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School spending doesn’t lead to higher performance in N.J.

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by Derrell Bradford
The Press of Atlantic City

Education Week’s recent release of “Quality Counts” – its state-by-state study of a variety of education data – ranked New Jersey in the top five nationally for its public education output. This was enough to garner a B- on the study’s A-through-F scale.

A top-five finish should be something to write home about, but a closer look at the report, and the data from which it is culled, provides an unfortunate picture of New Jersey’s school spending, its suspect student achievement, and how utterly average its student performance is, despite its marketing as an education leader.

First: According to the report, New Jersey has the second-highest state contribution to public education costs, and the third highest per-pupil spending at $13,238. It also reports an adjusted national per-pupil average of $9,963.

If per-pupil spending and student achievement are hardwired, as the state’s education bureaucracy would have us believe, we’d expect New Jersey’s B- to be about 32 percent higher than the national average. Unforunately, we barely distance ourselves from the rest of the pack and the nation’s average grade of “C.”

This spending (which is as high as $20,482 in Newark, for instance) makes it worth noting that, as a Tax Foundation study shows, New Jersey has seven of the 10 counties with the country’s highest median property taxes – and the link to school costs, if not performance, is undeniable.

Second: The study measures academic performance by compiling myriad state and national data. Notable among this information is the state’s reported high school graduation rate.

As is often chronicled, New Jersey graduates between 11,000 and 15,000 students annually who are unable to pass its standard High School Proficiency Assessment, or HSPA. These students fail the math, language arts, or both, sections of the test as many as three times before taking the state’s much-maligned alternate route exit exam, the SRA. They then receive the same diploma as their classmates who pass the test outright. Additionally, though Abbott students represent only 15 percent of the state’s graduation total, they are 42 percent of SRA takers.

If all of these students are removed from the graduation tally, New Jersey is not first in graduation rate, as is often cited by the governor and advertised by the New Jersey Education Association – it is 24th.

This says nothing of the relative rigor of the HSPA itself, which has been described as a “middle-school level” test by Education Commissioner Lucille Davy. Even our lower grade assessments reflect these abysmal standards, with fourth graders needing to answer only 42 percent of questions correctly on the language arts assessment to be deemed proficient.

Lastly: A key indicator on the study’s “Chance for Success” index is the enrollment of 3- and 4-year olds in preschool.

New Jersey’s court-ordered pre-K system is populated largely by private and community-based providers who are chosen by parents in what amounts to one of the nation’s largest school-choice programs. Despite the ostensible success in this area, many districts are currently moving to eliminate these existing private and community-based providers and replace them with capacity in the traditional public school system – at significantly higher expense. Which begs the question: if you have a good thing going, why change it?

In the end, what “Quality Counts” shows is that, for all its bombast, New Jersey’s public education system performs barely above average, despite its near nation-leading spending. That its nation-leading high school graduation rate is inflated to the detriment of students and taxpayers, and that, if it wants to emulate its success in pre-K, it should look to expand the school choice implicit in the system to K-12 as soon as possible.

Derrell Bradford is deputy director of E3, a Newark-based organization that advocates for urban public school reform, including school-choice and voucher programs.