NJ Education Report

The New York Times makes the case for consolidating small towns in the tri-state area. New Jersey, of course, is cited as the “extreme example,” comprising 566 municipalities, “the most of any state in the country per capita and, not coincidentally, the nation’s highest property taxes.” The piece catches Joseph Doria, N.J.’s Commissioner of Community Affairs, in a historical mood:

It’s Hamilton versus Jefferson all over again. Jefferson’s model was the small agrarian communities. Hamilton was in favor of more centralized government. And right now, Hamilton has the momentum.

Not really, not if you ask most New Jerseyans. We love our Jefferson gestalt– those distinctive and quaint little villages and townships that are the stuff of historical tours and civic pride. And, either craftily or blithely (we’re betting on the former), Corzine has instituted a number of educational initiatives that seek to erase those differences. We’ve got High School Redesign, which standardizes high school graduation requirements. We’ve got a sea change in our Core Curriculum Content Standards, which are now so detailed as to allow almost no time in the school year for digression (which is a good thing or a bad thing, depending on the teacher). We’ve got the passage of 6A, a massive set of regulations that dictate district governance to a fare-thee-well: nothing is left to individual district control. We’ve got “adequacy formulas,” a cost-per-pupil number that all districts must emulate, regardless of township wealth. And now we’ve got the School Funding Reform Act, which eliminates Abbott designations and distributes state aid and services regardless of town of residence. (Well, there is that preschool thing…)

It’s either duplicitous or wise, this back-door approach to standardization, to erasing the differences in educational services regardless of wealth, demographics, place of residence, school board leadership, administrative oversight. Nothing wrong with leveling the educational playing field – it’s the only plausible strategy to extricate ourselves from the Abbott financial mess, since the original court decisions were based on compensating poor kids for being trapped in a ravine among the Himalayas.

So good for Corzine – he’s found a way to bypass New Jersey’s genuflection to home rule, at least in education. . Now if only we had the money to to pay for it.