New Jersey Ends Abbott Rule

It's about time, but the damage has long been done. In a unanimous ruling, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that Governor Corzine's new education spending plan passes constitutional muster.

Justices unanimously ruled that Governor Corzine's new school funding formula, which will still send the lion's share of state aid to the 31 Abbott districts, meets constitutional muster. In doing so, they agreed with the Corzine administration's argument: that a new funding formula fairly shares state aid among all 600 of New Jersey's school districts because it targets extra money to any district with high numbers of poor students.

However, justices said the governor's office and legislature must fully fund the new formula for the next three years. State education officials also must adjust funding at the end of next year, as scheduled by the law, to account for real costs and enrollment shifts. Writing for the court, Justice Jaynee LaVecchia called this a "look-back" period and established an ongoing role in ensuring school funding is adequate.

"There should be no doubt that we would require remediation of any deficiencies of a constitutional dimension, if such problems do emerge," she wrote.

Justices rejected a counter-argument made by the Education Law Center, which represents students in Abbott districts. Lawyers had countered that the new formula is flawed and unproven, and fails to take into account the difficulties faces by communities with very high concentrations of poverty.

The court also ruled that "supplemental funding," a special funding source available only to Abbott districts, should end. In an earlier remand hearing on the matter, a special court master had recommended that the court accept the new funding formula but continue supplemental funding for three years. Justices declined to follow that suggestion.

The Abbott program has brought billions in extra state aid and special programs to 31 poor school districts, including Paterson, Passaic and Garfield. It began with a class-action lawsuit filed in the 1980s alleging that an unfair state aid formula and low property tax collections in poor cities prevented students from getting a "thorough and efficient" public education, which is guaranteed in the state constitution.

Never mind that the state can't afford this, or the prior Abbott plan, which funneled billions into 31 poor school districts to the point where the average spending per student was nearly $3,000 more than the rest of the state with no measurable effect on school performance.

The 31 Abbott districts make up a quarter of all students in the state, and yet take half the state's education spending dollars.

Corzine's plan was simply to spread around even more money to more districts so as to get the Court to lift the Abbott requirements. The result is still more spending, but after the three year period ends, the court oversight ends.

The Courts should not have been involved in the first place, and all the talk about education funding is done in a vacuum without regard for how the state pays for any of this. It can't afford Corzine's spending, and little has been done to make sure that all this money actually ends up in the classroom where it benefits students.