New Jersey Politics and Government: The Suburbs Come of Age

Chapter 15. The Politics of Education

305 Chapter 15 The Politics of Education The Legislature shall provide for the maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of free public schools for the instruction of all children in the state between the ages of five and eighteen years. —1875 amendment to the New Jersey constitution Whether the state acts directly or imposes the role upon local government, the end product must be what the constitution commands. . . . If local government fails, the state must compel it to act, and if local government cannot carry the burden, the state must itself meet the continuing obligation. —New Jersey Supreme Court in the Robinson v. Cahill landmark school funding case, 1973 Home rule versus state direction; cities versus suburbs; local property taxes versus broad-based state taxes; how to achieve both economic development and social justice—nowhere are these debates more prominent than in the politics of public education.The 1970s mark a major dividing line for New Jersey education policy. Before then, coalitions of local leaders made state policy. After the 1970s, education policy was directed from Trenton. Education Policy in Historical Perspective Public education in New Jersey had assumed its distinctive characteristics byWorldWar II.The state spent at a rate one-third above the national average by the 1920s.Teachers enjoyed above-average salaries and pensions. 3 0 6 N e w J e r s e y P o l i t i c s a n d G ov e r n m e n t As the rest of the country saw a massive wave of consolidations, New Jersey, with its home rule tradition, increased the number of school districts.1 Trenton’s contribution to local education budgets through the 1940s was 3 to 6 percent. Next door,Albany already provided a third of the funds for New York’s schools.2 More than nine out of ten New Jersey’s education dollars came from local property taxes. Most districts approved their budgets in annual elections and at the same time elected school board members. In urban areas, appointments to the school board and jobs in the school system were important patronage resources for local politicians. State education commissioners, although they controlled little money, approved curricula, certified teachers, appointed county education superintendents , and chose the administrators and faculties of what were then the state teachers’ colleges.This role in higher education was uncommon in other states. Frederick Raubinger, appointed by Republican Governor Alfred Driscoll in 1952 and reappointed by Democrats Robert Meyner and Richard Hughes in 1957 and 1962, was often cited as an example of how state education commissioners, in symbiotic relationships with interest groups, could dominate educational policy making.3 Every few months, he met at a Princeton inn with leaders of the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA), the School Boards Association, the PTA, and the superintendents’association.They discussed“tactics,general strategy ...and intelligence on the political climate.”4 Among the participants, the NJEA, with its large membership and research capacity, ranked second in influence to the commissioner. Raubinger presided over a system in which local preferences and resources produced wide regional disparities. By the late 1950s, New Jersey was second to NewYork in per capita expenditures for elementary and secondary education. However, it ranked thirty-seventh among the then forty-eight states in state aid. Hudson and Essex counties in the north spent almost twice as much per student as did Camden and Cumberland counties in the south. A Transition Period: The Hughes and Cahill Years Democrat Richard Hughes achieved passage of the first broad-based state tax when he won reelection and control of both legislative houses in 1965. In deciding where to spend the new sales tax revenue, he could seek more dominance over state policy.A showdown with Raubinger arose over Hughes’s resolve to strengthen higher education.5 New Jersey’s public The Politics of Education 307 institutions for the most part had neither quality nor quantity to recommend them. Legislation establishing county colleges was not passed until 1962; the six teachers’ colleges each enrolled only about two thousand students ; and Rutgers—the nominal state university—had only eleven thousand students on its three campuses.6 Other public higher education systems in the Northeast also developed late because of a sizable private sector, but New Jersey’s private institutions were relatively few and mostly small. Almost half of high school graduates...