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New Jersey's Fiscal Disaster and Education Cuts
What a different world February 25th, 2020 was, the day Gov. Phil Murphy gave his budget speech for FY2021. There wasn't Coronavirus. There wasn't talk of state bankruptcy. There wasn't...
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The Need for Shared Control over the Congressional Calendar
In the last 20-30 years everyone who observes American politics has acknowledged that the political system has become more and more combative and chaotic. First functionality gave way to gridlock,...
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Can New Jersey Increase Teacher Salaries? Should it? A response to Mark Weber...
The New Jersey Policy Perspective has written many reports over the years in favor of programs to benefit New Jersey's poorest residents. These include calls to increase cash assistance for poor...
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The New Jersey Policy Perspective Misleads on Pensions
As part of its advocacy for the New Jersey Education Association, the New Jersey Policy Perspective has put its imprimatur on several reports arguing that New Jersey's teacher pensions are "modest" and...
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New Jersey's Wealth: Unequal Yet Mobile
Since the beginning of New Jersey's chronic fiscal crisis in the early-2000s, there's been an unending argument over raising taxes on high-earners to mitigate the budget crisis. The argument over...
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2021 Equalized Valuations Show Economic Trends, Forecast State Aid Changes
The release of Equalized Valuations for every town in New Jersey allows us yet again to get a snapshot of New Jersey's demographic and economic churn, plus get a preview of state aid changes for...
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Rationalizing NJ's Construction Aid
Thanks to the passage of the School Funding Reform Act in 2008 (SFRA), New Jersey finally has a unitary, progressive funding formula for K-12 opex aid. The difference between the previous...
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Why the Maine-Nebraska Electoral Vote Allocation Method is Really Bad
Many people I know have said that they wished that every state used the same method to allocate electoral votes as Nebraska and Maine, where electoral votes are awarded by Congressional district, with...
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Vouchers, Integration, and Educational Choice: My case for School Vouchers
As a K-12 public school graduate, former Board of Education member, and activist for a fair distribution of state aid in New Jersey, one education stance I have been very reticent about is my support...
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The New Jersey Policy Perspective's Fictions on Outmigration
The New Jersey Policy Perspective exists to advocate for the betterment of New Jersey's most vulnerable residents, and it isn't shy about advocating for tax increases to achieve that. As its mission...
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2021-22 Brings $1.7 Billion to Education, More State Aid Equity
In his budget for FY2022, Phil Murphy has proposed an increase in education spending of $1.7 billion, of which $578 million is for new K-12 operating aid. More than just a very large increase in state...
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Good and Bad in the Lakewood State Aid Case
One of the most significant state aid news events of the past month is the decision by an Administrative Law Judge, Susan M. Scarola, that the School Funding Reform Act is not necessarily...
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Anticipated NJ Enrollment Loss
New Jersey's public schools have projected an enrollment loss of 26,114 for 2021-22, comparing the pre-Covid enrollment estimate made in February 2020 to the post-Covid enrollment estimate made in...
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New Jersey's Population Growth in the 2010s
One theme of this blog is that New Jersey is overtaxed and that having high taxes induces low economic growth, net outmigration, and low population growth.In making that argument, I used...
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2022 Equalized Valuations are Out
New Jersey's 2022-23 state aid numbers will not come out until the governor's FY2023 budget speech and state aid surpluses and deficits in 2022-23 will be strongly affected by the new Education...
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New Jersey and the Quasimander: Why We Need Proportional Representation
In the last twenty years the United States has seen its constitutional democratic deficits go from being latent problems that most Americans disregarded to being glaring crises that call into question...
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New Jersey's 2022-23 State Aid
New Jersey's 2022-23 state aid distribution is another big step towards state aid fairness.Thanks to the addition of $650 million of new K-12 opex aid plus $186 million in redistributed Adjustment Aid,...
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A Politically Realistic Proposal to Fix Local Fair Share
Now that Adjustment Aid is being phased out, the biggest problem in the School Funding Reform Act is its use of Aggregate Income to calculate Local Fair Share. To see how bad Local Fair Share...
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Educator Compensation: New Jersey versus Florida
Public sector unions want their members to believe that their union membership and the dues they pay are worth it because a well-funded union is a powerful union, and a powerful union is one that can...
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Randomness is Not Equity
Imagine if a town wanted to have something done and instead of hiring people to do the work, it required randomly selected residents to do the work for the town. Imagine if the time requirement was...
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