Posted on 05/26/2007 6:44:47 AM PDT by TornadoAlley3
While the rest of the nation's public school districts spent an average of $8,701 per pupil, New Jersey's spent about $5,000 more, according to a federal government report.
Paterson and Passaic school districts spent almost twice as much as the national average.
These findings were released Thursday in a report, Public Education Finances 2005, by the U.S. Census Bureau.
"New Jersey has a unique and wonderful education system," said John Donahue, assistant executive director of the New Jersey Association of School Business Officials in Robbinsville, Mercer County. "Who else in the country has the kinds of supports given to children in low-wealth communities?" he said. But that, he added, "comes at a cost."
In New Jersey, the average spending in 2004-05 was $13,800 per student. The Garden State was second only to New York, which spent $14,119 per pupil. Spending in the Passaic school district that year was an average of $15,531, according to Census figures. In the Paterson school district, the average per pupil cost was $16,302.
The New Jersey Department of Education also reports the average amounts spent on students in the state's 595 operating school districts. However, those numbers differ from what the Census reported Thursday. Chip Berry, project manager for the Census school district finance survey, said in a telephone interview that individual states may calculate per student expenditures differently than the federal government.
But several educators and public school finance experts say what really matters is not how much is spent, but what it is spent upon.
"The data only gives you one perspective," said Joseph Atallo, a Paterson Board of Education member and a former school business administrator. In Paterson, he said, many socio-economic factors affect student achievement and require sometimes costly programs. Paterson, like Newark and Jersey City, which spent $20,482 and $17,549 respectively per student, is an Abbott school district. The state's 31 poorest school districts earned the name after a series of state Supreme Court cases called Abbott v. Burke mandated additional state financial assistance.
Atallo said that providing services for bilingual and English-as-a-Second-Language students who come from Paterson's large immigrant population, as well as the health and social programs the district offers, can be costly. Some potentially expensive programs such as preschool and full-day kindergarten classes are required under the Abbott v. Burke decisions.
Passaic Schools Superintendent Robert Holster said he'd love to spend much of the $15,531 per student on purchasing computers, for example. But, he said, 80 percent of his students are classified as disadvantaged while 22 percent need special education services and have more pressing needs.
"Our population is so poor, so they get more," Holster said, noting the spending is not wasteful. "Children are a key resource."
According to the state Department of Education, classroom instruction accounts for most spending per pupil, largely because of teacher salaries and benefits, class size and types of programs. Steven Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research, said the cost of living in New Jersey and the surrounding region requires higher teacher salaries. "If we offered the same to teachers here as in New Mexico," he said, "we wouldn't have teachers."
And what do the standarized test results show? Are the people of NJ getting bang for their buck or just banged?
Bangded, high, hard and fast.
utah’s at the bottom of the barrel despite the $85,000,000 in tax dollars our multi-millionaire governor approved to educate mexican kids here last year.
and apparently there are concerns about TB in a Provo school thanks to an illegal. hear it costs a fortune to treat it.
Wow, those algore and Michael Moore movies must be real expensive.
Atallo said that providing services for bilingual and English-as-a-Second-Language students who come from Paterson’s large immigrant population, as well as the health and social programs the district offers, can be costly. “Our population is so poor, so they get more,”
I grew up in the area. Paterson and Passaic have been hellholes for forty years. High crime, drugs,corrupt governments,bad schools.
So the libs passed in 1976 the state income tax and a lib judge created the 31 Abbott districts. All hellholes. Some are so bad, like Newark and Camden, they had to be taken over by the state.
Tax money has been siphoned off to these districts, and property taxes are raised in the other districts to make up local needs not funded by the state.
Paterson and Passaic are old industrial towns that have ALWAYS had high percentage of immigrants going back over a hundred years ago.
80% disadvantaged, 22% special needs? Yeah, right.
And the kids are dumber and dumber each year. But it’s not their fault or the fault of the education bureaucracy. IT’S THE LACK OF FUNDS,YOU KNOW!
