| |
Posted Apr 11, 2017, 3:13 AM
|
|
Registered User
|
|
Join Date: Jan 2014
Posts: 3,017
|
|
JerseyResident4Life, for your edification...
The issue of public education quality in Jersey City is part of a much larger picture that has been played out on the Statewide for close to 40 years. Pointing the finger at recent abatements in Journal Square is terribly misguided without first understanding the history of why JC public schools, and most urban districts in New Jersey, are so shitty to begin with. Hint: It's State's policy that has been found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court but haven't really been rectified to this date.
Quote:
THE HISTORY OF ABBOTT V. BURKE
In 1981, the Education Law Center filed a complaint in Superior Court on behalf of 20 children attending public schools in the cities of Camden, East Orange, Irvington, and Jersey City. The lawsuit challenged New Jersey’s system of financing public education under the Public School Education Act of 1975 (Chapter 212).
This was the first salvo in the historic case, Abbott v. Burke, which is widely recognized as the most important education litigation for poor and minority schoolchildren since Brown v. Board of Education.
Beginning in 1981, ELC argued that the State's method of funding education was unconstitutional because it caused significant expenditure disparities between poor urban and wealthy suburban school districts, and that poorer urban districts were unable to adequately meet the educational needs of their students.
The case eventually made its way to the NJ Supreme Court, which, in 1985, issued the first Abbott decision (Abbott I) transferring the case to an administrative law judge for an initial hearing.
The Remedial Directives
In 1990, in Abbott II, the NJ Supreme Court upheld the administrative law judge’s ruling, finding the State’s school funding law unconstitutional as applied to children in 28 “poorer urban” school districts. That number was later expanded to 31. View the Abbott Districts
The Court’s ruling directed the Legislature to amend or enact a new law to “assure” funding for the urban districts: 1) at the foundation level “substantially equivalent” to that in the successful suburban districts; and 2) “adequate” to provide for the supplemental programs necessary to address the extreme disadvantages of urban schoolchildren. The Court ordered this new funding mechanism be in place for the following school year, 1991-92.
In response to the Abbott II decision, the Legislature approved the Quality Education Act (QEA), which modestly increased foundation aid levels for the Abbott districts, but failed to provide parity funding.
In 1992, the Abbott plaintiffs went back to the NJ Supreme Court, asking for a decision on whether the new funding law met the specific terms of its 1990 decree. The Court remanded the motion to a trial judge with instructions to develop a full factual record. Following an extensive trial, the remand judge found that the QEA failed to meet the Court’s 1990 ruling and recommended the law be declared unconstitutional as applied to the urban districts.
In 1994, the Supreme Court affirmed the findings and recommendation of the remand judge. The Court then entered its second remedial order, Abbott III, directing the Legislature to adopt another funding law by September 1996 that would assure “substantial equivalence” in per pupil foundation funding with suburban districts and provide the necessary supplemental programs.
In December 1996, the Legislature enacted its second funding law – the Comprehensive Education Improvement and Financing Act or “CEIFA” – in response to the Court’s 1994 decision. In January 1997, the Abbott plaintiffs asked the Court to declare CEIFA unconstitutional for failing to achieve compliance with the Court’s prior orders. The Court acted quickly on the motion and in Abbott IV found CIEFA unconstitutional as applied to the urban districts.
The Court also took more decisive action. First, the justices ordered parity in foundation funding for the 1997-98 school year, resulting in an immediate state aid increase of $246 million. Second, they ordered that parity be continued in future years until the Legislature, through new or amendatory legislation, could “convincingly demonstrate” that resources adequate for urban schoolchildren to meet established academic standards could be provided at a level lower than the amounts expended in the successful suburban districts.
Finally, the Court ordered that a second remand trial be conducted by a designated judge, this time for the purpose of developing a full evidentiary record of the need both for supplemental programs (including early education) for urban schoolchildren and for capital facilities improvements in the urban districts. The State Education Commissioner was directed to prepare and present a study of these needs, including recommendations for funding levels and a plan for program implementation.
On review of the trial court’s decision, the Supreme Court in Abbott V accepted many of the supplemental programs and reforms, and a plan to fund capital facilities improvements, recommended by the remand judge. The Court also modified several recommendations and established a unique process whereby urban districts were afforded the right to seek additional funding for supplemental programs and capital improvements if they could demonstrate the need. Districts were also afforded the right to seek administrative and judicial review of decisions by the State Education Commissioner denying requests for supplemental funds.
Taken together, the 1997 Abbott IV and 1998 Abbott V rulings directed implementation of a comprehensive set of remedial measures, including high quality early education, supplemental programs and reforms, and school facilities improvements, to ensure an adequate and equal education for low-income schoolchildren.
The Abbott remedies were strikingly detailed and comprehensive. The mandates also broke new ground in school finance and education policy in the United States. No other state had equalized – or assured “parity” – in the education resources provided to children in its lowest-wealth communities at the level spent in more affluent ones. New Jersey was the first state to mandate early education, starting at age 3, for children “at risk” of entering kindergarten or primary school cognitively and socially behind their more advantaged peers. The Court’s “needs-based” approach to providing supplementary programs and reforms was an unprecedented effort to target funds to initiatives designed to improve educational outcomes of low-income schoolchildren. Finally, New Jersey undertook the most extensive construction program in the United States designed to ameliorate the severely deficient condition and quality of school buildings in low-wealth neighborhoods.
Enforcing and Sustaining Implementation of the Remedy
The Court’s hopes for a sustained, good faith effort to implement the remedial measures ordered in Abbott IV and V were quickly dashed. Over the next ten years, both parties sought judicial intervention to resolve numerous implementation delays, disputes and controversies.
|
http://www.edlawcenter.org/cases/abb...t-history.html
|
|
|
Prev
Linear Mode
