School Law

In 1974, it was predicted that the “problems, uses and potential of New Jersey’s present effort to revamp school funding may very well be a prototype for what other states will face in the future.” By the time of Abbott V, the New Jersey Court, had undertaken “the most intensive and expansive reforms of any state court and was the first court to demand that a thorough and efficient education include high-quality preschool for three-year-old children.” The Abbott cases were, in the words of Professor Paul L. Tractenberg, a “sort of a Magna Charta for urban schoolchildren.”

New Jersey was the first state to introduce the alternate route to teacher certification for members of other professions who did not hold education degrees. This had a historic effect on the profession, changing the pool of new teachers nationally. Other states followed so that now, “a substantial 39 percent of teachers with five or fewer years of teaching experience in 2011 entered teaching through alternate teacher preparation programs.”

New Jersey pioneered the high school graduation test and the school report card, which publicized school standardized test scores, dropout rates and numbers of students going to college. In 1989, after years of failure, the state took over the management of the Jersey City school district, “the first in American History.” These policies have been widely adopted.

The results in New Jersey have paid off. Educational researcher Linda Darling Hammond extolls New Jersey as the one of the highest achieving states:

“New Jersey had sharply increased its standing on national reading and math assessment—ranking in the top five states in all subject areas and grade levels on the NAEP and first in the nation in writing. It was also one of four states that made the most progress in closing the achievement gaps between White and Black and Hispanic students over the previous 4 years in both 4th and 8th grade reading and math. Among the top-scoring states, New Jersey served the largest share of low-income African American and Hispanic students (17% and 19% respectively), far more than other high-scorers such as Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire. Taking student demographics into account, New Jersey was the highest-achievement state in the nation by 2007.

She attributes success in New Jersey to cases such as Robinson and Abbott. The litigation, she claims, “illustrates how smart, focused use of resources in high-need communities can make a major difference in student achievement in a relatively short period of time for students who have been furthest behind.”