New Jersey One Step Closer To Ridding Itself of Court Mandated Abbott School Funding

A judge ruled that a legislative school funding formula was constitutional, paving the way to eliminating the black hole of taxpayer dollars - the Abbott School funding requirement. This is a win for the Corzine administration and may end the court oversight over the educations system.

Sadly, it simply appears to replace one mess of funding with a larger mess of funding.

It [ed: the Abbott mandate] brings extra state tax dollars and oversight into 31 communities in New Jersey, including Paterson, Passaic and Garfield. The state covers as much as 90 percent of school costs in those towns and provides extra programs like preschool and full-day kindergarten.

State officials had argued that the court-mandated Abbott reforms should end because a new school funding formula, signed by Gov. Corzine last year, fairly divides state aid among all school districts.

The new formula awards aid based on enrollment, and then adds extra money per student for every student who is poor, has limited proficiency in English or receives special-education services. State officials have said it is superior to the Abbott program because 49 percent of low-income students in New Jersey live outside Abbott communities.

Getting the courts out of the education business is a start, but the legislative solution simply takes taxpayer dollars and doles them out among an even wider group of people, in the name of fairness, even though the money itself has not been shown to improve student performance.

The full decision can be read here. It's a 84 page decision.

One of the rationales given is that nearly half of low-income students are located outside Abbott communities, and therefore deserve to have like treatment. In other words, the solution of the problem created by the Abbott districts is to treat even more districts like Abbott districts - making it so that more money gets spread around. That's not fiscally responsible, nor does it provide improved education or student performance.