On April 25, the NJ Department of Education (NJDOE) held the first in a series of "stakeholder" meetings designed to lay the basis for a new school funding formula. The sessions raised a host of questions that must be answered before a proposed new formula is ready for the NJ legislature in the fall and adopted by the end of 2007 as Governor Jon Corzine has requested. It was less clear, however, what the NJDOE’s plans were for getting those answers.

The meeting was attended by about 40 advocates, representatives of parent, community, and professional organizations, state legislators and DOE staff. It began by reviewing the issues raised by the NJDOE’s "Cost of Education" report, a summary of the study that was originally conducted in 2003, but only released in December 2006. That report was supposed to serve as the basis for crafting a new school funding formula. However after numerous criticisms were raised, first by educators, advocates, legislators, and community groups, and later by experts hired by the DOE itself to review its report, the Governor delayed efforts to adopt a new formula until next year’s 2008-2009 budget cycle.

At the April 25 meeting, Commissioner of Education Lucille Davy and school finance expert, John Augenblick, the consultant who assisted the NJDOE’s costing out efforts, defended the DOE’s report. In the question and answer session, however, stakeholders raised their concerns about a number of serious flaws and gaps. These include:

• The "base cost" estimates for regular per pupil funding are artificially low and fail to accurately reflect inflation, real teacher salaries, and the cost of meeting higher state standards and new requirements like the federal No Child Left Behind law. The per pupil figure cited in the report is nearly the same as the levels spent by successful districts 10 years ago and appears to seriously underestimate the current costs of delivering a "thorough and efficient" education to NJ’s children.
• The real costs of supporting children with special needs, including bilingual, low income, and special education students, are similarly underestimated. The DOE report failed to include students who qualify for reduced lunch, as well as free lunch programs in their "at risk" populations. Also, the additional funding levels the report identifies to support special needs students is lower than the amounts critics say is needed and is not supported by evidence about the real cost of such services. Moreover, some mandated programs like pre-K, required by NJ’s Abbott decisions to support districts with high concentrations of impoverished students, are not addressed at all.
• Issues have also been raised about the credibility of the report’s deliberative and review processes. In contrast to normal practices used in costing out studies, few school-based educators and an unusually high number of DOE personnel were represented on the NJDOE’s "professional judgment panels." The background data and information used to arrive at the report’s conclusions and estimates were not released, making evaluation of the panels’ work more difficult, and one expert noted that the report "provides no discussion of the educational programs and strategies underlying those staffing recommendations, so it is unclear how the staff levels were determined...." (Additional discussion of the costing out study is available here.)

Different methods have been proposed to correct the report’s flaws. One is legislation that has been introduced in the Senate and Assembly. A4060 (and identical bill S2619) would authorize a new study to ensure education costs are based on conditions and needs of actual New Jersey school districts and address the educational needs of low income children and children with disabilities and other special needs. The alternative is an as yet unspecified process through which the NJDOE would supplement and revise its existing cost of education report to address some of the criticisms that have been raised to date. So far, the Corzine Administration has opposed a new study, contending it is not necessary and would further delay a new funding formula.

The Our Children/Our Schools campaign supports the costing out legislation and believes a new study is needed to build the reliable base of information and transparent process that a credible new funding formula requires. OC/OS has previously noted that the NJ Supreme Court has already laid down clear Constitutional principles that any new funding formula must follow, including parity in per pupil funding for students in the urban Abbott districts and provision for required supplemental programs to address the effects of concentrated poverty in poor urban districts and schools.

The Commissioner stated that NJDOE will hold stakeholder meetings at least monthly between now and the fall. In addition to addressing the cost study flaws, these meetings will include discussion of other critical topics related to the school funding formula itself. OC/OS will remain engaged and continue to update its members and the public on the key issues. (Minutes of the April 25 meeting.)

For more information contact: Lesley Hirsch at lhirsch@edlawcenter.org

Prepared: May 8, 2007