Court: Give schools what they deserve

A special master appointed by the state Supreme Court has found that education cuts pushed through by Gov. Chris Christie — and ultimately approved by the Democratic Legislature — violate the state’s constitution.

The cuts, which ignored Jon Corzine’s funding-reform law, had a disproportionate effect on low-income students, according to the master.

The ruling sets up a showdown between the governor and the court — the court, according to experts quoted by The Star-Ledger, is unlikely to ignore the findings of its own appointed master — that we have not seen since the court shut down the schools until the Legislature relented and passed the state’s first income tax.

The court decision puts the basic question in front of the public: What is the role of money in education? The answer, I think, is yes.

Given that there are plenty of studies that show that the best predictor of educational success is socio-economic status, meaning that communities that lack resources have the greatest trouble in providing quality schools. The only way we can offset the financial advantages that rich school districts have is by giving extra money to the poor ones — which rarely is enough to offset the vast array of other problems that hamper educational attainment.

You cannot expect a student who faces the danger of gunfire and gangs, hunger, lack of heat, broken families, etc., to perform at the same level as a kid from the suburbs, even a poor kid from the suburbs. The advantages that a kid gets in Cranbury, South Brunswick, Maplewood and Morris County are visceral and cannot be offset by charter schools, teacher accountability, high-stakes testing and all of the other gimmicks we have turned to as a way to avoid spending the necessary money to make up for the gap.

We should be striving for equity of opportunity, which we have basically abandoned.

For now, we are going to fight over where the money is going to come from to meet the court’s requirement that we actually pay for what we said we were going to pay for.

• Send me an e-mail.
• Read poetry at The Subterranean.
• Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
• Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.