpapers, gives us his take on the Supreme Court’s recent non-decision on maintaining Abbott districts or moving to a different way of allocating money to poor kids:
Given a chance to relegate the wasteful Abbott school district funding to the waste basket of history with other coo-coo ideas, the state Supreme Court instead punted. OK for this year, ruled the court, but it remanded proceedings to a special master to determine whether the formula can be applied permanently. Corzine proposed in 2007 a new formula that aimed to base funding on children’s needs, not districts’ wealth. The $7.8 billion plan, up $530 million from what was spent the previous year, raised aid for all districts between 2 percent and 20 percent. That makes more sense than the failed Abbott experiment. The Education Law Center, which likes to sue the state so that the so-called Abbott districts get more than 50 percent of the state’s education dollar, which keeps your property taxes high, filed a legal challenge to the formula. Of course it did. If the money were based on need, what need is there for the Education Law Center? Over the years the Abbott district funding has nothing to show for itself except billions wasted. Teachers and students did not benefit. Nowhere in the discussions are results discussed. There isn’t a definable goal beyond throwing more money at the districts. With a couple of exceptions, the NJ Supreme Court remains a collection of political hacks.
