Breaking Ground: Rebuilding New Jersey’s Urban Schools
Article begins with background discussion on NJ Supreme Court Ruling in the case of Abbott v. Burke. The court ruled that the state was required to provide adequate and sound curriculum to school districts school facilities afflicted with poverty. In 1997 the Court ruled that a complete assessment of Abbott school facilities was to be conducted by the New Jersey Board of Education. The results of these assessments were accepted by the NJ Supreme Courts. The state was obligated to provide proper management and financial assistance to these districts. The formation of the Abbott School Construction Programs was born. This article continues to discuss program assessments and implementations that will begin the repair of the New Jersey Abbott Districts. The article also includes challenges that these districts still face in addition to new ideas and plans for the future of the Abbott School Construction Program.
School Finance: Raising Questions for Urban Schools
This article is broken up into three sections addressing some of the many issues related to the financing of urban schools districts. The first section of the article focuses on the history of education financing in the United States and how the money is spent within an urban school district. Section two discusses the structures of funding and the creation and use of policies for school districts. In the final section, the article addresses the idea of “decentralization”, school site based budgets, charter schools and the voucher system. The author ends with a final discussion of school budget restructuring and how the outcomes of student performance can be affected in a positive or negative manner.
Whole School Reform from the Inside
Written from the perspective of a Superintendent of an urban school district this article address the criticisms of authors who choose to attack and question the efficacy of reform in located in these districts (Note: many authors who criticize this reform are not educators from poverty stricken school districts). Trenton and the state of New Jersey are used as a case study example in this article boasting to be the only state with a “large scale trial” of whole school reform. Developers of models for school reform are brought in to the city of Trenton to assist in the choice and implementation of new reforms. As an example, the article mentions the model “Success for All” which is a performance driven review process that adjusts instruction based on student performance in order to meet the ever changing needs its students. Other issues addressed in the article include, problems with whole school reform, challenges of new school models, adequate funding for reform implementation and teacher-principal-administrator relationships within this new reform.
