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Njspotlight.com ‘Same Day, Two Takes on New Jersey's Education Troubles’
Star Ledger ‘N.J. Supreme Court weighs constitutionality of Christie's education
Record ‘NJ Supreme Court hears arguments on education cuts’
Njspotlight.com ‘Same Day, Two Takes on New Jersey's Education Troubles’
Star Ledger ‘N.J. Supreme Court weighs constitutionality of Christie's education
Record ‘NJ Supreme Court hears arguments on education cuts’
Njspotlight.com ‘Same Day, Two Takes on New Jersey's Education Troubles’
Supreme Court hears Abbott, State Board laments student achievement gap
It was a fitting juxtaposition yesterday morning: two powerful state panels meeting at the same time in Trenton, less than a mile from each other, to discuss New Jersey’s public schools.
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In the Hughes Justice Center, it was New Jersey’s Supreme Court hearing another chapter in the 30-plus-year epic Abbott v. Burke school equity case.
In oral arguments to the court, the hour-long legal parry centered on what is and what isn’t constitutional in the public schools at a time when there is little money to do much about it. There was no resolution, except a sense that more hearings are to come.
Student Achievement
But for all the lawyer talk about public schools, the state Board of Education at its monthly meeting nearby had different facts before it: a presentation of the state’s latest student achievement results.
Overall, the 2010 scores were pretty static, some drops from the year before but mostly increases from two years prior. High-school passing scores actually saw a nice jump, to 87 percent passing in language arts last year.
But at the same time, the passing rates for low-income and disadvantaged students at every grade level -- many of the very students that the Abbott case has sought to help -- remained troubling, as much as 30 points lower than their peers.
"These are presented as raw numbers, but then you realize these are real kids," Arcelio Aponte, the board’s president, said later. “We are looking at two-thirds of Hispanic students in a given grade who are failing to meet basic proficiency. Two-thirds."
The Court's Edicts
The numbers in the Supreme Court arguments were less about the test scores and more about the dollars.
The plaintiffs in the case, those who have represented low-income students through more than 20 decisions, argued that Gov. Chris Christie’s $1.1 billion in state aid cuts had violated the court’s previous edicts.
At the center was the court’s decision in 2009 to uphold the School Finance Reform Act as constitutional, as long as it was fully funded.
The court "accepted the state’s firm commitment to provide full funding as a condition of constitutionality," began David Sciarra of the Education Law Center, the Newark-based group that has led the case. "The plaintiffs are asking for no more than what the state was committed to do."
Lawyers for the Christie administration argued that the state simply has no money to fully fund the formula under the current economic crisis, saying it would have cost an additional $1.8 billion last year.
“The money was just not there,” said Nancy Kaplen, an assistant attorney general arguing for the state.
Economic Reality
And clearly it was a point the justices immediately grabbed hold of in their own questioning, the first three questions to Sciarra all asking the same thing.
"Is this court not to take into consideration this economic reality?" Justice Barry Albin asked in the first question of the day.
Sciarra initially hedged, and it took two more justices to ask the same question for Sciarra to say that the court has made clear in its litany of rulings what is a "fundamental constitutional right," regardless of ability to pay.
Still, Justice Jaynee LaVecchia asked whether the state would be in violation if it had underfunded the formula by just 75 cents. And Kaplen focused on the fact that the funding disparities that the court first sought to remedy three decades ago had long been resolved.
But the justices each appeared to want more information of the extent of the cuts, and each one mentioned the idea of appointing a "special master" to hold fact-finding hearings, a step they have taken at least three times before.
There is a danger to trying to predict final rulings using justices’ questions during oral arguments, but several lawyers said after the hearing that such a remand hearing looked likely.
Raising New Worries
Meanwhile, at the state Department of Education headquarters, members of the state Board of Education already had much of the evidence they needed in the test scores to raise new worries about the state of New Jersey’s schools.
As the day wore on and the board considered several proposals before it, the conversation often returned to the low performance of disadvantaged students. There were some gains in some places, but disheartening in others. Even in positive high school scores, the one group to see a drop were those with limited English skills.
One proposal before the board is to loosen the rules for superintendent certification, allowing those without education degrees to lead a district. Under the plan, it could apply to as many as 161 districts with substandard scores.
Board members raised a host of questions about the proposal, but even the most critical conceded that trying new approaches to solving the plight of the lowest performing schools held some merit.
‘We know that too many schools are failing our students, and we need to do something dramatically different,” Aponte said. “This is maybe one way to do that.”
After the meeting, Aponte said that making excuses in the face of the achievement gap is no longer an option.
