A new report from New Jersey Policy Perspective calls out “persistent” funding shortfalls for schools serving low-income students and English Language Learners, urging state leaders to triple funding weights and reform the decades-old funding formula to ensure all children access a quality education.
The state’s funding formula, designed to provide additional resources to students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch and English Language Learners, in practice delivers much less, the report said.
For every low‑income student, districts now receive just 21% extra–well below the 47 to 57% written into law and short of what’s needed to ensure successful academic outcomes. Black and Latino students are also disproportionately affected, with a four in five chance of attending schools classified as underfunded compared to one in two for white students.
The report’s author Mark Weber argued that tripling the poverty “weight” to $8,880 per pupil would allow for smaller class sizes, more specialists, after-school support, and increased access to up‑to‑date technology and counseling, which are all standard in wealthier districts.
New Jersey Policy Perspective recommends eliminating the sliding scale that further disadvantages districts with higher poverty rates and adopting a uniform funding increase statewide. This reform would represent less than one percent of New Jersey’s total economy, and advocates say the state has the resources to restore school funding to pre-recession levels.
Policy experts and education advocates are calling for swift action from Trenton lawmakers: codify these changes in lasting legislation, sustain funding over the long term, and decisively address systemic racial and economic injustice in education financing.
The report was based on a University of Miami study called “Estimating the Costs of an Adequate Education in New Jersey” by Bruce Baker.