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Two op-ed pieces appeared in today's 4-19-11 newspapers on the Abbott school funding litigation:
Northjersey.com - The Record - Opinion: The long and winding road to school funding by Carl Golden
Star Ledger - Opinion: The State's GOP school funding plan is sound by Senator Tom Kean
Northjersey.com-The Record - Opinion: The long and winding road to school funding
Friday, April 15, 2011 BY CARL GOLDEN
Carl Golden, former press secretary for Govs. Thomas H. Kean and Christine Todd Whitman, is a senior contributing analyst with the William J. Hughes Center for Public Policy at Richard Stockton College.
ABBOTT V. BURKE has become New Jersey’s political version of “War and Peace” — a tale spanning decades, involving hundreds of characters, palace intrigue and a convoluted plot.
The opening lines in the next chapter will be written soon, when the Christie administration presents its argument in state Supreme Court that last year’s reductions in state aid to public education did not violate New Jersey’s constitution.
The administration will attempt to persuade the court to modify the recent findings by Superior Court Judge Peter Doyne, appointed by the high court as a special master to hear testimony in litigation that challenged the aid cuts. Doyne found the reductions to be unconstitutional — largely because of their disproportionate impact on low-income districts — but did not offer any remedy.
Retaining former Supreme Court Associate Justice Peter Verniero to present the state’s case was a wise move by the administration, given Verniero’s intimate knowledge of the issue (he argued on behalf of the state in a 1998 school funding case), as well as his particular insight into the working of the court.
Origins in 1972 battle
The initial challenge to the method by which the state provides financial support to local school districts came in 1972 and, since then, some 20 cases have been heard and decided. Virtually all turned on the question of whether state funding to at-risk districts — largely urban areas without the wherewithal to support local education on their own — was sufficient to provide students with a quality of education equivalent to their suburban neighbors.
Two years ago, the Supreme Court approved a revised funding formula, declaring it constitutional provided it was fully funded. With the aid cuts implemented last year, opponents argued it violated the court’s finding and Doyne agreed.
Doyne rejected the state’s assertion that it could not be clearly demonstrated that money translated into more favorable student outcomes and pointed out several times that the state had argued the opposite position two years earlier in its defense of the funding formula.
“Ironies abound,” was the phrase he employed in his report.
He was sympathetic — indeed, on the verge of apologetic — in acknowledging the state’s fiscal distress and taking specific note of the difficult challenges involved in supporting government’s myriad activities and responsibilities at a time when resources had declined sharply as a result of an unprecedented national economic downturn.
His role, however, was limited to a determination of constitutionality and did not extend to offering recommendations to overcome the deficiencies he found.
The state Supreme Court, of course, is back on familiar ground. It has been the arbiter of education funding challenges since the last quarter of the last century and has, in point of fact, been the driving force in determining the appropriate level of state aid during that time.
It is this latter fact which so infuriates the court’s critics who accuse it of supplanting the executive and the Legislature — the branches of government elected by the people — and directing how much public money should be spent and where.
Critics have continually pointed out that because of the court’s actions, 5 percent of school districts receive more than 50 percent of the state aid and that per-pupil expenditures in some of those districts exceeds $25,000, while student performance has shown little significant improvement despite spending those sums.
The court’s composition
The governor has expressed much the same sentiment, suggesting the only way to change the court’s approach was to change the court’s composition, an action reserved to him through the authority to nominate its members.
The court has a great deal at stake as well. While it may agree with the sympathy expressed by Doyne over the state’s difficult financial condition, its lengthy history in dealing with the funding issue cannot be discarded or ignored without dramatically undermining, if not destroying altogether, its credibility.
The four decades worth of established precedent was built one case and opinion atop another, and it is highly unlikely that the current court would move to knock the props out from beneath that history.
Both the governor and Verniero, whose lives and careers have been involved in the law, have a deep respect for the institution and understand more than most the sanctity of legal precedent and why it would not be overlooked by the court.
It has used the constitutional mandate for the state to establish a “thorough and efficient system of public education” as the basis for its past decisions, interpreting the phrase to mean that a “thorough and efficient” education must be provided to the state’s children.
