Opinion: Cutting Education Funding Will Widen Achievement Gap

The following opinion piece was written by Mary Shaughnessy, a memeber of the Bloomfield Board of Education and Save Our Schools New Jersey. 

My name is Mary Shaughnessy and I am a member of the Bloomfield Board of Education and a member of Save Our Schools New Jersey. However, I also speak as a longtime Bloomfield taxpayer and the proud parent of two college-age daughters who thrived in Bloomfield’s highly diverse public school system, which is comprised roughly of one-third African American students, one-third Hispanic and one-third Caucasian, Asian American and other ethnic groups.

Several of our 11 schools teach from 35 to 55 percent economically-disadvantaged or ESL-classified students. Consequently it is my job as a BOE member and a Bloomfield taxpayer to protect the quality of education those children receive and to fight for the funding the state itself says they are entitled to have in order to meet the state-mandated education requirements.  

First, I would like to express deep gratitude to the legislators who have already taken steps to block attempts by New Jersey State Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf (and other legislators) to cut funding for at-risk students which research has already made abundantly clear will hurt programs aimed at closing the achievement gap between kids at the upper and lower ends of the economic spectrum.   

Using Cerf’s proposed formula to reduce funding for at-risk and bilingual students, Bloomfield will likely receive $1.6 million below the amount the state itself says it owes us.

This, despite the fact the state, by its own calculations, is already underfunding our township schools by 20 percent, which in turn has had and will continue to have the effect of driving up local property taxes in Bloomfield.  

Why is it suddenly credible to say that income level has no direct correlation to academic success? It is an irrefutable fact that student achievement (using the narrow measurement of standardized test scores) is greatest in districts with the highest proportion of economically stable homes and safe streets, and lowest in districts where children are more often faced with unstable homes and unsafe streets. 

In as much as the state apparently takes new found pride in “data driven” decision making, I pose these questions to our legislators regarding the proposed changes to the funding formula: 

Has there been a fiscal study that will reliably predict the outcome of withdrawing financial support from our at-risk student populations around the state? Do we have real time data on how the proposed cuts will impact the classrooms in those schools?

For instance, in one Bloomfield elementary school, 225 out of 418 of the children are considered "low-income" or “at-risk" students. Can legislators who are going to vote on the proposed cuts say with any certainty how those cuts are going to affect the day-to-day life of the children in this school?

Will a first-grade class with a 50 percent low-income rate and 40 percent mobility rate, i.e. the number of children who come and go in a single classroom over the course of a single school year, increase in size from, say, 26 to more than 30? And if so, how will that affect the quality of learning and life in those classrooms?

How many teachers will that school lose?

How much academic support and how many after school programs will have to be shut down?

How will we screen, monitor and follow up on our most vulnerable children?

Knowing that funding drained from our at-risk population will have to be taken from our general education budget, what will happen to student nutrition, music, athletics? 

How long will the cuts forestall the implementation of an all-day pre-K program, which research has consistently proven boosts life-long learning gains. 

If Cerf and state legislators want to reshuffle the pot of education money to give more funding to the better-off suburbs and less to at-risk kids, where is the transition program to help the suddenly defunded districts find ways to do more with less?

Is the State prepared to help them find other sources of revenue, to either fund or reduce the plethora of the unfunded mandates?

Children who have not been or cannot be properly cared for at home will continue to come to school with serious skills deficits – a heartbreaking dilemma that our teachers and principals have to compensate for every day.

Who has done a responsible calculation of the impact on those children and teachers if we simply pull the safety net from beneath them with no clear proof of consequences? 

Also, with inclusion rightly becoming the new model for public education – eliminating out-of-school or out-of-class placements for all but those with the most acute mental or physical disabilities – how will more densely-packed classes with less support for the vulnerable manage these changes – especially in our schools where more than half the general population is considered at-risk? 

Until legislators have honestly and carefully examined and answered these questions, I don't believe they can cast an informed vote. 

As elected officials, it is our job to nurture and protect public education. Any abandonment of that responsibility is a dereliction of duty and a grave injury to our most challenged children and ultimately the general population of students who depend upon us to remain committed to a strong and vital public education system.