The Education Trust singled out New Jersey as a state that has made real progress in terms of funding. In 1997, the state had a funding gap of $787 per student in cost-adjusted dollars. By 2002, the gap had been erased, and the state had a $566 positive difference for low-income students. Starting in 1998, spurred partly by the state's long running Abbott v. Burke school funding lawsuit, the state implemented a series of new funding programs designed to help low-income students. This chapter details the progress.
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The Education Law Center, a nonprofit organization that tracks school financing issues, reports that lawsuits challenging state methods of financing public schools have been filed in 45 states (Education Law Center, 2022). Founded in 1973, The Education Law Center is the nation’s legal defense fund for public education rights. ELC is widely recognized for successfully advancing education equity, opportunity and justice in New Jersey, New York, and states across the country. ELC pursues its advocacy mission through litigation, public engagement, policy development, research, and communications.
ELC seeks to elevate the urgent need for school funding fairness as a state and national imperative for improving student outcomes and school performance through in-depth, state-specific analyses and reports, targeted communications, and support for the Partnership for Equity & Education Rights (PEER).
After narrowing in better economic times, the financial gap between poor and wealthy school districts has widened (Education Trust, 2004). State and local money account for more than 90 percent of all education spending, but higher poverty districts typically receive less per student from those sources in 2002 than did their counterparts with relatively few poor children.
The Education Trust report singled out New Jersey as a state that has made real progress in terms of funding. In 1997, the state had a funding gap of $787 per student in cost-adjusted dollars. By 2002, the gap had been erased, and the state had a $566 positive difference for low-income students. Starting in 1998, spurred partly by the state’s long running Abbott v. Burke school funding lawsuit, the state implemented a series of new funding programs designed to help low-income students.
Abbott v. Burke is a like a mystery novel with a great deal of twists and starts. The case is of particular interest to the author because she was born in Trenton, New Jersey, and received an excellent kindergarten through high school education in Bordentown, New Jersey. Bordentown (Exit 7 on the New Jersey Turnpike) is a twenty-minute drive from Camden, New Jersey (Exit 4 on the New Jersey Turnpike), the home of Raymond Arthur Abbott, the lead plaintiff. This case has remained in the author’s heart and mind for more than thirty years because the process of reconciling two school districts that are twenty minutes from one another produce substantially different results for its graduates.
There have been twenty-seven iterations of Abbott v. Burke. In general, research on school finance appears to be disconnected from education reform. Advocates for school finance reform tend to focus attention on how equal the funding is and how it is distributed, and economists and educational sociologists appear to be more interested in determining what the outcomes are.