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Fulfilling the promise of Abbott
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
BY DAVID G. SCIARRA
Gov. Jon Corzine recently restated his commitment to the reforms ordered in Ab bott vs. Burke, the Supreme Court's landmark education equity rulings. This is good news for poor children, largely concentrated in New Jersey's high-poverty, intensely segregated urban school systems.
It's good news because of the great progress made in transform ing long-neglected urban schools in recent years. As a result of Abbott, we've built arguably the best preschool program in the United States, narrowed test score gaps in the fourth grade, lowered class sizes, made tutors and other supports available to students and teachers and, just last year, launched an ambitious effort to improve urban middle and high schools.
Building on that success, Cor zine, in announcing the first aid increase to low-income students and schools outside the Abbott districts in five years, said he would target the new aid to expand those Abbott programs proven so effective: preschool, full-day kindergarten and intensive literacy reforms.
In supporting Abbott, the governor also stated his concern about its "execution." Clearly, educational progress in Abbott districts would be much greater if the state had not mismanaged key reforms and instead operated with a coherent vision and strategic agenda for improving high-poverty public schools.
At its core, Abbott is about equity, about improving public education for poor students in distressed communities, urban, rural or otherwise. The governor's ex pansion of the Abbott programs is long overdue, but much more is needed from his administration to fulfill the promise of Abbott in high-needs districts across the state.
First, recognize what Abbott has clearly shown: Adequate school funding is necessary, but not suffi cient, to improve educational quality in high-poverty schools. Any new funding formula must provide and sustain such funding to all schools serving sizable enrollments of poor students.
Second, state officials must be willing to hold themselves accountable for performance, especially to poor students and schools. This mean the state needs to refrain from blaming districts for fiscal or educational failures and telling underfunded local officials to fix these failures on their own.
Third, the state Education Department must be overhauled so it has the expertise, technology and capacity necessary to lead reform and collaborate with districts to solve tough educational problems. The Legislature last month authorized an independent evaluation of the department's operations, and the governor should move quickly to bring in the nation's leading educational experts to perform a thorough review. Any departmental reorganization, such as abolishing the Abbott division, should await the results of this evaluation.
Fourth, we must recruit top- notch leadership at the state level. The Abbott reforms are unprecedented but challenging to imple ment. We need creative leaders, steeped in educational practice and policy, with the skill set to build strong partnerships with diverse schools and communities. If we can raise judges' pay, why not do the same to attract talented leaders to run our education system?
Fifth, while audits address fiscal operations, they say nothing about the effectiveness of educational programs or what reforms are working. Incredibly, the state de votes almost no funding to research effective practices. The Education Department has even re fused to evaluate the Abbott reforms despite a court order to do so. Without a robust education research agenda, we'll continue grop ing in the dark for solutions.
Finally, educational investments in high-poverty communities must be viewed as vital to regional redevelopment efforts. For too long, schools have remained off the urban revitalization agenda. Schools should be networked with social services and heath care, child welfare, public safety and other systems. Every new or renovated facility should be planned and built as a "center of community." We know poor students aren't the challenge. It's the intense concen tration of poverty, something schools simply cannot address in isolation.
Isn't it high time state officials took responsibility for ending New Jersey's decades-old educational divide? After all, it's the state's ob ligation under our constitution to make sure local districts and schools deliver the education our children need and deserve.
David G. Sciarra is executive di rector of the Education Law Center in Newark.
The Public Education Institute and the Education Law Center
Present
Costing Out an Adequate Education in New Jersey: Where do we go from here?
When: March 19; 9:00 to 12:30 followed by lunch
Where: Busch Campus Center, Rutgers University
604 Bartholomew Road, Piscataway
Presenters:
Margaret Goertz, Ph.D., Co-Director, Consortium for Policy Research in Education, University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education
William Mathis, Ph.D., Adjunct Professor of School Finance, University of Vermont; Superintendent of Schools, Rutland Northeast Supervisory Union in Brandon, Vermont
Ernest Reock, Ph.D., (invited) Professor Emeritus, Rutgers University Center for Government Studies, Edward J. Bloustein School of Public Planning and Public Policy
