New Jersey:
Urban Spotlight

by Jessica L. Sandham

But while the state takes those next steps in its accountability efforts, the school reform spotlight continues to shine most intensely on New Jersey's urban school systems.

New Jersey will make changes to assessments, but urban areas remain the focus.

In a landmark decision last May, the New Jersey Supreme Court backed much of Republican Gov. Christine Todd Whitman's plan for how to overhaul curriculum and instruction and answer facilities needs in her state's poorest city districts.

school reform," and a school construction measure, the ruling put an end to the high court's oversight of 28 districts involved in the long-running lawsuit over funding equity.

"This year marks an end and a beginning," says David Sciarra, the executive director of the Newark-based Education Law Center, which spearheaded the suit, Abbott v. Burke, on behalf of the urban districts. "We're enormously satisfied with what we've accomplished as a result of years of effort. But we're also humbled by the work that lies ahead of us."

Now schools are working under the gun to carry out major reforms by the court-imposed deadlines.

Last September, 72 elementary and secondary schools got a jump on their work by restructuring their administrative and instructional structures in accordance with whole-school reform models approved by the Whitman administration.

Each of the 320 elementary schools in the so-called Abbott districts must begin implementing whole-school reform by the 2000-01 school year. The districts must also offer half-day preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds starting in the fall.

The court decision upheld an earlier ruling that judged the state responsible for providing the urban districts with the same average per-pupil-spending level enjoyed by more affluent suburban districts. In the current fiscal year, state officials directed $279 million to ensure that spending in urban districts equals that of some of the wealthiest districts in the state, a 27 percent increase from fiscal 1998.

New Jersey's education accountability structure is designed to hold districts responsible for the academic performance of individual schools, and targets interventions and incentives accordingly.

But when crafting an Abbott proposal, state education officials placed the onus for successful reform squarely on the shoulders of school officials by embracing whole-school reform efforts like Success for All, a reform model developed by researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Adopting the approach ensures that state resources are not filtered through districts, but flow directly to schools, state Commissioner of Education Leo F. Klagholz says.

Whole-school reform is no cure-all, he says, but it offers "the best chance of using the money we've provided to make a long-term educational improvement for children."

Whole-school reform requires that the educational structure in each participating school be razed and rebuilt, and requires the input of teachers, parents, and administrators.

However, with empowerment comes responsibility, and state education leaders say many schools are still building their capacity to take on reforms such as school-based budgeting and management under the court-imposed time constraints.

Schools need to be careful that they don't plunge forward too quickly and shortchange the reform process, says Lynn Maher, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey Education Association, the state affiliate of the National Education Association.

The high court also ordered the state to cover all the costs of renovating or replacing deteriorating school buildings in the 28 districts involved in the lawsuit.

In response, Whitman proposed a five-year, $5.3 billion school construction plan last fall that would also offer state aid for construction in wealthier communities. Under the governor's plan, the state would cut costs by using a centralized state building authority to oversee construction projects. State officials will have a greater sense of how to divvy up the construction dollars after the Abbott districts submit long-range plans detailing their facilities needs in March.

Meanwhile, after nearly a decade of state control in the Jersey City schools, state officials have started looking into how best to restore local control there.

The 33,000-student district, which in 1989 became the first to be taken over by the state under New Jersey's "academic bankruptcy" law, may emerge from state control as early as the next school year, Klagholz says. State withdrawal from the districts in Newark and Paterson is farther down the road, he adds.

The legislature's joint committee on public schools formed a subcommittee last fall that is charged with overseeing the transition to local control in the three state-takeover districts.

State officials want to be certain they phase out their control in such a way that the districts "won't return to their old ways," Klagholz says.

Last fall, state lawmakers and administration officials also debated the merits of a plan that would allow a limited number of students to attend school outside their home districts, tuition-free, starting in September of this year.

Although administration officials originally started with a broad-based proposal for district-to-district transfers, lawmakers pushed for a pilot program that would limit the number of districts that could receive students, as well as the number of students any one district could lose.

Sen. Robert J. Martin says the legislature also plans to ensure that any public-school-choice program would include incentives for districts to accept new students. Without adequate compensation, academically strong districts would have no reason to accept out-of-district pupils and, consequently, increase their class sizes, adds Martin, a Republican who chairs the Senate education committee.

In a state with a total of 582 school districts, sending a child to a different district could offer practical alternatives for parents who cross district boundaries to go to work, or a way to offer more school choice to middle- or low-income families, Martin says.

"Parents with economic means move out of district or send their children to private schools," he says. "The ones who don't have choice ... are parents with lesser means."

This spring, New Jersey students will face a new round of tests tied to the state's content standards. Tougher state assessments for 4th grade students, which were given in core subjects for the first time last spring, will be expanded to include hands-on science applications. The state's 8th grade tests in reading, writing, and mathematics have also been rewritten to align them with state standards. The new tests will not be used to determine district and school standings on state report cards for another two to four years, however, when the updated 4th, 8th, and 11th grade tests are fully phased in.

New Jersey teachers will have to meet new state standards for professional development, thanks to a measure passed last May by the state school board that requires all teachers to receive 100 hours of continuing education every five years, starting in January of next year.

The new measure does not specify whether school boards or individual teachers are responsible for picking up the tab for tuition reimbursement and other costs associated with professional development. Officials of the state school boards' association have complained that the Whitman administration caved in to the NJEA by choosing not to make the new continuing education policy a hard-and-fast requirement for renewing teaching licenses. Under the new code, teachers could lose their licenses if they do not complete 100 hours of training every five years, but it would not happen automatically.

But, as New Jersey was one of the last states to require ongoing professional development for educator recertification, teachers' union leaders wholeheartedly backed the new state mandate.

"We support it vigorously," Maher of the NJEA says. "It was a long time coming."

© 1999 Editorial Projects in Education

Vol. 18, number 17, page 160