NJ Education Report

An organization called Our Children/Our Schools, which describes itself as “a statewide education justice campaign whose membership includes education, children’s advocacy and civil rights organizations,” has an opinion piece in New Jersey Newsroom which underlines the obvious: Corzine’s budget underfunds the new School Funding Reform Act, in spite of the political and legal pressure to do so:

Full funding of the new school aid formula and expansion of pre-K were the two strongest “selling points” for the SFRA last year when it passed by one vote in the N.J. Senate and Assembly. Now both are gone.

OC/OS also remarks (correctly) that SFRA requires, according to the State Supreme Court, full funding for all students who meet its criteria, and Corzine’s cap on state aid increases “results in a huge $300 million gap between what the formula calls for and what districts will actually be receiving this year.” It also complains about SFRA’s “adequacy” formula for school spending, “a threshold so low that almost 400 districts around the state spent more in the 2007-2008 school year than is considered “adequate” for 2008-2009.”

It’s true: Corzine has painted himself into a corner with SFRA. The Court was clear that underfunding the formula would jettison its credibility and that’s exactly what is happening. Lucille Davy can repeat her mantra as often as she likes : ommm — no school district will receive less money next year than it did this year and about a third will see more. But ask around and you’ll find that district after district in New Jersey has lost state aid and expects the other shoe to drop after Election Day.

OC/OS also remarks, almost as an aside, that the High School Redesign Plan coming fast through the D.O.E. will require significant investment in teachers, lab facilities, and extra services for kids who can’t possibly pass courses like Algebra and Chemistry on their own steam.

We’ve got several different strands here that will tie us up in a big knot. The first strand is OC/OS’s correct explanation of the fiscal pickle we’re in: SFRA is predicated on full funding, both logically and ethically, but “fund” actually means “fund,” and the State can’t do that. The second strand is High School Redesign, which raises the achievement bar for all kids and will require at least some extra cash (again, a “can’t do”) . Then we have the third strand, much in the news: the Special Review Assessment, that scandalous “test” given to kids who can’t pass the standard high school test, even after given three tries, and which artificially raises our much-heralded state graduation rates.

Here it is: we can’t fund the SFRA because our school system is extravagantly inefficient (we pay more per pupil than anywhere in the nation). Despite the profligacy, many of our poorest students can’t pass our standard assessment test. Yet we are raising high school graduation standards and concurrently admitting that our weakest students only get through high school with a dumbed-down assessment. (Someone asked Lucille Davy how many kids fail the SRA and she couldn’t come up with a number. She gets points for honesty.)

Talk about a triple-whamy: cut school funding despite court order, raise graduation requirements, and cement up the back-door diploma route. Is it over-reaching? Political gamesmanship? Necessary pain? Thumbing your nose at the Supreme Court? Chutzpah? Take your pick. It does take a certain boldness to multi-task to this extent, so snaps to Corzine and the D.O.E..