The court and critics
That interpretation is another point of ongoing and serious dispute between the court and its critics.
While it remains to be seen what approach Verniero will take, there has been early speculation that a compromise is a likely outcome, that the court would grant the administration additional time to bring funding up to the formula standards or to permit a phase in which the state commits to a specific level of additional aid for a set number of years.
It’s difficult to imagine that the participants have not wearied of this long and often acrimonious dispute, which never seems to arrive at a resolution.
Eight governors and countless legislatures have been players in this “War and Peace” saga. It’s time for less of the former and more of the latter.
The following editorial by Senate Republican Leader Tom Kean appeared in The Star-Ledger on April 19, 2011:
State GOP’s School Funding Plan is Sound
Over the course of the last year, a debate over how New Jersey funds education in the midst of a yawning budget deficit has raged in Trenton.
In one corner are people like Governor Christie and me. We believe that in times of fiscal crisis there are no sacred cows, and that the endlessly escalating court mandated cost of education, like the cost of anything else in government, is a cause for great concern.
We also have enough faith in talented, dedicated educators to know that if we reform the system to value classroom performance over seniority and student outcomes over dollars, we can improve education in New Jersey more than any amount of money ever would.
Democrats in the Legislature, chiefly Senate Majority Leader Barbara Buono (D- Metuchen), hold a different view: that spending determines the quality of education our children receive.
Never mind that the most poorly performing districts in New Jersey spend more on education than almost anywhere else in the world. Forget that we spend 56% of state education aid on 31 school districts that account for less than 25% of students statewide.
It is my colleagues’ right to disagree with my point of view, but the least they could do is provide a workable solution. However, as is often the case in government, they choose only to identify a problem and stop short of putting their necks on the line to solve it.
To those who have spent most of the last year criticizing the Governor and Legislative Republicans for under funding education, I pose a simple question: “what’s your plan and how do you pay for it?”
If money were the answer, how would Democrats fund an additional $1.7 billion dollars that they claim is necessary to provide every child in New Jersey a quality education?
We don’t know because they have yet to tell us.
Would they raise the so-called “Millionaire’s Tax,” a tax that is among the highest in America, and of which 30 percent of filers are small businesses that put food on the table for New Jersey families?
Even the most wildly optimistic revenue estimates for this tax come up $1 billion short. Where’s the other $1 billion coming from?
Would it come from a business tax increase? Nine percent of New Jersey residents are unemployed and we have among the highest corporate taxes in America. How many people are we willing to keep on the unemployment rolls?
Which hospitals shall we close?
Whose property tax rebates do we eliminate and what roads do we not pave?
Governing means making tough choices.
There are no pennies from heaven, no “Loaves and Fishes Tax” that will provide for every need with endless revenue and no consequences.
What is really mind boggling is that Democrats shorted school funding for years, beginning with Governor McGreevey’s 2004 state aid freeze. Talk about hypocrisy!
Adequate funding for schools is critical, but one is hard pressed to say that New Jersey, spending more than anywhere in America on education, is shirking its responsibility.
School funding can also not be considered in a vacuum. Only in a fantasy world should the state be expected to dramatically INCREASE spending on anything while in the midst of the worst recession in 70 years.
For my part, I believe we can do better than a system that only equates dollars with success.
We can do better by unshackling our educators from a system that rewards longevity over accomplishment.
We must make tenure mean something by linking it to classroom performance, reward our very best teachers while getting the bad ones out of the classroom, and ensure that seniority rules do not cost us our very best educators.
And in those districts that are chronically failing and will take years to fix because of decades of mismanagement, we have a moral obligation to give parents and students a choice to get out of a failing system.
Governor Christie and Legislative Republicans have detailed these reforms as part of a plan for a better way forward for education in New Jersey, coupled with a commitment to fair and realistic funding. We believe it will improve student performance while reducing costs and thus, the burden on the most highly taxed people in America.
Our critics can disagree, but we’re still waiting for their plan.
Senator Tom Kean, Jr. (R- Union) is the Minority Leader in the State Senate and member of the Senate Education Committee.