David Sciarra, Esq. Executive Director, Education Law Center
***A more detailed agenda will follow.
____________________________________________________________________
To register, please fax a completed form to (732) 564-9099 or e-mail complete registration information to rupei@rci.rutgers.edu
Name: ___________________________ E-mail: ____________________________
Organization: _________________________________________________________
Telephone: _________________________ Fax: _____________________________
Address: _____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
From the Op-Ed page of today's Leger:
Don't use audits to indict the state-run school districts Thursday,
February 08, 2007
BY PAUL L. TRACTENBERG
The audit reports released re cently by the state Education Department
have trig gered a flood of over-the-top rhetoric about waste in four of
our largest high-poverty urban districts. One can speculate about the
reason for this reaction, but animosity in some quarters toward the Ab
bott vs. Burke court rulings and the constitutional mandate for
increased funding to improve education of our poorest students is likely
to top the list.
The four districts -- Camden, Newark, Paterson and Jersey City -- are
all operated by the same state Education Department that commissioned
the audits. Camden has been informally under state control since 1999.
The other three districts have been under formal state operation for so
long that it's hard to remember when they last functioned under local
control. Actually, it was 1995 for Newark, 1991 for Paterson and 1989
for Jersey City. That means a generation of Newark students, and more
than that in Paterson and Jersey City, have spent their entire
educational lives under state operation.
Yet the media coverage sur rounding the recently released audits reads
as though these cities were shamelessly ripping off the state and its
taxpayers. In truth, unlike other New Jersey districts, Newark, Paterson
and Jersey City have no boards of education with any legal power or
superintendents selected by local boards. What they have are state
district superintendents, hired by the state education commissioner,
with powers that in other districts reside in local boards and
superintendents.
They also have had waves of state Abbott fiscal monitors crawling over
one another for years. If anyone ought to be blamed for al leged fiscal
irregularities in these districts, it's the Education Department and its
officials.
But let's not play the blame game. Let's instead look more closely at
these audits. Auditors aren't paid to find perfect fiscal records.
They're paid to identify is sues and problems. What did the auditors
find? They found serious problems in Camden, to the tune of $13 million.
In the other three districts, they "questioned" expenditures totaling
about $2 million. Understand, audits raise issues and identify problems;
they don't convict anyone.
Curiously, although the Education Department allowed districts to submit
written responses to the audits, it released the audits without publicly
responding to the districts' explanations or making appropriate
adjustments regarding expenditures flagged as "questionable." In the
case of Newark, district representatives claim that all $446,000 of
those expenditures can be satisfactorily explained. Neither the state
nor its outside auditors have spoken out about that claim. Keep in mind,
too, that this amount represents less than 0.05 percent of Newark's more
than $900 million budget.
What would happen if the same auditors, employed by the state and
applying the same rigorous forensic standards -- different than the
standards used by districts in their ordinary annual audits -- descended
upon large suburban districts? How many would wind up with less than
one-half of one-tenth of 1 percent of total expenditures being
questioned? I suspect not many.
Of course, we should not allow even small amounts of education funds to
be squandered. The education of all our children, especially the poor,
is too precious to let a single dollar be misspent. Ultimately, it is
the state's responsibility to see to it that all districts use education
funds, whether they come from local property taxes or state aid, wisely
and well. However, when the state assumes direct operating control of
districts, as it did long ago in Camden, Newark, Paterson and Jersey
City, its responsibility is immeasurably greater.
The state needs to face up to that responsibility, proceeding in a
careful, professional and fair way to determine, first, whether money
actually has been misspent and, if it has, what to do about it.
If it turns out that money has been misspent under the state's watch,
the blame can't be deflected onto local districts long ago stripped of
their powers to run their own affairs. To use the audits to inflame the
public or play to biases and stereotypes only compounds the
irresponsibility.
Paul L. Tractenberg is the founding director of the Rutgers-Newark
Institute on Education Law & Policy.
C 2007 The Star Ledger
C 2007 NJ.com All Rights Reserved.
Did '800-lb. gorillas' sit on property tax reform?
Democrats say contributions by powerful special interest groups didn't affect their votes
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
BY DUNSTAN McNICHOL AND JOE DONOHUEStar-Ledger Staff
Hours before they were scheduled to consider a controversial package of bills aimed at reining in local property taxes on Dec. 14, top Democrats in the state Assembly hosted the state's lobbyists at a breakfast -- for $1,000 a head.
The "Breakfast Reception Honoring the Assembly Democratic Caucus" raised funds for this November's legislative election campaigns, including at least $12,000 from state worker unions and thousands more from other groups concerned about cost-cutting provisions in property tax reform bills.
