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End segregation in N.J. schools
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 12/3/06
One of the most glaring failures of the legislative committee
studying public school funding reform was the absence of any
recommendations for reducing spending. In fact, it proposed pumping
an additional $1 billion into the state's bloated educational system
next year.
Perhaps worse, it failed to acknowledge the role New Jersey's de
facto school segregation has played in both the inequity of school
funding and the grossly uneven educational results. It had a chance
to address both problems equalizing school aid and educational
opportunities by recommending wide-scale regionalization and
consolidation of school districts. But it decided to take the easy
way out: Throw more money at the problem.
The legislative committee studying government consolidation also
backed off bold reforms. But it did suggest creating a pilot county
school district. Monmouth County should step forward. It would be an
ideal place to test the hypothesis that school district consolidation
would save money and raise test scores of the disadvantaged. Monmouth
County is loaded with small school districts ripe for consolidation.
And it has enough wealth and resources to easily absorb the students
now floundering in underachieving districts, including one of the
state's most dysfunctional Asbury Park.
The committee's Democratic members and the state legislative
leadership have been thumping their chests over a plan they say will
produce greater financial equity among school districts. But they've
offered no specifics and no clues as to how they intend to pay for
it. And the plan ignores the fact that the flawed Abbott funding
scheme and the huge amounts of money that have been poured into the
poor-performing urban schools was a response necessitated by the
unequal educational opportunities afforded by New Jersey's highly
segregated schools. Instead, legislators have again chosen to pay
blood money to keep the state's schools segregated.
A study by The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University earlier
this year again confirmed the state's standing as one of the most
segregated in the nation. On most segregation measures, New Jersey
ranks fifth or sixth. Only 25 percent of black public school students
in New Jersey attend schools in which whites are in the majority.
That's worse than Mississippi (26 percent), Louisiana and Texas (27
percent), and Georgia and Alabama (30 percent).
Only 28 percent of Latino students in New Jersey are enrolled in
schools in which whites constitute the majority. Only four states
have lower percentages California, Texas, New Mexico and New York.
If Monmouth County officials don't volunteer to become the pilot
county, state education commissioner Lucille Davy should take it upon
herself to throw a lifeline to the children trapped in the Asbury
Park school district. She should carve out a regional district from
neighboring towns and develop a plan to distribute children from
Asbury Park into other schools perhaps turning one or more of the
city's schools into magnet or specialty schools.
The Abbott districts aren't working. The school funding formula isn't
working. And despite the legislative committee's bluster about a new,
equitable funding formula that will better serve the needs of all
schoolchildren, it doesn't address the two basic problems: the notion
that more money will solve everything, and the adverse impact
clustering children disadvantaged by race and class has on
educational performance.
New Jersey's constitution is just one of two in the nation that
specifically prohibits segregation in the schools. Instead of pouring
more money into the state's poorest and most segregated districts, it
should start talking about ways to desegregate them. It would save
money, improve academic achievement and give more than lip service to
the notion that all kids deserve equal educational opportunities.
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