By Bret Schundler
Commerce Magazine

Education has always been an issue of primary concern for parents. But now, education is increasingly becoming a critical issue for New Jersey's business leaders. That is because employers know that if New Jersey is to remain competitive in a global economy, we must have a workforce that possesses the skills and intellect necessary for the jobs of the 21st century. Many New Jersey business owners are also understandably concerned about the skyrocketing cost of education because the sky-rocketing taxes that we pay to fund our public school system are hurting the state's economy.

New Jersey's Constitution guarantees every child a "thorough and efficient" education, yet any objective analysis of student performance of urban public schools shows that we are far from meeting this obligation. Consider these three statistics: less than half of the ninth graders in our urban public schools finish high school, only 41% of those who remain in school passed their High School Proficiency Test this year, and only 6% of our urban 8th graders who took the Early Warning Test were judged to be fully competent in basic math.

Spending More Money Is Not The Answer

Jersey City is a perfect illustration of how increases in the cost of public education do not necessarily translate into higher quality. Since the state seized control of our school district in 1989, spending has increased by $75 million per year. We now spend over $9,000 per year to educate each child. Despite a massive infusion of state funds, student achievement scores and graduation rates have barely budged, and both are still far below the state average.

If a lack of money is not the problem, then what is? In my opinion the problem lies with the way in which our hard-earned tax dollars are being spent. Accordingly, I have proposed a comprehensive educational reform program for Jersey City, called the Jersey City "Schoolchildren First" Education Act, that will improve the quality of education by giving parents and teachers the power to fundamentally change the way we educate our children -- without increasing taxes!

Meeting The Diverse Needs Of Our Students

The reason that so many of our inner city students perform poorly on achievement tests is not because their schools are "bad" relative to those in suburbia, but because so many of our students are severely disadvantaged and come to school with extraordinary needs and challenges -- needs that our bureaucratically rigid government schools simply cannot address well. In fact, there is no single, homogenized model of education that can successfully work with a population that is as diverse, and often disadvantaged, as Jersey City's. Children with special needs are not unique to our inner cities, but they are much more abundant. For example:

• over 60% of Jersey City's public school children have been identified as being "at-risk" and in need of remedial help

• 41% of Jersey City families live on fixed incomes -- primarily welfare -- while only 13% of families statewide are on welfare.

• 41% of Jersey City children speak a language other than English at home, and

• 14% of Jersey City residents immigrated to the United states within the last 10 years.

To meet the diverse needs of these children, we need to replace today's bureaucratically rigid approach to education. We need to realize that there is no "one best school" capable of working for each of them. Instead, our teachers should have the freedom to create a broad range of specialized programs that are tailor-made to address the different needs of our children.

Building On Proven Successes

Alternative education programs that focus on the individual needs of children are springing up across America, and they are proving to be quite successful at educating children who were not performing well at traditional public schools. For example, East Harlem's "Schools of Choice" program has dramatically improved student performance. This low-income, primarily Hispanic, school district was once the lowest scoring of New York City's 32 school districts. As a result of the "Schools of Choice" program, the district rose to 15th best in just ten years -- out-performing many middle-class and primarily English-speaking districts.

Here in Jersey City, the privately-managed Kenmare School graduates the vast majority of its students, all of whom are young women who had previously dropped out of the education system. To meet the special needs of these students, the Kenmare School provides on-site day care, job training, and job placement services. It even provides a residential facility for homeless young women and their children.

These programs succeed because they focus on educating their students in ways which are distinctly tailored to their needs. We want to put this same principle into action throughout the Jersey City school system.

Bringing Innovation To Jersey City By Establishing Alternative Schools

The Jersey City "Schoolchildren First" Education Act will expand on the success of these alternative education initiatives by establishing a pilot program in Jersey City which will encourage educators to develop a wide variety of educational programs, and then will empower families by allowing parents to apply to enroll their children in the program that they think will best help their children learn. Our legislation will also make each program accountable for student performance, rather than continue today's approach to ensuring accountability which simply asks each school to comply with a maze of bureaucratic regulations.

