Chris Christie's education reform plan: Part II

Laura Waters:

School funding is never just about dollars and cents. Instead, it subsumes a whole slew of issues, including educational needs, politics, economic constraints, and public perception. New Jersey's 2013 Education Adequacy Report, issued last week by Ed. Comm. Cerf, incorporates one other factor: the Christie Administration's education reform agenda.

New Jersey funds most schools through local property taxes and, historically, this has led to vast educational inequities between poor and rich districts. After all, wealthy communities have a much higher tax base to devote to public education.

A series of Supreme Court decisions, known as Abbott v. Burke, ordered that N.J.'s poorest school districts be given enough state money - from N.J.'s first income tax -- to even out those inequities. In 2008, the Corzine Administration passed the new School Funding Reform Act (SFRA), which tried to render the Abbott designations obsolete through a new formula in which "the money follows the child," regardless of zip code.
Part of our new system of education funding (which is on a sort of probationary status after challenges from Education Law Center) is that the Commissioner must present an annual Educational Adequacy Report that specifies the amount of money needed to "adequately" educate a child for the year.

Here's the bottom line, courtesy of NJ Spotlight: "the base proposal for funding is $11,009 per child in fiscal 2014, up almost $500 from this year." However, adds Spotlight, "certain at-risk students will see decreases in funding by as much as $1,000 per year."

Posted by Jim Zellmer at January 6, 2013 3:45 AM
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