Hell the amount of money spent on NJ education is bigger than the GNP of about half the world’s countries.
Thirty years and the places are worse than ever—not only in the schools, but in everything. Paterson was America’s Arsenal of Democracy in the 19th Century(Civil War) right into WW2—the industrial base rivalled Detroit in his massiveness and variety.
A proud city brought to ruin by the libs.
But don’t worry, next year they’ll ask for more money, after all it’s for the children.
That’s one reason I live in another state now.
And the major price that is paid is that the quality of education is sacrificed. I don't recall seeing NJ at the top of any educational standards lists.
“Tax money has been siphoned off to these districts, and property taxes are raised in the other districts to make up local needs not funded by the state.”
I live in the northern part of Passaic county and I know the feeling.
For ex: in Newark an audit found that for 30 years the B-O-D was paying $100,000 yearly for someone who died in 1977.
So net-net is all the other districts still have to fund their schools. In effect making the taxpayer pay twice to educate his child. One time for his district, and one time for Camden, Paterson, Newark.
Lastly, voters have no rights re: education spending in NJ. What they 'vote' on, amounts to about 15% of the total budget. The other 85% is off the table, mandated.
Even if they reject the 15%, NEA has built in 'circuit breakers' at the municipal then state level to override the will of the voting public.
NJ taxpayers have no rights; they are serfs to their state government masters [but don't necc. know of feel like it].
I actually live in both NJ and Pa.so I have a view on this subject. NJ standards aren’t bad by the usual measures, but they aren’t as good as they should be given the money spent. Pa. spends less and gets nearly the same result, and property taxes reflect the differences. I have two houses; both the same size and lot size. Both are in suburban/rural areas, with no special educational problems. The property taxes in NJ, where most of the tax goes to the schools, is 2X the Pa. tax.
In NJ all the latest liberal educational enhancements are practiced. In Pa. they do less. In NJ I’ve heard there are classrooms where special ed. students have their own adult “helper” in class with them. One teacher I met said she was leaving the profession because the 8 helpers she had in her classroom made it impossible to teach the rest of the class.
The local NJ taxes are faithfully raised by frequent tax assessments, which, of course, reflect the spiraling home values. These in turn are increasing because of restrictive land use rules imposed by those who want to keep development(sprawl)at bay. The money is always spent.
The losers are people who don’t have kids and are retired. They leave. Young families move to Pa. and commute. The population fill-in is from immigration at the lowest economic level. A formula for building your typical South American economy.
interpretation
N.J. tops nation in fraudulant waste and bureaucracy posing as educating children.
There, I feel better!
Um, same here but we spend less than $7,000/student.
Seems the headline is wrong. Maybe they meant certain areas of NJ. Looks like NY has NJ beat by a little over $300 per kid.
We can't expect kids to read or do math at only $16,302 a year. We need to spend a lot more.
JeanLM—you very accurately described the financial tsunami which will hit NJ in the near future.
The underfunded pension funds, serving double and triple dippers,high taxes, wealth flow moving out of NJ and being replaced not with wealth generators but with lower class immigrants who require social services(more taxes) will implode the state.
When I lived there, I would ask people why they thought it took $ 32 billion dollars to run a state of less than eight million people? They had never even considered it. And that’s just the state budget, not the county, town, or school budgets.
I got out a year ago and moved to Southern Delaware, where at least there is a measure of sanity, both personal and financial. I could not see retiring in NJ. There would be nothing left after taxes and expenses. That’s not living.
Born and raised in Passaic County, in Clifton.
Left NJ a year ago after living here 52 years and moved to Southern Delaware, where the taxes are low, the area is rural, but I can get to the beach in 20 minutes or so. Nicest people here, too.
Make your plan to move before the financial tsunami hits—see my post before this one.
Here’s another perspective. I spend 20% of what the state of NJ spends on education when I pay for my girls’ private Catholic School. In return, I am getting ten times the educational AND citizenship bang for my buck.
I truly wonder what excuse the libs would dream up for their failures if they were allowed to spend $100,000 a year per student.
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