At the heart of the Jersey City "Schoolchildren First" Education Act is a set of public school reforms that will help make our public school system more flexible, accountable, and successful.

Our legislation will give teachers and principals the power to design educational programs tailored to the needs of children. For example, programs could focus on the needs of children with language barriers, truancy or discipline problems, reading difficulties, as well as those who are educationally-gifted or have a special interest in science, math, or the arts. Numerous different programs could operate out of the same existing school facilities and become "schools within a school."

Our legislation would also give parents, teachers, and principals the ability to apply to the State to receive a "charter" to start an autonomous, performance-based school. Charter schools would be required to meet the same rigorous academic standards of any other public school, but would be managed by a board of trustees rather than by the school district bureaucracy. Under our proposal, the State Commissioner of Education would reserve the right to renew or revoke a school's charter based on its ability to fulfill its commitment to provide a solid learning environment for our children. Similar charter programs already successfully operate in California, New Mexico, Massachusetts, and Colorado. It's time New Jersey joined these states on the cutting edge of education reform.

Educational Opportunity Grants -- Expanding Choice Without Raising Taxes

In addition to these innovative public school reforms, the Jersey City "Schoolchildren First" Education Act would also provide Educational Opportunity Grants to help parents pay for excellent programs at privately-managed schools. These grants will help expand educational opportunities for families by allowing parents to choose from a broader range of programs.

Offering Educational Opportunity Grants to families who choose to send their children to privately managed schools will not increase taxes. In fact, doing so will actually make it possible to increase per pupil spending in our public schools at a time when the State Supreme Court has mandated equalized per student funding between rich and poor districts -- again, without increasing taxes! It will also help alleviate our public school over-crowding problem -- again, without increasing taxes!

How is all this possible? As I mentioned previously, the Jersey City public school system spends approximately $9,000 per year to educate a child, while the average tuition cost for privately-managed elementary schools in Jersey City is only $1,700, and is just $3,500 for privately-managed high schools. Under my legislation, when a child transfers from a public school to a privately managed school, the state aid which Jersey City was receiving for that student would be deposited into a grant pool. The local tax dollars that were being spent on that child would stay in the public system, to be added to the state and local dollars being spent on the students who remain in the public system. This would fund vouchers, increase per-child spending in the public schools, and decrease over-crowding in the public schools -- all without increasing taxes by one cent.

Meanwhile, because tuition at Jersey City's privately managed schools are so low, the revenue in the grant pool generated by one transfer would be enough to provide Education Opportunity Grants for six private school students. Therefore, there would be no additional revenue source needed to finance grants not only for the students transferring from public to privately managed schools, but also for those students already enrolled in privately managed schools. Replacing "Accountability by Regulation" with "Accountability for Results." Now, I recognize that in order for our education reforms to be successful, we must make both our publicly and privately managed schools more accountable to parents. That's why our legislation establishes Parental Information Centers that will provide every family with the facts about the curriculum, policies, and track record of every school and alternative education program in the district. This information center will ensure that every parent has access to the facts they need to make an informed decision.

In addition, it is absolutely vital that we create a system where schools, teachers, and parents feel directly accountable for student performance. That's why the Jersey City "Schoolchildren First" Education Act requires the State Commissioner of Education to administer assessment tests in core subjects like reading, math, and science at every participating school. The results of these annual assessment tests, administered at every grade level, will be used to determine the true effectiveness of various educational programs in our publicly and privately managed schools.

These assessment tests will help determine how effectively a program is working with a given child. If one child is not being helped by a given program, the child's parents will know, and may decide to enroll the child elsewhere. If a program is proven educationally ineffective with a great number of students, it will be phased out altogether, or if it is a privately managed school, disallowed from continuing to redeem Educational Opportunity Grants.

A Pilot Program that Leads by Example

While my legislation will only establish a pilot school choice program in Jersey City, I think it will benefit all New Jerseyans because it will provide lessons on how learning can be enhanced everywhere. My legislation will also save taxpayer money because it will demonstrate that the quality of education in our schools can be improved without increasing taxes.