Last week, Judge Peter Doyne announced a ruling that, if upheld, will change the way we finance the education of poor children in New Jersey. Since 1997, as a result of a long series of cases called Abbott v. Burke, New Jersey taxpayers have directed huge sums of money at 31 urban districts without much to show in terms of academic achievement or fiscal accountability. Judge Doyne’s decision lets the State use a different method, called the School Funding Reform Act, which proposes to allot extra education money to low-income kids regardless of where they live. The ruling also gives all of us an opportunity to reinvent our public education system so that it is no longer one of the most expensive and segregated systems in the nation. Whether we take this opportunity depends on whether New Jersey has the resolve to look squarely at three thorny issues: home rule, the Department of Education, and the New Jersey Education Association.
Here’s a fact for you: New Jersey, the fifth smallest state in America, has 566 towns and 616 school districts. It’s part of our charm – all those tiny little towns boasting personal identities and histories – and it’s a large part of our inefficiency. This “municipal madness” accounts for rampant redundancy of services, and an awful lot of elected officials. Every town has a local government. We have 486 local authorities and 186 fire districts. And just about every school district has a superintendent, a budget, and a school board. It’s a home rulist’s dream come true.
Governor Corzine is the most recent in a series of governors to attempt consolidation of towns and school districts. He’s right to keep trying because this duplication of services is largely to blame for sky-high property taxes and a school system that ranges from jewels like Millburn High, which offers 30 A.P. classes, to districts like Paterson, where the average ninth grader reads at a 4th grade level. Whether he’s successful of not depends on whether New Jerseyans are able to stomach some leeching of local governance for the pay-off of a more equitable and less expensive education system. Sure, tax levies will have to change – most for the better and a few for the worse – but the result could rescue our children from a de facto lottery system where their scholastic opportunities are tied to their place of residence.
The implementation of the new School Funding Reform Act will be the provenance of the Department of Education. Imagine: everything depends on the ability of this office to accurately follow each low-income child so that the money flows to the appropriate district. It’s a monumental task, and there’s little in recent history to inspire confidence. Last summer, for instance, hundreds of pages of regulations spewed from the D.O.E. office as part of the State’s Fiscal Accountability, Efficiency and Budgeting Procedures, which intends to cut unnecessary costs. (How unnecessary? We spend over $14,000 per child each year and the national average is about $10,000.) Districts quickly realized that adherence to some of the regulation, in fact, added costs. The D.O.E. then announced with great fanfare its High School Reform, which standardizes high school graduation requirements. But certain elements have already been removed – Algebra II, a 3d year of lab science – because of lack of due diligence and support. The much-vaunted universal preschool initiative has become a shadow of its hype. The result is a lack of credibility, a pattern of bravado and retreat.
Finally, the New Jersey Education Association needs to stop behaving like an industrial union and start behaving like a professional one. Lifetime tenure, annual pay hikes between 4% and 5%, and minimal (if any) contribution to healthcare are unsustainable. All signs point to a national education reform, including merit pay and limits on tenure, and the NJEA leadership needs to get over its recalcitrance and consider modifications to an obsolete model.
Judge Doyne’s ruling opens the door to a more efficient and equitable way to educate our children. Can we walk through that door? To steal a phrase, yes, we can. But we’ll only cross that threshold if New Jerseyans can stomach a little less local governance, the D.O.E. can manage its own business before it manages everyone else’s, and the NJEA can trust that its teachers are professional educators whom will thrive in an environment that rewards success.
