Abbott District - History

History

Abbott districts are school districts in New Jersey covered by a series of New Jersey Supreme Court rulings, begun in 1985, that found that the education provided to school children in poor communities was inadequate and unconstitutional and mandated that state funding for these districts be equal to that spent in the wealthiest districts in the state.

The Court in Abbott II and in subsequent rulings, ordered the State to assure that these children receive an adequate education through implementation of certain reforms, including standards-based education supported by parity funding. It include various supplemental programs and school facilities improvements, including to Head Start and early education programs. The Head Start and NAACP were represented by Maxim Thorne as amici curiae in the case.

The part of the New Jersey Constitution that is the basis of the Abbott decisions requires that:

he Legislature shall provide for the maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of free public schools for the instruction of all the children in the State between the ages of five and eighteen years.

In 2009, the New Jersey Supreme Court issued its latest Abbott ruling, holding that the State satisfied its constitutional burden by passing the New Jersey School Funding Reform Act of 2008 (SFRA). The Court released the State from prior remedial orders.

Two years later the Education Law Center, the original litigants in the case, challenged that school funding in the state's 2012 budget violated the 2009 agreement. The state's Supreme Court agreed and ruled that the state had to provide an additional $500 million to the state's 31 Abbott districts.

There is, however, limited evidence that the legal actions have improved student learning outcomes in the Abbott districts.