“How do we turn that around? The standard answer you hear is, 'it’s complicated,' " he said. "But really, shame on us if we allow this to continue to happen."
Star Ledger ‘N.J. Supreme Court weighs constitutionality of Christie's education cuts’
Published: Wednesday, January 05, 2011, 2:22 PM Updated: Wednesday, January 05, 2011, 2:23 PM
TRENTON — Education advocates and state lawyers faced off before the New Jersey Supreme Court today, arguing whether Gov. Chris Christie's cuts to education spending were unconstitutional.
The Education Law Center said the loss of about $1 billion in aid to schools violates the state's constitutional obligations. It wants the court to force the state to fully fund the school funding formula in the upcoming budget year.
The state countered by saying cuts to education spending were unavoidable because of the economic recession. It also said there's no constitutional inequity in school funding, leaving the court no role in saying how the state should spend taxpayer money.
It's unclear when the Supreme Court will issue a decision on the matter. Some justices floated the idea of appointing a special master to review the impact of funding cuts before the court makes a decision, a move that would significantly lengthen the case.
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Today's oral arguments were the latest fight over Abbott v. Burke, the landmark school funding decision in 1985. The courtroom was packed with reporters, lawyers and advocates. Attorney General Paula Dow and two of her top deputies sat in the front row watching the arguments.
Justices questioned whether declining tax revenues should allow the state to make funding cuts.
"Is this court not to take into account the present economic realities?" Associate Justice Barry Albin said. "Should that not be a factor?"
David Sciarra, executive director of the Newark-based Education Law Center, said he wants "no more than what the state committed to do."
"This court has always directed the state to do what it's constitutional obligations are," he said.
Assistant Attorney General Nancy Kaplen said the state simply can't afford to fully fund the formula, which was created by former Gov. Jon Corzine's administration and upheld by the Supreme Court in 2009.
"It's no longer a flush time," she said. "We can no longer afford this flush formula."
Kaplen said the state cut education spending in an equitable way, without penalizing poor or rich districts.
"The gross disparities that caused the court to intervene in the past do not exist," she said. "There is not the vast disparity in education funding between wealthy districts and the Abbott district."
Albin said students in poor districts have greater needs, requiring more funding.
"There are kinds who are malnourished," he said. "There are kids who live in decrepit apartments.
The Record ‘NJ Supreme Court hears arguments on education cuts’
Wednesday, January 5, 2011 Last updated: Wednesday January 5, 2011, 4:09 PM
BY LESLIE BRODY, Staff Writer
An advocate for New Jersey’s poor children asked the state Supreme Court Wednesday to force the governor and Legislature to fully fund the state’s formula for distributing aid to schools in the coming school year, saying it’s too late to ask for more money for the current year.
“That horse has left the barn” said David Sciarra, attorney for the Education Law Center, a Newark-based group representing children in the state’s poorest cities.
His comments came in nearly two hours of oral arguments this morning on whether Governor Christie’s cuts in education funding this year were constitutional. Sciarra argued the cuts denied many students their right to thorough educations, by forcing schools to have bigger class sizes, less remedial help for struggling students, and fewer security guards in many districts. Such cuts led to student fights, dilapidated equipment and “fire alarm systems that don’t work.”
Nancy Kaplen, an attorney representing the state, argued that the aid cuts were distributed fairly and the 2008 funding formula was too “generous” to be implemented during a time of fiscal crisis.
“The money’s just not there,” she told the court, adding the cuts “were not made out of indifference but out of necessity.”
The justices grilled both lawyers and asked repeatedly whether it would be useful to ask a special master to conduct a hearing to review the full impact of the aid cuts. It was unclear when they would rule.
The Education Law Center, which fought for decades for fair funding for poor students, filed a legal challenge in June saying Christie’s aid cuts violated the state’s obligation to fully fund New Jersey’s new formula for distributing aid to districts. The ELC argues the Supreme Court upheld the new formula, passed in 2008, on the condition that it gets full funding for its first three years.
Christie countered he had to cut school aid in the face of a massive budget hole and the end of one-shot stimulus funding, and he made sure all districts shared pain equally. Last spring, Christie slashed state aid by $820 million for the current fiscal year, reducing aid to each district by 5 percent of its operating budget.
Today’s hearing marks the return to the Supreme Court of conflicts over equitable funding for poor districts that have been litigated since the early 1970s. The landmark 1985 ruling known as Abbott vs. Burke sent billions of state dollars to the state’s 31 poorest cities. The 2008 funding formula deviated from numerous subsequent Abbott rulings by allocating state dollars based on districts’ enrollment of needy children and special education students.
E-mail: brody@northjersey.com
