NJ Education Report

Education Law Center Gets Another Loss in Their Column:

The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled 5-0 on Thursday that the D.O.E. does not have to release the data it used to arrive at the School Funding Reform Act. The Education Law Center, which just lost a ruling that would have preserved Abbott districts, had requested the data, but the Courts overturned two previous decisions to rule that the material falls under the “deliberative process” exemption of the state’s Open Public Meetings Act, according to the Star-Ledger.

How Would School District Consolidation Work Anyway?

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports on efforts to merge school districts in Pennsylvania, where Governor Ed Rendell is pushing a plan to consolidate 501 districts into about 100. The same resistance from home rule advocates in N.J. dominates much of the discussions across the river. The Inquirer took a gander at how Pennsylvania education costs would change if they established county-wide districts, as Maryland does:

The analysis found that property owners in 51 of the 64 districts in the four suburban counties would see tax decreases; 13 of the wealthier districts would get increases. In an all-Montgomery County district, for example, Cheltenham would see a 47 percent decrease; Upper Merion, a 48 percent increase.

Elimination Of Abbott Districts Isn’t Fair:

The Daily Journal argues that Judge Doyne’s decision regarding Abbott vs. School Funding Reform Act may be “constitutional” but it isn’t “fair”:

We urge the state Supreme Court to rule in favor of the Abbott school districts. If not, the judges should at least grant the supplemental aid to the neediest districts so they have time to adjust their budgets to the ugly and unfair new funding formula.

Jackson Says Toss Life-long Tenure and the SRA:

Reverend Reginald Jackson, the head of the New Jersey Black Ministers Council, called for New Jersey to reform its failing school system by eliminating the current lifetime form of teacher tenure and getting rid of the Special Review Assessment, which allows kids who fail the 11th grade HSPA to graduate anyway. The NJEA responded through a spokesman, Steven Baker:

“Tenure is not a job for life,” he said. “Tenure is a fair job dismissal process that requires just cause. It can’t be an arbitrary firing or a personality conflict between a teacher and an administrator.”

Not a “job for life?” Really? Would NJEA care to offer up stats on the number of tenured teachers in New Jersey who have been dismissed due to performance over, say, the last twenty years?

Bad Prospects For School Budgets:

The Courier-Post predicts that many school budgets will fail when voters go to the polls on April 21st and points out that, under the new School Funding Reform Act, even if budgets don’t pass muster with the voters there will be no changes made anyway if the district is under the D.O.E.’s “adequacy formula.”

Mulshine the Proofreader:

Paul Mulshine of the Star-Ledger makes the salient point that the oft-quoted line from the State Constitution – that every child is entitled to a “thorough and efficient education” – is actually false. The Constitution says, in fact, that

The Legislature shall provide for the maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of free public schools for the instruction of all the children in the State between the ages of five and eighteen years.

Mulshine explains why the faulty formulation, actually quoted by Judge Peter Doyne in his decision last week, would never have been written by the framers of the Constitution:

For good reason: It is nonsensical. A child could theoretically have a right to a thorough education. But a right to an efficient education? Such a right would be abridged not if the state spent too little on education, but if it spent too much. And that of course is exactly what the state has been doing ever since the court first got involved in school funding back in 1973.