That evening, the Assembly adjourned without taking action on the most substantial of the reform measures.
While Assembly Democrats insist the fundraiser in East Brunswick had no impact on that evening's action at the Statehouse, it is a prime example of how the special-interest money flowed during Trenton's big property tax debate.
Lobbying reports released yesterday show groups with the biggest stake in property tax reform spent more than $1.9 million last year to influence lawmakers. At the same time, key legislators extracted nearly $569,000 in campaign contributions from the same groups.
"That was the price for denying us property tax relief and reform," said Assemblyman Kevin O'Toole (R-Essex), one of many lawmakers convinced that aggressive lobbying watered down the Legislature's ambitious plans to attack the nation's highest property taxes.
Labor unions, teachers, contractors, school officials, mayors, business groups -- the "800-pound gorillas" that Gov. Jon Corzine exhorted lawmakers to resist in their drive for tax reform -- kept the heat on throughout the long special session.
Lobbying expenditures by two prominent unions -- the New Jersey Education Association, representing teachers, and the Communications Workers of America, representing state workers -- topped $675,000 last year, state Election Law Enforcement Commission reports show. That was double what the two groups spent pressing their issues in Trenton in 2005, according to ELEC records.
The two unions, which staged a noisy Statehouse rally of 7,000 protesters in December, also added $335,000 in campaign contributions to the cost of the effort. That pushed their total expenditures to more than $1 million last year.
The union leaders said the efforts were needed to preserve their benefits. They maintain they did not get everything they wanted.
"Our pensions and benefits have been under attack," said Lynn Maher, spokeswoman for the NJEA. "It was a very active year."
"Frankly, the climate around Trenton (on) state worker health and pension benefits was awful in 2006," said Bob Master, CWA political director. "And we used all the resources we had to mobilize our members."
Lawmakers wound up passing about half of the 98 recommendations made by four special committees that studied property tax reform during the summer and fall.
"What was well-intentioned originally has been drawn back in ways that are compromised for this interest group or that interest group," said Sen. John Adler (D-Camden), one of four Democratic senators who bucked party leaders and voted against a $2.2 billion tax relief plan and an accompanying 4 percent cap on tax increases.
As the Legislature's property tax reform effort went into full swing between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31, Democrats raised $1.5 million through their three statewide political committees to bankroll this year's legislative election campaigns, three times that of minority Republicans. At least one-fifth of the money, almost $300,000, came from groups or individuals with a direct stake in the outcome of the property tax debate, state records show.
Lobbying expenditures surged in tandem with the campaign contributions.
The New Jersey Business and Industry Association, which spent $237,229 lobbying lawmakers, won assurances in August that lawmakers would not propose a constitutional change to allow businesses to be charged higher taxes than homeowners.
"It was a big victory," said Arthur Maurice, vice president of the group. "There were some meaningful efforts in this tax effort. They could have done more, but we are happy with what they did."
Professional engineers paid lobbyists $278,000 as lawmakers considered plans to consolidate towns, and other reforms that would have cut local expenses and lucrative contracts and pension arrangements that many engineers enjoy.
Meanwhile, municipal engineers poured another $90,000 into Democratic campaign coffers while the reform bills were being drafted and amended last fall, state records show.
Lawmakers last week passed reform legislation (S17) designed to cut engineers out of the state pension system, but the most onerous provisions of government consolidation bills were pared from the reform package.
Joseph Donnelly, spokesman for the Assembly Democrats, rejected any suggestion of a link between campaign fundraising and the fate of the reform effort.
"It's beyond absurd to imply a connection, particularly when you consider public employee, police and firefighter unions were furious at the reforms we ended up passing," he said.
Not every interested group could bring lots of firepower to the debate.
Matt Shapiro, the unpaid lobbyist for New Jersey's 1 million tenants, spent hours dogging the debate over $2.2 billion in tax credits. For days, Shapiro hovered outside caucus rooms where Democratic lawmakers huddled in private to hash out details of reform bills.
But in the end, Shapiro said, he changed few minds. Tenant rebates announced yesterday by the Corzine administration are "unfair" to those who rent, he said.
"Had we been a group that made large campaign contributions, we would have had more access," Shapiro said. "We've had conversations, but we were not legitimately a part of that process."
Staff writer Tom Hester contributed to this report.
