Education Reform: Lessons from New Jersey

For more details on this event, please see the events page.

“The [New Jersey] Supreme Court turned school finance in New Jersey upside down in 1997 when it ruled that funding in the poorest districts should reflect the specific challenges those districts face,” Gordon MacInnes, a Century Foundation fellow, said in reference to the Abbott v. Burke case during Tuesday’s event “Closing the Achievement Gap Through Additional Funding, High-Quality Instruction, and a Focus on Early Literacy: Lessons from New Jersey Districts.” The event was co-hosted by the Center for American Progress and The Century Foundation.

MacInnes, the author of In Plain Sight: Simple Difficult Lessons from New Jersey's Expensive Effort to Close the Achievement Gap, discussed his book and the lessons learned from the New Jersey School Districts alongside Greg Anrig, Vice President for Policy at The Century Foundation; Pablo Munoz, Superintendent at Elizabeth Public Schools in New Jersey; and Sara Mead, Senior Research Fellow at the New America Foundation. Opening remarks were given by Robin Chait, Associate Director for Teacher Quality at American Progress.

The Abbott v. Burke court case resulted in a set of education programs and reforms for New Jersey’s poorest urban school districts. In 1997, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that spending in wealthy school districts be matched in low-income districts. Later in 1998, the court decided this was not enough and they not only imposed 34 specific remedies but also encouraged districts to ask for additional funding, giving them accelerated rights of appeal if they were unsuccessful. Finally, in 2002 New Jersey Governor James McGreevey's administration and its commissioner of education, William Librera, brought all of these programs together into the first cohesive Abbott program. MacInnes said the latest court decision brought about a fundamental “change in the conversation from ‘is each school complying with each mandate?’ to ‘Are you educating third graders as competent readers?’”

The focus on literacy turned out to be fundamental to Abbott schools’ success. “If you can’t read, you can’t be educated,” MacInnes said, “and reading is a skill learned early.” MacInnes considered an early education system that emphasized reading skills and did not give up on children as one of the most valuable lessons from the Abbott education reforms.

“The results of early childhood education and intensive early literacy programs show growth in student achievement,” said Munoz. “The Elizabeth [New Jersey] students who attended these programs at the age of four outscored students who had not attended these programs by 11 points in grade three and 14 in grade four.” The data collected on the Abbott schools’ progress as a whole consistently demonstrates this type of achievement. “It’s unusual to see these kinds of gains district-wide,” Anrig said. “So we think there are a lot of implications for national education policy in looking at what happened in New Jersey.”

Munoz observed that, “Our experience in Elizabeth illustrates how the alliance of policy with practice has improved student’s lives.” The situation in New Jersey reflects a unique combination of legal mandate, committed leadership, and the Department of Education’s willingness to get involved on the ground level. This does not mean, however, that these conditions cannot be reproduced elsewhere.

During his campaign, President Barack Obama repeatedly emphasized the importance of investment in high-quality early education and there is currently bipartisan support in Congress to address this issue. “New Jersey’s experience is especially important for conversation at the federal level because it demonstrates that better results from high-poverty schools are possible,” Mead said.

New Jersey’s improvements were only possible, however, because pre-K programs were a fundamental part of the plan. “A lot of people just don’t see early childhood as part of K-12 problems,” Mead said as she warned of the problematic divorce in the education field between pre-K and K-12 groups. In order to recreate New Jersey’s success it will be necessary to “align and integrate pre- and post-K programs,” Mead said.

“A critical part of being an education reformer is to share models of success,” said Chait in her opening remarks. “It’s always important to show that there are models of success and that it’s possible to improve achievement for disadvantaged students.” And the remarkable success with closing the achievement gap in a group of high-poverty districts in New Jersey can serve as a model for districts across the country. The challenge, however, will be to enact similar changes without the catalyst of a legal mandate.

New Jersey has proven that it’s possible to improve student’s lives in poor communities. Now the question is how to bring these lessons to the national level.

For more details on this event, please see the events page.