Wide Range of Spending in N.J. Schools

The New York Times just came out with an article in today's paper in regard to the wide range of spending in New Jersey schools. Although they concentrated mainly on the Abbot School districts that receive a majority of state funding, they also ranked the municipal school districts . The chart shows comparative spending per pupil in more than 600 school districts across New Jersey. As everyone within Jersey (or Joisey, if you want to be technical) knows, there is nothing - nothing that we are more passionate about (and I am even INCLUDING SEX) than our school rankings.

On one hand, a high ranking means that your property values are certain to escalate dramatically because everyone looks at the rankings and NO ONE wants to cause incalculable harm to little Jaden, Madison or Chad by leaving them to the prattlings of an INFERIOR school system (I'm not naming names, Rockaway Boro, ranked 562 out of 600). Personally, my own imaginary children, Kayleigh and Rocco, chronic underperformers that they are, would do well in Rockaway Boro, since I'm sure they would blow out the curve and graduate Summa and Magna Cum Laude - misunderstood child geniuses, both). On the other hand, Mountain Lakes is 26th on the list. Excuse me while I commit hairi kairi with my letter opener. My own town, Morris Plains is a "slackerish" 129th in spending. (Apologies to my Boro - I'm sure all of our teachers are working extremely hard given the $13.4k per child they have to work with, which only covers 87% of educating said student).

Which leads us into the second unfolding drama as a result of the school rankings and the SECOND MOST IMPORTANT TOPIC THAT WE NEW JERSEYANS HOLD DEARER TO OUR HEARTS THAN EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE WORLD (save our imaginary children). Test Rankings. Basically, the school ranking discrepancy can be parsed by the fun "how much are we spending per child in our school systems vs. the effect of this spending on math and language test rankings game." ) a.k.a. (with the heinous amount of property taxes I pay annually, Rocco and Kayleigh had BETTER be scoring in the top 90th percentile, dammit)

Of course, when the reader focuses on the rather mundane aspect that school spending equals HIGHER PROPERTY TAXES, the rankings game becomes less important than the "how the heck am I going to afford to pay my property taxes this year" game.

Now this starts up the exciting battle between my sister, "Eliza the Obsessively Perfect"(EtOP) and me "Trish the Excessively Imperfect" (TtEI). EtOP lives in Mendham which, according to our friends at the NYT ranks 156th in school spending and $12.9k per student (I'm taking Mendham Twp, not Boro). Morris Plains ranks 129th in school spending and 13.4k per student for the 2006/7 school year. (This is down $200.00 from the prior year, so they must have discontinued art or phys-ed for the savings. Either that, or an overly paid administrator was summarily shown the door - kidding, please don't send me 20,000 hate e-mails in regard to our school system, yes, I know it's great...please don't hurt me)

Well, should Rocco and Kayleigh have taken the 3rd, 4th and 5th grade Language Arts exam, they would have scored somewhere around 98, 92, 92 percentile respectively.

Okay, Eliza-the-Perfect's genetically engineered test tube offspring known as Thad and Thor scored 93 and 96th, respectively, and 97th if they ended up in Mendham township middle school.

These are basically the same scores with Mendham winning slightly as spawn starts conjugating verbs. Now for math: Morris Plains 96, 95, 92 vs. Mendham 92, 95, 96. Basically, the same scores reversed. So, while I can rib Eliza-the-Perfect in regard to Mendham's slightly lower per student spending, I can't call NJ DYFS and claim my nephews, Thor and Thad, as my own because their test scores are still within the shockingly brilliant percentile. (I make up my own percentile categories).

Thus, EtOP retains custody of her children, at least until their scores fall into the 80th (abysmal) percentile and I scoop them up for the more brilliant climes of The Plains. Just kidding, Thor and Thad will never be my own, they have a blatant history of feline enmity and that just will not go over well with my 15 cats.

If you are still awake, check out this report on School funding formula at the NJ Department of Education website. All I can say is that it was obviously written by someone in Wisconsin... Oh look, a Comparative Spending Guide to examine school budgets! I'll let you parents parse the data. I was concerned that the school report card for 2006 isn't out yet on the NJ web site, but is is due out later this month, so I'm sure that there will be more rankings to peruse, dispute and feel smug about. Any comments, anyone?