Swift & Change Able

Tomorrow, Arne Duncan will take his "Listening and Learning Tour" to New Jersey where he will visit the North Star Middle School Academy in Newark.

It will be interesting to see what Duncan says about New Jersey’s eligibility for the second wave of stimulus funding (or why it’s bringing up the rear in applying for the first) and its worthiness for a share of his $5 billion "Race to the Top" fund.

When Duncan kicked off his listening tour in Illinois in April, he was sharply critical of that state’s record on charter schools, school finance, and teacher quality and said Illinois would have to "change its ways" in order to compete for subsequent waves of discretionary federal funding (which, just this week, it did with regard to charter school caps; score one for Arne Duncan).

Governor Corzine hasn’t lit any reform fires in any of those three areas. In fact, its arguable that during his tenure, things have gotten worse on all of them. At the same time, Corzine is up for reelection this year and is probably the most endangered Democratic elected official on the national scene. So what will be telling tomorrow is whether political pressures will cause Duncan to pull policy punches.

Charters. We’ve posted here about how Corzine’s new school funding formula and budget discriminate against charters, in a state where thousands of children are on charter school waiting lists. North Star Middle School, where Duncan will visit, receives only 74% of the per-pupil spending that New Jersey allocates to non-charters. This is a statewide issue. And yet, under Corzine’s proposed budget, 46 of the state’s 62 charter public schools will receive even less per pupil than they do now.

People tell me that charter schools in New Jersey do only about as well as their non-charter counterparts. Even if that’s true, and I’m not sure that it is, they’re doing it with a hell of a lot less money. Imagine what they could do if they were funded on the same basis as other public schools.

School Finance. School finance is in a state of upheaval in New Jersey. Corzine’s recent budgets cut back on funding to "Abbott" districts, which the state has been under court order to fund adequately, a court order Corzine has been seeking to overturn, with recent success.

The Education Law Center has all the latest on this and more, including the state’s decision not to fund expansion of the Abbott pre-k program – the nation’s best – to 84 more high poverty districts, also in violation of latest Abbott ruling: here.

I think there are compelling arguments for revising the state’s funding formula to reflect population shifts in New Jersey, especially for areas that have seen a spike in the number of poor children since the 1998 Abbott decision. But the way the state has done it is ham-handed and seems not to be driven by equity concerns as much as by electoral politics, and actually will result in cuts to the state’s poorest schools.

High-poverty districts like Newark in fact will get no increase in state aid, and likely will be unable to get their municipalities to increase local revenue since these communities have high property taxes, low property wealth, and low income – i.e., are in municipal overburden.  They will experience, however, the typical non-discretionary cost increases in teachers salaries, etc. (driven by collective bargaining agreements and state law) so they are cutting programs, services and positions this year (and will be doing so for years to come) in order to balance their budgets. The Education Law Center has a table which projects significant cuts - over $1 billion cumulative over the next 3 years, not accounting for inflation - to Jersey’s highest-poverty urban districts.

Did I mention that NJEA has consistently supported these budgets?

Teacher Quality. More than twenty percent of core middle and high school classes in New Jersey are taught by teachers with neither a major nor a minor in the subjects taught, putting them in the bottom quartile of all states nationally, according to the Education’s Trust’s 2009 State Watch report. 

New Jersey has fairly high standards, and national graduation rates that are superficially at about the national average, but it looks like the state is inflating its numbers through assessment shell-games and disparities in terms of the quality of classes taught at the high school level.

In a recent column, Derrell Bradford of Newark-based E3 summed things up this way:

Objective measures bear Bradford and Assistant Commissioner Doolan out. While African-Americans make up 15% of the state’s K-12  student population, they represent only 3-5% of those taking Advanced Placement classes. Latinos, who also make up 15% of the state’s school-going population, represent only 6% of those taking AP classes. Moreover, there are huge racial gaps on AP pass rates even for those who do get to take the classes. While 85% of White students pass the AP Language and Composition test, only 49% of Latinos and 46% of African-Americans do.

The cumulative result: the percentages of African-American and Latinos in New Jersey 25 or older who hold a B.A. (20% and 15%) are more or less half of that of their white counterparts (36%).

Looking Ahead. Advocates in New Jersey are watching the state’s implementation of ARRA closely. A coalition that includes school finance advocates from other states sent a letter to Secretary Duncan on May 21st, calling for close scrutiny of New Jersey’s application. And, on Tuesday, ELC asked Duncan to reject the state’s ARRA application.

New Jersey has largely flown under the radar when it comes to national attention to its education policies but, if you’ll excuse the mixed metaphor, in addition to ELC’s strong advocacy, there are other signs that the wheels may be coming off.

A new reform-oriented blog, "NJ Left Behind," was launched last summer, and whether or not one agrees with everything they say (I find much to like) is less important than the fact that they’ve filled a reform void in the state. Check out their coverage of the recently priemered movie "The Cartel" a documentary on substandard education in New Jersey that’s closer to Michael Moore than to John Merrow but may at the very least raise the quantity, if not the quality, of debate.

As tomorrow’s North Start visit will show, New Jersey is a state with pockets of good schools, even in poor communities. But such successes are the exception rather than the rule, and have come about despite state policies, not because of them.

As a New Jersey resident and lifelong Democrat, I plan to vote for Corzine in November.  But if I were making my decision based solely on his record on education reform and his commitment to educating poor and minority children, I’d look hard for a more deserving candidate. The huge infusion of new federal funds is yet another opportunity for the Governor and the state legislature to mount a concerted and credible school reform effort. Events of recent months, however, suggest that without a push from Duncan tomorrow at North Star, there’s little chance that state leaders will seize it.