Maybe We Should Make More Copies of the State Audits

Yesterday, the Education Law Center and their supporters argued before the Supreme Court that New Jersey's Abbott school districts are under-funded. Then, they got in their cars and drove through a city that spends more than $16,000 per-pupil in education, with state taxpayers picking up 80% of the tab.

"At bottom, the state's proposal (would) turn its back on the severe and extreme disadvantages of Abbott school children repeatedly identified," the brief filed by the Education Law Center, lead attorneys in the Abbott case, says. "There is simply no basis ... to, once again, consign untold future generation[s] of Abbott children to pay the price so dearly exacted upon prior generations of those children."

Last year New Jersey state taxpayers distributed $7.3 billion in state aid. More than half that went to the 31 Abbott districts, leaving more than 500 non-Abbott districts to divide the rest. At some point, the legislature has to come to the conclusion that spending more money on the problem of urban education does not make the problem go away - it only makes it more expensive.

The Urban Schools Scholarship Act, which would allow corporations to fund a school choice pilot program for poor children in seven New Jersey cities, is long overdue.