NJPSA’s Special Legislative Session Updates

Joint Legislative Committee on School Funding Reform

Tuesday October 24, 2006

At the October 24^th meeting of the Joint Legislative Committee on School Funding Reform, Commissioner of Education Lucille Davy provided a long-awaited look at the NJDOE’s efforts to develop a new school funding formula for New Jersey. Commissioner Davy described the Department’s efforts to “cost out” a single statewide formula for a variety of school types and student populations.

The efforts began in 2002 with the hiring of Augenblick, Palaich & Associates, a nationally-recognized expert in school funding and in the current methodology for estimating the cost of education. With the assistance of Augenblick, the NJDOE decided to utilize two separate costing out methodologies, the Successful School Districts (SSD) methodology and the Professional Judgment Panel (PJP) approach. Both methods resulted in similar results in cost recommendations despite the difference in methodology.

Commissioner Davy and Consultant John Augenblick (live from Denver) described both approaches in detail. The Successful School Districts approach started with the establishment of measurable criteria of district success and the identification of districts that met the criteria. In New Jersey, the 2004-5 test score results and AYP data were utilized. A total of 305 school districts (75% K-8 and 64% K-12 ) were identified. Next, their general education (exclusive of special needs) expenditures were analyzed and a cost per pupil developed. This method resulted in a proposed per pupil cost for general education of $8,004 for K-8 districts and $8,493 for K-12 districts. This method does not attempt to cost out the extra costs of the special needs of students including special education needs, limited English proficiency, or the impact of poverty on student learning needs.

The NJDOE prefers the second methodology which does examine and estimate the additional costs of students with special needs. The Professional Judgment Panel method focuses on the development of educational goals and the construction of theoretical prototype school districts. Education professionals are then asked to identify the resources needed to meet the specified educational goals. The cost of these resources is determined and applied to all districts with special weights calculated in the formula to meet the specialized needs of certain student populations.

In New Jersey, certain steps of this process were modified to maintain NJDOE control of the process. Initially, the role of the school funding consultant was modified in order for the NJDOE to directly control the cost data utilized. Next, DOE staff members made the first recommendations on the educational goals and prototypes. Their recommendations were formulated into materials for use by 5 panels of professional educators who met on for two days to evaluate the prototypes. The last level of review was done by a meeting of eight school district representatives.

At this point, the data and results were submitted to Augenblick and NJDOE for review and analysis. Augenblich developed six funding prototypes or models based on district configuration, enrollment, and the concentration of special student populations. Cost data was considered and applied to the prototypes solely by the NJDOE to develop the funding levels that were presented to the Joint Committee.

This data and the funding levels were not re-submitted to the Professional Judgment Panels as is the norm in this “costing out” method.  Despite requests by NJPSA and other statewide education groups, this data was not released to the public. The Education Law Center actually filed and won a request for the information pursuant to the Open Public Records Act. The detailed cost input data that was utilized by the NJDOE has not yet been released.

The Commissioner also released the special weights that have been developed to meet the needs of specialized populations in a funding formula. Such special weights have been developed for district type, and to address the needs of special education, limited English proficient, at risk (low income), and gifted and talented students. In addition, for the first time, the NJDOE plans to apply a geographic cost of education index to the school funding formula to address regional cost differences across New Jersey.

For more information and to review the Commissioner’s presentation, visit the state legislative website at www.njleg.state.nj.us/.

Posted by: Debra Bradley, Esq. at 11:00 AM — Share your opinion